Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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The Elephantman Has a Point, As Does Mona
[Read the article: Why is Brit Hume treated like a real journalist and news anchor?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Journalism of the so-called objective sort is a fairly recent invention, and when you think about it, a somewhat odd one at that. It's like pornography in that famous formulation of Justice Stewart's -- hard to define, but we know it when we see it.
It's nice to have, at least so long as every U.S. officials say is countered by an independent expert so-and-so disputes what U.S. officials say, but as Glenn points out, this has been honored more often in the breach than in the observance in recent years.
In the midst of our long cultural war, the narrative is more important than the news per se, and partisan reporting, for better or worse, suits us and our time better than an academic objectivity.
What are we to do for example, with the Elephantman, a reasonable person who accepts the phrase left-wing Democrat as part of a catechism he learned long ago, the origins of which he may not know, and in any case, can no longer remember. To point out to him that in the spectrum of modern political history, no Democrat has been more than two clicks to the left of center, and that the modern Republicans he accepts as centrists are only two clicks to the left of Francisco Franco or Benito Mussolini would be viewed as a radical attack on all that he holds dear.
So be it. This is a battle over the meanings of things. Ugly sometimes, yes, but always desperately real. Academics aside, it's hard to understand who could define objective on this battleground without seeming a hopeless Pollyanna.
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The Elephantman Needs Glasses
[Read the article: Why is Brit Hume treated like a real journalist and news anchor?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Elephantman: Nobody can point to one single voice of conservatism as a host or even a regular contributor on NPR.
Has it escaped your notice that there's also not a single conservative on Fox News? Proto-fascists, Dominionists, blow-dried blowhards of no particular conviction, and the kind of screamers usually found stumbling along the sidewalks around Washington Square, yes -- but conservatives? Honestly, do you really think that all it takes to make a conservative is a bow-tie and a set of pipes?
Then again, you're the guy who thinks Hillary is a leftist. God forbid you should ever encounter a real leftist. They probably wouldn't even bother to shoot you; they'd probably send you someplace nasty and re-educate you -- a task, by the way, which I wouldn't envy them.
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Bravo!
[Read the article: Why is Brit Hume treated like a real journalist and news anchor?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Che Pasa, thanks. Debout, les damnés de la terre... Come again? The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. I beg your pardon?
For the most part, I can cope with their braying; it's the sheer ignorance that gets to me. It's nice to see that someone else has a clue what the human race was like the day before yesterday.
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nabalzbbfr
[Read the article: Why is Brit Hume treated like a real journalist and news anchor?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A case in point.
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Liberty Qualified
[Read the article: Various matters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Professor: What about the biology professor who teaches students in a public university that evolution is a satanic lie? I don't think either academic has a 'right' to advocate such views without it posing a threat to their promised life-time employment, frequently on a public payroll.
Professor, I don't think you get it, and I think that if you had me as a student, we might both have a time of it. There simply is no arbiter which gives you the right to profess over others except the power of your own persuasion, no matter how many academic committees say otherwise. Yet here you are, volunteering to serve as an arbiter of views you find antithetical to what you perceive as the true nature of education.
We'd prefer to come to our own conclusions, if you don't mind, and even if you do, should it come to that. (And may I say, while I'm at it, that hanging your argument on the issue of public funding is just an appeal to censorship? It may take an enlightened public to provide funding for ideas not supported by a majority, but then that was supposed to be the crowning achievement of an enlightened public, and would be, but for the ferarmongering of politicians, and the right-thinking of academics such as yourself.)
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Some Libertarian
[Read the article: Various matters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mona: A biology professor who teaches that evolution is false in the classroom should be fired for teaching that is inherently in violation of his contract. It would be as if the professor assigned to teach calculus announced that really numbers and abstract symbols are an alien plot, and his/her students should all be drafting poems for his class. That isn’t a matter of his freedom to teach calculus, it is a matter of his failure to teach as he has been hired to do. Ditto for the biologist who teaches that the bedrock of the life and Earth sciences, evolution, is a satanic hoax.
Well, to the extent that the satanic hoax part of this formulation isn't a straw man, I'd say this: It's quite permissable in my book to teach that the theory of evolution is incorrect, provided one has an alternate theory, and has what one believes is evidence which supports it. Teaching that the earth revolved around the sun, or that there was no such thing as phlogiston, or that a marine chronometer was superior to celestial observations in determining longitude were all heresies in their day.
As for the robbing banks part, think of the rural foreclosures during the depression, when a number of small-town bankers were threatened with lynching. I can quite imagine a professor suggesting that robbing a few banks would be an effective political tool in drawing attention to the uneven distribution of misery in a national financial metdown. Not quite the same as encouraging your students to steal the money and bring it to you, a la Fagin, but not entirely fanciful as a defensible example of the benefits of academic freedom either.
And I thought you were the libertarian, Mona -- or are you one of those, ahem, responsible ones.