IT’S NOT THE GUN THAT NEEDED CONTROL

Oh, glorious Internet. Thanks to you, it now takes only a few hours for any news story of suitable gravity to become the launching pad for several million personal opinions. I can’t escape that conclusion now that the Virginia Tech tragedy has caused us to start placing blame everywhere except where it rightfully lies.

While the whacked-out theories go everywhere from overly-liberal immigration policies (crikey, he was eight when he came here) to (predictably) the teaching of evolution in science classes, I’ve been thinking all along, as the gun control issue has quickly taken over this story, that it’s probably true Cho would have had a hard time killing so many people so quickly if he hadn’t had a gun. But you can’t make the leap to saying that if he hadn’t had a gun, nothing bad would have happened. He might have gone to beat the crap out of a young woman, then gotten the crap kicked out of him by the RA. Cho would’ve been arrested and kicked out of Virginia Tech. That would have been less tragic, to be sure. But it’s not good enough to qualify as “better.” I’m not prepared to say that it’s alright for young men to beat up young women they’re obsessed with, so long as it keeps those young men from shooting people. The gun was just along for the ride here.

Cho was 23 years old and apparently completely incapable of dealing with anger or frustration, or of forming a healthy relationship with anyone. Maybe he was mentally ill or, maybe, as Nikki Giovanni suggested, he was just mean. Whatever is the case, he should’ve been able to control his emotions by this point in his life. There is no such thing as “a 23-year-old kid.” 23-year-olds are adults. We can blame Cho’s parents for not teaching him coping skills. We can blame university culture for being so focused on relationships and good times, isolating those who can’t participate or are just naturally awkward socially. We can blame society in general for glorifying violence. We can blame guns and gun culture for making killing so easy. We can blame the Virginia Tech administration for not immediately knowing Cho was responsible for the first shooting and still on the loose. We can blame the Great Gazoo if it makes us feel better. Cho isn’t around to blame any more, and what’s the point of blaming somebody who can’t be punished?

IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO BE TOO EARLY

Far be it from me to cast aspersions on anything Iowa-related, but I’ve long thought that the Iowa caucuses were a complete farce. The only thing they’re really good for is taking a fat wad of coastal-elite money and redistributing it among various small upper-Midwestern media markets.

With that in mind, it’s nice to know that the Des Moines Register takes the time to print up a schedule of where you can meet the candidates today. Since there are only ten short months to make a decision before it’s time to vote for the people who will vote for the people who will vote for the people who will vote for a candidate who will probably be out of the running by the time the convention rolls around, you can hardly miss an opportunity to ask a question, since you’ll only have seventeen or eighteen more between now and then.

In that spirit, here are ten possible ways Iowans who want to subvert the process can mess with the candidates’ heads.

1. Ask as many questions about E85 as possible. Might as well propagate the myth that Iowa is nothing but cornfields, right?
2. Give every candidate your resume and ask to named Ambassador to Gabookistan, or Secretary of Ordering Things From the Deli.
3. Sidle up to a candidate and say that four years ago, the hosts at your precinct caucus tried to pass off catfish bait as paté. Insist that you’re going Green (or Libertarian) if you can’t see the hors d’oeuvre menu before the caucuses. Watch the fear on the face of the intern assigned to investigate this pressing matter.
4. Pass a note to a staffer mentioning that you just saw Dan Savage touching the doorknobs at their campaign headquarters.
5. Carry a sign forcefully advocating immigration amnesty for Klingons and Ferengis.
6. With a straight face, insist on significantly tighter immigration policies and a solution to the problem of rural depopulation.
7. Poll the candidates on whether they can, as yet, tell the difference between cow manure and pig manure strictly by smell.
8. Make up business cards identifying yourself as the head of the Iowa Belgian Endive Growers Association and complain loudly that presidential candidates never address the concerns of your organization.
9. At an open forum, loudly denounce school consolidation as a terrorist plot designed to create larger targets. Demand that every town with a population greater than 200 has a right to its own fully independent K-12 school system. Insist that this can be done without raising taxes.
10. Circulate a petition at all campaign rallies asking for Charles Nelson Reilly’s head to be added to Mount Rushmore.

IN CASE YOU WONDERED . . .

. . . this is where I stand politically:

You are a Social Moderate (56% permissive) and an… Economic Conservative (63% permissive) You are best described as a: Centrist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Now, aren’t you disappointed?

Hat tip: Casburn

RIGHT BACK AT YOU

There’s a column in the Toronto Sun which nails the mess Western society is in:

The social contract between the governed and the government, between authority and citizenry, has become degraded and unbalanced. Instead of asking what our duty or responsibility might be in any given situation, we demand to know what are our privileges and rights.

At its most obvious there is the usual list of standard demands. The right to marry whomever you want, the right to be ordained a priest when you don’t qualify, the right to claim welfare even if it isn’t deserved, the right to have sex with anyone and everyone, the right to die, the right to be wrong.

The list goes on: The right to swear, the right to defy righteous authority, the right to be publicly uncouth, the right to insult a cop, the right to hide behind any excuse to escape punishment, the right to never fail, never lose, never have one’s self-esteem challenged, the right to be wrong.

He forgot to mention “the right to never be confronted with an opinion differing from our own” as one of the rights we seem to insist upon, but otherwise, good show.

MOSTLY TRUE STORIES

I heard some interesting discussion on a local talk radio show tonight. The host (Mark Reardon on WTMJ, for my two readers in Wisconsin) was briefly recapping the major news of the day, and asking his listeners to rank the day’s news stories in terms of their perceived importance. These were the stories; I’ve linked to summaries in case you’re not familiar with them:

• Baghdad car bombing kills 28, many of them children.
• New developments in the London bombing investigation.
• Pakistani train crash kills 128.
• Chief Justice Rehnquist is hospitalized.
• Technical problems halt the space shuttle launch.
• The ongoing flap over Karl Rove and Valerie Plame.

Just to point out the limitations of this unscientific poll, Reardon only asked four or five callers for their opinions, and he only asked them to pick the top three stories, as they saw it. Far and away, the Iraq bombing was the top story. Second, to most, was the continuing investigation into the London bombing. While there wasn’t a clear-cut choice for third, nobody picked the Pakistani train crash, and nobody picked Karl Rove. Reardon then pointed out that the network news led with the space shuttle, then went to Karl Rove, and the Baghdad bombing was third. He called this an example of “the mainstream media” trying to tell us what’s really important, thereby also telling what to think about and how to think about it.

We’ll ignore the fact that, since Reardon works for a company which also owns several TV and radio stations in this and lots of other markets, as well as the only daily newspaper in Milwaukee and a bunch of other publications, he’s part of “mainstream media.” (We’ll ignore it because there are a lot of reasons why “mainstream media” doesn’t actually mean “mainstream” any more.) That’s not what was amazing. I agreed with the callers’ assessments of the stories and their newsworthiness. A space shuttle non-launch isn’t news, and the Rove story is just something to keep the political versions of “Pardon The Interruption” functioning smoothly for a few days.

What struck me, though, was the rationale that the callers gave for voting the Iraq story #1. While I’m not sure I heard everybody speak on this matter, most of what I heard was something like “this story is important because it shows us what sort of enemy we’re really up against.” Now, I hate the fact that I have to issue the following caveat, but I do: I do not in any way, shape, or form condone suicide bombing, particularly when said bombers deliberately target children. Likewise, I am not a member of the Democratic Party or any other political party. I am not opposed to the war in Iraq, and I think the world is a better place with Saddam Hussein behind bars. Got it? (Oh, and in case somebody is reading this, I’m still waiting for that big check George Soros was supposed to write me for posting my assessment of GWB’s debating prowess in the comments over at Resurrection Song . I hope Soros hurries up, because we could really use a dishwasher.)

Alright, now that I’ve disclaimed my opinion to the point of nothingness, let me just say: What? While I agree that the Baghdad bombing is the biggest news item of the day, since when is it the function of the media to teach us a healthy disrespect for our enemies? Isn’t this exactly the sort of media bias we’re supposed to be against?

The Iraq story is big because any time our country calls upon someone to make the ultimate sacrifice, it’s news, and we both need and deserve to know as many of the details as possible without compromising national security. It is not news because there are some people in the US who don’t fully support the war and need to be shown the error of their beliefs. I just found it a little bit ironic that, in deriding media bias, Reardon’s callers seemed to tip their hands. Their complaint, it appears, isn’t that the media are biased; it’s that not enough of them are biased in the right direction. Apparently it’s OK by them for the media to tell us what to think about and how to think about it, so long as they agree with those assessments. I respectfully disagree.

PRESS AND PRESSURE

By now, enough has been written about Newsweek and its retraction of the story regarding alleged abuse of the Quran by US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. I admit that the worst, most cynical parts of me want to believe that Newsweek published this story with the full knowledge that it was a humbug which they would have to retract, much as a lawyer might ask a blatantly foul question while cross-examining a witness, knowing that the other lawyer will object, the judge will sustain the objection, and the jurors won’t be able to put the whole incident out of their minds. I really don’t want to believe that Newsweek would be so stupid as to publish such an inflammatory article simply to embarrass the administration, but CBS bought the bogus “Bush is AWOL” memos, so who knows?

I am not a journalist, nor am I one who regards bloggers as “citizen journalists,” so I don’t feel overly qualified to address the question of whether Newsweek had enough evidence to justify publishing the story. I think we’d all have felt more comfortable if Newsweek could point to a second corroborating source, but I am not an expert on these matters.

What I am an expert on is the marketplace of ideas, since I represent a faith which has survived in it for two thousand years. And what intrigues me at present is the degree to which post-Watergate American journalism is now being tested in that marketplace.

All Americans owe a debt of gratitude to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. They exposed Nixon’s low hustles and helped usher in a new era of semi-accountability in American politics. So I’m not willing to make them solely responsible for the new era of “gotcha” journalism. It is well for journalists to want to reveal what others want to keep hidden, particularly when those things are being done in the name of a people or a government. But there’s a right way to do that, and a wrong way.

We all saw, in the CBS Air Guard memo story (or, if you prefer, in Fox News’ perpetual “WMDs found in Iraq!”claim from the early days of the current war), the willingness of a news organization to report a particular point of view. (Most thinking persons have been aware of this sort of partisan journalism for a long time, but let’s face it; without media bias, there wouldn’t even be a blogosphere.) CBS’s shameful episode produced the mother of all unintended consequences: Now, when derogatory information about the administration comes to light, it’s reasonable to assume that the information is either (a) spun like a Pedro Martinez fastball, or (b) completely made up. To many people, the large media now serve a function like Baghdad Bob did in Hussein’s Iraq: They’re who you turn to find out what’s not actually happening in the world.

In recent days, there have been polls showing that Americans are beginning to support the idea that maybe freedom of the press goes too far. When we see the rage that these reports of Quran desecration have caused among those who already don’t like us anyway, it’s natural to wish that it had never happened. It’s even more natural to wish that after finding out that the report was quite flimsy in the first place. But I reject the idea that the solution to situations such as these is to implement some form of prior restraint on the press. Anybody with enough experience in the marketplace of ideas can tell you that it’s the most ruthlessly capitalist market on Earth–and it’s a buyer’s market, because there are far more people seeking your urgent attention than you can ever hope to pay any attention to. In this marketplace, there are no second-place trophies; the rewards go only to the person who can get their idea to market first. So it was somewhat natural for Newsweek to try to get its idea to market as fast as possible, without fully considering the implications of being wrong–or even the possibility that they might, in fact, be wrong. What if Time got the story right and beat them to it? Who, then, would read Newsweek?

The danger, of course, is the same as the danger of bringing an untested, unsafe product to market: the product’s failure might result in harm to the consumer, or even to innocent bystanders. There’s a plethora of such products in the physical marketplace; names like “Pinto” spring to mind. And that’s what happened here. Whether Newsweek failed to verify this story adequately, or whether they poisoned the well on purpose, the point is, they willingly put a sketchy product out there in the marketplace of ideas. And anybody who knows the basics about free markets knows that consumers can punish the sellers of bad products much more harshly and efficiently than the government ever can dream of.

So the solution to Toiletgate is not found in weakening the Constitutional protection of the press. The solution is found in all of us remembering that the right to publish doesn’t include the right to an audience, and we all do well to shun the purveyors of gooshy journalism such as that practiced by those who would be Woodward and/or Bernstein. You’ll recall that they investigated what Deep Throat told them; they didn’t just publish his information without checking it first.

AS A MATTER OF FACT, I DO OWN THE ROAD

My latest wild idea: sell the Interstate highway system to the highest bidder.

Pluses:

• Huge influx of cash
• No more tax dollars for maintenance
• Tolls may (may) discourage suburban sprawl
• Reduced highway trips = lower emissions
• Free alternative roads do exist everyplace

Minuses:

• As usual, tolls are a regressive tax
• Roads may not be maintained to the highest standards
• Private authorities wouldn’t have the power of eminent domain, so needed expansions would be very expensive
• Increase in price of consumer goods shipped by truck
• Accelerates the creation of a two-class society

So I’m not sure if it’s a good idea or not. What do you think?

IF THEY CAN, THEY’LL CAN THE CANS

My home state of Iowa was one of the first states in the union to institute a mandatory five-cent deposit on soda and beer sold in cans and bottles, all the way back in 1978. The state law mandates that any grocer who sells beverages must accept the used containers. (The state pays grocers 1 cent for every beverage container they turn over to be recycled.)

Grocers were never in love with the process, and for good reason. Processing returns is time-consuming, a penny per can is a lot less money now than it was 26 years ago, and frankly, you have to wonder if some of the cans people turn in for recycling were fished out of the manure pits on hog lots. If I ran a grocery store, I don’t think I’d be too thrilled about taking back cans full of backwash and cigarette butts, forcing my employees to handle them, and then having to find a place to store them–that’s space I could use to store additional items I could sell, after all.

So it’s not surprising that grocers have been trying to deep-six the law since it was enacted. There has always been a provision allowing stores to designate an off-site redemption center to handle their returns, so long as (a) it’s reasonably close to the store, and (b) it meets certain hours-of-business criteria. But, for the most part, stores haven’t pulled the trigger on this idea.

Until now.

Iowa’s largest grocery store chain has begun taking steps to rid its stores of empty bottles and cans that grocers have long complained are unsanitary and a risk to food safety.

Hy-Vee Food Stores spokeswoman Ruth Mitchell said Tuesday the chain’s 103 Iowa supermarkets are looking at no longer accepting empty beer and soda cans, and instead having customers go to a redemption center to claim their 5-cent deposit.

This is big–Hy-Vee (which many readers will recognize as the former employer of Kurt Warner, and which many New York Giants fans probably wish was Mr. Warner’s current employer) is the only grocery store in many smaller Iowa towns, and the state’s second-largest chain, Fareway, has already said it plans to stop accepting cans and bottles.

The grocers have a point. While the overwhelming majority of Iowans rinse their cans and bottles before returning them, it only takes a few slobs to establish a bacteria colony the size of Greenland. It’s not about the money–as the article points out, the grocers can always raise their price. It’s more about sanitation; bacterial outbreaks can be fatal to food-service establishments, even grocery stores.

It’s time for Iowa to reconsider the Bottle Bill. What made sense twenty-six years ago is not so self-evident now. Many communities already have curbside recycling for glass and plastic containers; it wouldn’t be so hard to add aluminum cans to the mix as well. Likewise, the law has failed to keep pace with the times. It only covers alcoholic beverage and soda containers; no deposit is required on juice, water, or “New Age” beverage containers.

Personally, I think the whole thing should be scrapped. The original purpose of the Bottle Bill was to cut down on litter. I now live in Wisconsin, where there’s no deposit on beverage containers, and our ditches, while not pristine, aren’t overflowing with beer cans–and you’d figure that if that would happen anyplace, it’d be here. Knock off the nickel-back and let the market clean the ditches instead.

IT’S 68 MILES FROM MILWAUKEE TO MADISON

. . . but somehow, what’s transpired recently on talk radio in the former hasn’t had much impact on the latter:

A radio talk show host drew criticism Thursday after calling Condoleezza Rice an “Aunt Jemima” and saying she isn’t competent to be secretary of state.

John Sylvester, the program director and morning personality on WTDY-AM in Madison, said in a phone interview Thursday that he used the term on Wednesday’s show to describe Rice and other blacks as having only a subservient role in the Bush administration.

I think the phrase is Yeah, right. But hey, at least he’s doing something about it:

[Sylvester] said he was planning a giveaway on Friday’s show of Aunt Jemima pancake mix and syrup. “I will apologize to Aunt Jemima,” he said.

There’s nothing like apologizing to a fictional character whom you could not possibly have offended because, well, they’re fictional.

AN OPEN LETTER TO UNHAPPY DEMOCRATS

I’m not one of you, but I’m not one of them, either. I don’t, in fact, belong to any political party. Just want to clear that up before we go any further.

My goodness, you’re a bitter lot these days. And for the most part that’s totally understandable. Nobody enjoys losing, and it’s more painful when victory seemed so close. The anger, the fears, the recriminations all start flowing when something you wanted so much, something which seemed so achievable just 48 hours ago finally slips away. And, like Ecclesiastes says, “There’s a time to dance and a time to mourn,” and guess which time this is?

Ecclesiastes. It’s in the Bible. You might want to read it some time, because, you see, that’s your problem. That’s basically why you lost.

Many of you understand this already. It didn’t take long for the “Jesusland” meme to replicate itself throughout bloggerdom, and it’s obvious that many disaffected Democrats blame organized religion–particularly evangelical Christianity–for the stunning loss not just of the White House, but of a lot of important Congressional races as well.

You’re pretty close. It’s not so much that organized religion united to defeat John Kerry. You see, one of the first things you learn when you’re part of a church is that “organized religion” is pretty much an oxymoron and most of the brainwashing and financial malfeasance you suspect occurs actually doesn’t because nobody has time for it. But I digress. You didn’t lose because of organized religion. You lost because one party in this race spoke in the common language of Americans, and one didn’t.

I remember how, in 1988, when Dukakis delivered parts of his campaign speeches in Spanish, that was such a novel idea that Saturday Night Live felt compelled to make fun of it. This time both candidates appeared on Telemundo and spoke without translators. Why? Because they knew that there’s a significant block of voters who wanted to hear their messages in the language those voters are most comfortable communicating in. That’s a big change in just 16 years. After all, in 1988, most Republicans were pushing to make English the official language of the US. Now they’re officially polyglot, and so is the nation.

Anyway, this is a complicated way of saying that Kerry didn’t lose because so many Republicans go to church. Kerry lost because not enough Democrats do. You can say what you want to about the sins of organized religion–and they are many–but you cannot deny its influence on America. And you can’t deny that it’s gaining more influence day by day.

Which means that, this Sunday, all across America, about 100 million adults will gather in their places of worship, where they will see their friends and neighbors, they’ll drink dreadful coffee and eat commercial baked goods, and they’ll be sitting around after services talking about what’s on their minds–the weather, the Green Bay Packers, what their kids are doing in school . . . and, of course, politics. 100 million Americans will do that this Sunday morning, and that’s a stingy estimate. (I’ll do you a favor and not use the “c” word, OK?)

Will your viewpoints be part of those discussions? You might be surprised by the number of churches at which they will–not all Christians are Republicans, any more than all secular persons are Democrats. But you know that, in the grand scheme of things, you’re losing the war for the loyalty of America’s Christians–and you cannot win national elections without them. Bear in mind, the last two Democratic presidents we’ve had were Southern Baptists–a denomination that ought to be officially credited with an assist for the 2000 and 2004 elections.

So, since there are so many of you out there who have said and are continuing to say that you would do anything to end the red-state stranglehold on national offices, I’ve got three words for you: Go to church. This Sunday and every Sunday you possibly can, from now until forever. It isn’t so much that politicking clergy threw this election to the Republicans; it’s that people who weren’t afraid to share either their faith or their religious views had this wonderful opportunity to bond with each other and reinforce their commonality on a weekly basis. There is no equivalent in the secular world to the kind of community created by worship. And you’re not going to create one in four years. You either use what’s in front of you, or you live in Red America for the foreseeable future. You either work with the institutions of society, or they work against you.

Oh, sure, I hear you saying. Let’s all become zombie vampire robots for Jeebus, and maybe then we’ll take back the Phlegm County Mosquito Control Board. I’d almost rather lose than have to associate with Christians.

Really?

Then that’s what’s going to happen.

Look, any dope can read the Bible–whether they believe a word of it or not–and see that for every statement in there about sexual morality, there’s 15 or 20 about economic and social justice, and most of them are far more radical than anything John Kerry said. If your IQ is above room temperature, you can not only formulate a faith-based refutation of tax cuts for millionaires, you can make a good argument for the return of the 90% bracket for the uber-wealthy.

I am not, of course, advocating the pursuit of religion under false pretenses. If you’re an atheist and you’re utterly convinced that not even finding God’s driver’s license on the sidewalk would change your mind, so be it. But if you’re not utterly convinced, if you’re sitting on the fence faith-wise, now would be a good time to start learning more. This article has a list of what are considered “mainline” denominations–walk into a church of these denominations and there’s about a 70% chance that the pastor will be a Democrat. I ought to know. I serve as a pastor in one of those denominations. I am considered to be among the most conservative 10% of all clergy in my denomination–and I voted for Kerry. The same political structures which helped turn huge chunks of this country from blue to red could also work for you. So use them. Come and make connections with your friends and neighbors. Learn how to talk in the language of faith, because until you do–and I don’t just mean your candidates, I mean your rank-and-file party faithful as well–you might as well be speaking Albanian. And that red map is just going to get redder.

Can’t do it? Fine. Just don’t say “I’d do anything” when what you mean is “I’ll do anything I’m currently doing, even though it’s not working.” Remember, in 16 years, the Republicans went from “speak English or go back to Mexico” to a presidential candidate appearing on Telemundo without translators. They were willing to concede some points to win others. Why won’t you do the same?

(Sent to join OTB’s Beltway Traffic Jam)