;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 6, 2014
Internal links removed.
White House: "In this week's address, the President highlighted the good news in Friday's jobs report -- that American businesses added 314,000 new jobs this past month, making November the tenth month in a row that the private sector has added at least 200,000 new jobs":
Gail Collins: "Our institutions cheerfully refuse to restructure themselves to reflect the fact that most families do not contain a non-working parent. Congress has been debating early education programs for more than 40 years and it has hardly made a dent. A great many of our employers don't bother to make jobs more family-friendly; they don't even bother to make modest arrangements to accommodate their pregnant workers. Everybody thinks this is extremely unfortunate, but almost nobody does anything about it because there is not a lot of political or financial reward for siding with working mothers."
John Eligon of the New York Times: "... the recent high-profile deaths of black people at the hands of police officers in Ferguson, New York, Cleveland and elsewhere — and the nationwide protests those deaths spurred -- have exposed sharp differences about race relations among friends, co-workers, neighbors and even relatives in unexpected and often uncomfortable ways. Put bluntly, many people say, they feel they are being forced to pick a team."
Sari Horwitz & Jerry Markon of the Washington Post: "As the Obama administration prepares to announce new curbs on racial profiling by federal law enforcement, government officials said Friday that many officers and agents at the Department of Homeland Security will still be allowed to use the controversial practice, including while they screen airline passengers and guard the country's southwestern border."
Josh Rogin of Bloomberg View: "Secretary of State John Kerry personally phoned Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Friday morning to ask her to delay the imminent release of her committee's report on CIA torture and rendition during the George W. Bush administration, according to administration and Congressional officials. Kerry was not going rogue -- his call came after an interagency process that decided the release of the report early next week, as Feinstein had been planning, could complicate relationships with foreign countries at a sensitive time and posed an unacceptable risk to U.S. personnel and facilities abroad. Kerry told Feinstein he still supports releasing the report, just not right now." ...
... Dan Froomkin of the Intercept: "The net effect of a delay would be to wrest the decision from Feinstein’s hands and give it to incoming Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), who has called the report a 'flawed and biased' piece of fiction." ...
When this report is declassified, people will abhor what they read. They're gonna be disgusted. They're gonna be appalled. They're gonna be shocked at what we did. But it will lay a foundation whereby we don't do this in the future. That's been my goal. That's been my mission.... I have made it clear over the last couple of weeks -- if the report is not declassified in a way that's transparent and shines a bright light on what we did, then I will consider using all and any options. -- Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colorado)
... Scott Rabb of Esquire publishes a portion of his interviewof Mark Udall. The whole interview will appear in the January edition of the magazine. Udall had better hurry with those "all & any options." In less than a month he will become "former Senator Mark Udall."
Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court will review whether Texas's rejection of a proposed license plate featuring the Confederate flag violated the free speech rights of the group that wanted the special plates. Courts are divided over whether government may choose among the political messages requested for state-issued plates or whether such messages should be recognized as the speech of the motorist and entitled to more protection.... The Supreme Court has not decided whether to hear a second, similar appeal from North Carolina. A federal appeals court in that case blocked the state from issuing plates saying 'Choose Life' because the state would not grant a request to issue a plate with a message in favor of abortion rights."
Julia Preston of the New York Times: "A group of 20 states that filed a federal lawsuit this week against President Obama's executive action on immigration could face difficult legal and factual hurdles, legal experts said, because federal courts have been skeptical of similar claims in the past." CW: Let's hope so.
Annals of "Justice," Ctd.
Rocco Parascandola & Oren Yaniv of the New York Daily News: "While Akai Gurley was dying in a darkened stairwell at a Brooklyn housing development, the cop who fired the fatal bullet was texting his union representative, sources told the Daily News. Right after rookie cop Peter Liang discharged a single bullet that struck Gurley, 28, he and his partner Shaun Landau were incommunicado for more than six and a half minutes, sources said Thursday." Readt the whole story. ...
... Tasneem Nashrulla of BuzzFeed: The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association disputes the Daily News account.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Richard Perez-Pena & Ravi Somaiya of the New York Times: "Rolling Stone magazine acknowledged on Friday that it now had reservations about an article it published that made startling and detailed allegations of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity. The magazine said that its trust in the sole source for the article, Jackie, the woman making the allegations, was misplaced.... The fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, released a statement on Friday in which it denied the assault took place.... The fraternity said that the chapter had no event scheduled on the weekend in question. While the article said the initiator of the assault was a fraternity member who worked as a lifeguard at a university aquatic center, Phi Kappa Psi said ... that no member of the fraternity worked there during the time in question." ...
... Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post: "A group of Jackie's close friends, who are sex assault awareness advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to her, but they also have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.... The Washington Post has interviewed Jackie several times during the past week and has worked to corroborate her version of events, contacting dozens of current and former members of the fraternity, the fraternity's faculty adviser, Jackie's friends and former roommates, and others on campus." ...
... Will Dana of Rolling Stone: "In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account." ...
... CW: I guess I'm naive about what a fact-checker does. Wouldn't s/he at least check to verify there was a venue where the rape could have happened? Wouldn't s/he at least find out if the alleged rapist was an actual person? This is making George Will look pretty good.
Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: "This disaster is the sole property of editors and a reporter."
Hanna Rosin of the Atlantic, in Slate: "Rolling Stone did a shoddy job reporting, editing, and fact-checking the story and an even shoddier job apologizing."
November December Elections
Till the Last Blue Dog Dies. Bruce Alpert of the Times-Picayune: "Louisiana's most expensive U.S. Senate race is in the hands of voters. Polls will be open Saturday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. as three-term Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu faces her Republican challenger, Rep. Bill Cassidy of Baton Rouge. Two House races also are on Louisiana ballots: For the 6th District seat now held by Cassidy, Republican Garrett Graves, a former coastal restoration adviser to Gov. Bobby Jindal, faces Edwin Edwards, the Democratic former governor who served prison time for his role in the riverboat licensing scandal. In the 5th District, incumbent Vance McAllister, R-Swartz, who was caught on a leaked surveillance video kissing a former aide, didn't make the runoff. His replacement will be Republican physician Ralph Abraham or Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo, a Democrat." ...
... Paul Lewis of the Guardian: "Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, the last remaining Democratic senator in the south, appeared to be on the cusp of a painful electoral defeat on Saturday. A victory by Landrieu's Republican opponent, Bill Cassidy, would solidify the GOP's control over the Senate when Congress reconvenes in January. As voters went to the polls in the state's runoff race -- thanks to neither candidate securing sufficient votes in November's midterm elections -- Landrieu trailed Cassidy by more than 17% in public polls."
Presidential Election(s)
Peter Baker & Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "What Mrs. Clinton leaves out about her time as first lady is her messy, sometimes explosive and often politically clumsy dealings with congressional Republicans and White House aides. Now, the release of roughly 6,000 pages of extraordinarily candid interviews with more than 60 veterans of the Clinton administration paints a more nuanced portrait of a first lady who was at once formidable and not always politically deft." ...
... Laura Bradley of Slate: "The video does not appear to be a joke. According to the [Washington] Post, the super PAC [that produced it] 'is the project of Daniel Chavez, a longtime Democratic political operative, and media producer Miguel Orozco, who wrote a series of Latin-flavored songs celebrating Barack Obama in the 2008 election.'" Here's the Post story. ...
(... One of Orozco's 2008 creations, "Viva Obama," was a favorite of mine. The music & lyrics aren't so bad, & the hats are fabulous! [if you can stomach stereotyping]:)
... As James S. observed at the end of yesterday's commentary, "My problem with Hillary is a mechanical one. She creates chaos not organization, as witnessed in her 2008 primary campaign (and her healthcare reform way before that). And, as a result of such turmoil, I don't think she's capable of running a successful presidential campaign; I don't think she's electable."
David McCabe of the Hill: "Aides to Mitt Romney's presidential team in 2012 are airing their frustrations with the campaign, alleging that tweets had to be approved by nearly two dozen people by the end of the race. 'So whether it was a tweet, Facebook post, blog post, photo -- anything you could imagine -- it had to be sent around to everyone for approval,' former Romney campaign aide Caitlin Checkett told Daniel Kreiss, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina's School of Journalism and Mass Communication in a new academic paper.... The paper lays bare some of the difficulties Romney's campaign had in keeping up with the demands of the 21st-century campaign, which requires candidates to push their message on an ever-growing list of online platforms." ...
... CW: Sounds like the model for a Hillary campaign. Which would be duller? Hillary v. Jeb or Hillary v. Mitt?
Beyond the Beltway
Olé, L.A. Christopher Hawthorne of the Los Angeles Times: "The redesign [of Broadway in Los Angeles] suggests just how many politicians and policymakers in Southern California are finding inspiration in Latino Urbanism, a term that describes the range of ad hoc ways in which immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America have remade pockets of American cities to feel at least a little like the places they left behind. Planners are adding parks and bike lanes to major streets but also pushing to loosen outdated restrictions, so that murals can be painted in the arts district and street vendors selling tortas or sliced fruit can operate legally. Temporary events like the popular CicLAvia open-streets festival, patterned after a program in Bogota, Colombia, are spurring permanent urban-design changes that challenge the dominance of cars."
News Ledes
AP: "Acid reflux is responsible for the sore throat President Barack Obama has complained about for the past couple of weeks, the White House said Saturday, shortly after the president returned from undergoing diagnostic tests at a nearby military hospital."
Washington Post: "Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter detained in Iran for more than four months, was officially charged Saturday in a day-long proceeding in a Tehran courtroom, according to a source familiar with the case. The nature of the charges were not immediately clear, at least to those not present in the courtroom."
New York Times: "Two hostages, including an American journalist, who were being held by Al Qaeda's affiliate in were killed during a rescue attempt by United States commandos early Saturday, American officials said. In a statement, President Obama said the hostages had been 'murdered' by militants belonging to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula during the rescue operation. A senior United States official said that the American, Luke Somers, 33, was badly wounded when commandos reached him. By the time Mr. Somers was flown to a United States naval ship in the region, he had died from his injuries, the official said Saturday. The other hostage was identified as Pierre Korkie, a South African citizen, according to a brief statement posted on the website of Gift of the Givers, a disaster relief organization that was trying to negotiate his release." The Washington Post story is here.
Time: "When the commander of U.S. armed forces in Africa confirmed the presence of what he described as training camps linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) in Libya this week, he threw a spotlight on a growing source of anxiety in the Middle East: namely the erosion of the Libyan state and its consequences for both Libyans and the wider region as militants fill the vacuum."
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Reader Comments (7)
About the Rolling Stone gang rape story:
..."Rolling Stone explained in their statement today: “Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie's story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her.”
This whole story looks like a set-up to me, reminiscent of the Satanic sexual abuse-false memory era in the 80s when I was a practicing therapist. The journalist sounds to me like a naive "therapist" caught up in the horrendous drama of a survivor of gang rape, who compromises her story in order not further to traumatize the "victim." I supervised therapists who were caught in this trap years ago, who compromised their integrity and professionalism because they treated the "Satanic abuse" victim as a fragile hot-house flower who would fall apart if her experiences were questioned gently, but firmly.
The journalist for Rolling Stone did the same thing--with the cooperation of her editors. Shame on them all. They have set back the exposure of gang rape on college campuses and the need to bring to well-examined light some of the terrible things that go on at so-called fraternity parties--where there is almost always a surfeit of alcohol and drugs.
The dynamic, I think, is that people, who are not educated about how to interview an abuse victim, make assumptions about how this should proceed. The victim does not want to have the journalist talk to the perpetrator(s), or even to name them. We know, or should, that memories can be wrong--sometimes very wrong--and in order to help the victim, it is important to find out the truth. This includes interviewing the perpetrator(s) and verifying the "facts" one has been told--not always easy to do. (This, of course, should usually not be done with the victim present, unless perpetrators are family members.) Journalists must hold to an even higher standard on this score than therapists, since they are publishing their findings. Therapists take an oath of confidentiality, and the information they learn stays in their offices--or should.
The idea, however, that a person who has endured the horrors of gang rape cannot or will not permit all the facts to be known before her story is told, is blackmailing the journalist. Someone who has survived this terror and lived to tell about it will not fall apart under gentle, empathetic scrutiny. Too many victims have enhanced their stories--probably unwittingly--to gain sympathy and to become "special." Sad but true.
The journalist then becomes an accomplice to a partially true drama--or perhaps a mostly imagined drama--which becomes truer with the telling in the eyes of the victim. Careful fact checking is necessary for a competent journalist, as well as for a competent therapist. Otherwise, how can a person who probably is a victim of some kind of sexual abuse truly begin to heal? Telling one's story is important as long as it is accurate. It is in the wild embellishment, and with the cooperation of enablers, that healing turns into manipulation and self-hate.
Re: Waiting for the time to be right. Sorry Sec. Kerry, there are somethings you can't wash off. Ask Lady Macbeth. "Kerry told Feinstein he still supports releasing the report, just not right now."
As reported by Josh Rogin of Bloomberg View
@Kate: Thanks very much for your insights on this.
I used to write short fiction, & often (or usually) I would use as a starting point something that had happened to me. Since I was writing fiction, I changed events, characters &, usually, outcomes, to fit into some kind of cohesive narrative. Sometimes my "inspiration" was merely a thought I'd had & most of the narrative was fiction. However, some of the stories were fairly close to what really happened in a number of particulars.
When you write, you edit (or at least when you write something other than Reality Chex). And then you edit the edit. And you edit again. So by the time I'd finished a story, I had in my head (1) an actual event that had happened some time in the past, & (2) a fictionalized version of that event that I'd written, reread & changed ten times. The result was that the fiction more than once confused my memory of what really happened. At least once, I caught myself later telling someone a story -- as if it were true -- but embellishing it with elements of the fictional account. I did not do this to impress or horrify; I just really confused fact with fiction. (And I admitted to the listener that part of what I'd said wasn't true.)
So it seems to me that if a young person undergoes some kind of traumatic event, then tells & retells the story -- as Jackie did to her friends & fellow victims -- the story can change innocently enough. And a "new truth," oft-repeated, can seems as real as the actual facts. Maybe Jackie inadvertently incorporated some of the elements of her friends' stories into hers because the other stories seemed "true" or felt "real." Probably she left out parts of her own story which might make her appear complicit; i.e., that "she'd asked for it." Maybe she purposely tweaked parts of her story to one-up some of the other victims who conveyed more horrific stories. It's possible the whole thing is a sham perpetrated by an attention-seeker who knew exactly what she was doing, but I doubt that.
Another thing to bear in mind is that most of the alternative reality that the Post has reported came from people with a very good motivation to obfuscate & lie -- a better reason, in fact, than Jackie had. For instance, the frat says there wasn't a party that night. Really? Evidently there wasn't a campus-registered party, but we're talking about a frat house, for pete's sake. There's probably a group partying in every single frat house in America every single night.
Similarly, could Jackie have gotten wrong just which frat house it was? Absolutely. I can't remember what frat house row at UVA looks like, but I'll hazard a guess it's a cluster of Southern colonial-style brick mansions, which to someone other than an architecture student would look pretty much alike. In addition, if Jackie wasn't into Greek culture, she may not have known one fraternity from another.
The fault here, as Erik Wemple wrote, is entirely with Rolling Stone. Any reporter -- any person -- should know people lie or embellish. Reporters are supposed to be detectives of sorts, not stenographers.
And I still can't imagine what that fact-checker did. Even if the reporter agreed not to interview the perps, as she claims, there are discreet ways of identifying & verifying them & the situation. The fact-checker could not have gone to the extent the Post did, under her Jackie-imposed rule, but s/he sure as hell could have found out "Drew" was not a Phi Psi.
The Post hasn't claimed the whole story was a hoax, with good reason. They now have some of the "he-said" to counter the "she-said," but we have no idea which version is closer to the truth. There's an implicit suggestion in the University's formal response to the Post's new information that something did happen.
Marie
@ Marie,Kate; First, thanks for both posts, that's why I read Realitychex. Second, it's always been my wonder that who would possibly put out a story that is so harmful and hurtful to themselves if there wasn't truth behind it? Only a very sick puppy lies in it's own mess. So is Jackie a sick puppy or not?
Jonathan Chait writes a solid piece enumerating the documented successes of the ACA, linked in yesterday's RC. I found the following footnote most interesting, as it answered (possibly) a question I had about the Supreme Court decision:
"*Edit: Seven justices actually voted for the ruling, which gave states the right to opt-out of Medicaid. Many legal observers believe, but of course cannot prove, that the support of two Democratic appointees for this measure was a form of horse-trading to preserve the law's overall framework, which John Roberts nearly decided to overturn completely. The actual decision to make Medicaid voluntary was likely made by five Republican-appointed justices, but formally the decision was endorsed by seven."
@Victoria D. Yeah, I liked that footnote, too. It's a thought I had (& maybe expressed back in the day), & I'm glad to see I'm not alone in my (unprovable -- unless an insider speaks up) theory. Breyer talks a lot. Maybe he'll tell someday soon.
Marie
@Kate: your post brought to mind all the disastrous results of the alleged kinder care sexual abuse cases years ago––how children were being led to believe something bad happened to them sexually––how easily they were manipulated. When I was in training we rookie therapists came across a case of a young girl, 12, who was accusing her uncle of sexual abuse.(Her mother had discovered during a school physical that her daughter had a vaginal infection). Turned out she had made the whole thing up in order to protect her father who turned out to be the actual abuser. (With emphasis on rape in the military, rape on campus's, Cosby rape scandal–– we are awash in ferreting out an old habit that has gone on much too long, but as we can see the process of outing needs careful handling and in the case of Rolling Stone, decent editing; I'm with Marie––what were they thinking?)
Finally got around to reading the Chris Rock/Frank Rich interview. I encourage everyone to read it if they haven't––looking forward to the film. "Top Five."
The New Republic breakup is fascinating––had no idea there was such rumblings going on. It will be interesting to see what becomes of the journal and where all those wonderful writers will find new homes.