People seem to love to categorize things.  One of the things we love to categorize is other people.  We categorize by sex and gender and race and age and educational level and many many other things.  

Men, women.

Masculine, feminine.

Homosexual, heterosexual.

Black, White, Asian….

Senior citizen, generation X, generation Y, boomer.

Graduate, dropout

Democrat, Republican

Conservative, liberal.

Christian, Jew…..

and so on.

Are any of these categories real?  Do they “carve nature at its joints”? (I forget who came up with that memorable line)

I doubt it.

There are many people who, when asked “Are you male or female?” can only answer ‘No’.  There are people who are masculine or feminine, and there are some who aren’t much of either, and there are some who are so hyper-masculine or feminine that they seem almost parodies of gender roles.  A woman where I work is one-quarter Black, one quarter American Indian, one quarter Scottish, and one quarter a mixture of other European countries; pray tell, what should she mark for ‘race/ethnicity’?  (oh, and she grew up in a Jewish neighborhood and speaks some Yiddish).  

People aren’t born in generations, they’re born in years.  And their attitudes don’t necessarily mesh with any particular ‘generation’.  I was born in 1959.  Does that make me a boomer?

I’ve got a PhD, but I dropped out of law school.  My father has a law degree, but no BA.  The best professor I had in grad school dropped out of his own PhD program.

I count myself a Democrat, and have only once voted otherwise, but there is that once; others have split tickets or changed parties many times.

I’m very very liberal on social issues, somewhat liberal on most economic issues…. but even conservative on some issues.

I was raised Jewish, but am an atheist; of the religions I’ve studied, I find taoism most appealing, but I can’t really call myself a taoist.

and so on.

Why do we divide?

Divisions define.  We define ourselves, in part, by what we are not .  But this division process destroys solidarity.  Robert Coles studied the moral life of children (in a book of that title) and one of his conclusions is that moral children tend not to see an ‘us’ and a ‘them’, but only ‘us’.  When we call some people ‘them’ we become freer to treat ‘them’ badly.  “They”, after all, are, by definition, not “us”. This can be an attempt to make ourselves feel good about ourselves by saying that, whatever we are, we are at least not ‘them’ – maybe, if we stop defining a ‘them’ we will start trying to make ourselves feel good by doing good.  Instead of digging holes for others, we might build mountains for us all.  Being ‘good’ doesn’t necessarily mean being ‘better’ – it’s only when we define ourselves in terms of an ‘us’ and ‘them – an ‘I and thou’ that we need to rate ourselves by comparing ourselves with others.  

But if we treat people as existing on various continua, then there is no ‘them’.  There is no one to stigmatize, no one to separate out and ignore or defile or defame.  

There are only people who are more or less like ourselves.  And we are all ourselves; in the words of a Sesame Street song: “We are all earthlings, spinning around together, on a planet of the sun”.

Maybe, if we all start to see ourselves as one ‘us’ we can start treating each other better.  

I think it’s worth a shot.

Just a reminder,

I am working on the following story for an early morning release tomorrow.  The concept is to compile as much known information about the situation into one semi coherent essay.  If anyone has research or posts relating to this in any way please post it in the comments.

State Department official and brother queried on Blackwater

Rep. Henry Waxman decided to call State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard and his brother A.B. “Buzzy” to the same hearing after they separately gave the committee conflicting accounts about Buzzy Krongard’s ties with Blackwater, which protects U.S. diplomats and other State Department officials in Iraq.

Thanks for helping.

I attended a riveting symposium yesterday, hosted by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, titled: No News Is Bad News – The Role Of The Media In Our Democracy. The panels were interesting for who wasn’t included as much as for who was.  

I was intrigued to note that no television or radio-based media representatives were present, but that the blogosphere was more than ably present in the guise of Marcy Wheeler – emptywheel – who blogs at home on The Next Hurrah, provided amazingly detailed live-blogging on Firedoglake of the Libby trial, and who is recognized for her meticulous research and detail into the intricacies of the legal finagling being performed by the Bush/Cheney administration.

The three sessions presented included war reporting, political reporting and the news business and the business of news. The discussions were animated, at times intense, and they were insightful for what was said and asked, and for what was left hanging in the air.

One elephant in the room was walking a circus tightrope and another was flying on a trapeze.

The first panel about war reporting included a last minute substitution of Kevin Cullen from the Boston Globe filling in for Mark Bowden, who had some life interfere with his appearance.

Moderator David Greenberg, a local boy made good in the history, media studies and journalism arenas at Rutgers University, handled his job ably until he attempted a triple somersault off the high wire without a net, and he tumbled to the ground while the audience looked away mostly with disappointment in his ability to present fact-based opinions about media coverage reliability in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq.  However, Samantha Power and Anthony Shadid spoke to the individual journalist’s moral and professional responsibility to cover news when their own life and safety is imperiled, and this, in my view, could stand much more reflection and public discussion about just where the mantle of responsibility lies for exceeding risk.  

Power described her own experience in going to Darfur and seeking out meetings with the head of the janjawid.  Shadid spoke to his coverage of the very unequal Israeli attack last summer on Lebanon, and also to his coverage of Iraq while in Iraq.  All three panelists discussed the critical need for journalists to report what they find as they find it in the field, and to continually self-check for biases of “being in the know” from remote places, such as academia, think tanks and offices.

What wasn’t addressed?

Given that tempus fugit and that there was not nearly enough time to explore in depth, let alone breadth, there were still several topics and questions which never made it to the panelists, but or which I have lingering questions:

Why is the “war” reporting relative to Iraq not called “US OCCUPATION” of Iraq?

Why are the terms, war and occupation conflated in US media reportage?

Because of the expense of sending investigative reporters and war correspondents to the field, why don’t they receive more recognition by their papers for this via longer stories, more prominent placement and more respect for the reporters’ requests about timing and placement?  (Powers related that when Dana Priest filed her black site extradition/torture story to the Post, she begged for them not to publish it on Christmas.  They went one better and published on the day AFTER Christmas – the ultimate Friday news dump! They also wrote the headline to reflect just he opposite of what Priest had written.)

Kevin Cullen, who reported about Northern Ireland for The Globe, spoke to the differences in perspective by reporters from other countries versus that of Americans covering wars and conflicts.  That somewhat answered my question about whether is is essential for American reporters to cover the US occupation of Iraq if US reporters are no longer able to do that due to extreme risk for being attacked as combatants.

Cullen and Shadid both referenced colleagues who had been killed since the invasion while working in Iraq, and this is affecting editorial decisions to continue to send reporters to the Middle East, as well as to inhibit or at least slow down the insertion of reporters into other places where they may be deemed combatants by warring forces.

The reporters all discussed their own biases and what they did individually to try to account for them and mitigate them in their reporting.  Shadid’s response resonated with me when he said that his best stories came about when he set aside his own views and knowledge and simply tried to ask questions, observe and write without any preconceptions.  Cullen and Powers affirmed this, and they all spoke to their perceptions that trying to “balance” stories is not valid.  Some issues and stories do not have two equal and balanced sides.  They aim for fairness.

Greenberg then shot his entire credibility to hell when he, as an afterthought, said that the media coverage of the run up to the Iraq invasion was valid, and that the public overwhelmingly supported it for the right reasons.  The audience reacted vociferously in refutation, and mercifully for him, time had run out, and he was able to exit without having to respond. (The audience leaned toward academics and media folks – silver hair predominated, but there were about a dozen middle school through college-aged appearing attendees.)

Oh, but I do go on!  

Let’s move ahead to the next session where the blogosphere is introduced and where Marcy Wheeler’s presence surprises and delights.

In the political reporting session, Alan Brinkley, (son of David – NBC’s news icon of yore) who is a professor of history and provost at Columbia very ably moderated.  He has one of those reassuring ways of speaking that makes me wish I had studied with him.  History is sometimes very scary, and having a reasonable and reassuring logical, yet probing, teacher, is a great thing.

Joe Lockhart, Bill Clinton’s press secretary was interesting as his perceptions about reporting were all about the message and the public’s marketing – the advertising of the message, the polls, and the effectiveness of the sold message.

Todd Purdum, of Vanity Fair and formerly of the NY Times, spoke to the history repeats itself meme of the McCarthy era to the Bush/Cheney era of oppression, accusations of unpatriotic behavior by anyone dissenting from the “official” message, and even the wearing of lapel flag pins by reporters.

But he Purdum also spoke to his perception that in days past, he generally enjoyed political reporting and coverage because he saw most politicians as generally good people with good motives trying to to the right thing.  In recent days, he feels that has slipped away and now politicians and reporters distrust each other on a deep fundamental level.  He believes that this has created an environment which squelches the ability of reporters to work sources effectively and which doesn’t get the necessary information to the public.

Marcy had a few things to say about this, and she referred to the “club” – as we do the “Village” or the “Beltway elite”.  The traditional media panelists agreed that there is a large discrepancy in what the politicians and reporters in the Washington area perceive as valid assumptions, facts and reality, and what the rest of the country – the general public – perceives as valid assumptions, facts and reality.

While not overtly hostile to bloggers, none of the panelists or moderators (absent Marcy, of course) enthusiastically embraced blogging, and no one seems to be able to speak cogently about the development of the blogosphere or its rightful place in “The Media”. There is still a great divide between traditional media and blogging, but I do perceive some bridge-building and a greater willingness of traditional media folks to learn about and engage with bloggers.  

Indeed, the NY Times now has its own stable of blogs and bloggers, and MSNBC has a blogger, Chris Colvin, who regularly posts news from around the blogosphere for the NBC News blog, the Daily Nightly where Brian Williams uses the venue to promote the likes of Tim Russert and his many forays into late night comedy TV.

Yes, I do think that Chris Colvin is a better reporter than Brian Williams by half.  Why do you ask?

Another elephant in the room that stayed visible to me, but apparently not so for the panelists was any discussion at all about the conflation of punditry with reporting.  I kept waiting to hear about a reference to Colbert or The Daily Show, but alas, that didn’t arise.

There was one statement presented as fact by Joe Lockhart that in spite of polls which demonstrate dissatisfaction with political reporting by the public and which demonstrate a desire for more policy and meat in the coverage, the ratings don’t bear that out.  

There was a lot of huffing that this couldn’t possibly be true.  Anecdotally, that’s exactly what I have experienced when I have written about healthcare policy – no interest and no response – and that’s on the progressive blogosphere, which is generally an informed, intelligent and interested demographic.

(If you want to disagree, I will point you to my reserved and empty group blog called Progressive Policy.  I requested input from progressive bloggers who write about policy from time to time – no one took me up on the offer to post or crosspost there, and I still can’t find any single progressive blog which discusses all policy all the time.  I’d LOVE to be proved wrong and to discover a gem out there, so please keep me in mind if you know where the treasure is.)

Wheeler and Lockhart had a little fun about the reportage of Clinton and Lewinsky, but they generally agreed that the coverage didn’t provide perspective, and that problem continues today in the coverage of the presidential candidates. Diamonds or pearls, anyone?

The News Business and the Business of News

Ellen Hume, formerly of the WSJ and now serving as the director of the Center on Media and Society at UMass Boston, served up a very lively and participative session.

She engaged David Carr, columnist on media, business and culture for the NY Times, John Carroll, the editor who resigned from the LA Times in protest of deep cuts in the newsroom, and Neil Brown (pdf file), the editor of the for-profit, but academic institute-based, St. Petersburg Times.

The advertisers and marketers’ coupling to the fiscal health of newspapers continues to provide sturm und drang for media.  Interestingly, none of the panelists was particularly worried about the consolidation of media ownership relative to the influence and direction of what is reported and how it is reported.  

The assumption that panelists help throughout the presentations and across the panels was that the editor and reporter relationship seemed to be the recognized place where editorial decisions are made.  Even when Dan Rather’s lawsuit against CBS was discussed in the light of his allegation of Bush administration pressure on CBS, none of these editors seemed to take that as a particularly ominous sign. Another question to the panel involved the ability of reporters to report stories when they crossed paths with the military or reported things that did not mesh with the government’s message.  

Because much of effective reporting is built on access to sources, questioners wanted to know how much news is simply suppressed by the military and government as sources are withheld or access is denied, such as it has been to McClatchy reporters trying to travel to Iraq.

The bulk of the time on this panel was spent in musing about different business models which will allow print media to continue to dominate, and which will allow for the expensive and critical ability for them to hire and support filed reporters:  investigative reporters such as Priest, Ricks and Hull, as well as war correspondents who travel and embed or who continue to take great personal risk and possibly be viewed as combatants.

Some of my other questions:

With the increasing use of online newspapers including readers’ comments to stories, does this add to the richness of reporting?

How, or should, newspapers, control or regulate commenters?

What is a preferred vision for the place of bloggers in relation to “media”?

What obligations do bloggers have in presenting opinion, commentary and news?

Given that newspapers often use unnamed sources, what is their responsibility relative to accuracy and reliability of sourcing?  Ditto for bloggers relative to sourcing.

More was not addressed than was, but given the time limits, and the willingness of the panelists to engage and to carry on frank discussions, the door has been unlocked and is ajar.  Let the light in.

What are your questions and concerns?

From ABC News

county officials sent a letter to delinquent parents and ordered them to show up with their children in court today so standby nurses can vaccinate children. If parents refuse, the consequences are serious.

“They’re grabbing the parents by the collars and saying, ‘You must vaccinate your children,'” said Dr. William Schaffner of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

“It was very heavy handed,” said Aloma Martin of Fort Washington, of the county’s action. “From that letter, it sounded like they were going to start putting us in jail.”

Any children who still lack immunizations could be expelled. Their parents could then be brought up on truancy charges, which can result in a 10-day jail sentence for a first offense and 30 days for a second.

It’s official, the shit is hitting the fan….

Get ready for the rant….

It’s like saying,”inject your child with our poisonous-mind-controlling-disease-infected-mercury-laiden-egg-grown-remedy, which happens to be made by our good friends over at…[cough]eli-willy[cough], who happens to be legally protected (for some reason by the Patriot Act) by your loving govment!  Or you will be imprisoned!”

I’m sorry but I will not, EVER, inject any foreign substance, chemical, man-made or at least man-grown diseases into my child’s blood stream IN CASE HE/SHE MIGHT COME IN CONTACT with someone who unknowingly has a disease.  ESPECIALLY since it’s required by the government.  I don’t trust the government to get my name right on my effin’ drivers’ license, why would they get immunizations right?  Seriously?

The sanctity of the human blood stream is a miracle in and of itself.  I don’t understand how people can call themselves Christians, really I don’t, when they doubt that their so-called God has made a mistake in the human body, that they feel they need to disturb the gentle balance by dumping thousands of chemicals into the blood stream, interfering with the blood-brain barrier and assume that the child is the better for it.  If they truly believed in His creation, why would they want to destroy that perfection?  

Originally immunizations were only for third class citizens, the un-washed, then Polio came on the scene and, really the Polio vaccine was an incredible break-through.  It worked.  But government saw exactly how wonderfully it made a profit too!  The 36 vaccinations that a child gets from birth to age 5, is insanity…are we soooo afraid of disease? so afraid of our children getting the chicken-pox?  If they don’t get chicken-pox, later in life they could get shingles, which is terrible for an adult.

From The Doctor Within

The condition of a child’s blood determines the quality of an immune system that has to last a lifetime. The blood is the medium in which all the cells of the body are bathed, from birth til death. The amounts of oxygen and nutrients in the blood promote life, determine longevity. Anything foreign – chemicals, altered bacteria and viruses, toxic foods, unproven injectables – promotes death. It’s that simple.

Children have a right to be protected from harm. If there’s a huge body of information that is saying vaccinations are dangerous, and another huge body of information saying that vaccines are safe, we have a responsibility to look at the evidence on each side, instead of just bowing to hollow rhetoric.

The external environment can only access the blood in three ways: through the skin, the lungs, and the digestive tract. Each has its own set of safeguards which have allowed our species to adapt within a changeful and hostile environment. Throughout the evolutionary process, Nature has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the blood from the outside environment. If Nature itself has recognized and defended the sanctity of human blood, can we presume to do any less?

There are 173 comments on the ABC News board…most are very angry parents who are sick of immunizations being thrust down their throats-trying to protect their children-I would rather go to jail, then home-school my own!  What’s next?  injecting RFID’s?