Hell Hath No Fury Dept.

Dr. Stanley Fish finds himself the target in a pissing gallery. In the minds of most, he brought it on himself with his conscientiously fair-minded observational essay at NYT.com about Sarah Palin's recently published Going Rogue. His commentary didn't laud or defend the ghost-written autobiography, but instead defended her right to publish whatever she wanted to, and call it her autobiography, as distinguished from a more proper biography, which might be subject to more rigorous standards of truthiness. And he also tried to make some sense about why Ms. Palin is an object of fascination - and more - for a significant swath of the voting public. He didn't defend her personally or politically, or champion anything she "writes," but simply defended her right to do so, and makes note of the fact that there seems to be a sizeable audience that is willing to pay to read it. Sounds as American as Adam Smith.

But of course that makes him a dunderhead in the eyes of the bulk of the New York Times readers who responded to what they imagined they had read in predictably snide and emotional ways. So Dr. Fish responded.

Larned Jetmore had the pleasure of reading Dr. Fish's response immediately after it was posted online, and thus was able to see the response-section equivalent of an untrodden field of snow; a blank white space as far as the eye could see. Larned's first reaction was disbelief, but he also recognized a rare opportunity to make the poignant equivalent of a snow-angel in the virgin expanse. To wit:

As i appear to be the first one to comment on Dr. Fish's eloquent and apt rebuttal to his many critics, I can only say this. It is a great relief not to have to wade through endless examples of how civil discourse is sabotaged in these interactive venues by what can only be described as the warped and circular thinking that results from poor reading comprehension. The silence is heavenly. Sorry I broke it.

Of course, by the time the editors got around to reviewing the responses to Dr. Fish's rebuttal, their inbox was overflowing with hundreds of missives even more condescending and nasty than the first time around, and duly printed them all. To which our correspondent could only sigh and mutter, "Ah, me. Why do I even bother."

NY Times editors give Geronimo a trifecta

NYT covered the missed deadline for closing Guantanamo, and the resignation of the White House counsel who drew up the timetable and legal strategy. Their coverage of this issue, and the absence of giddiness among the Chinese at President Obama's mere presence (awwww), prompted the following submission. How many Editors Selections is that now? They haven't offered Geronimo a steady gig, though.

Here's the link, o ye of little faith.

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/us/19gitmo.html?sort=editors-selection#


EDITORS' SELECTIONS (what's this?)

Geronimo

California

November 18th, 2009

5:48 pm

As head of human resources at an S&P 500 company for many years, we were always scrambling to find, hire and promote people capable of leadership. It was annoying to hear the "old white guys' club" complaints, when we were happy to have excellence wherever we could find it, and had one of the first female company presidents in Silicon Valley.

The counter-hypothesis seems to be, "lots of the world's big problems are sitting around unsolved, because old white guys are the only ones who've been allowed to work on them."

Women, minorities, whoever wants power--and the complex, thorny and unpopular problems that come with that power--have at it! It can't happen too soon for me.

Maybe a few cycles of women (Sec of State Clinton), African-Americans (President Obama), Asians (Cabinet Sec'y Christopher Lu), gays (Committee Chairman Barney Frank) and so on will help convince people that these problems are not merely a matter of letting someone with a "fresh perspective" have at them--especially if that fresh perspective is attributed to the person's non-traditional race, ethnicity, gender, etc. Bad thinking, thrown into reverse gear, does not equal good thinking.

On a roll--NY Times editors choose Geronimo again

It's a challenge to write something you're pretty sure NYT doesn't agree with, but do it well enough that their editors still choose your post out of the hundreds they receive. True, blind justice.

This time, Geronimo posted a continuum of options available to health care supporters. The premise? The conversation has become such a mess that any effort to re-position will have pretty unattractive explanations to offer.

NY Times' editors chose it again!

Here it is, with a link to the relevant page @ NYT website below.

127.

EDITORS' SELECTIONS (what's this?)

Geronimo

California

September 3rd, 2009

9:36 am

Pick your point on the continuum:

Strong: We were right all along and still are; we’re making minimal changes; you were too stupid to know what’s good for you; we’ll explain it slower this time.


Not as strong: OK, electorate, we are in a dialog with you. We have changed 10% to show we’re listening. See if you can find it.


Medium: We’re really changing this. Please don’t ask us why we came up with the wrong answer the first time, after working on this for the whole Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2 administrations. Let’s just move forward. Interrogation techniques? No, we don’t want to move forward on that one. Why do you ask?


Pretty weak: We’re offering discount cards and calling it health care reform. We finally figured out that we need to get re-elected.


Capitulation: We have all learned that America has to set priorities in this economy. We have had a great dialog with the American people, and we will use what we learned to make substantial changes in health care in the future. Someday.



http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/health/policy/03care.html?sort=oldest&offset=6

NY Times editors like Geronimo

Geronimo, your faithful correspondent, was originally encouraged to create this blog by having comments regularly selected over the course of a year or two by the editors of the NY Times. Talk about a love-hate relationship!

They did it again today, for Geronimo's response to a piece by Charlie Savage, headline: Justice Dept. to Recharge Enforcement of Civil Rights.

Here it is, with the accompanying NYT explanation of what the "EDITORS' SELECTIONS" designation means. That's fine as far as it goes, but the piece was also voted #6 (a/o 10AM) by the Times' readers.

27.

EDITORS' SELECTIONS (what's this?)

Geronimo

California

September 1st, 2009

7:42 am

This will quickly get the discussion back to the difference between equality-of-opportunity and equality-of-outcomes. Most people favor equality of opportunity, yet strongly believe that equality of outcomes is the responsibility of the person / family for whom the doors were open.

Economist Thomas Sowell cites a pair-matched study where high-work-ethic West Indian Africans (Caribbean families who'd emigrated to the US), who looked African-American, fared somewhat better for socio-economic progress over the years than did a white experimental control group chosen for similar incomes, education levels, etc. In other words, the greater work ethic / thrift ethic / education values of the West Indian African-descent people in the study were more than sufficient to allow the West Indian Africans to out-progress a white, native born control group.

This finding contradicts the "racist hypothesis," which rarely gets challenged in any public forum any more. The “America is racist” hypothesis sets forth that, if you are visibly of African descent, it doesn't much matter what you do, how much you learn, how hard you work, what profession you choose. Your race, seen by the racial majority around you, will cause people to put obstacles in your path so that you will never be able to make socioeconomic progress because of this insurmountable racial disadvantage.

Substantial research by Sowell and others refutes that, and not just by this example. President Obama, (need it be said?) is a terrific example of how someone who happens to have an African parent, but has done the things society calls for to get to the higher tiers, can be elected to the highest office in the US.

The departure of the civil rights lawyers cited in the article begs the question--what were their expectations? If they wanted to manipulate the workforce toward a situation in which each and every demanding, education-intensive profession has the same number of each protected class as are present in the underlying population, you'd expect a lot of turnover and frustration. It's an unrealistic model, but an unfortunately common one—“If half the country’s women, why aren’t half the Fortune 500 CEO’s women?” People forget that all but a few of the MEN in the workforce didn’t make it to the top of a Fortune 500 company either. Merit intervened. The average credential for a Fortune 500 CEO a few years ago was: 30 years continuous time in the workforce, since MBA. So, how many women got their MBA’s, with a technical undergrad degree, back in the 1970’s, and never, ever left the workforce since?

Most people want to be the patient of the heart-transplant surgeon who did best in a competitive, meritocratic system. Nobody sensible wants to be the patient of the heart-transplant surgeon who, ever since kindergarten, got the most help from every available affirmative action updraft, all the way through to med school.

People in the US are in favor of equal opportunity, mediated by merit. If the Obama administration gets distracted into efforts to overturn that common-sense principle, and dictate results and outcomes that reduce consideration for merit, they are begging for trouble--from an electorate that likes President Obama immensely.

Recommend Recommended by 130 Readers

How to Shave (Your Face)

Anthropologist Ralph Linton’s 1936 essay about cultural borrowing describes shaving as “a masochistic rite which seems to have been derived from either Sumer or ancient Egypt.” See, that’s where snooty shaving gear companies missed the turn.

The people who are trying to transform shaving into some kind of upmarket metrosexual deal do not have your best interests at heart. Somewhere down deep, shaving is a rite of purification, where you battle the dark side into submission for another few hours. For this to work, you have to treat your facial scruff like a worthy adversary. No challenge, no victory. Take my advice, you misguided shaving gear marketers. You’ll never get it right as long as you’re trying to make whisker abatement easy, comfortable and certain. Here’s the kind of process real guys are looking for, even if they may not articulate it very well.

1. Wash your face with the toughest soap fit for human use. Grandma’s Lye Soap would be great. You shouldn’t feel “moisturized.” You should feel like a mighty battle is joined, and it’s time to wake the hell up.

2. Second coat: more soapsuds, but applied with a brush. Forget shaving gel that lasts the whole shave. It’s just another copout, and will do your soul no good. Real soapsuds will not stay there very long, so you need more soap and hot water and more every few scrapes. A couple sopping-wet, steaming-hot hand towels aren’t a bad idea, either. Remember, this is a fight between you and your whiskers. It’s a war of attrition. You can never win, you can only hold the line. Your whiskers even keep growing for a few days after you’re dead.

3. Next, choose your weapon for the good fight. If you use a barber’s straight razor that you sharpen yourself, and know how to use a few hones and a strop, full marks. If there’s a big back-story about how you got the straight razor, extra credit. If the story involves New Orleans, you can stop reading right here—you’re in the pantheon already.

4. If you use one of those World War II Rolls Razors that has built-in hones and strops, but maintains the sharpening and stropping angles for you, that’s still pretty good. Anything south of that, you’re caving in to consumer culture. It’s your decision. I’m just here to set the bar.

5. Actual shaving is a test of how well you’ve been paying attention up to now, and how well you’re paying attention right this minute. You think you need a yoga instructor to get you into the moment? Scraping hair off your face is way more Zen than meditating. If you drift off while you’re meditating, so what? If you drift off while you’re shaving—damn! Instant feedback. You should have home court advantage here, so forget any excuses. No place where you’re going to nick yourself changed overnight, you know.

6. When you’ve covered the acreage, check your work thoroughly. Every place that you missed, and don’t notice until later today, is a silent indictment of your basic competency at life in general. No pressure.

7. Done with the razor? Get rid of the rest of the soap with one of those hot towels, if the dog hasn’t stolen it by now.

8. Next, apply some after-shave that came with the NIH Warren Grant Magnuson Clinic Pain Scale in the box. If you wouldn’t shake hands with Chuck Yeager smelling the way you do, you’re using The Wrong Stuff.

9. Finally, a quick pass along the jawline with a kerosene blowtorch, and you’re good to go.



(Dedicated to the memory of my father, who woke us up all the way through high school with the sound of his WWII Rolls Razor strop, and my younger brother, who was the only kid in his freshman dorm to use a straight razor and shaving brush.)

(c)2009 coyoteplaystheblues

Got us both riled

We'll take a pause after this, swear off the NY Times and its excesses for awhile. As Larned Jetmore noted in the earlier post, the Times conferred its aura of intellectual respectability on columnist Charles Blow, holding him out as someone who can help ordinary people "get the picture" through graphic representation of quantitative matters.

He's won awards for graphic design, and, per the paper's bio, "...graduated magna cum laude from Grambling State University in Louisiana, where he received a B.A. in mass communications." Great for graphics; apparently not so great for behavioral statistics and their representation.

Below, a point I thought worth making about police interactions across racial lines: a white cop / black stop is many times more likely, just based on the numbers in the population and random chance, as the reverse black cop / white stop. The NY Times apparently did not take this into consideration when designing their poll. Their results may reflect little more than the fact that there are six times as many opportunities for the complaint to occur in one direction as in the reverse direction. Yet, both the original poll and Charles Blow's piece on the Henry Louis Gates incident cite this as evidence of overwhelming police racism.

Geronimo

Let's play cops and professors--you're it!

Charles Blow writes a column called “By the Numbers,” in the New York Times. Linked below is his commentary on the Henry Louis Gates incident. He recounts a personal episode, a chilling police stop in Louisiana where a cop said he could kill him without cause and without consequences. Inexcusable behavior that’s relevant to the discussion—“so far, so good,” as President Obama said in his remarks about Gates.

Blow then seeks to support his point of view with some graphs that I believe are deeply misleading. The graphs, attributed to a 2008 NY Times / CBS survey, depict that black men are about seven times as likely as white men to answer “yes” to the question, “Have you ever felt you were stopped by the police just because of your race or ethnic background?”

By the numbers, indeed. Blacks are about 12% of the US population, whites about 75%. What does that predict about the likelihood—at random—that when stopped by police, blacks will experience a white police contact, versus whites experiencing a black police contact? Forget good or bad. Just consider, “If I’m stopped, what is the probability that the officer will not be my own race?”

Whites (or anybody) contacted by a police officer have about one chance in eight that the officer will be black--ie, will be a different-race police officer that’s relevant to this discussion. But blacks (or anybody) have six chances in eight that, if they encounter the police, their contact will be with a white officer. So, regardless of what the question is, blacks should report six times--600%--the frequency of observing a white officer doing anything, versus the frequency whites would report of observing a black officer doing the same thing—whether it’s acting aggressively, chewing gum on the job, or trying to sell tickets to the policemen’s ball.

Why? Once more—because, based purely on the racial make-up of the US population, blacks are six times as likely to be stopped at random by a police officer who’s white as whites are to be stopped by a police officer who’s black.

The graphs accompanying the article are very misleading, in a way that supports Mr. Blow’s narrative, and the New York Times’ political agenda, but wouldn’t pass muster in a behavioral statistics class. Police racism is bad enough when it’s accurately reported and depicted. But, to portray some ill-behavior as occurring six times more likely than chance, when it's really only occurring a few percent more than chance, is a serious inadequacy.

Geronimo

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/opinion/25blow.html?scp=3&sq=charles%20blow&st=cse

Charles Blow's color pic of an echo chamber

I must admit, when I first learned that Charles Blow was going to be writing a weekly column for The New York Times based upon interesting graphic representations of statistics related to the goings on of the world, I thought it was a great idea. As a magazine guy, I've learned to appreciate the deeper insight that can come from studying a really clever graphic. I especially like charts or graphs that can depict cumulative value or change over time, rather than simple snapshots or time slices.

Blow's graphics are pedestrian and elementary, however. And he uses them only to frame his point of view, and consciously chooses not give a full perspective. They aren't playful and artful in the way that best graphics are. They look like something that would illustrate an overhead projector presentation for the Politburo. And nothing meaningful really jumps out at you.


At a magazine where I once was a writer, we set out to invent a standing feature we called the "charticle." We never really succeeded because we were too old-fashioned, and our art department wasn't tightly integrated with the writing staff. We liked each other, but spoke different languages. Those of us with a mathematical inclination (as opposed to "quantitative") felt even more estranged from the design people. I remember trying to convey an idea to illustrate the cumulative change in revenue from Microsoft's various product lines as they evolved over time as a series of concentric circles with the smaller ones nudged down to touch tangents at the bottom so that the effect looked like an onion bulb. The outer circle would be the biggest revenue producer, while the core would be the newest line of business. Seemed simple enough to me, and a good way to quite literally show the company's growth in various dimensions. In fact, with the right color choice it could've been quite beautiful. I even drew it up and sent it to them:


But as usual, NIH [the ‘not-invented-here’ syndrome] struck. How could a word guy make such an explicit suggestion? We ended up with a bar chart with a linear scale that didn't allow for tracing the company's entire 30-year history, so it could only start in 1995, thus obscuring the whole point of how Microsoft's business evolved and adapted. Good graphics aren't just pretty pictures, but they're better and often more informative when they are.

I guess my point here is that Blow is not particularly imaginative graphically. Nor, as his columns show, is he a very rigorous thinker. That's not exactly a powerful combination, sorry to say.

He reminds me of Bill Maher, who thinks he understands everything, and that anyone who doesn't agree with his opinions is an ignoramus or worse. As Blow puts it in this article, "Trapped in their vacuum of ideas, too many Republicans continue to display an astounding ability to believe utter nonsense, even when faced with facts that contradict it."

Mmm-hmmm. . . .

I'd say that's like the pot calling the kettle black, but I guess that would be racist.

L.J.

Suppress cancer cures? Sure, no prob

Today's question came over the transom via a swim team buddy from high school. Someone...

…told me that ‘big pharma’ has a cure for cancer but is sitting on it because they make more money off the chemo drugs. I asked her how that could be 'cuz there are 200-300 types of blood cancers alone, according to a pathologist friend of mine. But she insisted it was true, and [that] prostate cancer was the main one!

Story lines like this hit my urban legend trip-wire. They remind me of hanging around my dad's used car lot at First and Main as a kid, hearing the salesmen talk about the 400 mile-per-gallon carburetor that GM had and was holding off the market, in collusion with the oil companies.

For the claim of a suppressed "cancer cure," I'll first mention some reasons for skepticism, then an example that could lend a little support to the conspiracy theorists.

Reasons to be skeptical
First and foremost, this particular example doesn't make sense. Prostate cancer is about the only cancer whose progress is normally so slow that "no treatment" is sometimes a valid medical option. As a population, patients with this diagnosis are likely to die of something else before the prostate cancer reaches lethal proportions. So, if you want to start a scandal rumor, get smarter. You picked the wrong medical condition for your conspiracy theories.

Conspiracies and cartels

Many years ago, I heard a Stanford economics professor address the question of the OPEC oil cartel. He did so by explaining the inherent instability of any cartel. Built into the cartel mechanism are the seeds of its own failure. The cycle goes something like this:

• All or most of the suppliers of something decide to cooperate to control the price, with the goal of limiting the supply so that their product is not available from anyone except the cartel, ensuring that they will get their preferred price.
• If few competitors exist outside the cartel, the price control mechanism goes into effect.
• The cartel discovers that it has an unavoidable task: to tell each of its members how much of the artificially-costly product they can produce and sell. Not all of them will be happy with their allocation. Maybe a lot of them are unhappy with their allocation.
• Some smart person in one of the unhappy units of the cartel gets out his abacus and figures, "We could make a dump-truck load more money if we left this dang cartel, cut our prices ever so slightly, and siphoned off a ton of business by beating the cartel-enforced price."
• They do.
• The decay of cartel loyalty and control is begun. As others defect and cut their prices to raise their sales volume, the cartel's efforts to enforce its high price against the free-market defectors actually help accelerate the disintegration of the cartel.

Similar to cartels, conspiracies that depend on absolute confidentiality and secrecy are horribly unstable. For them to disintegrate, it doesn't even take a monetary incentive. All that has to happen is that one of the parties to the secret conspiracy has to get hacked off, and blab.

From "quackwatch.com," a Snopes-type website for medical issues:

What about scientists who discover new treatments? If they can demonstrate effectiveness, publishing their data will bring them fame and fortune. The benefits could include research grants, academic promotion, enhanced research facilities, speaking invitations, honors, awards, and other career opportunities. Even scientists who are selfish and greedy would have much to gain by making their information public—and so would the institutions in which they work.

What about drug companies? Won't they simply abandon a new drug that threatens their existing drugs? This scenario is also far-fetched. Drug companies are continuously looking for new drugs, because existing drugs have patents that will run out. Also, any company that can market a new drug that is effective against cancer will come out billions of dollars ahead, even if existing drugs become obsolete. Some conspiracy theorists claim that drug companies ignore "natural" substances that cannot be patented and therefore cannot be profitable. However, if a natural substance is found useful, drug companies can develop related chemicals that are more effective.

Even if a short-sighted drug company executive decided to suppress a new drug because it was too effective, the scientists involved might still go public with the information, for the general good if for no other reason. Among the dozens of people who have inside knowledge, someone is likely to have a conscience. The need for drug company support could be eliminated by obtaining a grant from the National Cancer Institute. Also, if the treatment really worked, other researchers would eventually be able to demonstrate to the world that the treatment did in fact cure cancer. This has never been done for any supposedly 'suppressed' cancer cure.

A reason to believe it could happen
A company where I worked sold a medical infusion pump worn on the arm or on the torso to a competing pharmaceutical and medical device company many years ago. It was a case of a competitor buying a competitor. We worked with them to get our product through its final development stages and onto the market, but our engineers felt that the client / acquirer was moving very slowly. Even if this was true, it wasn't a case of a "better fix" being held off the market. It was an example of an existing fix being held on the market, by neutralizing a new entrant. I would like to think our pump was better, but if the acquiring company thought "we own both products now, and we're sticking with Product A, which is already out there and doing just fine," that's a legitimate business tactic. Even at that, it was very expensive for them to prevent a new entrant coming into the market--in essence, we got "paid" for our product by having a competitor buy all of our product, instead of having to fight that competitor to give retail customers an opportunity to buy any of our product. This is about the only example I ran across in 30 years in the industry.

Bottom line
To believe that a cancer cure is being held off the market by the companies who are supposedly searching for cancer cures, you have to believe that all the following things are absolutely true:

• The cure was developed in the pharma industry, and is highly effective. If so, hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of people have to have been involved. How will all the people who know about it be silenced with perfect, 100% certainty?
• The cure is so certain to make present therapy obsolete that it is being held off the market, despite being worth billions itself. Come on, folks. Only about a hundred drugs have an annual revenue line of a billion or more. Versus a sure and certain cancer cure? No contest, cancer cure wins and gets to the market.
• The secret has leaked to the Internet, email-forwarding strings, gym discussions, barbershops and cab drivers, but is still somehow so closely held that nobody can ever catch the villains at it. Huh?

The Rorschach Napster

Wikipedia has published the images used in the Rorschach test.

Today's New York Times asks the question, "Has Wikipedia created a Rorschach cheat sheet?" That's a question?

How about looking to Hippocrates: "First, do no harm?"

What harm? Read everything you can get your hands on about Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Strangler. He was a fairly high-IQ serial killer who studied psychological literature, and nearly succeeded in passing himself off as a case of multiple personality disorder. At the extremes, publishing the Rorschach images provides a recipe for sociopaths to buy time by figuring out how to look normal--not to mention the confounding effect it'll have for therapists and researchers who want to use the test in the normal ranges of the psychological spectra.

Publishing the images destroys their ability to elicit a candid, unstudied response. Therein lies their SOLE benefit. Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder) should have been smart enough to figure that out, and to take a stand on this example against the vortex of the Internet, which sucks everything inward and downward.

Much of psychological testing relies on the ability to elicit norms and variances. To do that, you need back-comparability between those who take the instrument now vs earlier. If that's destroyed, value is lost. No two ways about it.

Oh, I forgot. There's always the lowest-common-denominator argument that made tabloids out of the great newspapers: "If I don't do it, somebody with lower ethics will."

So what. Take a stand. Give it a try. Oops, too late.

Geronimo's bio

He didn't have a nom de plume in mind back then when he swiped the top sheet from his grandmother's linen closet, climbed up on the roof of the old carriage house out back, let out an eponymous yell, and jumped from the gable assuming that the parachute effect he would achieve by grasping the top sheet by the corners would deposit him gently onto the gravel drive below with a glorious flourish that would impress Betty, the soon to be voluptuous thirteen-year-old girl next door more even than his skill with a slingshot, but then he was only eleven and didn't know any better and so instead he simply plummeted, landing hard and awkwardly and fracturing both an ankle and a collarbone and creating a hubbub that abruptly interrupted the chirruping of the two dozen or so blue-haired ladies playing canasta and swatting flies around folding card-tables in the back yard who were there for the annual garden party of their local chapter of the HDU (Home Demonstration Unit).

They called him Geronimo ever after.

Maher slags profit, sets off Larned Jetmore again

Geronimo says: Here's another jolt of adrenalin from the author of the Cronkite chronicle, which was post #1. As with the first post, if you're still interested in what Maher had to say by the time you finish Mr. Jetmore's disquisition, you'll find a link at the bottom.

Larned Jetmore said:

"His overall point is good -- greed is bad. (See URL below) Of course it is. But I won't begin to go into why his examples in many cases don't even begin to support his premise, and in fact misunderstand and distort how profit-seeking contractors actually reduce the cost of the public services he talks about.

Or maybe I will.

Yes government often contracts with private, profit-earning business to take over some of the services of government. And in many cases, it is very easy to prove that the services cost less than if the government did the same thing itself. In the end that is a net savings to taxpayers and to the public.

I'm not making this up. This is precisely why the government has chosen to pay these contractors to do some of this work. It's the ONLY reason.

My problem with Bill Maher is that as likable and smart and good-hearted and charming as he is, he often doesn't know what he's talking about. His intentions are good, and his world-view is admirable, and his morals are much purer than many of the people and institutions that he criticizes. He's a good guy. But sometimes he overgeneralizes to the point of misleading people. This essay is a good example of that.

There are many, many, many instances in which profit-earning contractors do a better job than government ever could. Not because they are cut-throat, sleazy, con artists, but because they are more efficient and knowledgeable and experienced providers of the services. For every Halliburton in Iraq, there is an ambulance service or a janitorial company or an IT consulting firm or a truck fleet management company or a graphic arts company or an architectural firm that can do what it does far better and cheaper than the government can, and still make a profit for itself.

Don't fall for this cheap logic that profit is somehow evil. Maher shouldn't either. What is offensive about The American Greed Machine is the focus on short-term profits when no real service is rendered. The banks and Wall Street financiers, who are absolutely instrumental in keeping the larger economy moving, strip far more profit from facilitating deal-making that underwrites keeping America in business, than any of the "contractors" Maher criticizes, who actually provide a physical product or a specific service to fulfill a governmental obligation. At least they are providing the service or product, and we are paying their tax-paying employees to do what they are good at, rather than paying the government itself, which would have to recreate the same institutional capability at higher cost, to do the same thing.

Greed is bad. No question. Profit, however, isn't necessarily bad. What would you do if you couldn't mark up the cost of the beautiful art objects you find for your customers, as payment for the long hours you spent finding them and recognizing their particular aesthetic value for your very picky client? Profit, in its purest form, is recognition of value delivered. It doesn't cost me a specific amount of money to write 1,000 beautiful and meaningful words. I am paid for the quality of those words that I create out of my imagination and my knowledge and a little thin air to fulfill the requirements of someone who contracts with me. Am I evil for wanting to be paid for my creativity as well as my time? That is basically profit. So is my profit tainted? Of course not. And neither is yours.

Larned Jetmore

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-not-everything-i_b_244050.html

Larned Jetmore, forever young

Larned Jetmore's visa photo

Cronkite

This is Larned Jetmore's response to a Salon post titled Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did. Start with this, then if you still want to see what prompted it, there’s a link at the bottom. Here it is…

"My one comment about this article is that the notion of journalistic objectivity and neutrality is a crock. The best one can do as a journalist is strive to be fair, and give each side their say. But there's no reason in the world not to come down on one side or another if the evidence appears to warrant it. You do your reporting and try your best to make a judgment that is supported by what you find. If your conclusion is debatable, you say so, or else you simply don't draw a conclusion.

Television journalism is a different animal. Oftentimes the "reporting" isn't even done by the on-camera performer. In these days of 24/7 news, more and more of what we see is simply extemporaneous commentary. Very frequently they say nothing more than the obvious, or what has been spoon fed them either by their own editorial staffs or by their "sources." David Gregory's pompously self-effacing comment at the beginning of this article acknowledges none of this.

In the case of Cronkite, he liked to call himself a reporter, but in reality he was more of an editor. He decided what went on the news each night, and did a final rewrite to suit his aesthetic sense of good writing that could be delivered well verbally. Occasionally, at the end of the newscast, he would perform the equivalent of an editorial, which by definition is a formally articulated opinion based on his own editorial judgment. The irony is that on-camera "reporters" do this all the time when they try to sum up what it is they are "covering." Again, there's no avoiding this, but in a live medium like TV, spontaneous analysis isn't always fully informed, so it can't possibly be considered "fair." And unlike in the newspapers, where editorial commentary is mainly segregated into the op/ed pages, it creeps into news performances in ways that blur the distinction between news and opinion. That's why you can't stand Fox News, and why conservatives can't stand MSNBC.

Cronkite was also an "anchorman" during ongoing news events with historic significance. His job was to provide informed continuity on the fly, as unpredictable events unfolded and unrehearsed reports from the field came in. Again, that role is really more like being an editor, and editors have to make judgments and decisions all the time about what warrants attention and what isn't up to snuff.

The difference between Cronkite and today's anchors and news presenters is that he grew up working for newspapers and actually knew how to be a self-contained journalist who reported on events and then wrote the stories himself. He moved on to radio and found he had a good voice for the medium, but first and foremost, he was still a traditional journalist. Even by the time he got to television, he wasn't primarily a performer, per se, but instead rose to prominence because his editorial judgment was so sound. He also happened to have a reassuring camera presence thanks to his self-effacing Midwestern demeanor, and as he aged he acquired a certain gravitas that we haven't seen since. (Brian Williams' stentorian, baritone bloviation is the epitome of the pseudo-gravitas of today's news "talent.")

So while I agree with this article in general, I think it's useful to remember that "journalism" is a many-faceted profession, and that in different media it takes on special characteristics. What works in print doesn't necessarily work on the air. You can't really expect seat-of-the-pants television reports of breaking news to be deeply researched or even fair. There's simply not time for the preparation that requires, nor can the delivery always reflect a deep understanding of something that is unfolding before everyone's eyes.

I suppose the interview programs offer the greatest opportunity to practice pure journalism on television, because they basically depict the reporting process itself. But for that very reason, they are unpredictable, and usually one-sided, and happen only if the subject willingly agrees to participate. In this era of celebrity worship, you end up with two celebrities talking to each other, and in many cases each of them is more concerned with maintaining and buffing their own images than in deeply exploring ideas or uncovering something previously unknown. It's a performance, because it's all there to be seen. The best journalism, however, usually is the result of private discussions in which "sources" can be more open about what they say and in which trust between the reporter and the subject plays a role. Shows like 60 Minutes and Frontline and 20/20 are the best examples of this in television.

Journalism is a craft, not an art and not a religious calling and not a civic duty. We are blessed in this country with a tradition of journalism as "the fourth estate" -- the one that keeps the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of our government honest and responsible, among other things. The Constitution guarantees the right of journalistic entities to practice without interference by the government, as long as those entities don't abuse the rights of others. That's why the journalist's highest responsibility is to be fair. Very few activities or rights are explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution, but this is one of them, along with freedom of speech. So journalism has a special status, and thus special responsibility.

But it is practiced by human beings who are fallible, and who can't help but have biases and opinions that others might challenge. It tries to shine the light on nefarious activities and to also explain how our world works, and it often comes up short because not everything can be fully understood. It can be entertaining, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But it is what it is. Forget objectivity. The best we can ask for is that journalists be fair-minded and try to exert at least as much energy to understand what they disagree with as they spend trying to buttress what they believe to be true. Only then can they be considered credible."

Larned Jetmore

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/18/cronkite/index.html

Larned Jetmore's bio

By not trying to fool you, Larned Jetmore may do just that. He is the grandson of a fictional character in a Kurt Vonnegut novel, but is estranged from both his fictional grandfather and the author who created him. It’s too late to patch things up with Vonnegut, which seems to have taught Jetmore a lesson. Last week he wrote a nice letter to his granddad. Then he bragged about it.

Geronimo