Malpractice
Earlier tonight, a CNN correspondent suggested that people who were more interested in the riots in Baltimore than in the Correspondent’s Dinner go onto the internet to get news about them.
Jaybird
Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com
Don’t the protesters understand it’s prom night?Report
You’ve won the internet, sir.Report
Seems like a more accurate and less hysterical statement then many on CNN. Good for them.Report
Frankly, i dont care about either one. Why sould I?Report
Twitter is far and away the best source of news for any event anywhere. CNN is just acknowledging its irrelevance.
Even the Twitter coverage of the WHCD was better.Report
Oddly enough, my Twitter feed blew up into a race discussion… emanating from the WHCD.
On the upshot, it’s so rare that you get such a wonderfully clarifying reponse to an accusation of racism than calling the person you’re talking to a “Sammy Davis Junior fag boy” who has “surrounded [him]self with darkies.”
Went downhill from there and there was much unfollowing commenced as everyone picked sides.
Yay for clarity, I guess…Report
Wow.Report
I see what you mean about Twitter being a great news source.Report
Well, Twitter contains multitudes.
I not only knew about what was happening in Baltimore and DC as it was happening, I knew what was going on in Kathmandu, in Sanaa, even in around Sarrin, a town of a few thousand on the Euphrates in Northern Syria that no one had any reason to have heard of until it became a strategic target on the route to Raqqa. And I was getting my info from people, including reporters from around the world and just everyday citizens (and the YPG itself, in the last case), while CNN debated Obama’s top 10 jokes of the night.
But there are some awful people on Twitter. Surely you should stay away.Report
#signaltonoiseratioReport
As opposed to blogs and their notably high signal-to-noise ratio.Report
The wonderful thing about Twitter is that I get to choose who I listen to, so I play a Big role in determining its signal-to-noise ratio for me.
So I follow journalists who actually report, and activists on the ground, and local sources in war zones, because I wanted a lot of the sorts of info they provide. I also follow Jaime Murray, because she has pretty noise.Report
@chris “The wonderful thing about Twitter is that I get to choose who I listen to, so I play a Big role in determining its signal-to-noise ratio for me.”
Ironically, I just got back from a trip where I interviewed about a couple dozen or so Oathkeepers and ultra-right wing militia members who are hoping to start a firefight over the next month with the federal government.
They all said some various version of this statement about how they get their news.Report
Oh, I won’t pretend that it doesn’t lend itself to insulation. I mean, the internet does in general, and at this point, even cable news does, but Twitter magnifies both the good and the bad of media in general, and the potential for insularity is definitely magnified.
On the other hand, I get to choose who I get info from, so if I’m the sort of person inclined to seek out and listen to people who disagree with me on cable or blogs, I’m likely to do so on Twitter as well. It’s not as though, prior to 2006, Oathkeeper types weren’t selective in who they got their info from.Report
I suspect we’re actually going to see more and more of “Person says/does something completely ridiculous, looks confused when public screams WTF!” at him/her.
I watched a guy on a comments thread once brag to fellow compatriots that he knew he’d won an internet argument when the idiots he was arguing with, in his words, “Actually said Hitler wasn’t a socialist” and how he’d schooled them with pointing out “Socialist” was in the party name.
It’s so easy to get into the bubble, that I think that constant..culture shock, for lack of a better word…is going to be a problem, especially for public figures.Report
@morat20 “I watched a guy on a comments thread once brag to fellow compatriots that he knew he’d won an internet argument when the idiots he was arguing with, in his words, “Actually said Hitler wasn’t a socialist” and how he’d schooled them with pointing out “Socialist” was in the party name.”
Boy, is he ever in for a shock when he finds out what “DPRK” stand for.Report
I actually was only a party to the whole thing because I follow a disproportionate number of independent/libertarian/conservative African-Americans (the recipient of the Sammy Davis comment being an Arab-American Republican) with some really quite fresh perspectives. But it makes for an interesting playing/discussion field.Report
Dude, once upon a time, journalists had pretentions.
These fictions were *IMPORTANT*.Report
Our mistake was in believing CNN’s on-air people were journalists.Report
This.
they are repeaters for a Big, fancy omnidirectional antenna; sticking up above the horizon.
Hardware wise, totes obsolete. Entertainment now, not cutting edge of communication.Report
But the logic of the marketplace eventually undermines all pretensions. Ed Murrow’s show was replaced by one about a talking horse.Report
This was about pretention. “Our event is more important than Baltimore.” and “We’re more important than the news.”Report
I suspect it was about neither.
I suspect it was about ratings and contractual obligations.Report
Baltimore wasn’t just more newsworthy than the WHCD, it was more interesting. That’s why I don’t think this was about ratings.
I’m not sure what contractual obligations there would be.Report
Advertisers.Report
I can’t imagine there aren’t provisions in those contracts for breaking news (which a regular protest isn’t, but this was – and stimulating news at that). It comes with the territory.Report
Are you kidding? That’s pretty much all cable news does.
Oh, sTimulating news. Never mind,Report
TRIGGER WARNING Racial Stereotype
Sorry @will-truman black people rioting in Baltimore is dog-bites-man, which is the opposite of newsworthy.Report
Which is why nobody was interested in what was going on in Ferguson…Report
Well, if you Google you’ll see that in addition to the riot yesterday there was riot in Baltimore in 1986 and another one in 1861.
So yeah, it’s pretty common. Once every century like clockwork.Report
1986?
I’m surprised that they didn’t take this opportunity to compare Obama to Reagan.Report
I assume he meant 1968, after the assassination of Dr King.Report
Furthermore, the 1861 one wasn’t black people rioting. It was white people rioting in response to the prospect of freeing the slaves.
We still commemorate the event in our official state song, right there in the first verse. It is a sobering thought that on the list of embarrassing features of this song, its being sung to the tune of “O Christmas Tree” comes in at best at third:
The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!'[Report
@richard-hershberger I think you must be mistaken. White people do not riot.
That’s just science.Report
“She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb;
Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum!”
This was one of a handful of Confederate marching songs we learned in music class in elementary school. My favorite was “Goober Peas.” Oh South…Report
Wow. I am… surprised at that.Report
My school waffled on the cause of the Civil War, but at least we didn’t have that.Report
I wonder to what degree stuff like that shapes us.
I grew up in CA, and I can’t think of one thing we learned about in elementary school — civil war, slavery, internment camps, NA genocide, Jim Crow — where it wan’t taught in very explicit terms exactly where the right and wrong side of history was.Report
Elementary school was very different from high school, in this regard. In my system, anyway. I don’t know if that changed as I went through or whether it was just different at each end.
The only constant was a high degree of caution surrounding the Civil War.Report
I could talk about my education on the Civil War, but given where I grew up, it would be a long comment.Report
I suspect that the difference between our experiences probably extend beyond the singing of particular songs. I meant to mention that in a previous comment.Report
The War was such a big part of my town’s identity. My kindergarten was on the battlefield (the feeder school to Battlefield Academy), in a building that replaced the antebellum home of the school because that building had been destroyed by the Yankee army in 1863. The destruction of the Army of Tennessee near downtown in 1864 was a personal loss, the Rebs always referred to as “we.” It was a town, and a local culture, steeped in Lost Cause mythology, in tales of Confederate heroes, where the tragedy of the War was that so many died futilely.
Anyway, like I said, it’d be a long comment.Report
My school district had a lot of transplants, which I think was the source of the relative ambiguity surrounding the Civil War. It was like if they said slavery half of the parents would protest loudly, but if they said state rights the other half would. So it was kind of “it was complicated. Anyway moving on to what actually happened in the war…”
Lincoln was still a hero. But Lee was good folks, too. Both sides were fighting for what they believed in, but it’s a good thing the north won because the slaves were freed and the union held. Everybody gave a good fight. Moving on….Report
@tod-kelly
“where it wan’t taught in very explicit terms exactly where the right and wrong side of history was.”
You are presuming that everyone agrees what is right and wrong.Report
@aaron-david No, I’m actually pondering the opposite. Sort of, anyway. When I said “right side” of history, of course, I meant the winning side.
I’m still trying to mentally punch at fog to figure out exactly what my mind is touching on here…Report
Winning side? As in the tribes had it coming?Report
@will-truman “Winning side? As in the tribes had it coming?”
No, as in they actually *won.*
The North *won* the war.
The antislavery side won the argument. So too did the civil rights advocates and the anti-internment-camp champions. The South still has some advocates, obviously, but the others won so decisively that their opponents are all either gone or would not dare to speak against them in polite society. Things might change someday, but for now these are all winning sides.
@aaron-david Yes, but some losing sides are more pervasive than others in doing so — which is what I am wondering about.
No one today sticks up for the Chinese labor camps; no one sings songs about the great way things used to be before the cut throats of modernism came in and allowed Asians to live wherever they wanted dam well wanted to. And if there were, they wouldn’t dare teach such songs in public elementary schools.
Which is why Chris’s story seems so damn odd to me.
The culture in 19th and early 20th century California was no less a culture than the culture of the South. So why, I wonder, has one achieved a lasting grip on its decedents imagination while the other has largely abandoned it, preferring to pretend it never happened?Report
It was the reference to the Indian tribes that threw me off. (Still does, a little. But I guess “they” won the argument insofar as we have regrets and we did stop killing them.)Report
@tod-kelly
I don’t know why, but it just is. May have more to do with CA being largely an immigrant culture? I read a SF book years ago that basically said in a situation like that you have to either annihilate or assimilate.
The North did neither. Hence the songs, and the different name for the war in the South. “The War of Northern Aggression.” In some ways people are still fighting that, both sides. The complete and utter hatred vs. the love of the stars and bars and the disagreement of why the war was fought show that completely. The North won the war pretty decisively militarily, but the South may have won the peace. Won’t know that one for a while still.Report
People like them did that. We would never have supported something like that. We’re on the right side of history, after all.
Those hillbillies, on the other hand, still see The Civil War as something that is part of their heritage rather than as part of someone else’s.Report
Hmm… Given that it was my comment that sparked this subthread, and given what’s been said here, I find this comment thoroughly baffling.Report
I’ll try again and try to settle myself down this time.
When you go to war against a people, any people at all, it is best to go to war against a people who do not have a tradition of songs, poetry, storytelling, and passing secrets from person to person to person.
If your songs are not better, if your poetry is not better, if your stories do not stir as much, if your secrets do not give as much of a thrill to retell… you’re going to be wondering why in the hell those people over there haven’t converted yet despite the fact that you beat them militarily.Report
It was a lot more than songs and poetry that helped the South win the peace after the civil war. It was a deliberate end to Reconstruction by pols. It was in all the papers at the time. There was more desire to put the war behind and an eventual loss of desire to keep helping the former slaves.
Every culture has a history of story telling and songs and such.Report
If the politicians had only applied more force, we’d have a different narrative today?Report
@Jaybird
If not for the Allied policy of “denazification” after WWII, do you think Germany would be different today, with more tendency to minimize or ignore the Holocaust? Or do you think things would have gone exactly as they have and the policy was meaningless?Report
Sometimes I think things would have gone better had Reconstruction not been aborted. At other times, though, I don’t think that’s the case at all. And there was a substantial rebuilding component to Germany making it a carrot-and-stick, while the South was a different story.
And lastly, as bad as things turned out, things could have turned out worse. The Best Ways, to the extent that there were any, were either not feasible or not sustainable.
I don’t know what the right answer is. And the more I learn, the less I know as far as that goes.Report
Oh, I’m certain that denazification changed outcomes such that things today are different than if it had not happened. As such, I’m certain that the policy was not “meaningless”.
I am not certain that we changed things for the better over the long run, though. I can see why we’d argue that, of course, we (and they) are better off for how we did the things we did.
Is the measurement that we’re using “the tendency to minimize or ignore the Holocaust”? Because it makes sense to me to say that it’s probably likely that they’d minimize it or ignore it more in that hypothetical than they actually do in 2015 had we not denazified.Report
Yeah Jay its not like the gov could have crushed the KKK or established schools for slaves or protected their voting rights leading to freed slaves getting elected to all levels of gov. Since those things didn’t and couldn’t happen, then certainly the ending of federal reconstruction couldn’t have mattered. Since the Fed gov didn’t do any of those good things continuing to protect former slaves couldn’t have helped and certainly allowing the eventual enshrinement of Jim Crow was something the gov was powerless to present.
The confed has songs and flags so the Feds were powerless in the face of white supremacy. Shame there were no writers in the North. Maybe they should have had some NEA grants in the north.Report
Greg, how do you explain a shame over Jim Crow that doesn’t exist for the Civil War?
What’s your explanation for that?Report
Good thing the Nazis and Imperial Japanese had no songs or poetry, or losing WWII wouldn’t have changed them.Report
Ah, crap. Now I have to call the scarecrow repair guy…Report
“Good thing the Nazis and Imperial Japanese had no songs or poetry, or losing WWII wouldn’t have changed them.”
The Imperial Japanese committed suicide when they realized they were losing, and most of the Nazis either died fighting or were executed after Nuremberg.
Maybe the answer to the problem of the South is “Sherman should have kept going”.Report
Civil wars are different from other wars. They tend to result in centuries, even millennia of bitterness and resentment that periodically flares up into violence. Somehow, the aftermath of our civil war didn’t go that way. Part of that is that the South took its bitterness and resentment out on people it already hated. Part of that is that the North didn’t hang the South’s leaders and then violently root out its most fervent believers. Part is that after the Compromise if 1877, the South basically went back to something very close to its pre-war social and economic status quo, except with more capital and better infrastructure and industry, thanks to Reconstruction.
The North didn’t have to convert the South. The South won the peace.Report
Chris, would we have been better off 70 years later had we engaged in some serious deconfederatification? Or today?Report
De-Nazification didn’t take place after a civil war. It’s the wrong analogy in every way.
Things might have been better if Lincoln had lived, Johnson never got to make concessions that would pave the way for the Compromise, Federal troops had stayed so that former Confederates couldn’t purge virtually the whole of government and the economy of black people, and the South a generation later didn’t have Jim Crow as an option, much less its inheritance.
But who knows? Counterfactuals are always false.Report
” you’re going to be wondering why in the hell those people over there haven’t converted yet despite the fact that you beat them militarily.”
Remember the war against Franco?
That’s the kind where each of us belongs.
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs!Report
@tod-kelly with the Civil War, part of it was not treating the losers like losers; placing priority on ‘reunification’ instead of forcing compliance; (my words, my impression from reading Coates and a couple of the books he’s run as book groups and from my family’s history.)
But there does seem to be another thing important here; typically winners adopt many of the symbols of the culture of the losers, particularly the religious traditions; hence we have the pagan symbols of eggs for easter and Christmas trees and just look at what the ancient Egyptions added to their religion over time. Now I’ve never studied this or read about it as a real thing with it’s own name and specialists who study it, but since there’s something to at least ponder there for a moment or two; particularly since much of the socializing we’re seeing seems to follow religious fault lines.Report
@zic “Now I’ve never studied this or read about it as a real thing with it’s own name and specialists who study it…”
I don’t know if there are specialists in the topic, but I believe the term you’re looking for is syncretism.Report
@zac thank you, that was precisely the word I needed.Report
@tod-kelly
Well, history is written by the winner, obviously. But the little known other side of that is that the loser gets the oral history. And the musical history.Report
That’s how I remember my high school history classes being as well, to the point where the things that I remembered the most clearly were the negative aspects of British Columbia’s history: exploitation of Chinese workers building the Canadian Pacific railway; head taxes; the Komagata Maru; internment of Japanese people.
On the other hand, there’s a lot of things I didn’t learn in class about misdeeds by Canada and BC, and there’s a generally pervasive attitude of “but we’re not like that now, and we’ve always been better than the Americans”. And there were other issues where the right and wrong sides might be disputed by other parts of the country. My memory of learning about the October Crisis – probably coloured by my pre-existing opinions that anyone who wanted to break up my country was a bad guy – was “And here’s where Trudeau stuck it to the separatists. Good for him!”. When I went to a (very leftist) university, and later to a university in Ontario, perspectives on separatism were different.Report
Katherine (and Tod),
That’s what my high school classes were like, and why they were so different from grade school. The Civil War was a blind spot in what I otherwise a litany of progressive vindication. It actually contributed pretty significantly to the liberalism I took to college, and maybe my vote for Clinton in ’96 – though it’s hard to distinguish between the understanding I had of history at the time and the fact that I was young and idealistic. There is a stereotype of people learning about the Bald Eagle and Apple Pie in high school only to be confronted with the Ugly Truth in college, but Civil War aside a lot of the misconceptions I had ran in the other direction.
Grade school, though, was all George Washington cutting down the cherry tree and being unable to tell a lie.Report
https://youtu.be/RBOxw6vbDyoReport
Then there’s MSNBC, which stops being a news network in any way after 10 pm Fridays until 6 am Monday, except about 8 am- 1 pm Sat & Sun. So if you’re looking for coverage of anything national (below the level of network-break-in-level significance, which seems to be about the level necessary to get MSNBC to break into Lockup) in the evening of a Saturday or Sunday, CNN or the internet are pretty much your options.
As @chris says, the choice is clear.Report
…Fox, I forgot Fox. They do actually manage to remain a news network pretty much all week. Not sure you’re going to get coverage of something like Baltimore from them, though. (Maybe? Reports?)Report
There really isn’t that much need for multiple 24/7 news channels. Even without the internet there isn’t that much news.Report
If we had a good one that was actually good 24/7 I might agree (probably not, though: I think news (broadly – reporting, including arts, sports, business, issues, etc.) is the best thing for TV to be used for, and we certainly have multiple channels of everything else).
But we don’t have one that’s actually good anything like 24/7. As long as that’s the case, I’m all for a redundancy approach to TV news (which basically means cable news). (as I say, I wouldn’t be against such an approach anyway, so it’s pretty easy to be for it in the absence of good options.) Multiple channels means multiplying the chances that there will be a good or almost-good one. And it means increasing the chance that at any given moment a network will be covering a story you think merits coverage at that moment.
All that said, there are times when live news just isn’t going to be economical for any network; right now MSNBC replays its weeknight prime time shows thru the night. I’m okay with that, so long as there are crews standing by to cover news if it happens. I’m sure those crews are there during “Lockup” too, but my impression is that the network is far less likely to break in after news programming ends on weekends than to keep going live later into the night when stories are developing on weeknights. I would like it if the network would continue nodding the direction of real news over the weekend even if it’s repeated or pre-produced news programs that are broken into for live coverage with the same likelihood that the overnight replays are.
Now, the Nerd Prom problem, I’m not sure that competition will solve that. That’s a function of the whole Washington reporter class being co-opted into whatever the dynamics are that gets their full buy-in to that. But then, who knows, maybe a new, better network might have covered Baltimore tonight rather than Nerd Prom. That’s the point.Report
Even without the internet there isn’t that much news.
Last night demonstrated that even when there *IS* that much news, the multiple news channels aren’t part of dealing with that sort of thing.Report
Bullshit. You could run 10 times a day some interesting stories on smuggling, or something like that.
You could talk about what it would take for Iran to destroy Israel (spoiler: they’re capable of it today), you could do a ton of interesting things.Report
I’ll take a page out of Carl Sandburg, and wait for the book to come out.Report
Spike Lee tweeted “MSNBC doesn’t care about black people.”Report
Well the reporting class is based in DC and NYC so what happens in B-more really isn’t that important…especially given it’s the WHCD…OMG..SO important.
Except for folks like me…sitting in a bar North of the “incident”….because the cops closed off a major highway in and out of the city…..But hey, I got to put “survived the riots” in my scrapbook.Report
The smartest man on MSNBC repeats an untrue joke about Buzzfeed, while Buzzfeed is covering actualy news 30 miles up the road.Report
It’s like you’ve all forgotten (or maybe never truly understood) how capitalism actually works. First thing to understand is that you are NOT the consumer in the news biz. You are the product being delivered to the real consumers, i.e., the advertisers.
Second, which programming is going to deliver more eyeballs to the consumers? A reasonably entertaining WHNCD, or actual news of some importance? On a Saturday night no less.
Why would you ever expect this to go differently?Report
I’m silly enough to suspect that the riots will get more eyeballs.
But they’re probably poor people eyeballs.Report
I agree with your first sentence, Jaybird. I don’t think the answer to this is capitalism. I think the answer to this is “ego”… the WHCD is their night, and they’re not going to let some stupid protest that got out of hand ruin it.Report
Right. And: ego that convinces itself it’s just so lame and uncool, so dammit it can have this one night.
Or as our former colleague Ned Resnikoff tweeted: “Political journalists are total nerds but they are also extremely funny and cool, am I right guys.”Report
I have to admit, I’m enjoying some of the backlash that “nerd prom” has gotten this year.Report
In fairness, all industries, big companies, etc. do this. The big night where everyone gets together and fetes themselves. If there’s a crisis it can wait unit morning unless it’s truly existential. I don’t consider it prima facie evidence that the political media is worthless, though of course lots of people argue it is entirely apart from the WHCD.
But given they put their not doing their jobs on that night on display and take the risk of being seen ignoring major news, when that happens it’s certainly fair to make fun of them for it.Report
It proves nothing, but I think it symbolizes something (though not worthlessness). Specifically, a misunderstanding of their role in the echelons and hierarchy of power.
But I am pretty much of board with what you say.Report
I’m just imagining antibiotic manufacturers having a black-tie event at which they dine with bacteria.Report
Everyone dines in with bacteria, black tie or not.Report
This is why vegans crack me up.Report
The real offender of the dress code? Your typical virus – most of the time shows up with ripped genes.Report
Shut it down, boys.Report
Speaking of that, I assume everyone has seen this letter to the editor published in The Oberlin Review?Report
I has not. (Not a publication to which I subscribe.)Report
I suppose I should see my alternating horror and delight as evidence for my getting old rather than evidence for anything else.Report
Pretty much a stereotypical rant about the world not conforming to a college student’s wishes for how it ought to be:
Yes. That, and for showing up late to a job interview. Tends to suggest that you don’t take the interview seriously because they don’t care about your class.
Same for a woman. Women get to wear suits with skirts or suits with pants. For pretty much every situation, that’s a matter of preference and comfort. When a woman needs to look “professional,” she puts on a suit. Done.Report
Could have been written in 1975, ’85, or ’95, except for the parts about Twitter.
I did enjoy the part about not getting to pick and choose, or as she put it, “cherry pick,” which parts of progressivism you “embrace.”Report
Jaybird,
If you happen to be near Baltimore or are just a junkie for that kind of thing, sure. If you’re an average AMERICAN anywhere else in the country? I have my doubts.
I’m sure that among those of us at the O.T. you would be correct. But we’re not really typical that way. All other considerations aside, the WHNCD is likely a real outlier for the 24/7 news channels in terms of audience share.
I’m not arguing that it’s right for them to prioritize thusly but that’s what you get when news is treated as an entertainment business instead of a public service. Yay, freedom!Report
I think people like us are actually more likely to be interested in the WHCD than the average news watching Joe. I think the latter is more likely to be interested in watching stuff burn.Report
An average AMERICAN strikes me as being more interested in the riots than the WHNCD but the average AMERICAN is probably not inclined to watch CNN on a Saturday night.
Those that are?
Well, CNN will probably never again be the first choice of those who are more interested in riots than the WHNCD.Report
Haven’t perused the comments so I don’t know how much of a minority I’m going to be, but I actually wished they did this more often. I’d actually prefer non-very-urgent news to be reported with deference to getting facts and context right, not speed of delivery. (Whether CNN provides the former today on the protest is anyone’s guess, though.)Report
I predict the SJWs will claim this proves the media doesn’t care about blacks while NRxs will claim the media is trying to up cover blacks rioting.Report
It’s possible for both of those things to be true at the same time.Report
Hopefully today’s Orioles game against the Red Sox goes off without a hitch.
First pitch 1:35Report
Nope. The Sox showed up with no pitchers.Report
Which makes it different from a normal game how, exactly?Report
Ordinarily, that would make it a Giants game.Report
Recently, Salon published this great piece on the gentrification of Baltimore:
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/23/black_history_bulldozed_for_another_starbucks_against_the_new_baltimore/
I loved the city when I was just out of high school and many of my friends lived there. I haven’t been to Balmer in at least a decade, so I didn’t know it was gentrifying. But, it made me wonder what the connection is between that and this:
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/23/cops_are_the_terrorists_in_our_neighborhood_on_freddie_gray_another_victim_of_police_brutality/
I’ve been thinking about it for a week or two. Then I came across this line in Orwell:
“With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.”
It’s probably just cynicism that my mind made the connection.Report
Oh, one more thing about the romanticism of the Civil War:
The whole “punching up/punching down” thing implies some sort of moral status to underdogs by virtue of their underdog status. If you see the distinction of up vs. down as morally important, it could also explain much of this. Japanese Internment? Punching down. Native American Genocide? Punching down. Jim Crow? Punching down.
The Civil War? When Southerners start talking about their poor sharecropping ancestors who hated the Yankees and could tell stories about what the Red Legs did as they passed through… the punching up/down becomes muddled. “My ancestors didn’t own slaves. We just hated the Yankees.” is something that has been heard enough times that it’s a mockable trope in its own right. But when someone who is really poor, whose family has (as far as s/he can tell) always been poor, is being lectured by someone from Oberlin about the importance of actually reading the articles of Confederation and what their ancestors were *REALLY* fighting for… the punching up/down distinction gets muddled there.Report
Which is why we should let TNC make all the arguments about the Civil War. He’s better at it, anyway.Report
Dang, even the Pun Police have a SWAT team.Report
Maybe the news orgs can catch up on their riot coverage today as it appears to be continuing.Report
Now it’s serious – they’re preempting Jeopardy and Entertainment Tonight in the DC area for Bawlmer coverage.Report