TONIGHT: Politics, Partisans & A Pint… Florida TaxWatch’s Dominic Calabro on the legislative session
5 PM MANOR@midtown, 10 minute program starts at 5:30. Be there!
Add comment March 4th, 2010
Posts filed under 'Uncategorized'
My Purple Post: “600 TV channels and a gazillion blogs” (and still we’re uninformed)
(Visit our Purple friends at www.purplestateofmind.com)
Fresh from one of my unique moments of agreement with Glenn Beck yesterday as he riffed righteously on the unmitigated hypocrisy of Senate Democrats, I tuned into Rachel Maddow who was riffing righteously on the unmitigated hypocrisy of Senate Republicans.
They were both completely right.
Or completely half-right. Which makes them both completely wrong.
Beck gigged Democrats who are wailing about the Republicans’ use of the filibuster threat to kill health care when just a few short years ago there was talk of the “tyranny” of the Republican majority wanting to stop a Democratic minority’s right to filibuster.
Maddow set her sights on the Republicans who were arguing for the procedural validity of reconciliation during the Bush administration when they were kings of the hill, now squawking like stuck pigs as the Democrats may use it too.
So half the TV watching audience was treated to the half of reality they liked, other half of the story be darned.
Roger Cohen shed light on the dynamic at work in The New York Times as he described a societal rise of narcissism:
Community — a stable job, shared national experience, extended family, labor unions — has vanished or eroded. In its place have come a frenzied individualism, solipsistic screen-gazing, the disembodied pleasures of social networking and the à-la-carte life as defined by 600 TV channels and a gazillion blogs. Feelings of anxiety and inadequacy grow in the lonely chamber of self-absorption and projection.
These trends are common to all globalized modern democracies, ranging from those that prize individualism, like the United States, to those, like France, where social solidarity is a paramount value.
Beck and Maddow are simply different choices in our national à-la-carte life, and as we pick out what we love to eat, we seem to not recognize we’re eating ourselves to death.
Are we really an America with so little moral compass that we don’t give a flip about staggering acts of hypocrisy unless it’s a staggering act of hypocrisy by someone we dislike?
In their moments of slightly higher statesmanship, Republicans argue that a 51% majority shouldn’t get 100% of what they want and that our system was structured around minority rights. When Democrats are cogent, they argue that a minority shouldn’t essentially have the power to stop all governance by procedural foot-dragging.
Of course, they’re both correct.
The piece they are both missing is where our system demands that they step outside their neat and self-righteous hermetically sealed realities and deal with each other. I mean roll up the ole sleeves and really get in there and work out solutions.
Cohen agrees normal human contact is in short supply, as he recalled a recent stint of jury duty:
Thrown together for two weeks at Brooklyn Supreme Court with 22 other jurors, I was struck by how rare it is now in American life to be gathered, physically, with an array of other folk of different ages, backgrounds, skin colors, beliefs, faiths, tastes, education levels and political convictions and be obliged to work out your differences in order to get the job done.
There’s only one way this is going to turn out well for us as a country and it will be if we willingly walk away from our self congratulatory self-absorption and feel similarly obliged in our political life to work our our differences in order to get the job done. And we’re going to have to expect our elected representatives to do the same, or we should fire them.
The alternative, according to Cohen: “Or we can turn away from each other and, like Narcissus, perish in the contemplation of our own reflections.”
Yesterday Obama and the Republicans met on health care, but I haven’t quite had the courage to turn on the television to see how it turned out.
Should I?
____________
Stay tuned next week for our companion Keith Olbermann piece to last week’s Glenn Beck. The staggering hypocrisy of this week just couldn’t wait.
Add comment February 26th, 2010
Why the Village Square and Glenn Beck have just about everything and absolutely nothing in common
By Liz Joyner
Perhaps you didn’t know that Glenn Beck is a big fat copy cat and he’s copying me.
I wrote the essay The Square to launch The Village Square more than 3 years before Glenn Beck’s 9/12 project. In it, like Beck, we harkened back to the days after 9/11 as something we might want to emulate.
Like Beck, we have built our concept on the guiding wisdom (and sometimes the manners advice) of our founding fathers.
Finally, we’ve both launched (or in my case am trying to launch) populist movements, although I have to admit that our event attendance (and my salary) is just a wee bit lower than Beck’s. But we both seem to believe in the power of the common man, of “We the People.” (We even have a project called We the People that got us a Knight Foundation grant.)
We’re practically twins!
Except I believe Glenn Beck is currently one of the people most responsible for breaking down civil and civic discourse that The Village Square has been working to restore.
Unlike many others who agree with me about the damage that Beck is doing, I watch Beck’s show and listen to him on the radio. It has led me to some stunning head-exploding moments of weirdness where I agree so fully with an isolated statement he makes or even his basic premise, but his conclusion leads me to wail in abject agony on the floor (literally). People regularly ask me why I am torturing myself.
I do it for you.
So, humbly presented for your consideration is everything I’ve learned about Glenn Beck (and The Village Square):
1. Glenn Beck isn’t always wrong. There are parts of his perspective that would make a constructive contribution to our public debate. (The Village Square isn’t always right.)
2. People I really love really like Glenn Beck. (Weird, but true.)
3. Glenn Beck is smack in the middle of The Big Sort – the grouping of like-minded people resulting in group think to the point of denying factual reality. He needs a good friend or two who thinks his philosophy is nutty and will tell him so, forcing him to moderate just a bit. (Half of The Village Square board thinks the other half is nutty and vice versa.)
4. Glenn Beck’s show is a manifestation of many of the things wrong with our society, both sides of the aisle. We’ve gotten lazy physically and mentally and when we turn on the TV we want drama, intrigue, and self righteous fury all inside of a warm bubble bath of agreement. The show gives us what we’re asking for and don’t be all smug if you’re on the other side of the partisan fury cause you’re asking for it too*. (The Village Square seeks out disagreement as being a fundamental building-block of good decision making and democracy as our founders intended. We should note here that far fewer people are asking for this.)
5. Glenn Beck’s thinking is sloppy. Facts presented, when they are actually factual, lead inevitably to the conclusion he intended to draw from the very beginning. Facts that don’t support his view are simply disregarded. (The Village Square sees good facts as fundamental to drawing good conclusions. Sloppy thinking inevitably leads to bad results as the chickens of the factual distortion come home to roost and your action simply misses the mark…or far worse. Squawk. Squawk.)
6. Glenn Beck’s face is next to a definition of cherry-picking in the dictionary. Sometime he has to throw out half of a whole sentence to make his case because the other half a sentence blows it out of the water. (The Village Square so abhors cherry picking we draw dinner door prizes out of a bowl of 200 numbered cherries to make the point.)
7. Glenn Beck’s show is an emotion looking for facts to support it. (Our primary emotion is abject horror and despair at the quality of the civic dialogue.)
8. We need to remember that it’s not Glenn Beck’s job to govern. He’s even performed the public service of repeatedly reminding us of that, but we seem to not be listening. (OK, so it’s not The Village Square’s job to govern either.)
9. Glenn Beck needs to put down his Swami hat because he cannot read minds or infer intentions from the evil “they” he’s always, well, reading the minds and inferring the intentions of. (The Village Square doesn’t have enough money in the budget for a Swami hat.)
10. Glenn Beck plays a major role in the ramping up of the partisan fury in our national dialog. His nearly day long overreaction every day provokes an equal overreaction on the other side of the aisle against him and a spiraling cycle that may lead – and has led – to a lot of things that are very bad for our country. (Alas, The Village Square doesn’t play a major role in anything nationally. Really people, what is wrong with you?)
11. Glenn Beck seems to be serving an audience who doesn’t even want to hear the other side of the argument thank-you-very-much. By comparison, I might add, the Fox News rubric is to find someone who can make the very weakest case liberals have therefore torpedoing the liberal argument altogether. Icing on the cake if they’re ugly. (The Village Square’s specifically finds the best argument from each side of the aisle because we want to – uh – solve the problem?)
12. Among a certain percentage of the American population, Beck’s antics are absolutely poisoning the cogent conservative argument that needs to be made YESTERDAY in order to competently solve the current mess we’re in. (Uh, has anyone noticed what Democrats do when they’re all on their own?) While conservatives may get a short term bump from the momentum he creates, it’s like using LSD to study for an exam… not a good long term strategy.
13. While we’re on drug analogies, Glenn Beck sells cocaine masquerading as cod liver oil. (The Village Square sells cod liver oil with a bit of a candy coating to help it go down a smidge better.)
14. I believe that the success of shows like Glenn Beck too often plays to the worst in human nature. (We go for the best, although we understand that the worst is there.)
Given the obvious advantages to our approach over Mr. Beck’s to the business of running a country, I’ve been sitting by the phone waiting for a major network to offer The Village Square our own hour and planning what schtick I can use to replace the blackboard and the red phone.
America’s got a choice to make. My hope springs eternal.
Stay tuned next week to our companion blog post: “Why The Village Square and Keith Olbermann have everything and absolutely nothing in common.”
Add comment February 19th, 2010
Knock down fights would be an improvement about now…
“The thing is we have real honest-to-goodness policy differences in this country. And there is nothing wrong with having drag down fights about this. But what is wrong is when it’s only about partisan politics and not about facts and not about creating policy.” –David Corn, Politics Daily
1 comment February 18th, 2010
Steven Pearlstein: The myth of Washington bipartisanship and the art of true compromise
From yesterday’s Washington Post:
The only way a democratic system like ours can work is if the majority party acknowledges that winning an election means winning the right to set the agenda and put the first proposal on the table, though not the right to get everything it wants. By the same logic, if members of the minority party want to influence that policy, they have to understand that it will require them to accept some things they don’t like to get some things they do.
All this is rather elementary stuff, but trust me when I say that until recently, you’d have trouble finding anyone who seemed to understand it. For years, the reigning philosophy from both sides has been “It’s our way or the highway.” It has reached the point where people don’t know how to hammer out a compromise even when they might be so inclined, as we saw during the charade put on by the “gang of six” trying to negotiate a health-care compromise in the Senate. That dynamic is unlikely to change until the voters get so disgusted that they are willing to indiscriminately turn out all incumbents, irrespective of party and ideology. Perhaps we have finally reached that tipping point.
Add comment February 6th, 2010
My Purple Post: Civility Takes a Road Trip
(Visit our neighbors over at Purple State of Mind to read this post and pull up a chair and visit while you’re at it.)
It’s a lonely, lonely cross I’ve borne. Advocating for political civility is a sort of Siberian No Man’s Land: It’s quiet here, you never quite know when you’ll get the next meal and if you need surgery you’ll probably have to do it yourself.
Well, not. any. more. Last week I spent a glorious 3 days in a veritable city-wide street festival of civility.
Graciously invited to Venice (Florida, not Italy, although perhaps we should hold our reunion there) to a Because It Matters training session, I joined other trainees for all civility, all the time.
Because what matters, you ask?
Silly you.
Here, for your reading pleasure, are 25 previously little known facts about civility (although now that they’ve made the Purple blog will be common knowledge):
1. There is such a thing as a civility expert, called…uh….Civility Experts. And goodness knows we need them to fan out into a civility fleet, no less powerful than our Navy. And in case you’re suspicious that this might be a plot hatched by the (Republican/Democratic, circle one) side of the political aisle, Civility Experts is actually the brainchild of Canadian Lew Bayer who finally decided she’d had enough. So in America’s vast partisan divide, she’s Switzerland. Or – uh – Canada?
2. There will be an International Civility Conference in 2011. You’ll know where to find me.
3. There is actually a website You’re So Rude.com. I’m thinking of sending a few folks the link. Do you think that would be rude?
4. Civility is really only civil if everyone gets the same respect from you every time. That’s everyone, regardless of how much you disagree with them, you listening 99% of the Senate and House?
5. There is an actual website Rude Busters.com. I might send another whole group of people this link.
6. University of Virginia students, under the tutelage of a renowned expert on George Washington and the one and only Miss Manners are rewriting George Washington’s 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation for this century.
7. Technology has created daunting problems in our effort to be civil to each other. The constant electronic connection may make us wired to the internet, but it distracts us from being “wired” to each other.
8. Attending workshops about not allowing technology to make us interpersonally rude nearly made my head explode because I couldn’t check my email.
9. The Wall Street Journal wrote an article about asking ourselves three questions before passing something on: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it worthy?
10. Maybe more people should read the Wall Street Journal.
11. Maybe the Wall Street Journal editorial page writers should read the Wall Street Journal. (And to be fair, everyone who writes in every other paper on – well – the planet.)
12. There is something called social intelligence and it’s a really important thing for people to have in a civilized society. We have less and less of it.
13. There is something called social capital and it is a really important thing for communities to have because it is what makes us a civilized society.
14. There is such a thing as “hurry sickness” that causes headaches and insomnia.
15. I have to hurry up and make my deadline to get this blog post up and I have a headache because I didn’t sleep last night.
16. There’s a great exercise for children (or adults who act like children) on thinking before you speak (or write a post on a website, are you listening, people): Give everyone a tube of toothpaste and race with each other to squeeze all the toothpaste out. Declare a winner! Then give everyone a knife and have them race to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Point made.
17. I think as a society we may be squeezing all the toothpaste out of the tube.
18. Our civility trainer knew someone (who called her “little lady”) who plucked a hair from his head and used it to floss his teeth in front of her.
19. Ewww.
20. At a buffet, you’re supposed to serve yourself one course at a time.
21. At the buffet at the conference, I forgot to serve myself one course at a time.
22. Asian women cover their mouths when they smile because they consider their gums unattractive.
23. The key to stopping bullying is activating bystanders.
24. I think it’s officially time now to activate a whole country full of bystanders.
25. Civility and diversity training is a growth industry. Go figure.
–Liz Joyner is the Executive Director of The Village Square, a nonprofit devoted to improving the civility and factual accuracy of the political dialogue. Liz now has really gray hair, but really good manners.
Add comment February 5th, 2010
National Prayer Breakfast: “A prayerful return to civility”
Suggest you begin watching at 79:00, when his Village Square-ish comments begin in earnest.
Add comment February 4th, 2010
My Purple Post: A Cup of Sugar
Hop on over to Purple State of Mind and read the post there…
As I wrestle with the gut-twisting images coming from Haiti, I am struck by the enduring meaning of being a neighbor. When it comes to epic human tragedy, it’s pretty clear America counts Haiti as a neighbor and a helping hand for neighbors is so fundamentally American that – push comes to shove – they even do it on Desperate Housewives.
Our neighbors, after all, are the people we know. They’re the “as thyself” who God or the universe (or just dumb luck depending on your point of view) saw fit to put right across the street, or maybe just across the ocean.
It’s the connection with people we know that compels us to rise to the higher angels of our nature, whether it’s to help someone lift a heavy box, dig through rubble during a breathtaking catastrophe or just bake a cake.
There’s another flavor of gut-twisting I feel when I contrast our neighborly response to Haiti with our lack of charity toward each other at home. I’ve had time to think about both hate and Haiti this week as The Village Square had the pleasure of hosting National Endowment for the Humanities Chair Jim Leach as part of his 50-state civility tour (we were #4).
Chairman Leach spoke of where we now find ourselves with respect to our civility toward one another:
“Everybody is aware of certain recent comments on the house floor, but vastly more rancorous commentary is alive and too well across the country. Public officials have been labeled too frequently in recent times as fascists, they’ve been labeled communists, and they’ve been labeled perhaps both at the same time. And also very surprisingly a new word has come back into the American vocabulary: Public figures have raised the secession word… and that is history-blind radicalism. And one might ask what is wrong with a bit of hyperbole? If 400,000 American soldiers sacrificed their lives to defeat fascism, if tens of thousands lost their lives standing up and holding communism at bay, if we fought a civil war to preserve the union, isn’t it a citizen’s obligation to think through words that have warring implications?
‘There is after all a difference between supporting a particular spending or health care bill and asserting that someone who prefers a different approach is an advocate of an “ism” that includes gulags and concentration camps.
‘Certain frameworks of thought define rival ideas, other frameworks describe enemies. Citizenship is hard. It’s a commitment to listen and watch, read and think in a way that allows the imagination to put one person in the shoes of another.”
…Like we do without thinking twice for a neighbor. Are we still neighbors?
Perhaps the most telling moment in the visit we had with Chairman
Leach was when he was asked to pass judgment on Joe Wilson’s heckling on the house floor during a presidential address – an event negatively referenced in Leach’s talk not 20 minutes earlier.
Much to the chagrin of many of us (oh curses to my lower angels), Leach declined. You see, it turns out Joe Wilson is someone Jim Leach knows. So he did what neighbors do… He allowed Wilson to make a mistake, gave him credit for an apology, forgave him his transgression and loaned him the dang sugar. For what it’s worth, so did President Obama.
I may not know Joe Wilson, but I do know Jim Leach:
“Words matter. Stirring anger and playing on the irrational fears of citizens inflames hate. When coupled with character assassination, polarizing rhetoric can exacerbate intolerance, perhaps impelling violence.
‘Conversely, just as demagoguery can jeopardize social cohesion and even public safety, healing language such as Lincoln’s call for a new direction “with malice toward none” can uplift and help bring society and the world closer together.”
So can a cup of sugar.
–Liz Joyner, The Village Square
(Photo credit: Living Water International.)
1 comment January 15th, 2010
