Local Tint

"The voters are smart..."

You hear that pandering bullshit line all the time from candidates. The Birmingham News, dutifully encouraging its readers to exercise their most sacred of civil rights, essentially idiot-proofs the process before every election by providing the answers to astoundingly asinine questions. Here's the list published today. I usually cut it out and take it to my polling place with me to amuse me while I wait.  

• So this is not the presidential election? No. The presidential election is Nov. 4, but Tuesday's voting in Alabama and more than 20 other states could determine who the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees ultimately are.
• Can I still register to vote on Tuesday? No. The registration deadline was Jan. 25.
• If I vote Tuesday, do I get to vote in both party primaries? No. You must choose one.

This one's great:

• Suppose when I am voting, I choose someone for president but then I want to choose delegates for another candidate. You're wasting your time. Your presidential choice will be counted, but your delegate choices will not be.

Couldn't they have ended that last one with "For the love of God, just stay home"? Some suggestions for the News's November FAQ:

• What if it's cold outside today. How can I prevent being uncomfortable when I go vote?
• I want to support my favorite person, but I don't see my favorite Idol contestant's name here. Could the FCC be suppressing my rights?
• Suppose when I am voting, I begin to feel hungry. Can I eat my ballot?

What does this even mean?

Experts: City's education is cool

Ah, more crack reporting from the Birmingham News.  For this article to make a modicum of sense, I'm afraid we need more information. Though I understand the individual words of the headline above, in the order they appear they make no sense to me. Sadly, the text of the article only muddles the issue further (all emphasis mine):

A national coolness expert [nausea kicked in here] says Birmingham's educational opportunities are the number one amenity for its young professionals, in a report being released this week by the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Young professionals interviewed as part of the report say the city needs to build on its diversity, improve mass transit and offer more opportunities to be involved in leadership.

"Birmingham is way better than average," said Rebecca Ryan, an economist and founder of Next Generation Consulting. "But the message hasn't caught on in the city yet."

Are these consultants paid to produce vague 'findings' or simply to blow sunshine? (or blow sunshine in the form of vague 'findings?')

But hey, who cares? We're cool without even knowing it! Or maybe it's just residents of Birmingham proper who are. I'd let you know BUT THE ARTICLE DOESN'T ELABORATE! Other pieces of information that would have made this article remotely informative instead of infernally frustrating:

1. Which educational opportunities? Now, folks, we know they're not speaking of the Birmingham City School system. It's hemorrhaging students and consistently has the lowest test scores in the area. Then there's that pesky safety issue. So are these uber-hip young adults referring to metro-area K-12 opportunities, with an eye toward raising supercool children here,  or are they thinking of their own opportunities at local colleges and universities? Wouldn't that have been just a little enlightening? (especially since the reporter lead with that finding)
2. The "Birmingham proper"/"Birmingham Metro Area" question plagued me throughout the article. While the regional Chamber of Commerce commissioned the study, and references were made to the area's increase in young professionals, wording elsewhere in the article suggested the focus of the study was the city proper.  As we learned with that moronic study a few months ago that said that Birmingham is one of the 'most liberal' cities in America, these types of surveys mean very little if the metro area isn't included.  And it may have been in this case. We just don't know!

The full ranking of how the city/metro area/who knows did on the other measures is forthcoming this week. I realize this is 'cool' thing was probably too tempting to pass up, especially when the News is always trying to promote civic pride (sincerely), but if they didn't have more information from the 'coolness expert' than this, they should have waited. And if they did have the information that would have put this information into context and, for whatever reason, didn't make basic distinctions clear, well, that's just pathetic--and confusing.

This should be interesting

The Birmingham News' editorial board has grown increasingly uncomfortable with the death penalty. Supporting it is inconsistent with the board's convictions about the value of life, evident in positions opposing abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and euthanasia. The board also believes Alabama's capital punishment system is broken. A six-part editorial page series "Choosing life in a death penalty state" starts today.

This paragraph at the bottom of yesterday's front page caught my eye and left me...surprised, to say the least.  The explanation continues in an editorial:

[The death penalty] is matter of law that deeply troubles The News' editorial board. After decades of supporting the death penalty, the editorial board no longer can do so. Today and over the next five days, we will explain our change of mind and heart.

We know that many of our readers, including families and friends of murder victims, will disagree. We acknowledge we cannot grasp the profound grief experienced by those who lose loved ones in senseless, savage killings. We well understand some crimes are so great that those who commit them don't deserve to live in the free world ever again, and that some don't deserve to live at all. Yet we can no longer in good conscience continue to advocate the death penalty in Alabama.

In addition to their own opinion, the editoral board published in yesterday's "Commentary" section "for" and "against" opinions.  Will it suprise you to learn our bloodthirsty 'Christian' Attorney General Troy King wrote the article attempting to defend Alabama's administration of the death penalty? Would it suprise you that he was defensive and petulant in doing so? Folksy and pandering as ever, King's 'piece' began, as all death-penalty-related opinions seem to, with an anecdote. Then he throws in about four more (these are his 'reasons' for supporting the death penalty), each more sad, disturbing, and grisly than the last. It becomes obvious he's going to play to your heart strings rather than your sense of reason. Then comes the petulance:

If [families of crime victims] must be told [that Alabama needs a moratorium on the death penalty], you will have to tell them because I will be busy fighting to ensure we never let them down. If you tell them, you have not only failed them, but you have also failed justice."

King does not address the state's absurdly low pay for public defenders of those accused of capital crimes, or that reviewing courts have found "nearly 150 Alabama capital murder convictions and death sentences have been illegally and unconstitutionally imposed," or that "reversals outnumber executions almost 5 to 1," statistics brought to light by the "against" writer, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Intiative.

King refuses to acknowledge the complexity of this issue, and the specific queasiness Alabama's administration of the death penalty inspires. All he sees are men who must die. Some deserve to be imprisoned for life, no doubt. Some deserve worse than that. But, if history is any guide, some deserve to be freed. King would leave it to God to sort them out.

Did I mention he's running for re-election?

And as N.O. slowly recovers, MSM returns to its pathetic state

Bush Denies Racial Component to Response

Ask an asinine question, get an asinine talking point:

"The storm didn't discriminate and neither will the recovery effort,"

(Think we'll hear that line again?) Any journalist who believes they'll receive any answer other than a variation of the above from any federal official when asking about the sluggishness of the federal response to Katrina's victims, and whether that sluggishness was related to the victims'--at least those in New Orleans--being predominantly poor and black, deserves to be fired right along with Brownie.

You want an answer to that question, MSM? Hint: you're not going to find it on the streets of a now-deserted and locked-down New Orleans--the only kind Bush would deign to tour. You don't even need a press pass to get it, only a working Nexis user ID.

The secret, see, is to judge people (and administrations) by what they do, not what their inept leaders "testily" refrain, hoping like hell someone will buy it.

In a sign that Bush is growing weary of the accusations, he testily replied to a reporter who asked whether he felt let down by federal officials on the ground.

"Look, there will be plenty of time to play the blame game," he said.

And that time will be long after the horror of this disaster has been erased from America's memory by next season's Apprentice! Really though, the "blame game?" Jesus. He's still using that old chestnut? Someone needs to tell this administration that infantile rhyming phrases used defensively to avoid accountability (to paraphrase Jon Stewart) have a shelf life. New talking points needed pronto. Rhyme and other rhetorical tricks a plus.

Also see:  John Howard, as only he can, dissects Bush's dishonest attempts to turn criticism of the administration into criticism of the people doing the work.

So now they can talk about it

"What I wouldn't pay to hear a Fox anchor ask, 'Say, Bob, why are these African-Americans so poor to begin with?' " -- Bob Shafer

Why no mention of race or class in TV's Katrina coverage?

I wondered a few days ago when the philosophy would start. It's sure to be trite and painful. But there's trite philosophy and then there's just plain observation.

Jack Cafferty of CNN' s "Situation Room" appears to serve little purpose but solicit viewers' opinions and then tell the audience what Americans Americans lame enough to e-mail their opinions to CNN (get a blog already!) think. Nevertheless, Cafferty was the first person I heard on broadcast media who mentioned this issue, though it was only after Jack Shafer's column at Slate first made the topic acceptable. Begins Shafer:

I can't say I saw everything that the TV newscasters pumped out about Katrina, but I viewed enough repeated segments to say with 90 percent confidence that broadcasters covering the New Orleans end of the disaster demurred from mentioning two topics that must have occurred to every sentient viewer: race and class.  (Shafer's emphasis)

Race and class are explosive, complicated issues in just about any setting. But with them being, in a very real sense, among the deciding factors in who lives and who dies, and with that being so in America in 2005, the analysis can go on forever. Shafer's article is the first volley out of an armchair from which we'll all be casting opinions before it's over.

To start the conversation, Shafer references  an eerily prescient "New Orleans Times-Picayune five-parter from 2002, 'Washing Away,' which reported that the city's 100,000 residents without private transportation were likely to be stranded by a big storm."

The Decline of Western Civilization: harbinger #3,245,926

Michael Jackson Easily Trumps Darfur on Nightly News

[A] report, released this week by the Genocide Intervention Fund (GIF) and the American Progress Action Fund, note[s] that the major network and cable television stations devoted 50 times more coverage to the child molestation trial against Michael Jackson last month than to events in Sudan, including both Darfur, where as many as 400,000 people have died over the past two years, and the outbreak of fighting in the eastern part of the country.

Hardly surprising, yet oddly startling.

 

Nation also constitutes central portion of North America

Poll: Religious Devotion High in U.S.

Good grief. And who paid exactly how much to learn this?

Keep your assignment off my comics page!

Of late, the "Letters to the Editor" page of The Birmingham News has borne even more child-like scribblings than usual. Apparently, kids in Hoover schools are given the assignment every year to select an article from the paper, write a letter to the editor in response to it, and send said letter. The results are often painful. The language is infantile and the topics sleep-inducing, containing more facts than opinion (e.g. "small children should be in their proper child restraint seats," "that judge shouldn't have taken that bribe," etc).  I don't know of this assignment first hand, mind you, but the names of the students and the part of town they hail from are enough to piece it together (also, their clumsy inclusion of the title of the article they're referencing as well as its author is another dead give-away).

It appears there are two ways kids tackle this assignment (this phenomenon has been around about five years at least, so its evidence has become quite predictable). A flurry of letters flow in at the start of the school year. This is obviously when the assignment is first given. The students who give a crap about issues (or maybe just their grades) get their letters in pretty quickly, and the first rush can be seen in September or so. The others are the ones I now suffer through daily, obviously written at the last minute before the school year ends.  I point you now to the News's "Letters, Faxes and E-mail" page where new examples are available everyday (at least for a couple of weeks yet).

Why can't the News save up these letters, set a Sunday aside, and load down the "Opinion" section with these all at once instead of interrupting a daily source of fresh comedy?  Don't get me wrong:  I'd love it if high-school kids in my town actually cared about issues enough to (of their own volition) read the paper and write a letter to the editor in response. But this is wasting space that could be used by legitimately funny wingnuts, whose rants I rely on daily for entertainment (for example,  last week one letter writer defended famed racist J.B. Stoner as a good Christian man who'd been maligned by the press).  Shame on you, Hoover teachers.

I knew it

Fairy tales linked to violent relationships

A study of both parents of primary school children and women who have been involved in domestic abuse claims tha[t] those who grew up reading fairy tales are likely to be more submissive as adults.

Susan Darker-Smith, a graduate student who wrote the academic paper, said she found many abuse victims identified with characters in famous children's literature and claimed the stories provide "templates" of dominated women.

...

"They believe if their love is strong enough they can change their partner's behaviour," Darker-Smith said. "Girls who have listened to such stories as children tend to become more submissive in their future relationships."

Hm. I thought he sounded well-adjusted myself

Shooter Described As Deeply Disturbed

I'll probably burn for being flippant about this tragedy, but exactly what kind of kid does shoot his grandfather, take his guns (having the forethought to don a bullet-proof vest), and start mowing people down at his school?

Did 500 years of his people being sickened, enslaved, evicted and impoverished, along with the inordinately bleak conditions on the Red Lake Reservation play in? I'm just asking.