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33 Responses

  1. Kolohe says:
    October 27, 2014 at 3:00 pm

    Wow, an experiment where one assesses the control group after 30 years and the experimental group after 3 days. What great science reporting!Report

  2. zic says:
    October 27, 2014 at 3:13 pm

    Nice photo and message.Report

  3. Dave says:
    October 27, 2014 at 3:30 pm

    Why Dave hates partisan politics – example 3,212,654,100.00001Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Dave says:
      October 27, 2014 at 4:22 pm

      @dave

      I’m working on a large piece on this but I think that ideology and partisanship (aka as tribalism) is innate to human nature. There are people who like to claim to be above the fray and really interested in good policy but they have their own ideologies that they don’t admit to. I find it too convenient that they happen to always believe in what is the best policy or what is the best policy happens to coincide with their beliefs and interests.

      What is the alternative to partisanship?Report

      • LWA in reply to Saul Degraw says:
        October 27, 2014 at 4:25 pm

        “What is the alternative to partisanship?”
        The preferred policies of the Beltway journalists.Report

      • Dave in reply to Saul Degraw says:
        October 27, 2014 at 5:04 pm

        @saul-degraw

        I can’t give an alternative to partisanship for the reasons you mentioned. People are communal and opinionated and when you get like-minded people together that a hold a certain view, I would expect nothing less for them to defend it. I will defend my views as much as you should defend yours. When things go too far, I tend to get a little irritated.

        Why does comparing President Obama’s response to Ebola to Reagan’s response to AIDS matter? We know how poorly the government responded to the AIDS crisis but it’s also important to note that 30 years ago, we were dealing with a society that was far less tolerant towards gays and to think that ANY politician would have gone out on a limb and addressed the AIDS crisis when it was only ravaging what many considered the fringes of our society (sad to say) is a big stretch.

        If I recall from my younger years (I was 8 in 1981), people started paying more attention to AIDS when it was starting to affect larger numbers of heterosexuals, culminating with Magic Johnson’s press conference.

        It’s too apples v oranges for my liking.

        One last excerpt from the article:

        When people are governed by fear, the most important thing a president can do is be calm, clear, and compassionate. This is why a hug matters. It was an intentional photo-op to demonstrate that people with Ebola and their contacts shouldn’t be shunned and stigmatized.

        Given the partisan nature of politics, do you think that the President’s detractors are going to pay any attention to this? They’re not and I’m sure I am going to have to suffer through Sean Hannity complaining about it when I’m at the gym tonight. At least I’ll be able to throw weights at the TV. 😉Report

      • notme in reply to Saul Degraw says:
        October 27, 2014 at 7:01 pm

        Saul:

        Partisanship is one thing, cheap shots like this are another. It is what I would expect of a Slate writer. I wonder if she was even alive at back in the Regan years. If Obama was hugging someone that actually had Ebola I would be more impressed.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Saul Degraw says:
        October 27, 2014 at 7:06 pm

        @notme

        You are hardly one to talk about cheap swipes considering everything that is wrong with society seems to boil down to “Liberals, liberals, liberals, liberals” for you.Report

      • notme in reply to Saul Degraw says:
        October 27, 2014 at 7:46 pm

        Saul:

        So instead of admitting that this is a in fact a cheap shot you want to make this about me? That is classy. As I said, partisanship is ok but cheap shots less so. Even if I was only liberals, liberals, liberals, that is partisanship not a cheap shot. Surely someone as educated as yourself can tell the difference.Report

      • Kim in reply to Saul Degraw says:
        October 28, 2014 at 2:15 pm

        I like pepsi.
        the alternative to partisanship is intelligent thought, on every issue that comes up.
        People are lazy and hate to think.
        [Witness will truman complaining about the requirement of backup cameras in new cars, without bothering to ask how much they were going to cost, just being “concerned this would make it more expensive” and possibly unaffordable]Report

      • Dave in reply to Saul Degraw says:
        October 28, 2014 at 4:01 pm

        @kim

        I’ve never pegged you as a deep thinker.Report

      • Damon in reply to Saul Degraw says:
        October 29, 2014 at 3:26 pm

        @saul-degraw
        And here I got slapped down in this site and called a “race realist” (whatever the hell that means) when I said all human behavior is essentially tribal. Glad you’re coming around 🙂Report

    • zic in reply to Dave says:
      October 28, 2014 at 2:23 pm

      You know, @dave I don’t necessarily agree with this.

      GWB was very comforting to the American People in the aftermath of 9/11. That is part of a president’s job. Always looking at any presidential action through the lens of partisan politics is not always a healthy habit.Report

      • Dave in reply to zic says:
        October 28, 2014 at 3:59 pm

        @zic

        Let’s just say I’m not as warm and fuzzy about certain things as a lot of other people. I’ll leave it at that. It’s just how I roll. Nothing more.Report

      • Kolohe in reply to zic says:
        October 28, 2014 at 4:14 pm

        But that’s kinda the point of the original critique, no? GWB comforted people after both 9/11 and Katrina, but no one really says that his administration’s management of either crisis was really effective. And that administration was actually rather effective in the fight against AIDS in Africa, and Bush didn’t have to hug anyone (though I think he might of)

        The original article has the implicit claim that image matters more than action, when it was really the Reagan administration’s (and larger society’s) *actions* that exacerbated (or at least did not ameliorate) the AIDS crisis at that time. The article went out of its way to make dubious comparisons between AIDS in the early 80s and Ebola now, and not, say, how the Wilson administration handled Spanish Flu (or how Bush handled either AIDS or so called Swine Flu, the latter of which is more analogous to the current level of the Ebola health concern)Report

  4. Kim says:
    October 27, 2014 at 3:37 pm

    When the government has to resort to blackmail to get anything done, that says something about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

    People who argue for a smaller government might want to think about enforcement, not just monitoring.Report

  5. Gabriel Conroy says:
    October 27, 2014 at 7:26 pm

    The picture by itself doesn’t say much, which leads me to wonder what “1,000 words” I’m supposed to get from it. But when I skim the article, I find it to be the apples to oranges comparison Dave above says it is.

    I’m no defender of Reagan’s cowardly and opportunistic refusal to do anything about AIDS until Rock Hudson died, but hugging a nurse who recovered from a disease that she acquired by helping someone and can no longer infect anyone with strikes me as something he and his press-corps–or a 2014 version of them–would do in a heartbeat. It’s a quick photo op. Probably the right and necessary thing to do, but not particularly courageous.Report

  6. Mike Schilling says:
    October 28, 2014 at 1:03 am

    As vice-president, LBJ often acted as a goodwill ambassador, for instance during this trip to Senegal:

    One morning at 4:30 he and Lady Bird traveled to a fishing village, where the American ambassador refused to leave his limousine. “It was too smelly a town for him,” a Johnson traveling companion recalls. The ambassador counseled Johnson against any contact with these people, whom he described as dirty and diseased. But the Vice President strolled among the villagers handing out pens and lighters, shaking hands with everyone, including a few fingerless lepers.Report

  7. Mo says:
    October 28, 2014 at 4:20 pm

    Ebola today is a heck of a lot better understood today than AIDS was in Reagan’s era. Heck, Ebola was discovered before HIV. No one would think it’s brave to shake hands with someone infected with HIV today.Report

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