SCOTUS: The Diversity Shibboleth

The Associated Press tonight is reading Pres. Bush's tea leaves and finding signs that "diversity" will influence the president's nomination, expected as soon as this week, of Sandra Day O'Connor's successor on the Supreme Court of the United States. Here's the AP lede:

WASHINGTON - John Roberts, hailed by supporters as "the brightest of the bright," cruised Monday toward easy confirmation as chief justice while President Bush hinted that his next pick to the Supreme Court could be a minority or a woman.

"Diversity is one of the strengths of the country," the president said.

Here's the full exchange per the White House transcript:

Q Mr. President, now that Judge Roberts is heading for confirmation, how close are you to choosing your second nominee for the Supreme Court? And how much of a factor is diversity going to be?

THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I will -- I'm cautiously optimistic about Judge Roberts' vote in the Senate. I will -- he's done a fantastic job of showing the Senate and the American people he's not only a brilliant person, but a decent person with a great heart. And so I await confirmation and I hope it goes well. It looks like it might.

Your question indicated that it looked like it was headed in the right direction. I will withhold judgment until the Senate exercises their consent part of the advice and consent relationship with the White House.

I have interviewed people in the past, and thought about people from all walks of life. And I will put the person in to do the job. But I am mindful that diversity is one of the strengths of the country.

Any other questions?

Yeah, you could say that. One question would be, where does AP get off seeing Bush's minimal acknowledgment of the reporter's question as a tea leaf worth reading? But the real question at issue with this nomination should be posed at this point to Democrats and it is: Why does diversity matter?

Because if diversity matters for the sake of diversity then Democrats should be thrilled if Pres. Bush were to nominate a gay black Latina, regardless of her political views. But as we saw with Clarence Thomas, that won't be the case.

It's time for Democrats to remember why they initially championed diversity and then, once they've rediscovered those goals, dump the concept that diversity in and of itself has value.

Democrats, and the left in general, have been pushed, particularly since September 11th, to address the question of whether every culture is of equal value. The answer is no. Virgin-worshipping cultures merit neither celebration nor salvation. The Sicilian Mafia culture of omerta deserves the fate it seeks for its enemies. The macho, anti-women, anti-gay cultures of barracks and dorms and locker-rooms have earned the same disinfectant their host environs so often desperately need.

Put another way: Valuing diversity ought not mean declaring English cuisine the moral or asthetic equivalent of French cuisine. If we could save only one, we would be wrong to submit it to a coin toss. Why? Because some cultures are better than others. The culture of western-civilization's centers of learnings is demonstrably better than the culture of the madrassas. And that should be a liberal position, rather than a conservative one.

Why? Because liberals championed diversity originally for one reason -- fairness -- but with an understanding of why diversity gives us strength: It's our societal equivalent of genetic mutation.

Nominating blacks to the high court is a noble goal not just as part of a striving toward equality, but also as a way of introducing new genetic material into our cultural and national makeup. That's why liberals were flummoxed by the nomination of Thomas: Their focus on the former had made them lose sight of the latter.

Thomas satisfied the notion of pursuing racial equality. So why were liberals so pissed by it? And why were they unable to articulate a coherent reason for their rage? It's because they had lost sight of the fact that diversity is not the goal. It's a tool we have for strengthening our society. Thomas fell short of that goal because he didn't bring actual diversity to the court.

In genetic terms, again, the American society needs the constant infusion of new genetic material (the ideas, perspectives and opinions of minorities, immigrants, the disenfranchised, the outcasts, the mutants) in order to continue evolving. When I started working at one big American media company, I was impressed to see the wide-ranging diversity among the desk assistants in its news room. I was disheartened, soon after, to discover that the pay scale was so low that only rich minority students could be found among their ranks. These students represented the status quo and so would be hard pressed to know how to question it, let alone find the motive to do so. They offered the company no new intellectual mutations that could improve its survival ability.

If diversity for the sake of diversity were truly a liberal goal, the left would demand the nomination of a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, or an Orthodox Jew whose religious beliefs forbade him to shake Ginsburg's hand, or an anti-Semitic Imam. Hell, if anyone on the left had any real courage, they'd nominate someone from the most politically under-represented religious minority in America: the non-religious. But what the left really values is not diversity of race or even of opinion, but diversity of ways to pursue certain goals which the left values more than diversity.

Goals like: Human rights, freedom of expression, social justice, economic justice and government accountability. Until the left learns to rank diversity appropriately, and to recall why diversity is of value, the right will continue to distract the media with its diversity shell-game, and confound the left by appeasing its calls for superficial diversity, while killing its hopes for meaningful diversity.

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ABC News: Even-Handed and Wrong

Tonight's e-mail blurb for ABC's "World News Tonight" previews the following story:

In other news, once again the separation between church and state is being hotly debated, as the American Civil Liberties Union accuses a Pennsylvania school board of inserting religion and creationism into their public schools. Jake Tapper brings us more about a case that will likely influence school boards across the country, where "intelligent design" and other theories that challenge evolution are gaining momentum.

ABC News thought it was playing fair, but actually played into the hands of un-American theists. How?

By putting the onus of the "accusation" on the ACLU. There is no question that the Pennsylvania school board is inserting religion, if not outright creationism, into public schools. The second error ABC makes is by labeling "intelligent design" a theory. It's not. It's the lack of a theory. It doesn't have the attributes of a scientific theory, nor does it have even a meaningful fraction of the support of the scientific community. So, why does ABC News treat it as a viable, let alone rival theory? Fear of the Christian right is one answer. Insecurity about their intellectual ability to distinguish between a real, accepted theory and a bogus, would-be theory is another. Fair-minded but wrong-headed loyalty to some sort of notion of post-modern objectivity -- under which every claim occupies equal grounds in the eyes of journalism -- is another. Unfortunately, this combination of cowardice, intellectual laxity and flawed concepts of objectivity will spell our doom until someone in the news media gets some courage, some brains and some heart.

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No Shit, President Sherlock

Here's the impeachment-worthy headline from the Associated Press this morning:

Bush Told U.S. Needs Post-Disaster Plan
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer

Military officials told President Bush on Sunday that the U.S. needs a national plan to coordinate search and rescue efforts following natural disasters or terrorist attacks...

Now, it would be one thing if, five years after vowing to defend this nation, and four years after the attacks of September 11th and one month after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, military officials told the president that he should be prepared to deal with disasters after they happen and the president replied, "No shit, it's taken care of."

But that's not what happened.

Here's what the military told him:

Bush got an update about the federal hurricane response from military leaders at Randolph Air Force Base. He heard from Lt. Gen. Robert Clark, joint military task force commander for Hurricane Rita, and Maj. Gen. John White, a task force member, who noted confusion in search and rescue operations after Hurricane Katrina.

With Katrina, "we knew the coordination piece was a problem," White said. "With Rita, we had the benefit of time. We may not have that time in an earthquake scenario or similar incident."

"With a national plan, we'll have a quick jump-start and an opportunity to save more people," White said.

The crucial part of White's quotation is this: "'ll." As in, "will." As in, "don't yet." As in, "there is no national plan to give responders to a major disaster (natural or otherwise) a quick jump-start and an opportunity to save more people." As in, "due to the U.S. government's planning, Americans will die needlessly."

So, what did President Bush say in response? Did he angrily deny the allegations? Did he show us the elaborate document that lays out exactly the well-thought-out plans he and his crack team have developed over the past four years? No. Without coercion, he confessed:

Bush said he has been interested in whether the Defense Department should take the lead in disasters "of a certain size."

"It's clearly the case in a terrorist attack," Bush said. "It's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about." ...

Bush thanked White for his recommendations.

"This is precisely the kind of information I'll take back to Washington to help all of us understand how to do a better job," the president said.

Again, "'ll" is the important part. Along with "going to be." Four years after September 11th, a national disaster-response plan could only be the topic of a future-tense discussion in a criminally negligent administration.

Constrained by the prevailing notions of "objectivity," A.P. writer Deb Riechmann nevertheless figures out a way to remind people of this point, by tossing in an unnecessary anecdote for the final paragraph:

On Saturday, [Bush] made a stop in Austin, Texas, and at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, where he autographed a photo of himself gripping a bullhorn at ground zero three days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

UPDATE: The White House has posted a transcript of President Bush's remarks from this morning. Here they are, in full (or, at least, the portion they've chosen to make public), with my emphasis added to remind folks that this president is someone who got re-elected on the premise that he already was the best man to make us safe:

7:35 A.M. CDT

THE PRESIDENT: Part of the reason I've come down here, and part of the reason I went to NORTHCOM, was to better understand how the federal government can plan and surge equipment, to mitigate natural disasters. And I appreciate very much, General, your briefing, because it's precisely the kind of information that I'll take back to Washington to help all of us understand how we can do a better job in coordinating federal, state and local response.

The other question, of course, I asked, was, is there a circumstance in which the Department of Defense becomes the lead agency. Clearly, in the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case, but is there a natural disaster which -- of a certain size that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort. That's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about.

END 7:36 A.M. CDT

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Rita Washes Away Post-Katrina Rationalizations

After Katrina, one meme the administration tried to sell was that, okay, the flooding of New Orleans might have been predicted, but that the odds of it actually happening had been judged minuscule, and that reasonable cost-benefit analyses had led to the construction of defenses only against hurricanes no stronger than category 3.

Writing for Reason, Jonathan Rauch says:

"Remember, the odds of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans any given year were small. [Army Corps of Engineers Lt. Gen. Carl] Strock told reporters, 'We figured we had a 200- or 300-year level of protection. That means that an event that we were protecting from might be exceeded every 200 or 300 years. So we had an assurance that, 99.5 percent, this would be OK. We, unfortunately, have had that 0.5 percent activity here.'

"Remember, too, that reinforcing the levees was a multibillion-dollar project. An ancillary project to restore the protective marshes of the Mississippi Delta, which would have reduced the force of storm surges reaching the city, would cost something like $14 billion over three decades. For that kind of money, there are always competing priorities, some of them urgent.

"The question, then, is not whether the failure to improve New Orleans's flood protection was a mistake in hindsight—obviously, it was—but whether it was a reasonable choice in foresight, based on the probable odds and costs as they appeared at the time."

Rauch, and, for that matter, the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, seem to have fallen prey to some common fallacies about probability. I'll explain in a second, but Rauch continues:

"Using the more cautious of Strock's figures, assume the odds are that a storm surge would overtop or breach the existing New Orleans levees once every 200
years. This seems, if anything, optimistic..."

Here's the thing about probability: Your deepest, strongest-held instincts about it often couldn't be more wrong.

Let's assume that Strock and Rauch are right, though, in saying that a storm surge would occur only once every 200 years. Therefore, it seems a little excessive, to Rauch, to prepare for a 1-in-200-year event.

Here are the problems with that reasoning. For one thing, just because something is expected only once in the next 200 or even 300 years, doesn't mean it comes at the end of that span. The whole point is that it could come at any time during that span. Thus, you can't claim there's only a 0.5% chance, let alone "assurance," that it'll happen now. Also, when considering what "now" means, there's no reason to think in terms of years. A sturdy levee system would, after all, last at least a decade, right? So, let's look at this in terms of decades. Suddenly, we're talking about a 1-in-20 event. And if the levee were to last (with appropriate maintenance) for 20 or even 25 years, now you're talking about a 1-in-10 event or even 1-in-8.

More to the point, as Rita has shown us, the randomization of nature truly is random. It's not random the way fate would be if fate existed, let alone were guided by a magic man in the sky; there is no sentient decision-maker spacing out low-probability events. If you toss heads a million times, the odds of it coming up heads the next time are still 50-50. In other words, once you win the lottery, at a million-to-one odds, the next time you play you still have just as good a chance of winning even if it's the very next day.

Or, in Rita's case, losing.

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The Christian Cancer Metastasizes

If you think George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, Sam Brownback and their buddies are bad, just wait.

The latest Chronicle of Higher Education (a really good publication the mainstream media ought to plunder from more often) has a really important piece by Thomas Bartlett on the next generation of anti-American Christians. It shows us that Bush, et. al.’s virulent strain of Christianity has evolved several traits that will aid in defense and spread of the virus. First, it’s inoculating future carriers. Second, it’s programming those carriers with traits that will serve to propagate and defend the virus in the future. (Yes, I know I’m swapping the carcinogenic metaphor of my headline for a viral one. Indulge me!)

It’s important to think in viral terms about this for several reasons: It helps us predict its patterns of growth and attack and, frightening though it may be, it makes clear just how quickly and thoroughly we should expect it to spread.

Immunology

In order for a virus to succeed, it has to develop resistance to anything that threatens its survival. In the case of Christianity (and any faith), the primary threat is reason. The need to oppose reason’s advances (or avoid conflict with it) is at the root of virtually every substantive theological shift. When religions pursue the mainstream (a la Vatican II) it is to make themselves appear in concert with reason (like a virus camouflaging itself from a host’s white blood cells). When religions turn militant and fundamentalist it’s to confront and challenge reason’s threat. This notion of immunologically-based theology explains why so many religions evolved tenets that promote indoctrinating the young: The young have not yet developed the immune systems of cognition and ratiocination. If a religion advocated waiting until children were 21 to make itself and its tenets known to them, it would die in a generation. Natural selection ensures that only youth-indoctrinating religions survive.

So, think of religion (in this case, the North American strain of the Christianity fundamentalis virus) in viral terms. And consider reason (which encompasses both the internal phenomenon of logic and its empirical manifestation, science) as the cure. When religion evolves (i.e., mutates in a way that promotes either survival or spread) it does so in response to threats from the cure, or to exploit weaknesses of the cure.

In the excerpts below from the Chronicle piece, you’ll see this dynamic play out. But first, a quick word about epidemiology, or the nature and rate of viral spread:

Epidemiology

We’re witnessing in the United States right now the latest, arguably greatest metastasization ever of North American Christianity fundamentalis. (I know, I’m mixing the metaphors again. Let’s stipulate that when I say, “metastasization,” I mean, “the spread of viral elements through a social body in the same way cancer cells spread through an animal’s body.”) How does a religion virus spread? Only two ways: Reproduction and transmission. To aid reproduction of itself, virtually all religious viruses promote reproduction of its carriers (i.e., sex) within parameters defined by the religion (i.e., marriage). Virtually all religious viruses also promote transmission (i.e., proselytization) of the virus from carriers to non-carriers. How does this occur? Marketing: Everything from preaching to wearing Kaballah bracelets; whatever spreads the word.

So, why is Christianity fundamentalis metastasizing? Because it has evolved mechanisms that combine new types of immunity with aggressive new modes of transmission. When you get a virus that’s immune (or, at least, highly resistant) to existing, widely available forms of treatment (i.e., schools and books) and also develops highly efficient, effective forms of transmission, what do you get? An epidemic.

Now, let’s get to the Chronicle piece, which shows us how the virus has developed and combined the necessary traits to begin an epidemic.

Christian students gather and prepare to defend their beliefs
By THOMAS BARTLETT
(Available in full here for five days after the date of this post)
Manitou Springs, Colo.
...Each summer more than 1,200 [Christian teenagers] come from around the country to attend a two-week workshop on how to defend their faith during college. They listen to lectures on creationism versus evolution, abortion, homosexuality, Christianity and the media, euthanasia, and postmodernism, among other topics. … On an average day, students sit through six hours of classes…

Two important features right off the bat. We’re talking about teenagers (young, with yet-to-develop-fully ratiocination skills) and we’re talking about training specifically, overtly designed to inoculate carriers against the threat posed by college (i.e., education).

Spend a couple of days at the workshop and it becomes clear that, for many of these students, college is fraught with peril. There is the pressure to party, to drink, to have sex.

Hedonism’s greatest threat is not to the supposedly moral components of the religion virus. Hedonism poses a threat to the virus because its rewards – and the fact that negative consequences often fall short of those predicted by the virus – can trigger questions (i.e., thought) about the religion, specifically about its misuse of moral language to control individuals in pursuit of society-wide goals. In other words, sex and booze can kill you, but if you indulge in them with some thought you can often, easily avoid the “Reefer Madness”-style hells predicted by Christianity fundamentalis.

There is also the subtle pressure to conform to a non-Christian worldview. There are biology courses that ask students to accept evolution, which workshop organizers and most of the students reject as untrue and ungodly. There are literature courses that see any text, including the Bible, as open to multiple interpretations. And there are philosophy classes that view absolute truth as nothing more than an illusion.

Again, the threat here is not about conformity to a non-Christian worldview (there are, after all, Christian sects that accept biology, Biblical interpretation and even post-modernism/deconstructionism). The threat here is thought itself. Accepting evolution means considering empirical evidence and considering it rationally. Both processes are anathema to our virus. Interpretation by definition requires thought. Ironically, I happen to think that post-modernism/deconstructionism – that school of thought so assailed by the right and the Christian right – is actually the least hostile to our virus (widespread disbelief in absolute truth led Americans to justify neglecting fact, documentation and reason at the voting booths in 2000 and 2004) – but that’s a separate discussion.

Professors are often portrayed not as keepers of knowledge, but as clever propagandists determined to undermine the beliefs of gullible Christians. "The dirty little secret of education is that our young people are being indoctrinated into another faith, but they're not told that," says the Rev. David Noebel, the president and founder of Summit Ministries, which runs the workshop. "They're being told that secular humanism is somehow agenda-free and value-neutral when it is not."

The deeply epidemiological nature of this conflict starts to pop out at you after a while, right? The Reverend Noebel sees the conflict in terms of an exterior entity intent on penetrating cell walls and inserting its own ideological DNA in place of his religion’s DNA.

What this means for Christian students, he says, is simple: "Either they're going to get serious about their faith, or they're going to lose it."

In Darwinian terms: Survival of the fittest.

When David Noebel started Summit Ministries in 1962, the group's focus was on communism...He also wrote books and pamphlets warning of the dual threats of communism and rock 'n' roll. One of those books, Communism, Hypnotism, and the Beatles, has become an underground classic among memorabilia collectors. Its cover features the disembodied heads of the Fab Four floating beneath an ominous-looking hammer and sickle.

In other words, as the threats to religion have evolved, so has its response. It now has new defense mechanisms. It now recognizes other strains as threats. Past threats have either died off (Soviet-style communism) or been neutralized (rock music) by other viruses (recording-industry executives).

Even after more than 40 years, the 69-year-old minister and author seems to revel in the company of his young students. He calls them "Tiger" and they call him "Doc." As it happens, Mr. Noebel did not finish his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, though his rapid-fire references to philosophers and theologians tend to impress listeners. "Did you know he used to read a book a day?" one teenager asks, her voice full of awe.…

At some point, the carrier David Noebel found -- maybe even accidentally -- that when he coated his cell wall with a deceptive membrane (one that mimics a doctorate) he more easily penetrated other cells (those with lower resistance to the element known as PhD than to the element known as Mr). Because viruses stick with behaviors and traits that improve their spread, he kept “Doc.”

On a recent Thursday, the guest lecture was delivered by Dave and Mary Jo Nutting, a husband-and-wife team who founded the Alpha Omega Institute, which is devoted to "exposing the fallacies of evolutionary worldviews and defending the accuracy of the Bible," according to its Web site. They have put together an entertaining two-hour PowerPoint presentation to promote creationism. In one sequence, Mr. Nutting shows a cartoon of a man standing next to a pile of lumber covered with dynamite. The cartoon man lights the fuse and -- boom! -- suddenly the lumber is gone and in its place is a lovely house. "That, folks, is evolution," Mr. Nutting says…

He may be Nutting, but he’s right. His explanation is evolution in action, it's an explanation that has evolved to counter evolution itself. Simple explanations beat complicated ones almost every time (if you cut me with Occam’s Razor, do I not bleed?) – just as a small needle penetrates the skin easier than a thick one does. We comprehend, and can defend, simpler concepts better and easier than we can complex ones – regardless of their truth value! If you’re a parent who’s ever skimped on an explanation for your kid, you know what I mean. That’s why religions have evolved explanations that are not just simple, but explanations that are deceptively simple and, most importantly, explanations that are deceptively simple in ways that require particularly complex rebuttals. The evolutionary advantage of this is that it raises the bar for successful challenges to the virus. Why does Nutting’s folksy, compelling, intuitive example amount to, well, nutting? Well, you can start with the initial flaw in his analogy: Explosion creates iteration of an existing type of structure (house) ≠ evolution creates iteration of a new structure (humanity). And if you want to get more complicated than that, I recommend you read The Blind Watchmaker (yes, it’s tough going – that’s what Christianity fundamentalis relies on!)

About half of Summit's expenses are covered by student fees. The other half comes from the 6,000 or so donors who consistently support the program. It doesn't seem to hurt fund raising that the workshop has been endorsed by some of the most prominent evangelical leaders in the country, including Tim LaHaye, co-author of the extraordinarily successful Left Behind book series, and James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family, located in Colorado Springs, just a few minutes from Summit's headquarters.

In other words, in the free market that they espouse, they have yet to evolve sufficiently well to survive on their own. So, they’ve evolved several compensating mechanisms. First, they only advocate free markets in ways that benefit them (or hurt their threats). Second, they’ve evolved parasitic (or, more accurately, symbiotic) relationships with particularly powerful carriers of the virus. And they continue to thrive and spread because they have evolved the trait of social cooperation, and, literally, insulation from hostile environments (i.e., cities, public schools, Broadway, etc.).

Mr. Dobson, who sent his son, Ryan, through the program, writes that Summit helps teenagers "suddenly understand the civil war we have described and what it means to them personally."

Note the recurring use of the word “war.” This is, to them, an elemental, primal struggle for survival (and they’re right).

When a professor or fellow student asserts something that runs contrary to Christianity, Mr. Thomas intends to speak up.

Why? Who hasn’t had a professor that said something dumb? Is it really so important to voice disagreement every time it occurs? Why? A few reasons: One, it’s an inevitable side effect of the virus's fundamentalism. Two, it serves to proselytize other students. Three, it tends to repress the tendency of the threat (professors) to utilize their threatening traits (reason).

And now, thanks to the workshop, he knows what to say. "Without Summit, I would have been very much unprepared," he says.

Exactly.

That's how Sarah Keyes feels, too. Ms. Keyes, a sophomore at Columbia University, came to Summit before her freshman year and decided to return this summer "just to reaffirm what I learned." As part of its well-known core curriculum, Columbia undergraduates study the Bible not as divinely inspired scripture, but as literature. For Ms. Keyes this was distressing. But, she says, Summit taught her that the Bible is "historically accurate," and this knowledge kept her from believing that it belonged on the same plane as Homer or Aeschylus. "It equipped me to think through things and not accept everything I was told," she says.

One of the genius elements of this strain (and many good thought viruses) is its subversion and co-option of language (the medium for the cure, after all). When Sarah says she thinks things through, she genuinely believes it. She’s come to consider mental activity about a particular subject as equivalent to thinking about that subject. Genuine “thinking through,” ratiocination, would require application of logical scrutiny to her faith. Because her faith is a matter of faith, it must by definition eventually come into conflict with reason. If her alleged thinking never yields that result (and some of the Christians I respect most are those who acknowledge the inherently unrational nature of faith) then she’s not really thinking. (And, ironically, she gets into Columbia because academia values diversity of thought, and hasn't yet recognized that Christianity fundamentalis isn't thought).

(Quick parable: When I took Logic I in college, I had a proof to do using symbolic logic. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t figure out how to prove it. Rather than turn in a non-proof for a non-grade, I did the next-best (or worst, if you want to get all ethical on me) thing: I hid my failure. I came up with a proof that I knew was flawed. But I built my proof in such a way that the flaw was limited to a single step, in what superficially appeared to be, well, I guess you’d call it a sub-routine. The result? The entire argument was wrong, the entire thought process was a sham. But it looked – even under some degree of scrutiny – like a substantive, thoughtful proof with, maybe, one little error along the way. That’s what these students don’t realize that they’re learning: False methodologies of rebutting reality and logic -- while appearing not just to embrace them, but to utilize them – without ever even understanding what they’re doing. Conscious carriers of Christianity fundamentalis, they are unwitting carriers of its defense mechanisms, even when those mechanisms are directed at the carriers themselves).

Still, she experienced plenty of challenges to her faith, and she felt like a second trip to Summit was necessary. "There were several times when I felt professors were trying to undermine my faith, though perhaps not intentionally," Ms. Keyes says…

The booster shot.

The workshop has only one session devoted to homosexuality, but the topic seems to come up frequently. Mr. Noebel contends that gay and lesbian organizations wield more power than any other group on college campuses.

Perhaps “Doc” Noebel has confused gay student groups with the varsity football team. In fairness, an easy mistake.

Students are encouraged not only to take sides on controversial issues like abortion, but also to evangelize whenever possible during college. Some of the more fearless ones even fan out into Manitou Springs to attempt to convert locals and tourists. This is not always appreciated. They are no longer welcome at a certain New Age gift store, and one local innkeeper says students "come up to you and say awful things about how you're going to hell." …

Of course they’re encouraged. Why shouldn’t they be? If you thought I were going to hell, wouldn’t you be morally obligated to do everything you could to save me? Frankly, a Christian who believes only the saved go to heaven and then doesn’t proselytize the hell out of us, comes lower on the moral scale than do the proselytizers. That’s why belief in hell, and belief in belief itself as the key to heaven, is such a powerful viral trait. Of all the cults in the world, why do so few of them say, “Join us and go to heaven! Or don’t join us, but go to heaven anyway! It’s all the same!” Because that trait has no transmissive value. Which means the trait dies off. The religions that evolve the trait of offering advantages – specifically, undisproveable survival advantages – tend, not surprisingly, to survive the Darwinian world of competitive theology.

Politics and theology mix in a none-too-subtle manner at Summit. In the lobby of the main building hangs a framed drawing of Ronald Reagan. Among some students the words "liberal" and "atheist" are used as synonyms. Mr. Noebel's views on a range of issues, including free-market capitalism (he's in favor of it) and environmentalism (he seems to be against it), slip out during lectures...he does believe in blending politics and religion. In his book, The Battle for Truth, he argues that "the state was established to administer God's justice" and encourages Christians to run for political office. "If the people rejoice when the righteous rule (Proverbs 29:2), the righteous need to rule," he writes…

Now we get to the epidemic. The body in which Christianity fundamentalis wants to spread is the body politic. It has spread, essentially, as far as it can within the body’s unessential organs (the isolated, gated communities; survivalists; home-schoolers) and it’s now bumping up against the essential organs – our heart, brains and circulatory system – and the organs that, therefore, enjoy the greatest defenses.

The only way to continue promoting growth is to turn the body’s organs into organs of transmission. And the two organs of transmission in America are politics and media. Both of them, if you haven’t noticed, are under assault. Furthermore, Christianity fundamentalis has devoted untold manhours and millions of Mammon dollars to the task of figuring out and implementing the most effective methods of transmission.

Make no mistake, this phenomenon is not a side effect of a benign attempt to spread happy Jesus-ness. The entire, sole point of everything “Doc” Noebel and other carriers do is specifically, consciously, overtly to wage, in their own words, a “war” (a metaphorically biological conflict) in which soldiers must put on armor and brandish their weapons. Sorry to switch hackneyed metaphors on you again, but they have spent millions on munitions research and defense. They have recruited more successfully than has the actual United States military. And they have spent centuries refining their tactics.

They churn out carrier/soldiers in their home schools, they immunize them against the intellectual rigor of college, they train them at their own law schools and then feed them into the brachia of our government. They have cultivated our laxity, thrived in the neglect of our condescension. In Bush, DeLay, Brownback, et. al, we’ve seen only a minor outbreak, a slight incidence of symptoms. In the next generation, we’ll start to see what happens now that the virus is no longer limited to isolated iterations. We’ll see what happens when the virus gains a sufficient number of carriers not to overwhelm the entire body, but only that number necessary to overwhelm the organs that control the body and sustain it. That's true of every infected patient. Even when it’s already too late to save them.

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George Bush's Arab Clone...

Not only does he look like Bush, but he's already begun to attack anyone who criticizes him, and he's starting to hate school. He also respects his god's will, while doing his best to fight it. And, to top it off, his real identity is: Usamah. He's almost outBushed Bush. At this rate, he'll be president by 14. Just like ours.

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Honore Without Honor

Transcript from Media Gab of news conference on Hurricane Rita, emphasis added by me:

Honore: And Mr. Mayor, let's go back, because I can see right now, we're setting this up as he said, he said, we said. All right? We are not going to go, by order of the mayor and the governor, and open the convention center for people to come in. There are buses there. Is that clear to you? Buses parked. There are 4,000 troops there. People come, they get on a bus, they get on a truck, they move on. Is that clear? Is that clear to the public?

Female reporter: Where do they move on...

Honore: That's not your business.

Male reporter: But General, that didn't work the first time...

Honore: Wait a minute. It didn't work the first time. This ain't the first time. Okay? If...we don't control Rita, you understand? So there are a lot of pieces of it that's going to be worked out. You got good public servants working through it. Let's get a little trust here, because you're starting to act like this is your problem. You are carrying the message, okay? What we're going to do is have the buses staged.

Male reporter: General, a little bit more about why that's happening this time, though, and did not have that last time...

Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the way we've got to do it. So please. I apologize to you, but let's talk about the future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side about the past, in a couple of months.

In other words, Gen. Honore got the Bush memo: Journalists serve no function other than to distribute its information. Non-cleared information that could be pertinent to life or death for American citizens is "not [our] business."

Hey, General Honore? You work for us. So fuck you, and answer the goddamned questions.

Oh, and on the same day, this obscenity from CNN's Kyra Phillips:

PHILLIPS: General Russel Honore, always a pleasure, sir. You're my hero. I'm curious, are you going to -- are you still with me?

HONORE: Yes, ma'am.

PHILLIPS: All right. Final question. Are you going to sing with Wayne Newton? Because I know you can hum a mean tune.

HONORE: No ma'am, I can't sing, but I will see him sometime today.

PHILLIPS: I'm just trying -- there we go, I got a smile. General, great to see you, sir.
HONORE: OK.

PHILLIPS: All right. General Russel Honore. Quite a man.

Thanks for asking the hard questions that America needs answered, Kyra. And Gen. Honore, thanks for making time to answer her questions.

And if you think I was being facetious about Honore getting the memo, there's clearly been a directive that no one in the Bush administration is to admit that anything is being done differently post-Katrina. Look at Scott McClellan's refusal to specify a single thing done differently, even while he claims that lessons have been learned and things have improved. Emphasis, again, is mine:

Q Are you confident that the lessons learned from Katrina will be applied in the case of this hurricane?

MR. McCLELLAN: And I might want to point out, too, before I come to that question, too, that the disaster medical teams are in the region. You have nine -- at least nine search and rescue teams that are in the region so that they can deploy quickly once the storm has passed.

Q So the lessons learned from Katrina will be applied in the case of Rita?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, in terms of Katrina, that was a storm that was unprecedented in size and scope and devastation. It is something that we want to make sure all the lessons possible are learned, and we want to make sure that we know exactly what worked and what didn't work. And that's why we are working closely with Congress as they move forward on their investigation. That's why the President has tasked his Homeland Security Council to make sure that there is a comprehensive review of the preparedness and response relating to Katrina, so we're doing that. Now, in terms of Rita, I just talked about the steps that we're taking. And we're going to make sure that we are doing everything we can to have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments as we prepared and respond to Hurricane Rita.

Q Well, Scott, continuing with what Steve said, how is what you're doing for Rita different from what you did from Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: Sure. A couple of things -- one, the President is focused on making sure we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments in the path of Hurricane Rita. We hope Rita is not devastating, but we must be prepared for the worst. Coordination at all levels needs to be seamless, or as seamless as possible, and that's what we're working to do. Homeland Security and FEMA officials are working closely with state and local governments so that resources can be targeted where they are most needed. They are redoubling efforts to make sure we have a full understanding of what the needs are so that we can make sure that those needs are met. And I went through several steps that were already taken to address these issues.

Q So that's -- you think that that's going to be an improvement over what was done in Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, in terms of Katrina, we're still focused on the immediate needs of the people in the region and working to make sure that they are getting back up on their feet, that we're moving forward on the recovery, that we're moving forward on the rebuilding to help people rebuild their lives and rebuild their communities. We are determined to learn the lessons of Katrina, and that's why we have been assessing what's been working and what hasn't been working and taking steps to address those issues. That's why we're also working closely with Congress, and the President is committed to making sure that there's a thorough investigation so that we can learn those lessons.

Q Well, can you distinguish what you're doing differently?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I just talked to you about where the President's focus is and what we are doing. We want to make sure that we're --

Q And these are things you didn't do in Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: We want to make sure that we are better prepared and better positioned to respond to Hurricane Rita and that's what we're doing. That's why I outlined the several steps that we are taking. And that's why I just told you that the President is focused on making sure that we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local officials, and that we have --

Q Which you didn't have before, right?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- as seamless as possible coordination with state and local officials.

Q In other words, better than the last time?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think I just answered that question, Bill.

Q No, not really.

Well, on the other hand, maybe McClellan meant it when he said: "the President is focused on making sure we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments in the path of Hurricane Rita...Coordination at all levels needs to be seamless, or as seamless as possible, and that's what we're working to do. Homeland Security and FEMA officials are working closely with state and local governments so that resources can be targeted where they are most needed. They are redoubling efforts to make sure we have a full understanding of what the needs are so that we can make sure that those needs are met." If it's true, that definitely would be different from Katrina.

In either case, though, less than a month after a massive hurricane wiped a major American city off the map, both the American military and the American civilian leadership refuse to tell the American people a single change in procedure, even on the eve of another potentially devastating natural disaster.

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Unholy Trinity

A Philadelphia grand jury today displayed the requisite courage and moral fortitude to spit in the face of United States Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa) and the Roman Catholic Church. (Thanks to Capitol Buzz, via Rising Hegemon, for the news...) The grand jury said that top diocesan officials ought not to have sheltered and concealed the actions of known child molesters, let alone assigned them to work in children's hospitals. In a 70-page report described as "blistering" (what, not stigmatizing?), the archdiocese disagreed.

Also this week in news of the Holy Roman Catholic Church...

Mexican Catholic officials, including a bishop, got a lecture on corruption from the government of Mexico. Specifically, the government of Mexico informed a Catholic bishop that he ought not be involved with laundering drug money. The bishop disagreed.

Our third story of despicable behavior comes from The Super-Sacred Extra-Special Holy Zone of Galveston, Texas, where the Magic Kingdom of Vatican-Land declared that its mightiest wizard is above the law and so can not be held accountable for his role in decades of church conspiracy to protect child molesters. And the government of George W. Bush agreed.

What's gone wrong here? A Philadelphia prosecutor and a grand jury of everyday citizens stand on moral ground, understand moral grounds, more than do the depraved local officials of the world's largest religion. A bishop in Mexico, one of the most religious (not to mention Catholic) countries on Earth, doesn't meet the exacting ethical standards of the Mexican government when it comes to corruption. The Mexican government!

Only the corrupt, religion-over-rationality government of George W. Bush bucks the trend. Why is that?

It's because government officials in Philadelphia and Mexico (intuitively or consciously) understand something that the faith-based Bush government does not: Morality is neither a creation of a magic creature, nor could it be even if there were a god. Morality is reason. Morality is logic. That's it. Every moral rule that deals with autonomy is a necessary logical parameter for the equitable interaction of independent, autonomous, intentional, sentient beings. (It's not quite, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That's a flawed rule, one that aims at the right target, but misses such exceptions as The Missionary Example; to wit: If I were a missionary, I could justify torturing heathens because if I were them, I would want my soul to be saved no matter what).

The point behind it, though -- the logic behind it -- is that we all have the same rights, and protections. These rights and protections are the logical boundaries between my personal autonomy and yours. I can't hit you or steal your stuff, you can't hit me or steal my stuff. Lying, too, falls in this category because bad information is usually intended to deceive us into acting differently than we otherwise would, thus also subverting our autonomy.

The Catholic officials in Rome, Mexico and Philadelphia are operating under the belief that morality came from somewhere, that the rules are not intrinsically logical but merely make sense cuz the guy whut wrote ‘em is REALLY smart. Their morality is answerable solely to a god. They mustn't displease him, or dishonor him, or go against him. So why should they worry about molested children or the victims of drug-running gangsters? It’s not hurting god, it’s not violating the rules he wrote, so what’s the problem?

Now, the instinctive counter-argument, for some, will be that I’m Catholic-bashing; that the church is a flawed, human institution consisting of people who err. (Anyone wishing to defend the church is kindly asked to read these documents first). The argument might have some merit if the Magic Kingdom restricted its judgment to autonomy. Autonomy is really the only thing with which a rational morality ought to concern itself (in addition to fairness, which preserves the value of our autonomy).

We can tell that the Catholic church is flawed in its moral thinking because of how it categorizes its sins. (No, I’m not talking about cardinal v. venal sins. I’m no more interested in the distinctions regarding those rules than I am in the rules of that other once-dominant role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons). What I’m referring to is the fact that Catholicism (like, to be fair, many or even most other religions) strays well beyond autonomy in deciding what behavior to condemn.

Look at how the Philadelphia archdiocese addresses issues of consensual sexual conduct. Its web page of sex-judgment doesn’t, of course, address its own horrific failings (and sins against the autonomy of children and parents who trusted it), but condemns people for normal, consensual, safe sexual behavior for no reason (and that’s what we’re dealing with: reason) other than God doesn’t like it. Here's the proof -- the church's site explains that masturbation is wrong because, "it is a misuse of God's gift of sexuality which, in his divine wisdom, the Lord intended to be used between husband and wife." As a philosophy major, I think I'm on solid ground when I postulate that the best, most succinct refutation of this argument would be: So? Using a gift in a way the giver didn't intend isn't a sin. It's not wrong. Sorry, but it just ain't. In fact, the only inherently negative aspect of it is that the giver might not like it. As any fourth grader could tell you, "Dude, tough shit, you gave it to me."

But more tellingly, the unnamed author begins his (do allow me the presumption here!) explanation of masturbation's sinfulness with this: “The Church has consistently taught that what determines a particular human act to be sinful is not the context or conditions in which a human act is performed nor the foreseeable consequences of an act, but rather the act itself.” I wish I had explained it that way myself. The act is sinful regardless of context or consequences! Why is it wrong to hit people? Because it hurts them. Why is it wrong to steal things? Because it deprives others of their property. Consequence is not irrelevant to morality, it’s the defining factor! That's why I don't think the Catholic church actually engaged in a conscious conspiracy to conceal decades of child molestation in hundreds if not thousands of churches around the world. But if you're dogmatically opposed to the consideration of consequence, to the unthinking adherence to "divine" laws, you will become a church forbids masturbation while enabling child molestation. In other words, because the church abhors consideration of consequences, the rest of us have to pay them.

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New Storm, Same Hot Air

A quick epilogue to my lengthy rant about the media reaction to Katrina...

First, I should have acknowledged how valuable TVSpy's Shoptalk was in compiling the media coverage of the media coverage.

Second, we're already seeing just how extravagantly the media are taking the wrong lessons from Katrina. CNN and NBC are opening bureaus in New Orleans. Why? The problem was not that TV news failed to get good video from New Orlenas, the problem was that TV news institutionally fails to respond to boring, unphotogenic information like the 2001 FEMA prediction that the top three likely threats to the U.S. were a terror strike on New York, a flood in New Orleans and a San Francisco earthquake. We don't need bureaus anywhere. We need executives in New York to start crafting news that's forward-thinking about America's challenges, not over-saturated on the allegorical plundered barns now that the horses are gone. (Les Moonves, are you listening?)

Third, apparently the TV news media have ordained their first Katrina star. Sorry, their first Katrina-victim star. Not surprisingly, it's a child. (How long, after all, could a grown, capable, rational-and-angry black man like Mayor Nagin retain an uncritical spotlight?) That the media are giving over the airwaves to a Katrina survivor based solely on that survivor's charisma demonstrates not just that the media have not figured out how to cover, in compelling fashion, the boring, unfriendly, procedural matters that ACTUALLY shape our lives, but that it hasn't occurred to them to try.

Sorry, San Francisco. See you soon.

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Why Katrina Won't Change a Thing I: The Media

By now, I think everyone has fully catalogued the multitude of ways in which Katrina will change everything. Ornery contrarian that I am, I've become pretty convinced that Katrina will change nothing (except, well, New Orleans, Gulfport, etc.) in the long term. That said, the strongest candidate for Katrina Makeover so far has been: The media. The rise of a "new," "adversarial" media is the most viral meta-meme making the rounds. I predict it'll be dead before New Orleans is dry. I'll explain why, but first, a quick survey:

New York magazine: "In many ways, [Anderson] Cooper and [Brian] Williams defined a fork in the road for the future of broadcast journalism."

The New York Times (9/5/05): "CNN...and National Public Radio...both found their voices amidst the chaos."

The New York Times ("Reporters Turn From Deference To Outrage" 9/5/05): "...it is clear that television is having a major mood swing."

USA Today "Katrina Rekindles Adversarial Media" (9/5/05): "Reporters covering Hurricane Katrina on the scene showed their human — and often angry and frustrated — face as they questioned the slow response over the weekend...

"Says Fordham University communications professor Paul Levinson, 'The media rose to the occasion, shone their light on the desolation and the needy, and kept it focused there until the cavalry finally began to arrive.'

"...some observers say that Katrina's media legacy may be a return to a post-Watergate-like era of tougher scrutiny of the federal government and public policy issues.

"'If any good comes from the catastrophe, it will be that it signaled the beginning of the media's reassertion of aggressive, in-your-face reporting, in which it confronts government wrongdoing, rather than just swallowing the government's public-relations handouts,' Levinson says."

USA Today (also Peter Johnson, but later in the day): "...experts and journalists predict that mounting questions about U.S. government preparation, policies and response to Hurricane Katrina will result in intense news coverage for months.

"Katrina 'doesn't just have legs, it has tentacles,' says Bob Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. 'Its implications reach into hot-button controversies involving race, poverty, economics and partisan politics. The reach of this story will make the O.J. Simpson case look like a news brief.'"

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (9/6/05): "...reporters and anchors have been asking tough questions in combative and even angry tones."

SF Indymedia (9/6/05): "Not for decades has there been such merciless questioning of the president and his administration by the US media."

Reuters (9/7/05): "American TV reporters and newscasters are covering Hurricane Katrina and problem-plagued relief efforts with a sense of outrage and antagonism many thought had long gone out of fashion in broadcast journalism."

Chicago Tribune "A Cronkite Moment in the Gulf Story" (9/9/05): "...we might be witnessing something no one thought was possible in this age. This may be a Cronkite Moment."

Boston Phoenix (9/9/05): "...it took a hurricane to wake up the press, raise the issue of race and class, and redefine the political landscape.

"Hurricane Katrina did not simply destroy physical infrastructure, social fabric, and countless lives on America’s Gulf Coast. It blew away the ground rules that had defined post-9/11 American politics and protected the most polarizing administration in recent history...

"All the elements that George W. Bush and Karl Rove had exploited for political gain — a timid and kowtowing mainstream media, a deafening silence about America’s growing underclass, the fear that criticizing the White House in the era of Al Qaeda was tantamount to treason, and Bush’s can-do, cowboy image — were shattered by the same winds and rains that savaged casinos in Biloxi and homes in Jefferson Parish."

USA Today (9/11/05): "ABC News executive Paul Slavin [says] 'Katrina has uncovered grave weaknesses in this country's ability to handle a crisis, and we need to make sure we hold officials accountable and investigate as best we can both what happened and what might happen.'"

Salon even posted a "Reporters Gone Wild" compilation reel.

So, what does the post-Katrina news media look like? In condensed form, the storyline goes like this: Their "timid and kowtowing" nature "shattered" by Katrina, the "rekindled" media are "asking tough questions," shining "their light on the desolation and the needy" with "merciless questioning of the president and his administration" in "a return to a post-Watergate-like era of tougher scrutiny of the federal government and public policy issues" "with a sense of outrage and antagonism many thought had long gone out of fashion" and "aggressive, in-your-face reporting, in which it confronts government wrongdoing;" "something no one thought was possible in this age...a Cronkite moment," complete with "reporters gone wild."

Wow. That's amazing. And indicative of a grave misunderstanding of some elemental forces that shape news media's editorial judgment. This mistake about the media will, very quickly, come to be seen just as ironically as we now consider the post-9/11 obituaries for irony itself.

Katrina became a media storm for a very simple reason: Its sheer magnitude overwhelmed the fundamentally flawed media levee known by the misnomer of "objectivity." My personal theory is that Watergate, rather than inspiring investigative journalism, inspired a generation of people who became journalists not to challenge power, but to gain the fame that comes with journalism's podium.

Look past the headlines of the stories I've posted above, and you'll see in them the seeds for the return of old-time, useless "journalism." Here are a couple important points SF Indymedia made, though I think the author missed the meaning of the former:

"Never before, say some observers, have US reporters been so emotionally involved in a story to the point of being enraged.

"They are not just telling a story, they have become part of it.

"'Has Katrina saved the US media,?' asked BBC reporter Matt Wells who sees the shift in tone as a potentially historic development.

"A number of US journalists who cover federal politics, especially television presenters, had become part of the political establishment, says Wells.

"'They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties. Their television companies are owned by large conglomerates who contribute to election campaigns.'

"It's a 'perfect recipe' for fearful, self-censoring reportage, he says, but thinks 'since last week, that's all over'."

No, it's not. And the reason is that after Katrina, the same reporters who were emotionally engaged, and outraged, will return to their desks and their bureaus. And their suburbs. And their parties.

The emotional root of The New Adversarialism is just one reason it will be short-lived; such high-pitched feelings can't and won't last (and shouldn't: Journalists who really cared about Katrina's victims would have wept less afterward and done more boring, public-policy stories beforehand). Nikki Finke in the LA Weekly attributes the death of The New Adversarialism to corporate politics. But even more profoundly at work here is the dynamic of how the media engage not with emotion but with the nature of reality itself.

Yes, this was the first time many of these reporters and journalists saw such conditions on U.S. soil, but the reason that translated into outrage had to do not with emotion, but fact and objectivity. This was the first story in which a critical mass of high-level, decision-making media were on the ground to witness X and have government officials tell them to their face "-X."

It was the first time they were directly, personally cognizant of the Bush administration's willingness to lie to their face about matters they could verify instantly with their own eyes.

This was a shocking event. It was an outrage. Look at who was outraged: Primarily reporters on the ground. The schism at Fox News was not between secret liberals and true conservatives, it was between Shepard Smith knee-deep in reality and Bill O'Reilly back in the studio.

Katrina changed the nature of media coverage because it overcame the media not emotionally but epistemologically. If human suffering were the sole trigger for media outrage, why have the past few years' rising poverty rate -- casting millions of Americans into squalor and despair -- not unleashed the same fury Katrina did? It's because the causal nature of the former is more elusive than the latter. That cognitive distance between cause and effect guarantees the old media will return far too soon.

Why? Media decision-makers don't understand very well themselves why Bush budget policies are factually, objectively, inarguably biased toward the rich: Hence, they won't articulate, let alone explain, that position to their viewers. Media decision-makers don't understand very well themselves not just why evolution is real but must be real: Hence, they wrongly assume they're fulfilling their responsibilities by presenting "both" "sides," when they're actually abdicating their responsibilities by treating one "side" as though it's credible. A journalist's job is not merely to say, "He said/She said." A good journalist says, "He said/She said, but our investigation/analysis revealed that Her numbers have a greater claim to factuality and He has a history of twisting facts." Katrina did the journalism for them by literally swamping journalists with irrefutable, unmistakeable facts.

Without a hurricane at their doorstep, the flow of facts fueling The New Adversarialism will dry up. Don't believe me? It's already happening. Ask Larry Johnson. Already, and on the issue of Katrina itself, he's allegedly been informed by MSNBC that verifiable, quantifiable, empirical matters of fact are actually matters of "opinion" and "perspective."

On the Daily Show, one of the newest and last TV outlets of genuine journalism, Brian Williams, The Transformed Man, was asked who was at fault. "I'm gonna let that one go," he said. "I don't do opinions, I'm going to leave it to others." But Brian, dude, it's not an opinion. It's a matter of law and statute and the performance of public officials under same. Williams mistakes it for opinion because he'd have to convey it in the same way he would an opinion: Not with video of a starving flood survivor, but with nothing more than his assertion that, yes, NBC has assessed applicable laws and statutes and determined that Agency X bore primary responsibility for evacuation coordination and State Department Y was legally in charge of initial law-enforcement response and X only provided 72.3% of buses needed and Y failed to implement maximum-response measures. It feels like an opinion because it can be disagreed-with (out of dishonesty or ignorance) but that doesn't obligate Williams to treat it like an opinion.

The ultimate evidence that this is not a Cronkite moment comes from the simple fact that Cronkite's moment was his declaration of U.S. woes in Vietnam. It became a Cronkite moment because Cronkite did not have the luxury of video proving him right but put his credibility on the line to warn America what the reality was even though Americans could, out of ignorance or ideology, reject his assessment in a way they could not reject video. Katrina gave American media the safety net of objectively indisputable, immediately verifiable reality. Vietnam did not. Katrina will actually prove to be the anti-Cronkite moment. If today's media wants a Cronkite moment, they already have had several years of opportunity to claim that moment: In Iraq.

That they have failed to do so, that they still embrace and mistake omni-subjectivity as objectivity, indicates that we're already returning to the "who-knows-what's-true" school of anti-journalism journalism that nurtured the growth of neglectful government that made possible the post-Katrina woes over which those same journalists wept. And already it makes those fleeting days of early September -- of direct confrontation and confident assertion of fact -- seem positively antediluvian.

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An artifact

I saw the Washington Times's useful piece on hyped weather coverage. It made me think of 2003, when Anderson Cooper and I had just created the closing segment for his then-new show. We called it, "The Nth Degree." This early one, which I wrote for September 17, 2003's program, benefited greatly from the visuals, but I thought it might be worth dredging up even without them:

"COOPER: Tonight, we take weather forecasting to the Nth degree.

"Now, you have no doubt seen a lot about Hurricane Isabel on the news today. But tonight on 'The Nth Degree,' we wanted to explain some of the more arcane elements at work in this story. For instance, Isabel is unquestionably dangerous, destructive and potentially deadly. But no matter how it turns out, it is clear today that some of its terrifying power comes from a constant influx of overheated hype which is sweeping in from the bottom of your map.

"That is forecast, of course, to continue at least through the weekend. Now, this pattern of hype, which is coming down from here, may be due to a stagnant patch of low ratings in this region colliding with an area of very high pressure for better ratings. As you can see, that is bringing in a cold front which is pushing waves of fear and anxiety toward low-lying regions.

"So watch out for coastal floods of correspondents in those regions. After all, it may be a Category 2 storm, but it is definitely a Category 4 media event, which means we are in for some very powerful winds. So watch out.

"That about wraps it up for us this evening. Thanks very much for joining us on 360."

The past is prologue, and all that.

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The Christian Right Targets Teachers

According to the ACLU, Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany -- whom you'd think might be preoccupied these days -- is making time to take point in the Christian right's ongoing war against American teachers, by trying to impose on them the most un-American of tests: A religious test.

This week, Rep. Boustany is pushing an amendment that would erase a provision of American law that currently protects Head Start teachers and volunteers against religious (or, more to the point as far as I'm concerned, a-religious discrimination). Basically, right now, religious organizations that receive TAXPAYER money to run Head Start programs are forbidden from doling that TAXPAYER money out solely to those people whose religious views match their own.

Rep. Boustany wants to let religious organizations discriminate against other religions, and against the non-religious -- by using TAXPAYER money for only those whose religious views they deem correct. Why is this un-American? Because religious tests are specifically forbidden in the United States Constitution:

Article. VI.
Clause 3: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

The Christian right, though, as we've learned, doesn't care about the Constitution, or American principles. And if you don't think they can take out your local teacher for not believing in their god, ask David Habecker whether the Constitution is sufficient protection against Christian theocracy these days. Or do something about it.

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The Soul of Cronyism

The Washington Post reports that Bush's nominee to oversee customs and immigration -- four years after foreign agents crossed our borders and killed 3,000 people on American soil -- is facing some resistance, and not just from Democrats.

Why would anyone object to 36-year-old Julie Myers heading up the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, part of Michael Chertoff's Department of Homeland Security?

Per the Commerce Dept.'s web site, here are some of her credentials:

• Associate Independent Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel
• Assistant U.S. Attorney
• Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary for Money Laundering and Financial Crimes
• Chief of Staff of the Criminal Division for the Assistant Attorney General
• Assistant Commerce Secretary for Export Enforcement

Now, given her relative youth, it's clear Myers has not spent much time in any one office. One year at Commerce, a brief stint in the A.G.'s office, two years as a federal prosecutor. It's been a pretty meteoric rise, though, which should indicate fantastic competence. But let's look at some of those credentials again, this time fleshing them out with some info not at the Commerce Dept. site, but up top in the WaPo write-up:

• Associate Independent Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr
• Chief of Staff of the Criminal Division for Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, whose current chief of staff, John Wood, became Julie's husband on Saturday, although the wedding notice doesn't specify whether the ceremony was attended by Julie's uncle, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard B. Myers

and, most recently...

• Special Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel (known in civilian circles as "HR")

Myers told Congress that, at Commerce, she oversaw 170 employees and a $25-million budget. (It's safe to assume she'd be honest in her job application, I think, given her background in HR.) But now the president wants her to oversee six thousand employees with...I'm sorry, that's six thousand investigators, out of a total of 20,000 employees, in five separate law-enforcement agencies, with a combined budget of $4 billion, composing a bureau that, according to its web site, encompasses the following goals:

• "To secure the nation's air, land, and sea borders."
• "To prevent acts of terrorism by targeting the people, money, and materials that support terrorist and criminal activities."
• "Identifying and shutting down vulnerabilities in the nation’s border, economic, transportation and infrastructure security."
• "To be the nation's preeminent law enforcement agency, dedicated to detecting vulnerabilities and preventing violations that threaten national security."

The guy currently keeping Myers' new seat warm is someone named John Clark. I've never heard of him, but judging from his resume, he's been a little busy for the last 25 years (since January of 1980, when Julie was 10):

• U.S. Border Patrol Agent
• U.S. Customs Service Patrol Officer
• U.S. Customs Service Special Agent
• U.S. Customs Service Group Supervisor
• U.S. Customs Service Desk Officer, Domestic Operations Division
• U.S. Customs Service Desk Officer, Foreign Operations Division
• U.S. Customs Service Assistant Special Agent in Charge, San Francisco
• U.S. Customs Service Associate Special Agent in Charge, Miami
• U.S. Customs Service Special Agent in Charge, Miami
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director of Investigations
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director of Operations
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deputy Assistant Secretary

So, why would Bush go forward with this nomination so soon after the debacle of Michael Brown? That's what the Washington Post asks (although she was nominated well before Katrina struck).

Noam Schreiber has a theory for Bush's cronyism, which he articulates in the latest New Republic purely in response to the Brown fiasco.

"The problem may have less to do with the current president than with conservatism itself. Let's first distinguish between two very different types of cronyism. The first kind is what you might call "inner-circle cronyism": Pretty much every president has dragged a small collection of cronies with him into the West Wing....The reason for this phenomenon, as John F. Kennedy once explained, is that the White House is a lousy place to start making friends. Presidents need advisers they can trust unconditionally, and longtime friends and associates are often the only ones who fit the bill. If Bush is exceptional in this case, it's only because he so values loyalty that he refuses to fire these people even after they've proved themselves incompetent.

"It's the second kind of cronyism--call it "outer-circle cronyism"--that's truly destructive...handing out jobs to cronies of cronies... The Bush administration is infested with it. Mike Brown, the former FEMA director, is a college friend of Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh. Treasury [Myers' old haunt-JL] employs former political hands but few top economists...Meanwhile, as my colleague Spencer Ackerman has reported, the Bush administration insisted in 2002 that the Department of Homeland Security be exempt from having to stock its upper ranks largely with members of the Senior Executive Service--the elite cadre of civil servants who make the government's machinery run smoothly--in order to give it more political appointments...

"Why do conservative administrations specialize in outer-circle cronyism? The answer has to do with the fact that conservatism doesn't hold bureaucracy in very high regard...Conservatives believe that bureaucracy is inherently bumbling, inefficient, and, well, dumb. '[T]he brutal fact is, government tends toward bureaucracy, which means elaborate paper flow but ineffective action,' as David Brooks wrote on Sunday. Even Bush himself couldn't resist a jab at bureaucracy in a press conference shortly after Katrina. '[B]ureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people,' the president announced...

"Now, if you happen to think bureaucracies are structurally incapable of improving people's lives...then you have two choices: You can either slash the bureaucracy and refund taxpayers' money, or you can reconcile yourself to the existence of bureaucracy and run it as a patronage operation. (If, by definition, a bureaucracy can't get any less competent, you might as well make appointments that benefit you personally or politically.) But, in reality, it's just not politically feasible to cut bureaucracy very much...conservatives have generally opted for choice B--reconciliation. About the worst thing you can say about Bush is that he's more reconciled than most."

The logic here is spectacularly poor -- it's almost an act of cognitive derring-do. Here's the argument laid out, if not quite in Boolean terms:

1) All presidents need cronies
2) Bush values loyalty
3) Bush's loyalty-valuing protects incompetent cronies
4) Inner-circle cronyism breeds outer-circle cronyism
5) Conservatives don't value bureaucracies
6) Conservatives have two choices: Kill bureaucracies or use them for patronage
7) All bureaucracies are immortal
8) Conservatives have no choice but to fill bureaucracies using outer-circle cronyism

(The logic of 5-8 is just non-existent. The premises are unsound, for one thing. Number six is simply not the case: Why should patronage be the only alternative to death? You don't have to value bureaucracy to abhor patronage, you only have to value meritocracy. Clinton and Gore proved #7 false by reducing the size of government. And once you take away 6 and 7, there's no logical way to make the leap from 5 to 8.)

But let's go back to Noam's more interesting error. Let's give him #1. I'll even uncynically spot him #2. But #3 should be understood with the following nuance: Crony incompetence isn't a test to Bush's loyalty, it's irrelevant. When you look at who Clinton's "cronies" were, they were, for the most part, astonishingly capable people who had achieved much on their own. Clinton was too smart, too engaged, too intellectually curious ever to have a meaningful circle of incompetence. Incompetence wouldn't test Clinton's loyalty at the end of the crony process, it would have torpedoed the very start of crony formation.

Not so with Bush (see: Rove).

And this explains why (let's call it) Clintonian cronyism doesn't yield Michael Browns -- because Clinton didn't form crony circles based on loyalty the way Bush does; he formed them with the necessary stipulations of competence and intelligence. Therefore, Clinton's trickle-down cronyism yielded concentric circles of ability, while Bush's yield concentric circles of floodwaters.

All of this, though, leaves us with the question of why does Bush now, after Sept. 11, after Katrina, after Michael Brown, still feel comfortable relying on trickle-down cronyism to fill spots of vital national security?

Oddly, John Kerry unknowingly provided the key to understanding this pivotal part of Bush's personality. In a debate discussion utterly unrelated to this one, he said: "The president and I have a difference of opinion about how we live out our sense of our faith. I talked about it earlier when I talked about the works and faith without works being dead."

Pres. Bush is a faith-based president. More importantly, he's a faith-based person. He's a new breed of Christian; seeing the world and everyone in it solely through the lens of personal salvation. I don't mean he literally has a religious litmus test. I mean that he's embraced a viral, mutant strain of Christianity that pays no heed to the teachings or works of Jesus, but focuses exclusively on a new, ephemeral, poorly defined notion of faith: Personal acceptance of (something you call) Christ as (something you perceive as) your savior. That's it. That's how you get to heaven. You don't even have to accept the biblically defined Jesus, you just have to think you do.

And once you understand that Bush has, in effect, annointed his subconscious as his internal Christ, then everything else makes sense. That's why his eyes can see Vladimir Putin's soul. That's why he's comfortable appointing buddies (those in whom he has "faith") to positions of importance despite their lack of qualifications (i.e., "works"). That's why we saw the following non sequitur in the 2000 debates:

GORE: I believe there are 1.4 million children in Texas who do not have health insurance. 600,000 of whom, and maybe some of those have since gotten it, but as of a year ago 600,000 of them were actually eligible for it but they couldn't sign up for it because of the barriers that they had set up.

MODERATOR: Let's let the governor respond to that. Are those numbers correct? Are his charges correct?

BUSH: If he's trying to allege that I'm a hard-hearted person and I don't care about children, he's absolutely wrong.

Bush was fundamentally (pun intended) incapable of even understanding that the issue was performance and works. He can only see himself (and others of "faith") through the lens of "faith." That he means well (i.e., is not hard-hearted, i.e., has faith) is all that matters. That's why he could issue the following flabbergasting observation about the Katrina response: "I am satisfied with the response. I'm not satisfied with all the results."

It's a hugely revealing, staggeringly cognitively-dissociative statement to make. A normal, reality-based person understands that when the results are not satisfactory, you change the response that yielded them. It is, in essence, impossible for a satisfactory response to yield unsatisfactory results. The only person who can't intuitively see that is one who deals exclusively with internal states, with intentionality, with "heartedness," with "souls," with faith. When Bush called Jesus the most important political philosopher in his life, he wasn't just covering for his lack of familiarity with actual political philosophers, he was sincerely identifying the person (or, more accurately, the concept) that had freed him to make decisions based on a divinely-inspired "gut," rather than on the tough, grueling boring work of work. And works.

America has to understand that President Bush responds to everyone and everything in terms of this only-superficially-religious faith. Because until America declares it's unsatisfied with Bush's response, it will remain unsatisfied with the results.

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Wanted: More Katrinas

"As all of us saw on television, there's also some deep, persistent poverty in this region, as well. That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality."

- Pres. George W. Bush, Sept. 15, 2005

New Orleans: 29.7% in poverty, 67.3% black, 35% of blacks living in poverty

- Urban Institute analysis of 2000 U.S. Census data

Pres. Bush's image-reclamation speech Thursday alluded to the now-notorious figures about the poverty rate in New Orleans, and about the racial component of that city's poverty. He said, "we have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action."

Okay. But, why?

The obvious answer is that a hurricane happened there. But if that's the only reason Bush has for acknowledging a "duty" to confront poverty -- particularly racially-linked poverty -- with "bold action," then, to paraphrase "Jaws," we're going to need a bigger hurricane.

In fact, according to the 2004 U.S. Census, New Orleans isn't even one of the 10 poorest cities. These are:

Cities with highest poverty rates:
Top Ten Metropolitan Cities with High Poverty Rate

City, State, % People Below Poverty Level
1. Cleveland, OH 31.3%
2. Newark, NJ 30.4%
3. Detroit, MI 30.1%
4. Fresno, CA 28.4%
5. Miami, FL 27.9%
6. El Paso, TX 24.5%
7. Long Beach, CA 24.1%
8. Atlanta, GA 23.5%
Memphis, TN 23.5%
10. Philadelphia, PA 22.5%
source: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2004

And how black are these cities? I've taken the above chart and added in U.S. Census figures indicating their percentage of black residents, and their national ranking (among cities of 200,000 people or more in the year 2000) based on percentage of black residents:

% People Below Poverty Level / % of Black Residents / Nat. Ranking
1. Cleveland, OH 31.3% / 51.0% / 15
2. Newark, NJ 30.4% / 53.5% / 12
3. Detroit, MI 30.1% / 81.6% / 2
4. Fresno, CA 28.4% / 8.4% / 141
5. Miami, FL 27.9% / 22.3% / 80
6. El Paso, TX 24.5% / 3.1% / 180
7. Long Beach, CA 24.1% / NA / NA
8. Atlanta, GA 23.5% / 61.4% / 7
Memphis, TN 23.5% / 61.4% / 7
10. Philadelphia, PA 22.5% / 43.2% / 29

The Urban Institute compared New Orleans directly with a sampling of cities that have taken in refugees from the flood zone. Here's a look at the racial/economic disparities that turned up:

% whites who are poor / % blacks who are poor
United States 9.1 / 24.9
New Orleans 11.5 / 35.0
Atlanta 8.5 / 33.0
Baton Rouge 12.8 / 33.8
Dallas 12.1 / 24.1
Houston 13.7 / 44.0
Jackson, MS 9.0 / 29.1
Little Rock 6.3 / 24.7
San Antonio 14.7 / 21.7
Shreveport 8.5 / 36.0

For comparison, the Urban Institute also looked at three cities of similar size to New Orleans:

Cleveland 16.6 / 33.8
Las Vegas 9.3 / 23.7
Oklahoma City 11.0 / 29.9

It's been well reported that the national poverty rate has, for the last few years, been going back up -- a reversal of its previous trend. But if massive hurricanes are the only time Pres. Bush will respond to grinding poverty, racially skewed or not, we're going to need a lot more Katrinas.

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George Bush: Gulf Coast Liberal

Maybe Katrina really did have divine origins: Now the storm has performed perhaps the greatest miracle of all, turning George W. Bush into...a liberal.

Oddly, however, Bush has become a new kind of liberal, one whose principles vary depending upon geography. When it comes to Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, Bush seems to be pretty much the model of a classic, big-spending, big-government liberal, albeit a Gulf Coast Liberal (see my checklist below). In fact, when he crosses those borders, he seems to turn into the walking punchline of the joke Ronald Reagan used to tell, that the most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

It's true that even before Katrina, conservatives were howling about Bush's profligate spending. Now, the staggering reconstruction allocations for Katrina have amped the howling considerably. But in his national speech Thursday and his radio address Saturday, Bush expanded his Gulf Coast Liberalism dramatically.

Unfortunately, while Bush has chosen liberalism as the lifeline to toss into the Gulf of Mexico, he has yet to apply similar thinking to the Gulf of America, that gulf into which the rest of America's vulnerable and unfortunate -- denied the visual, political and media boon of a sudden, dramatic, natural disaster -- slide in growing numbers. More and more Americans share the same concerns as do Katrina's survivors: Homelessness, poverty, racial injustice, health-care, education. Here's a look at how Bush, in his own words, is addressing all these issues, as a newly minted Gulf Coast Liberal:

Government Handouts:
"As of today, more than 500,000 evacuee families have gotten emergency help to pay for food, clothing, and other essentials...many of you will be eligible for broader assistance in the future..."

Unemployment Benefits and Job Training:
"The Department of Labor is helping displaced persons apply for temporary jobs and unemployment benefits...

"When the regional economy revives, local people should be prepared for the jobs being created..."

"I propose the creation of Worker Recovery Accounts to help those evacuees who need extra help finding work. Under this plan, the federal government would provide accounts of up to $5,000, which these evacuees could draw upon for job training and education to help them get a good job, and for child care expenses during their job search."

Urban Planning:
"And the federal government will undertake a close partnership with the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, the city of New Orleans, and other Gulf Coast cities, so they can rebuild in a sensible, well-planned way."

Regulation of Private Industry:
"Clearly, communities will need to move decisively to change zoning laws and building codes, in order to avoid a repeat of what we've seen."

Racial and Economic Justice:
"...there's also some deep, persistent poverty in this region, as well. That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality."

From his speech Saturday: "And one day Americans will look back at the response to Hurricane Katrina and say that our country grew not only in prosperity, but also in character and justice..."

Affirmative Action (or is this Quotas?):
"When the streets are rebuilt, there should be many new businesses, including minority-owned businesses..."

Government-Subsidized Housing:
"Hundreds of thousands of people from across this region will need to find longer-term housing. Our goal is to get people out of the shelters by the middle of October. So we're providing direct assistance to evacuees that allows them to rent apartments...In the disaster area, and in cities that have received huge numbers of displaced people, we're beginning to bring in mobile homes and trailers for temporary use... Near New Orleans, and Biloxi, and other cities, housing is urgently needed for police and firefighters, other service providers, and the many workers who are going to rebuild these cities...And we'll provide mobile homes, and supply them with basic services..."

Easy Access to Universal Health Care:
"In addition, we're taking steps to ensure that evacuees do not have to travel great distances or navigate bureaucracies to get the benefits that are there for them. The Department of Health and Human Services has sent more than 1,500 health professionals, along with over 50 tons of medical supplies -- including vaccines and antibiotics and medicines for people with chronic conditions such as diabetes...

"To relieve the burden on local health care facilities in the region, we're sending extra doctors and nurses to these areas."

Subsidized Child Care:
"...the federal government would provide accounts of up to $5,000, which these evacuees could draw upon for job training and education to help them get a good job, and for child care expenses during their job search."

Encouraging Labor to Organize:
"And I challenge existing organizations...labor union locals to get in touch with their counterparts in Mississippi, Louisiana, or Alabama, and learn what they can do to help..."

Non-Military Use of the Military:
"It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority
and a broader role for the armed forces -- the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice..."

Putting Faith in Science:
"Protecting a city that sits lower than the water around it is not easy, but it can, and has been done. City and parish officials in New Orleans, and state officials in Louisiana will have a large part in the engineering decisions to come. And the Army Corps of Engineers will work at their side to make the flood protection system stronger than it has ever been."

Reliance on Big Government To Work Quickly, Honestly and Wisely:
"Federal funds will cover the great majority of the costs of repairing public infrastructure in the disaster zone, from roads and bridges to schools and water systems. Our goal is to get the work done quickly. And taxpayers expect this work to be done honestly and wisely -- so we'll have a team of inspectors general reviewing all expenditures...

"The work that has begun in the Gulf Coast region will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen. When that job is done, all Americans will have something to be very proud of -- and all Americans are needed in this common effort."

Reliance on Social Security:
"The Social Security Administration is delivering checks."

Endorsement of The New Deal:
"We're the heirs of men and women...who reclaimed the prairie from the Dust Bowl of the 1930s."

Giving Mario Cuomo a Shout-Out:
"When one resident of this city who lost his home was asked by a reporter if he would relocate, he said, 'Naw, I will rebuild -- but I will build higher.' That is our vision for the future, in this city and beyond: We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and better..."

General Caring:
"...We've also witnessed the kind of desperation no citizen of this great and generous nation should ever have to know -- fellow Americans calling out for food and water, vulnerable people left at the mercy of criminals who had no mercy...

"You need to know that our whole nation cares about you, and in the journey ahead you're not alone...Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives."

Coddling criminals:
"In the community of Chalmette, when two men tried to break into a home, the owner invited them to stay..."

And, finally...

Communism:
"...we will identify property in the region owned by the federal government, and provide building sites to low-income citizens free of charge..."

Now, you may argue that Bush is not abandoning his conservative principles: He's merely making exceptions for an area hit by a hurricane. But if that's the case, how long will the rest of America's poor, hungry, jobless, sick and uneducated have to wait for their Katrinas?

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