The Not so Newsey News Analysis

I am a fan of The New York Times. After all, I worked there for nearly nine years.

But there are some stories The Times does that send me over the top.

"Are Liberals Helping Trump," a news analysis that appeared on The Times' website on Saturday was one of those articles.

According to the analysis, the upsurge in anti-Trump protests since the inauguration is pushing "moderate conservatives" who voted for Trump closer to him.

"We're backed into a corner," Jeffrey Medford, a 46-year-old owner of a small business in South Carolina, told the analysis' author, Sabrina Tavernise. "There are at least some things about Trump that I find defensible. But they are saying: 'Agree with us 100 percent or you are morally bankrupt. You're an idiot if you support any part of Trump."

He later told Tavernise: "I didn't choose a side. They put me on one."

Bryce Youngquist, a 34-year-old salesman at a tech start-up in Mountain View Calif., said of liberals:

"They are complaining that Trump calls people names, but they turned into some mean people."

Youngquist told Tavernise that when he finally admitted to his friends that he supported Trump they attacked him as being a "disgusting human being."

"They were making me want to support him more with how irrational they were being," he said. "The name calling from the left is crazy."

Ann O'Connell, a 72-year-old retired administrative assistant in Syracuse who said she voted for Bill Clinton twice, said she drifted from the Democratic Party because she felt it had moved away from its middle-class economic roots toward identity politics.

"I don't have a problem with protesting as long as it's peaceful, but this is destroying the country," she said. "I feel like we are in some kind of civil war right now. I know people don't like to use those terms. But I think it's scary."

She went on to say of liberal protestors: "These people are destroying our democracy. They are scarier to me than these Islamic terrorists. I feel absolutely disgusted with them and their antics. It strengthens people's resolve in wanting to support Trump. It really does."

That Medford, Youngquist, and O'Connell are disgusted with liberals does not bother me. That their responses to liberal protests is to double down on their conservativism does not bother me. The truth is I expect such a reaction.  

What bothers me is that there is little evidence that Tavernise pushed the three on why they voted for Trump in the first place, or whether they felt the same way when conservatives attacked President Barack Obama, calling him a closet Muslim and saying he was not born in the United States.

For eight years, conservative trolls referred to liberals as ‘libetards.” They called the President and First Lady apes. A Republican screamed “You lie” at President Obama during a State of the Union address. And of course there were the Tea Party protests.

Were these “moderate conservatives” upset at the protests and attacks from conservatives when it was directed at Obama? If they can't defend Trump now, then why did they vote for him? Are they upset at Trump's tendency to lie? Do they have questions about his possible conflicts-of-interest? Do they think it was okay for Trump not to release his taxes? How can "moderate conseratives," who called Hillary Clinton a crook, justify voting for a man who thinks its good business not to pay the owners of small businesses money he owes? Is there doubling-down a defense mechanism for voting for an unfit candidate for President?   

We won’t know reading Tavernise’s analysis.  

The Bitterness Within Us

With the U.S. presidential election entering its final weeks, it might be time to ask ourselves what we have learned this year about our nation and its people. The answers may not come very easily and may not be to anyone’s liking. The partisan divide makes one wonder if this nation will be able to move forward after such a contentious election season.

We appear more divided than ever, with few people able to open their minds to the harsh realities that lie ahead. Too many of us have become trapped in political echo chambers, unable to hear anything but the sounds of the like-minded. Few people actually listen to opposing views. Some seem afraid that respect for another opinion will shatter all previous beliefs, that it would upend the universe. Civility and respect are lost in a cacophony of hateful rhetoric, and the win at all cost attitudes of so many. Chalk it up to the messiness that is democracy, many say.

But what ails discourse in this country goes beyond the messiness of democracy. Our ailments lie in bitter hearts unable to empathize with others, in jaundiced eyes unable to see the tragedy that exists in a world different from our own. Two distinctive incidents recently brought this home.

One was the attempted murder of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan on Oct. 9. The other was the responses to a New York Times column in which Nicholas D. Kristof wrote about his uninsured college roommate, Scott Androes, who was dying of Stage 4 prostate cancer.

Malala, as nearly everyone knows by now, was heading home from school when gunmen boarded her school van, demanded she be identified, and then fired three shots – striking Malala and two other girls. Malala was rushed to a military hospital where she remained until recently being transferred to a hospital in Britain. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it will go after Malala again.

Why? The Taliban said because Malala is “promoting secularism” by pushing for education for women and girls. The attempted murder of Malala was rightfully met with outrage from many corners of the world. On Oct. 14, tens of thousands of people in Karachi protested against the Taliban’s actions.

In the United States, President Barack Obama decried the shooting as “reprehensible and disgusting and tragic.”

“Directing violence at children is barbaric, it’s cowardly, and our hearts go out to her and the others who were wounded as well as their families,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said.

In Britain, the BBC quoted Foreign Secretary William Hague as saying that the attack had “shocked Pakistan and the world,” and that Malala’s bravery was “an example to us all.”

“The public revulsion and condemnation of this cowardly attack shows that the people of Pakistan will not be beaten by terrorists,” Hague said. “The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism.”

Unfortunately in America, the shooting of Malala became a political football, a way to attack the Obama Administration. One conservative blog, Redstate.com, took a December 2011 comment by Vice President Joe Biden out of context in an effort to suggest that Obama and Biden had no issues with the Taliban and it’s shooting of Malala.

“Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy,” Biden said in an interview with Leslie Gelb of Newsweek. “That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests.”

During the interview, Biden was seeking to explain U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, in particular those aimed at reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Biden was also discussing U.S. reasons for going into Afghanistan: To oust al-Qaeda, not necessarily to wipe out the Taliban.

Meanwhile, others decided that the shooting was an opportunity to attack Islam in general and the President in particular, rather than show solidarity with Malala. The virulent attacks were numerous and outrageous. One has to ask: What manner of person is unable to empathize with a young girl nearly killed for seeking an education?

The answer may be found in the reaction to Kristof’s column. Kristof wrote that Scott Androes “had a midlife crisis and left his job in the pension industry to read books and play poker.” Androes worked part time and earned $13,000 last year. To save money he did not carry health insurance and did not go to the doctor for wellness visits. During that time, Androes developed prostate cancer that spread to his bones.

Kristof used Androes’s story to argue the merits of Obamacare. While many readers empathized with Androes, many also blamed him for his plight, basically saying he made his bed and must lie in it.

According to Kristof, one Oregon reader wrote: “Not sure why I’m to feel guilty about your friend’s problem. I take care of myself and mine, and I am not responsible for anyone else.”

Another reader wrote that many people in hospitals are there because of their own poor choices: “Smoking, obesity, drugs, alcohol, noncompliance with medical advice. Extreme age and debility, patients so sick, old, demented, weak, that if families had to pay one-tenth the cost of keeping the poor souls alive, they would instantly see that it was money wasted.”

A third reader said, “Your friend made a foolish choice, and actions have consequences,”

It would be easy to chalk up those responses to a few callous people hiding behind the anonymity of Internet posts. To do so is to fail to recognize that in these trying times, people are not only filled with disdain and vitriol, they are even more willing to share that with all of society. Recent Pew Research Center polling found, for example, that such feelings have increased dramatically among Republicans.

And that raises some serious questions about how this nation will move forward, and whether everyone will be invited on the trip.

The Battle for America's Soul

It is a burgeoning protest, one spurred by anger that seems to keep growing. And like any action borne of anger, it has the potential to wreak havoc on society, to become a volatile mix of arrogance and self-righteousness. That is why we cannot dismiss nor ignore the frustrations emanating from the “Occupy Wall Street” encampment in Lower Manhattan or the other demonstrations sprouting up around this country. For those demonstrations are battles in the war over the heart and soul of this country, the possible beginning of an American Autumn.

Some time ago, I wrote about the growing disconnect that is occurring in this country, the manner in which our political leaders – and many of us – have lost sight of what America is and what America should be. Too often, the policy decisions coming out of Washington have divided this country: One seemingly for the rich, another seemingly for the rest of us. The result has been a palatable discontent with a world that views any shift from the conservative orthodoxy as treasonous.

That discontent was not borne with the Tea Party, though the Republicans and the Tea Party gave face to it during midterm elections in which the GOP seized the U.S. House of Representatives and several state legislatures across the country. Instead, it was borne from a crumbling economy in which the working- and middle-classes saw their modest wealth slip away, and the people who robbed America of its stability rewarded with bailouts, some of which were used to pay exorbitant bonuses.

Now, as we head into a new election season we have witnessed what anger can do to a nation, especially when that anger is accompanied by demagoguery and stridency. Washington – and some state legislatures – has been paralyzed, unable to do the people’s work, unwilling to help the millions devastated by the greed and recklessness that dominated the last decade. Jobs are needed in this country, yet Washington cannot pass a jobs bill. The infrastructure needs repairing, yet Washington wants to cut such spending.

“Occupy Wall Street” can – and should – be the pushback against the flag draped conservatism that tears at the heart of our nation and threatens to destroy its soul.

A cursory glance at “Occupy Wall Street” shows the disenchanted, the disillusioned, the disaffected, people Republicans have assailed as jealous of the wealthy, as soldiers to class warfare. But if we look beneath the surface we see a cross-section of society: students and teachers; parents and children; the employed and unemployed; the elderly and young; homeowners and renters; artists and business people; citizens and foreigners. All are of different races and political attitudes.

Just a few months ago, many may have been apathetic. They no longer are because the issues we face are not Democratic, Republican, black, white, Asian, or Hispanic. They are man-made ills that plague all of us. That is why this is a fight for the soul of America, a battle to determine if we will be a callous, vengeful, and barbarous nation, or if we will be a caring, forgiving, and civilized nation. Xenophobia and brutish ignorance have made us a suspicious people who no longer strive for what is the best in us.

Three years ago, we seemed to be reaching for all that is good. In 2008, many young people – some once apathetic toward the political system – voted for Barack Obama. Those young men and women became engaged in the life of our country after spending part of their lives decrying the corruptness of the political system, refusing to vote or even read about Washington for fear it might taint. A year ago, the Tea Party forced some of the most absurd amateurs into our lives and into the national arena.

We have come to understand what happens when we allow extremists to take our country from us. Now, we must decide – each in our own way – how we will regain control of our collective destiny, to reassert our belief that America is more than platitudes about exceptionalism. That is what some of the people are doing at “Occupy Wall Street,” seeking to force America to be America again, pushing her to open her arms and heart to her children.

That’s why we must support them, and why we must help them to understand that protesting Wall Street is not the end. It is only the beginning. Wall Street is not the sole problem that we face. Draconian immigration laws in such states as Alabama and Arizona are forcing immigrants to cower in fear of being detained, regardless of whether they are here legally or illegally. Farmers who once brought Mexican laborers in to harvest crops under the country's H-2A farm visa program are discovering that farm jobs being held for Americans are going unfilled because many of the unemployed find the work to back breaking.

The New York Times recently reported that John Harold, a 72-year-old farmer in Olathe, Colo., decided to hire fewer Mexican workers this year in an effort to save jobs for unemployed Americans in his community. "It didn't take me six hours to realize I'd made a heck of a mistake," Harold said, explaining that many of the local workers started the $10.50 an hour jobs at 6 a.m. and quit by noon.

Another farmer, 49-year-old Kerry Mattics, had the same experience. "It's not an easy job," Mattics said. "It's outside, so if it's wet, you're wet, and if it's hot, you're hot...They wanted that $10.50 an hour without doing very much. I know people with college degrees, working for the school system and only making 11 bucks."

There are even more without jobs, and they are occupying Wall Street to show their displeasure. One such person is Jon Reiner, a former marketing executive and father of two boys. Reiner says he has been laid off three times in five years. He also says he has sent out 2,000 resumes, according to MSNBC.

“You were a member of the middle class, you were at a point in your life where you thought you’d be at the zenith of your career or upward trajectory, and all of a sudden you find yourself marginalized,” the 49-year-old said. “The term that I’ve begun to use is unemployable.

“What this rally – this organization you know – represents is to try to give voice to the have nots, who are a huge part of this society, and who no longer have the means or the opportunity to contribute,” he added.

Indeed, the protests that began with a few on Wall Street has to be carried to the ballot box, where both major parties and independents should have to vie for votes through policies that help the majority of Americans, not policies that seek revenge or to divide. “Occupy Wall Street” is an early salvo in a long war, one that with discipline, patience, and honor can accomplish as much – if not more – as the Arab Spring.

The time is ripe for us to harvest an American Autumn.

Making Education Flexible

Across the country, the education debate rages. The problem is it rages over the wrong things. Instead of the conversation being dominated by what is going on in the classroom, we are arguing the merits of unions and collective bargaining rights; the costs of pensions and health insurance premiums.

Meanwhile, the children of America slip further into the educational abyss, sinking into a muck that slows their entry into college and the job market. I have already written about how Michigan found that many of its graduates in the Class of 2010 were ill prepared to begin college level courses, or lacked the job readiness skills needed to enter the workforce. (The Not-So-Proficient Graduate, Feb. 22, 2011). In that post, I also mentioned the graduation rates for four-year and two-year institutions across the country, as well as the percentage of students who needed remediation on entry to the state of Washington’s community colleges and technical schools.

The statistics mentioned in that article speak to the fact that students across the country are not being properly prepared for adult life. It is not an urban problem or a suburban problem. Yet, we make the argument an urban versus suburban; union versus non-union; inexperienced teacher versus experienced teacher; charter school versus public school; tenure versus non-tenure. The list goes on and on.

Luckily, not everyone is distracted by the noise. Instead, many are seeking solutions to the problems that plague education. While those educators use different programs and different ideas to lift students from the educational morass, they share some common traits -- flexibility and freedom in the classroom.

In western Massachusetts, for example, a high school allowed eight students to create their own school within a school. The students, two of whom were at-risk of dropping out, decided to split their September-to-January term into two halves, according to a March 14 Op-ed piece by Susan Engel in the New York Times (Let Kids Rule the School).

The students, aged 15 to 17, developed their own curriculum under the watchful eyes of their guidance counselor and several teachers who provided advice. The students were responsible for monitoring one another's work and giving feedback. They also wrote evaluations for each other.

According to Engel, the students became not only learners, but teachers. And they excelled, with one of the students who had considered dropping out changing his mind. Another student who had failed all of his previous math courses ended up spending three weeks teaching his fellow students about probability.

The upshot, Engel concluded, was that the students were more engaged and invested in their educations.

Other schools that have given teachers -- and even students -- greater flexibility have also seen transformative results.

In Oakland, Calif., a third-grade teacher at a public school there began writing a children's novel. Each time the teacher finished a new chapter, he shared it with his students, who offered critiques.

"It really has gotten them excited about writing," the teacher, Joe Imwalle, told Grace Rubenstein of The New York Times. "Seeing their teacher try to do it brings writing closer to home. It bridges the gap between published novels they see in the library and the idea that they come from a person and a process."

How important is flexibility in the classroom?

So much so that flexibility in developing academic plans is a major concern for operators who may want to help Robert Bobb, the emergency financial manager in Detroit, convert 41 failing public schools into charter schools.

Todd Ziebarth, vice president of state advocacy for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Washington, told the Detroit News that charter school operators will want to know if "they have the flexibility to innovate."

Too often teachers are micro-managed by principals, who are micro-managed by school board officials, so much so that every last minute of the school day is directed from somewhere up high with little deviation to accommodate student needs.

During a recent conversation with a friend who operates two private schools for special needs students, my friend detailed a promotional film his school was making. According to that friend, a teacher with decades of experience in the classroom was asked why he continued to teach at the school.

"Because I have the freedom to do what I think is necessary," the teacher said.

And that is the rub. Teachers often find themselves victim to what Engel says has dogged public school reform efforts.

"We have tried making the school day longer and blanketing students with standardized tests," she wrote in that March 14 Op-ed piece. "But perhaps children don't need another reform imposed on them. Instead, they need to be the authors of their own education."

The only way students can become authors of their own educations is to give teachers -- and them -- flexibility and freedom in the classroom.

America Eats More Than Its Young

It did not take long for the conservative apologists and Republicans to get on their soap boxes after the attempted murder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Saturday in Tucson. While many expressed outrage at the shootings of Giffords and 19 other people -- what else could they do -- they also unleashed a torrent of comments denying that their over-the-top rhetoric may have contributed to the attack.

Indeed, it may turn out that Jared L. Loughner, the suspect in the murders of six bystanders and the wounding of 14 others, acted alone, driven more by a distorted sense of reality stemming from mental illness than anything else. But to say that his deranged state is the sole cause is to deny the damage done by the vitriol that currently passes for political discourse, as well as the tendency of the right to label anyone who disagrees as a conspirator working for the downfall of America.

By now everyone has heard about how Jesse Kelly, the Republican who challenged Giffords in the Eighth Congressional District race, held a "targeting victory" fund-raiser in which he invited contributors to shoot an M-16 with him. That summer event, which has been reported in The New York Times and other media outlets, was simply a pre-cursor to the paranoid, anti-establishment, us-against-them rhetoric that followed.

“These people who think they are better than us, they look down on us every single day and tell us what kind of health care to buy,” Kelly told his supporters during a rally in October in which he attacked President Barack Obama's health care plan. “And if you dare to stand up to the government they call us a mob. We’re about to show them what a mob looks like.”

The problem is that, true to his word, Kelly and others like him have repeatedly shown us what a mob looks like. And the faces in those mobs are quite often the same. While one could reasonably argue that there is nothing wrong with directing a people's anger to benefit a political cause, those who choose to stoke that anger through lies, paramilitary metaphors and ridiculous conspiracy theories cannot abdicate responsibility for the aftermath.

Too often, those who engage in wrongheaded and hateful speech complain about society trying to stop them from telling the truth. They attribute criticism of their speech to political correctness. Being PC -- or even civil for that matter -- is not the issue here.

When one uses hostile and violent words in a community where anger runs high, then there will be dire consequences. Sarah Palin's placing a rifle scope over Giffords district and telling her Tea Party supporters to "reload" creates an atmosphere in which people are given the impression that violence is acceptable. The same is true of Sharron Angle's comment about "Second Amendment" remedies.

Add to that the number of ludicrous conspiracy theories -- the President is not an American, but is part of a global plot to take over the U.S., etc. -- and the possiblity that an unstable individual might seek violent retribution increases.

For many, the concerns over the current political rhetoric go beyond whether Loughner was influenced by one set of thoughts or individuals. It goes to the heart of what kind of nation we seek to be. Shall we be a nation that believes in the ideas of open and free debate, where issues are hashed out in public? Or will we prefer to stifle discussions through threats, intimidation, lies and violence?

More important, will we be a country where citizens demand more of their leaders, regardless of political stripe, or a people who seek out the angriest words in an effort to reinforce our darkest and most dangerous thoughts?

The ball rests most surely in the courts of Republican lawmakers who have spent the last two years doing all they could to regain legislative power regardless of the damage to the national psyche.

Everybody Needs a Reggie

"I didn't do right by you." Those words were uttered by Gerald M. Boyd during our last conversation of substance. Gerald wasn't managing editor of The New York Times yet, but he had ascended to the masthead. It was at a dinner at Gerald's East Side apartment, where he urged Michel Marriott to return to The Times from Newsweek. I was at The Daily News, having gone there after Marty Gottlieb offered me a job as an Assistant City Editor, a position I knew I would not get at The Times. Marty had returned to The Times and Gerald suggested that I do the same. "You can write your own ticket," he said.

I didn't have the heart to tell him he was wrong. I had upset too many people there and I knew it. Nonetheless, I agreed to talk to the paper. One of the first things I was told during that talk was that I could not expect to return anywhere near my Daily News level. I said thank you and left.

Gerald and I had subsequent conversations after my Times visit, mostly at journalism conventions. None of those talks were of great significance. We joked around, teased each other and drank scotch. Chivas seemed to be his favorite then. Occasionally things would get out of hand. Gerald had this way of taking gentle swipes at you, the mischief in him. Sometimes those swipes were hard and he had to be reminded to back off. Such an occasion occured when we were having drinks with other black journalists at a convention. Gerald made a comment and I took offense. I think Gerald realized what he had done. He quickly announced to everyone that I was the conscience of the Metro desk when he was its editor.

I thought about those incidents as I read Gerald's posthumously published memoir, "My Times in Black and White: Race and Power at the New York Times" (Lawrence Hill Books, $26.95). The book brought back a flood of memories, some good, others not so good. The more I read the more I thought about the lament I gave him when he did something I did not like or when I wanted him to know someone had his back, ready to step up and take the heat for him.

"Gerald, you're gonna mess around and lose your Reggie," I would say. "If you don't know what that means, just look at the Yankees and what happened to them after Steinbrenner lost his Reggie. Everybody needs a Reggie."

Gerald would smile, shake his head and walk away.

I also thought about the first time I met Jayson Blair, who had not yet been found out. I was having drinks with a friend at a bar around the corner from the old Times building.

"Man everytime I come in here I see you," my friend told Jayson.

"Then maybe you come in here too much," Jayson replied.

"Look man, I'm off. You're supposed to be at work."

"You're lucky I'm not at The Times anymore," I interrupted. "I'd have my foot so far up your ass you'd be tasting shoe polish for a month."

Jayson stared at me. My friend laughed.

"He would," my friend said. "He would."

But most of all, I thought about how a proud, black journalist was left hanging in the wind by several of his colleagues and people he thought were his friends. As I finished "My Times in Black and White," I thought, "Brother, you could've used your Reggie."