Houses of the Holier-Than-Thou
Here is one of those quotations that explains why the rest of the word finds us so annoying.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (from an AP report) Bush insists that Pakistan squash attacks in Kashmir Bush said after a Cabinet meeting: "We are making it very clear to both Pakistan and India that war will not serve their interests."
Obviously, we do not want another India-Pakistan war, but where does Bush (who doubtless knew Kashimir only as a Led Zeppelin tune before 9/11) get off telling these two longtime rival nations what their interests are? How we react to such a statement coming from the Russians or the French or the Indonesians? Or, hell, from omnipotent space aliens? "Nuts," I believe that hero general said at the Battle of the Bulge.
Thursday, May 30, 2002
Just when I thought I could not be shocked by the Bush administration anymore, the German press (not ours) reports the following:
Bushs Allgemeinbildung: Gibt es Schwarze in Brasilien? - Panorama - SPIEGEL ONLINE Washington - It was Condoleezza Rice, national security advisor, who helped her boss out of the embarassing situation. During a conversation between the two presidents, George W. Bush, 55, (USA) and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, 71, (Brazil), Bush bewildered his colleague with the question "Do you have blacks, too?"
Rice, 47, noticing how astonished the Brazilian was, saved the day by telling Bush "Mr. President, Brazil probably has more blacks than the USA. Some say it's the Country with the most blacks outside Africa." Later, the Brazilian president Cardoso said: regarding Latin America, Bush was still in his "learning phase".
And remember, kids, Latin America was supposed to Shrub's lone area of foreign policy interest. But I guess that was based on liking tacos or something.
Bushs Allgemeinbildung: Gibt es Schwarze in Brasilien? - Panorama - SPIEGEL ONLINE Washington - It was Condoleezza Rice, national security advisor, who helped her boss out of the embarassing situation. During a conversation between the two presidents, George W. Bush, 55, (USA) and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, 71, (Brazil), Bush bewildered his colleague with the question "Do you have blacks, too?"
Rice, 47, noticing how astonished the Brazilian was, saved the day by telling Bush "Mr. President, Brazil probably has more blacks than the USA. Some say it's the Country with the most blacks outside Africa." Later, the Brazilian president Cardoso said: regarding Latin America, Bush was still in his "learning phase".
And remember, kids, Latin America was supposed to Shrub's lone area of foreign policy interest. But I guess that was based on liking tacos or something.
Wednesday, May 29, 2002
TRANSPARENCY IN ACTION
President Bush recently included a lack of transparency as one evil feature of the Iraqi government. True enough, though it seemed a bit hypocritical at the time given the Bush administration's tendency to keep secrets and angrily dismiss all questions and criticisms. But perhaps Bush was touting a different kind of transparency, the political kind where your administration's every action is determined solely by the imperative to help your friends and hurt your enemies. Has there ever been a policy decision no nakedly political as this most anti-environmentalist of presidents, whose administration has trashed regulations and pushed for more logging and drilling everywhere imaginable, whose Grand Vizier regards energy conservation as no more than a symbolic gesture, suddenly deciding to protect the environment in the one state where his up-for-reelection brother is governor? (Bush's foreign policy is done this way, too: He would be fast-tracking trade deals with Fidel today if the Miami Cuban emigre community was not such a huge constituency for Jeb's Florida Republican party.)
Sadly, the Bushes and the media seem to regard this as perfectly normal and natural, and even rather shrewd: Bush Wades Into Everglades (washingtonpost.com) "The Bush administration has been pushing to expand oil and gas exploration nationwide, but today's agreements should burnish the president's environmental credentials in the swing state that decided the 2000 election." The contempt in which both this writer and the president hold we the voters and readers is truly astonishing. One of the saddest things about modern political journalism is the way it always takes, and encourages the reader to take, the cynical political calculator's view of every question. This is called objective journalism because it avoids taking any ideological viewpoint. Karl Rove must be very pleased.
President Bush recently included a lack of transparency as one evil feature of the Iraqi government. True enough, though it seemed a bit hypocritical at the time given the Bush administration's tendency to keep secrets and angrily dismiss all questions and criticisms. But perhaps Bush was touting a different kind of transparency, the political kind where your administration's every action is determined solely by the imperative to help your friends and hurt your enemies. Has there ever been a policy decision no nakedly political as this most anti-environmentalist of presidents, whose administration has trashed regulations and pushed for more logging and drilling everywhere imaginable, whose Grand Vizier regards energy conservation as no more than a symbolic gesture, suddenly deciding to protect the environment in the one state where his up-for-reelection brother is governor? (Bush's foreign policy is done this way, too: He would be fast-tracking trade deals with Fidel today if the Miami Cuban emigre community was not such a huge constituency for Jeb's Florida Republican party.)
Sadly, the Bushes and the media seem to regard this as perfectly normal and natural, and even rather shrewd: Bush Wades Into Everglades (washingtonpost.com) "The Bush administration has been pushing to expand oil and gas exploration nationwide, but today's agreements should burnish the president's environmental credentials in the swing state that decided the 2000 election." The contempt in which both this writer and the president hold we the voters and readers is truly astonishing. One of the saddest things about modern political journalism is the way it always takes, and encourages the reader to take, the cynical political calculator's view of every question. This is called objective journalism because it avoids taking any ideological viewpoint. Karl Rove must be very pleased.
Tuesday, May 28, 2002
MY FRIEND SHRAK
One hopes that the president wasn't thinking about that movie where the ogre was in love with Cameron Diaz: The Independent: "On the environment. . the French President said all countries should learn to reduce pollution and the consumption of "resources that cannot be renewed".
Repeated at a joint press conference, this assertion brought a blank stare from the US president, who spent almost his entire career before politics in the oil industry."
"Mr Bush went out of his way, however, to respond to the frequent European complaint that the US – and his own administration in particular – makes constant demands on its allies without consulting them."
"'I appreciate this good man's advice,' he said, nodding towards Mr Chirac. 'I listen carefully. And I am proud to call him a friend.'
Mr Bush seemed, however, to be in a rather skittish and unfocused mood after a demanding five day tour to Germany and Russia. He referred twice to Mr Chirac as 'President Jacques' and pronounced the French President's second name throughout as 'Shrak'."
One hopes that the president wasn't thinking about that movie where the ogre was in love with Cameron Diaz: The Independent: "On the environment. . the French President said all countries should learn to reduce pollution and the consumption of "resources that cannot be renewed".
Repeated at a joint press conference, this assertion brought a blank stare from the US president, who spent almost his entire career before politics in the oil industry."
"Mr Bush went out of his way, however, to respond to the frequent European complaint that the US – and his own administration in particular – makes constant demands on its allies without consulting them."
"'I appreciate this good man's advice,' he said, nodding towards Mr Chirac. 'I listen carefully. And I am proud to call him a friend.'
Mr Bush seemed, however, to be in a rather skittish and unfocused mood after a demanding five day tour to Germany and Russia. He referred twice to Mr Chirac as 'President Jacques' and pronounced the French President's second name throughout as 'Shrak'."
Thursday, May 02, 2002
I'm back. Blogging during the last part of the semester is tough for those of us who actually teach!
Having once gotten sucked into a witless e-learning initiative at a certain Deep South university where I was once employed, I was gratified to read in the "New York Times" that online universities are mostly flopping badly. I always said that colleges where you could not drink beer, meet girls (or boys!), and bullshit sophomorically into the wee hours with your friends would be of little interest.
And yet, how the media that flogged all things Webbed for so long continues not to get it. The lone success, we read, is the University of Phoenix, which excels at "branding" we are told in Lessons Learned at Dot-Com U. "The trick now is finding a way for universities like Columbia, steeped in academic tradition, to make it work.
'In a way, that is the crux of the matter,' said Ms. Kirschner of Fathom [Columbia University's e-venture]. 'Are universities going to grow smaller and marginalized in a world teeming with sources of information, or are they more important than ever, as people seek to separate fact from fiction, knowledge from data?' Ms. Kirschner said she hoped the answer would be the latter."
There's little evidence for this growing smaller and marginalized jazz at all; state legislatures may be eviscerating budgets this year but there is no time to be in school like a recession. The "Times" is just allowing a diehard to recycle the same deluded rhetoric that buffaloed nearly every school in the country to throw money at distance learning in the 1990s. The real way for universities to find themselves marginalized would be to continue the behavior that led to these debacles in the first place: acting like corporations whose main mission is to compete in the marketplace and create profit centers. As many real corporations have found, losing focus on your "core business" -- in this case, expanding knowledge and educating students -- usually leads to disaster.
Having once gotten sucked into a witless e-learning initiative at a certain Deep South university where I was once employed, I was gratified to read in the "New York Times" that online universities are mostly flopping badly. I always said that colleges where you could not drink beer, meet girls (or boys!), and bullshit sophomorically into the wee hours with your friends would be of little interest.
And yet, how the media that flogged all things Webbed for so long continues not to get it. The lone success, we read, is the University of Phoenix, which excels at "branding" we are told in Lessons Learned at Dot-Com U. "The trick now is finding a way for universities like Columbia, steeped in academic tradition, to make it work.
'In a way, that is the crux of the matter,' said Ms. Kirschner of Fathom [Columbia University's e-venture]. 'Are universities going to grow smaller and marginalized in a world teeming with sources of information, or are they more important than ever, as people seek to separate fact from fiction, knowledge from data?' Ms. Kirschner said she hoped the answer would be the latter."
There's little evidence for this growing smaller and marginalized jazz at all; state legislatures may be eviscerating budgets this year but there is no time to be in school like a recession. The "Times" is just allowing a diehard to recycle the same deluded rhetoric that buffaloed nearly every school in the country to throw money at distance learning in the 1990s. The real way for universities to find themselves marginalized would be to continue the behavior that led to these debacles in the first place: acting like corporations whose main mission is to compete in the marketplace and create profit centers. As many real corporations have found, losing focus on your "core business" -- in this case, expanding knowledge and educating students -- usually leads to disaster.
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