No comments on 72 years ago today
Category: media
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Investors Business Daily would like you to know the results of its recent poll:
We keep hearing about how the Republican Party is full of radical Tea Party crazies. But our latest IBD/TIPP Poll shows that it’s Democrats who are out of touch with reality and well outside the mainstream.
The public overwhelmingly believes the country is headed in the wrong direction, that current economic policies aren’t working, that President Obama is doing a bad job, that government should be smaller and that ObamaCare should be repealed. But not Democrats.
Onissue after issue, in fact, Democrats are the outliers by wide margins, according to an analysis of the December IBD/TIPP survey.
They are, by and large, Pollyanna-ish about the economy, they can see no evil when it comes to Obama or ObamaCare, and they are extremists when it comes to the size and role of the federal government.
To get a sense of just how out to lunch Democrats are these days, consider:
The economy is barely moving after four years of Obama’s “recovery,” there are millions who’ve given up looking for work, household incomes are down and poverty is up.
Not surprisingly, 64% of the public says the country is headed in the wrong direction — 71% of independents say this. But those who identify themselves as Democrats are positively upbeat. Two-thirds, in fact, are perfectly satisfied with the country’s direction. …
It’s worth noting, too, that onquestion after question, Republicans and independents are more closely aligned than independents and Democrats. You can see that clearly in the charts above.
It’s true that some of these responses simply show Democrats rallying around their guy in the White House. But the fact is that Republicans were more willing to admit to George W. Bush’s faults as a leader when they emerged, and own up to a bad economy during his tenure. …
The only reason Obama and his fellow Democrats aren’t constantly tagged as extreme is because the press is so far left that it treats them as reasonable centrists. Meanwhile, by skewing the polls, the increasingly radicalized Democratic Party manages to make the country appear more liberal than it really is.
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The Capital Times’ Jack Craver:
The Wisconsin Free, a site founded by Josiah Cantrall, a conservative activist who worked on Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign and wrote for Breitbart.com, has attracted derision from two players in Wisconsin’s conservative blog space.
The criticism stems from Cantrall’s decision to post a guest column on his site by liberal radio host John “Sly” Sylvester. He also went on Sylvester’s show to promote his new site. The two apparently have a mutual friend, conservative talk radio host James T. Harris, who used to occasionally substitute for Sylvester on WTDY, a now-defunct Madison talk station.
That a former Breitbart writer would pal around with Sylvester is ironic, to say the least. Last year, the veteran talker, who has a penchant for provocation, celebrated the unexpected death of the site’s founder, Andrew Breitbart, saying he wanted to cover the conservative activist’s grave in weed-killer “so there’s no chance he ever comes back to life, and I can kill him like the weed that he was.”
Brian Sikma, the lead writer for Media Trackers, a conservative muckraking site, expressed shock at the cooperation between the two.
“Ex-Breitbart writer @JosiahCantrall recruits Lefty who said glad Breitbart died to write for @WisconsinFree,” reported Sikma on Twitter.
Sikma then highlighted a number of other controversial statements Sylvester has made over the years, including a crude joke about Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and a comment in which he referred to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as “Aunt Jemima.”
Then Milwaukee talk radio host Charlie Sykes, who runs Right Wisconsin, a conservative website operated by Journal Broadcasting Group (which owns the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and WTMJ), joined in bashing the new site.
“’Conservative’ website that gives forum to lefty misogynist “Sly” Sylvester…. Great start,” he tweeted.
Cantrall responded by relaying a message from one of his supporters: “It is a shame to see the jealousy of (Sikma and Sykes) and others for @WisconsinFree and @JosiahCantrall. Shameful & unprofessional”
Reached for comment on the tiff, Sylvester said he found Sykes’ objections to the Wisconsin Free ironic on a few fronts.
First, he noted, Sykes and other writers at Right Wisconsin have been giving him a great deal of attention lately because of the criticism he has had for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke. Second, he said, Sykes regularly highlights commentators, including conservative provocatrice Ann Coulter, who, among other things, called John Edwards a “faggot” and mocked a group of 9/11 widows.
“I suspect that has more to do with Charlie feeling threatened by Wisconsin Free,” he said.
Sykes didn’t have much to say. Replying by email, Sykes said, “I think Sly’s conduct speaks for itself. #vile.”
Sylvester said he didn’t want to cause the young web entrepreneur any problems, so he is unsure whether he will be contributing more content in the future.
Madison conservative radio host Vicki McKenna (1310 WIBA-AM), a perpetual target of Sylvester’s oft-obscene scorn, suggested Cantrall made an honest mistake in posting Sylvester’s column.
“I personally know how horrid that cretin is & I believe Josiah erred honestly,” she tweeted, urging peace in the conservative blogosphere.
Cantrall has apparently gotten the message that ‘Sly’ is not a brand he wants attached to his website if he wants a future in the righty mediasphere. Although he declined to discuss his reasoning, he confirmed he would no longer include commentary from the liberal radio personality.
I think there is a lot wrong in what you have just read. (Not Craver’s reporting, though I wonder why he considers this news other than to make conservatives look bad, at the command of his employer, which can never be said to print a discouraging word about Democrats. If you believe that part of the problem with political reporting is that it lacks substance, well, that can be your most recent example.)
First, an excerpt from Sly:
Recently, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Christian Schneider referenced my comments calling Democratic candidate for governor and Trek Bicycle shareholder Mary Burke “Mitt Romney in a red dress.” He urged like-minded conservatives to resist attacking Burke and Trek for making 99.5% of its bicycles overseas. Schneider went on to say that we need have an adult conversation about outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries like China.
I have some adult questions for all the so-called grown ups that are promising to create jobs in Wisconsin.
1) Ms. Burke— As a major shareholder of Trek, have you directly benefited from your company making almost all of its bikes in slave-wage countries?
2) Governor Walker— According to the U.S. Census Department, Wisconsin has one of the worst trade deficits with China in the country. It’s only gotten worse since you were sworn in as governor in 2011. China now has a 4.2 billion dollar trade surplus with the Wisconsin. The Economic Policy Institute reports that Wisconsin lost 54,000 jobs in the last decade. Given the overwhelming evidence, why did you appear on a Chinese media channel and say, “the best way for us to show that there is a good and fair trading system is to do what we’re doing right here?” Is our trading system fair or good for Wisconsin workers?
3) Assembly Speaker Vos— Why did Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly kill a bill that would have required the state to buy American-made material for public infrastructure projects? Did you really say the bill picks winners and losers?
If Wisconsin is going to create good jobs in the future, we need more economic patriotism from our elected leaders. They may want to follow the example of entrepreneur John Miller in Milwaukee.
Miller wants to employ veterans coming home from overseas to make a new type of motorcycle windshield that he invented. …
In his adult column, Christian Schneider also extolled the virtues of the TV show Shark Tank where the same type of shortsighted investors urge small business people to offshore manufacturing in order to grow their companies. What Schneider, Burke, Walker, and Vos lack is a little thing called Wisconsin patriotism. How can any elected leader create living-wage jobs when they fail to understand that we make things in the Badger State?
Are these conservative points of view? No, but it’s his blog to post the views of whoever Cantrall chooses. Does that mean conservatives shouldn’t discuss those points? No, it doesn’t. Does the fact that Sly (with whom, you’ll recall, I have personal experience) has been known to stomp all over the boundaries of good taste mean those aren’t points of view worth considering? No, it doesn’t. (Liberals love to dump on conservatives when Coulter or Rush Limbaugh offends them. Obviously respect for the right of free expression doesn’t necessarily follow partisan or ideological labels. It does make one wonder how conservatives would react to a Wisconsin talk show host with Sly-like taste, or lack thereof, but a rightward, or probably libertarian, message.)
The thing about Sly that conservatives should applaud is that he does occasionally take on his fellow travelers, such as Burke, which is more than can be said about nearly every lefty blogger in this state. (Sly considers Burke to be a faux liberal, and he’s not alone in that belief.) Sly’s report that Wisconsin lost 54,000 jobs in the past decade would be mostly while Gov. James Doyle occupied the Executive Residence. (During which 190,000 jobs were shed in one year.) There is not enough of that kind of scrutiny of your own side in the blogosphere, about which more momentarily.
I think Sly’s economics are dubious. To borrow an old George Will example, you have a trade deficit with every place you buy groceries, unless you own a grocery store. I’d be interested in knowing, more specifically, why taxpayers should pay more in taxes so that materials or products come from an approved source. (The state did that in the 1970s and 1980s, which got us Renault — I mean, AMC — Alliance cars for state employee use.) I am curious why Sly believes consumers shouldn’t have the choice of whatever they want to buy, regardless of where it was made. (One wonders how Sly would feel about layoffs at Trek because Trek’s bicycles cost too much against their competition because of refusing foreign sourcing.) Given the shots he takes at business, including Burke’s family’s business, I wonder how his advertisers feel about advertising on a show that regularly beats on business and what the business community supports. That, however, is Sly’s employer’s problem, not mine.
Craver’s story illustrates a major problem with political discourse today. Too many people of all political persuasions are interested only in affirmations of their own political worldview, and are unwilling to engage with those who express points of view different from theirs. Political arguments are not won or improved by hiding them from outside scrutiny. (Sometimes I believe I am the only right-wing blogger in Wisconsin who feels this way.
I do not believe in shunning someone because his or her political views differ from mine, as long as (1) that person isn’t obnoxious about sharing his or her views with those who don’t want them shared (put another way, if you don’t like Sly’s point of view, don’t listen to him) and (2) that person supports my right to have different views. If you are a conservative, and certainly if you are a libertarian or conservatarian, you should agree with the sentiment that government and therefore politics occupies far too large a role in our lives.
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George Will introduces the rest of the U.S. to Scott Walker:
In 2011, thousands of government employees and others, enraged by Gov. Scott Walker’s determination to break the ruinously expensive and paralyzing grip that government workers’ unions had on Wisconsin, took over the capitol building in Madison. With chanting, screaming and singing supplemented by bullhorns, bagpipes and drum circles, their cacophony shook the building that the squalor of their occupation made malodorous. They spat on Republican legislators and urinated on Walker’s office door. They shouted, “This is what democracy looks like!”
When they and Democratic legislators failed to prevent passage of Act 10, they tried to defeat — with a scurrilous smear campaign that backfired — an elected state Supreme Court justice. They hoped that changing the court’s composition would get Walker’s reforms overturned. When this failed, they tried to capture the state Senate by recalling six Republican senators. When this failed, they tried to recall Walker. On the night that failed — he won with a larger margin than he had received when elected 19 months earlier — he resisted the temptation to proclaim, “This is what democracy looks like!”
Walker recounts these events in “Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge” (co-authored by Post columnist Marc Thiessen). Most books by incumbent politicians are not worth the paper they never should have been written on. If, however, enough voters read Walker’s nonfiction thriller, it will make him a — perhaps the — leading candidate for his party’s 2016 presidential nomination.
Act 10 required government workers to contribute 5.8 percent of their salaries to their pensions (hitherto, most paid nothing) and to pay 12.6 percent of their health-care premiums (up from 6 percent but still just half of what the average federal worker pays). Both percentages are well below the private-sector average. By limiting collective bargaining to base wages, Act 10 freed school districts to hire and fire teachers based on merit, and to save many millions of dollars by buying teachers’ health insurance in the competitive market rather than from an entity run by the teachers’ union. Restricting collective bargaining to wages ended the sort of absurd rules for overtime compensation that made a bus driver Madison’s highest paid public employee.
Act 10’s dynamite, however, was the provision ending the state’s compulsory collection of union dues — sometimes as high as $1,400 per year — that fund union contributions to Democrats. Barack Obama and his national labor allies made Wisconsin a battleground because they knew that when Indiana made paying union dues optional, 90 percent of state employees quit paying, and similar measures produced similar results in Washington, Colorado and Utah. …
To fight the recall — during which opponents disrupted Walker’s appearance at a Special Olympics event and squeezed Super Glue into the locks of a school he was to visit — Walker raised more than $30 million, assembling a nationwide network of conservative donors that could come in handy if he is reelected next year. Having become the first U.S. governor to survive a recall election, he is today serene as America’s first governor to be, in effect, elected twice to a first term. When he seeks a second term, his opponent will probably be a wealthy rival who says her only promise is to not make promises. This is her attempt to cope with an awkward fact: She will either infuriate her party’s liberal base or alarm a majority of voters by promising either to preserve or repeal Act 10. …
“Outside the Washington beltway,” he says pointedly, “big-government liberals are on the ropes.” No incumbent Republican governor has lost a general election since 2007. Since 2008, the number of Republican governors has increased from 21 to 30, just four short of the party’s all-time high reached in the 1920s. He thinks Republican governors are in tune with the nation. If reelected, he probably will test that theory.
I remain skeptical that Walker will run for president, let alone get elected. But I like the phrase “President Walker” merely because it makes liberals turn blue with rage.
Such as this exchange chronicled by The Blaze after the death of actor Paul Walker Saturday:
After news of actor Paul Walker’s death, an editor of a feminist website turned to Twitter to ask why Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker couldn’t have perished instead.
“Why couldn’t it be Scott Walker?” Jezebel news editor Erin Gloria Ryan tweeted Saturday night.
… But Ryan defended her comment about 15-minutes after she initially posted it to social media.
“Wow, conservatives are about as bad at jokes making fun of celebrity worship as they are at governing Wisconsin,” she said, according to The Desk.
About 90-minutes later, she removed the controversial tweet and issued an apology.
“Dumb joke deleted,” she wrote. “Apologies.”
“I don’t wish death on anyone,” she later added. “Joking about that was insensitive and inappropriate.”
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The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel apparently read Unintimidated, Scott Walker’s Recallarama memoir, and its mention of a David Letterman-style top 10 list:
According to the governor’s new book, Walker read the list — written by author and commentator Rod Pennington — to put his staff at ease during the union-led protests at the Capitol in 2011. Here’s the list, which appeared on the Daily Caller website on Feb. 21, 2011:
10.) You take a week off to protest in Wisconsin and your office runs better.
9.) On a snow day when they say “non-essential” people should stay home you know who they mean.
8.) You get paid twice as much as a private sector person doing the same job but make up the difference by doing half as much work.
7.) It takes longer to fire you than the average killer spends on death row.
6.) The worse you do your job, the more your boss avoids you.
5.) You think the French are working themselves to death.
4.) You know by having a copy of the Holy Koran on your desk your job is 100% safe.
3.) You spend more time at protest marches than at church.
2.) You have a Democratic congressman’s lips permanently attached to your butt.
1.) You pay more in union dues than you do for your health care insurance. …
According to the governor’s new book, Walker read the list — written by author and commentator Rod Pennington — to put his staff at ease during the union-led protests at the Capitol in 2011. Here’s the list, which appeared on the Daily Caller website on Feb. 21, 2011:
10.) You take a week off to protest in Wisconsin and your office runs better.
9.) On a snow day when they say “non-essential” people should stay home you know who they mean.
8.) You get paid twice as much as a private sector person doing the same job but make up the difference by doing half as much work.
7.) It takes longer to fire you than the average killer spends on death row.
6.) The worse you do your job, the more your boss avoids you.
5.) You think the French are working themselves to death.
4.) You know by having a copy of the Holy Koran on your desk your job is 100% safe.
3.) You spend more time at protest marches than at church.
2.) You have a Democratic congressman’s lips permanently attached to your butt.
1.) You pay more in union dues than you do for your health care insurance. …
In a radio interview Nov. 21 on “The Devil’s Advocates Radio show (WXXM-FM 92.1 in Madison), Marty Beil called the list racist and disrespectful.
“His editor had to say to him, ‘You shouldn’t have put that in there,’” Beil said. Beil is executive director of Madison-based Council 24 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. …
Pennington, the writer of the list, is the author of the “Fourth Awakening” series.
His columns for The Daily Caller, a conservative news and opinion site, often include top 10 lists. Another was “The 10 things Obama will look for in a new secretary of state.” In that column, Pennington noted that “Hillary Clinton has announced that she will not serve a second term as President Obama’s secretary of state. Here are the top ten things Obama will look for in her replacement.
His first entry:
1.) See if any of the Wisconsin Democratic state senators are available. They already fully grasp the concept of “cut and run,” so there would be a smooth transition period.
If there is one person in Wisconsin whose opinion means less to me than Beil’s (his last name, by the way, is pronounced: BILE), that person doesn’t come to mind. Not knowing how much union dues are, or where they’re specifically spent (safe answer: union management salaries), the half of number one that refers to benefit costs and number eight are correct. So is number seven.
As for the sense of humor displayed, Democrats and liberals make fun of Republicans and conservatives all the time, and often in more pejorative and nastier terms than these.
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Fifty years ago today, the world stopped, so to speak, to numbly stare at their TVs and the coverage therein of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
I find most interesting (if you couldn’t figure that out yesterday) is how the three TV network news operations covered the assassination — an event the likes of which TV news had never covered before then.
Andrew Cohen first watched coverage of the assassination 25 years ago:
On that 25th anniversary, many of the major journalists and dramatis personae on the scene in Dallas (or New York or Washington) on November 22, 1963, were still alive. Walker Cronkite was still around. So were David Brinkley and Tom Wicker. So were Theodore Sorenson and Pierre Salinger and David Powers. And so, for that matter, were Jackie Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. and Teddy Kennedy and even Rose Kennedy, the slain president’s mother.
This year, it’s different. Those icons now are gone, as are a hundred million or so ordinary Americans who endured those sad days. And in their place have come another hundred million or so other Americans for whom the Kennedy assassination is a snippet on a film or a paragraph in a textbook or a murder mystery. Fifty years from now, we’ll still mark the occasion, only it will be something like this: “Last Surviving Witness to Kennedy Assassination…” The river of history thus ever flows.
All of which is why it is increasingly important—if you care about journalism or history or politics, or if you simply care about the way in which human beings react to great tragedy in their midst—to watch the “as it happened” videos of the assassination and its aftermath. Taken together, this footage is invaluable not just as an affirmation of fact and evidence (and myth and mistake) but as the single most vivid totem of a time most of us living today never knew and never will. …
The rest of the news coverage that day has probably been scrutinized over the past half century more closely than any single event in history—or in the history of news. Most things the reporters got right. Some things they didn’t. Some bordered on the hysterical. Some were stoic. Some kept referring back to the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, although even in November 1963, the comparison was inapt. But most just did what we expect journalists to do—which is to ask questions, and try to get answers, and then share what they have learned.
But if you watch the original footage this week, let go of the urge to make technical or editorial judgments about how precisely the assassination was covered and how such coverage might be different today. Resist the temptation to flare at the flaws you see. Forget the J-school analysis. Just try to absorb, as a human being, the pain and the grief and the shock that is coming at you. And remember, if you can, that these recorded hours are a precious chronicle of a nation in the middle of a crisis. …
But mostly that afternoon you see men (and they are mostly men) trying to do their jobs in extraordinary conditions. You see some journalists (like [Frank] McGee) handling it better than others (like Chet Huntley). You see the faux wood paneling of the NBC News set. You see the CBS Newsmen in shirt sleeves behind [Walter] Cronkite. You see, in other words, the raw product of a medium changing before your very eyes, in the span of just a few hours. It was like that on September 11, 2001, of course. And it will be like that on the next horrible day that America endures.
It’s impossible to get the sense of the shock of November 22, 1963, unless you take the time to watch the many hours of coverage. Because even though the drama is long gone for all of us today, even though we all know how the story ends, there is something inherently dramatic about watching other people, including famous people (like Cronkite and [David] Brinkley), absorb right in front of us the enormity of what was happening to them and to their country. Brinkley, in particular, seethes with fury at the senselessness of the violence. Cronkite, tears held back or no, looks and sounds just shattered. Just three months earlier, he had interviewed this president about Vietnam.
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On Friday, Nov. 22, 1963 around 12:30 p.m., John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy were riding in a motorcade in downtown Dallas.
At the same time, those watching a CBS-affiliate TV station in the Eastern Time Zone (and therefore not viewers of WISC-TV in Madison, which was carrying “The Farm Hour”) were watching this:
About seven minutes later, listeners to ABC radio stations heard this:
About three minutes after that, the aforementioned CBS viewers saw this:
Those listening to the biggest Top 40 station in Dallas had their listening to the Chiffons (given what we now know about Kennedy, an ironic choice of song) interrupted:
Those watching whatever their NBC-TV station was carrying around 12:45 heard this …
… while those watching WFAA-TV in Dallas at the same time saw this:
Those watching ABC-TV’s rerun of “Father Knows Best” (again, in the Eastern Time Zone) saw this:
From then on, for the first time in history, all three TV networks presented wall-to-wall (or as close as possible; most TV stations went off the air after midnight) coverage of breaking news:
I have great interest in JFK’s assassination and coverage thereof for a couple of reasons. I went to John F. Kennedy School in Madison, so that may be part of it, in addition to my being a media geek.
Coverage of Kennedy’s assassination came a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, which would have qualified for breaking news had the technology existed to bring live bulletins beyond someone sitting in front of a camera or microphone reading a script.
What is interesting from viewing the coverage is the quality of most of the TV coverage for an unprecedented (for TV) event. It was far from perfect (the ABC-TV coverage is particularly difficult to watch early on), but live remote reports were rare even when they could be set up in advance, let alone when they needed to be set up on the spur of the moment. NBC had its own problems getting a telephone report from Robert MacNeil (later of PBS’ MacNeil–Lehrer Report).
In comparison, the local radio coverage left something to be desired. Perhaps it’s because coverage standards have changed, but it blows my mind (pun not intended) that radio stations would report that the president had been shot in their own city, and then go back to their usual programming (music and, in one case, a Bible program). One reason is that radio news reporters were strewn all over the area to cover Kennedy’s several appearances in Fort Worth and Dallas. One station went between its own coverage and CBS radio coverage, while another went between its own coverage and NBC radio coverage, which also incorporated NBC TV coverage.
TV initially did the same thing. Imagine today watching, say, reports that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, and then being asked to stay tuned for later bulletins. In the nearly five decades since today, viewers expect wall-to-wall coverage, whether or not actual news is broadcast or repeated endlessly intertwined with less-than-factually-based observation and speculation.
There were mistakes, because there are always mistakes in such coverage. Lyndon Johnson was reported to also have been shot and to have had a heart attack. (Imagine the panic that briefly created.) A Secret Service agent was reported to have died. (Oswald killed a Dallas police officer after shooting Kennedy.)
Since there was no such thing as a minicam and satellites weren’t in much use yet, there is no tape of the actual announcement from White House assistant press secretary Malcolm Kilduff:
Nearly everything (except for CBS-TV’s NFL games on Sunday, since, unlike the American Football League, the NFL did not cancel games Nov. 24, a decision NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle later regretted) was knocked off the air for the next four days. That included NBC’s “Bob Hope Chrysler Theatre” on Friday, CBS’ Jackie Gleason and “Gunsmoke” Saturday, and CBS’ Ed Sullivan and NBC’s “Bonanza” on Sunday.
One is struck on watching the coverage how Kennedy’s assassination emotionally affected those covering it in a way I doubt would be repeated in today’s cynical age:
From nearly 50 years later, some reporters and commentators sound as if they were in the tank for Kennedy — or, more accurate, Kennedy the image:
A rather clear-eyed, even cold commentary came from NBC’s Edwin Newman, a UW grad:
Newman’s colleague, Chet Huntley, gave a commentary that might have to be repeated in our currently overheated political atmosphere:
Had I been a columnist or commentator (who might have actually voted for Kennedy instead of Richard Nixon, particularly had I been able to discern what a disastrous president Nixon would become) in late November 1963, I might have peered through my glasses or newfangled contact lenses, puffed on my pipe, and typed out something like this:
On Monday, Americans will get to witness on television something most have never seen before, except possibly in a theater newsreel — a state funeral. This country’s last state funeral took place in 1945 upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt.
It was noted at the time of President Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961 that this country had an unprecedented number of living former presidents — Dwight Eisenhower, Kennedy’s predecessor; Harry Truman, Eisenhower’s predecessor; and Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt’s predecessor. It is one of many cruel ironies of this weekend that all three have outlived our youngest elected president.
Kennedy was not our youngest president; that was Theodore Roosevelt, who became president upon the assassination of William McKinley, the last president to have been assassinated before Friday. However, our youngest elected president is also the youngest to have died in office.
Those men who fought in and survived World War II will note the additional irony of one of their own, who had his PT boat cut in two and sunk by a Japanese destroyer 20 years ago, surviving that only to die of violence back in this country.
When you reach the age of President Kennedy, you start to notice when people of your own age show up in the obituary columns. Usually, their deaths are because of heart attacks or car accidents or cancer. President Kennedy projected youth, energy and vitality, thanks in large part to his family. Whether or not you voted for him, most men of President Kennedy’s age or with a young family identified with him much more than with any other president of our memory. And now, Mrs. Kennedy will have to raise their two young children by herself, a widow thanks to, according to the wire reports, a former Marine who left this country for the Soviet Union.
President Kennedy knew much tragedy in his short life. Two of his men on PT 109 were killed in the collision with the Japanese destroyer. His older brother, Joe, died during World War II. One sister, Kathleen, died in a plane crash. Another sister, Rosemary, is retarded and in a nursing home. Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy had a stillborn daughter and another son, Patrick, die shortly after birth earlier this year. The president’s father suffered a massive stroke earlier this year. This latest Kennedy family tragedy is now the nation’s tragedy as well.
Those readers who were around in the 1940s remember where they were when news was reported about the Pearl Harbor attack and the death of Franklin Roosevelt. Now, this generation has its own where-were-you-when moment. This moment, though, reflects poorly on the United States of America.
I tried to write that what-if column from the viewpoint of 1963. (Hence the term “retarded” to describe Rosemary Kennedy, who had a low IQ and was the victim of a lobotomy ordered by her father, a world-class scumbag.) Americans then and now like to think of ourselves as idealists. A lot of Americans got into government because of Kennedy and what he seemed to represent. Even though Kennedy defeated a presidential candidate just four years older, Kennedy represented to most Americans youth and vigor. (We know now from his medical record that that was an inaccurate representation, as was a great deal of his life story.) He also represented nearly unlimited possibility, such as his embracing a flight to the Moon.
Those of my generation have never experienced an assassination of a president, though an attempt was made on Ronald Reagan’s life. So it’s hard to say how we’d react today to a similar event. Much of the reaction would be based on our political worldview, which is the wrong motivation. We are much more cynical today for good reason, and we see politics as a zero-sum game — one side wins, which means the other loses.
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Two weeks ago we determined that I, an ESTJ according to the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, have the same personality type as Darth Vader and Commander Riker on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Also several movie and TV cops, the lead character of “American Dad,” Wyatt Earp, and Richard Nixon.
The next obvious question to ask is: How does your personality type correspond to an animal? And according to this site, I am …
ESTJs are civic-minded workers who strive to improve society and like to be part of organizations and governments. They are often conservative and they are strong believers in the letter of the law, and the importance of procedures. They are practical and straight-forward, and have little use for “expanding their mind” or having new experiences. They are, however, outgoing, and they have no problem with clearly communicating their needs and desires to others.
“Civic-minded workers”? “Strong believers in the letter of the law, and the importance of procedures”? I’m sure my 1,000-plus regular readers (the Prestebeehive?) get a good laugh out of that.
Maybe another opinion is needed. According to this site, I am …
ESTJ- Hippo
Strengths: Handles criticism well, strong willed, stable.Weaknesses: Tends to be stubborn, difficulties in expressing and understanding emotions.This site agrees with Hippo, but with different characteristics:
Pros= Conscientious and realistic
Cons= Too rigid and detailed oriented
My coworkers would probably have a good laugh with these.
Back in the world of fiction, according to this site I have the same personality as another character played by Russell Crowe:Javert
From Les Miserables …
Dominate Function: Extroverted Thinking
Javert is primarily motivated by taking control of the world around him and getting results. He categorizes and organizes everything, assigning blanket terms for “good”, “evil”, “just”, and “criminal”. although Javert is not amiable, he works with people efficiently as it relates to his professional world. He would rather do something just to see it done than meditate internally. It goes without saying that Javert cannot abide loose ends, and finds gratification on seeing a job through to the very end.
Auxiliary Function: Introverted Sensing
Javert is passionate about structuring his environment, and he looks to his previous experience to determine what this structure should be. He understands how things have been done before him, and strives to continue traditions and practices that he is accustomed to. He puts a high value on continuity and is resistant to change. He has an excellent memory, and accesses data through memory and quiet reflection rather than through immediate observations of situations or the connections between ideas.
Tertiary Function: Extroverted Intuition
Javert struggles with his extroverted intuition function, but it is important to support his introverted sensing. When he is observing in the moment, he looks for possibilities, and how his new data fits with his old data. He tries to fit new ideas into the mental boxes that he has constructed. Javert needs outside stimuli to think of alternative options, and he makes connections through observations. He can put things together and recognize how his world relates to his memory with effort, but it is an important aspect to his investigations nonetheless.
Inferior Function: Introverted Feeling
Clearly, Javert’s weakest function is introverted feeling. This intangible value system defines his ideals of right and wrong, but these sentiments lack subtly due to being underdeveloped. He has a hard time justifying his emotions, and tries to categorize them into a structured system rather than listen to them. When his sense of good/evil comes into conflict with his overwhelming extroverted thinking preference for clearly defined categories, Javert is launched into an existential crisis.
Well, I’ve been a fan of Crowe ever since “L.A. Confidential.” But “existential crisis”? Jeez.
That site also names as ESTJs Liz Lemon from “30 Rock,” Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter books and movies — though there is disagreement you will see presently — as well as Lucille Bluth from “Arrested Development,” and something that has its 50th anniversary tomorrow:
That’s right, Dr. Who fans. I’m a Dalek.
Related is the Huffington Post determination:
Attributes: decisive, results-oriented, straightforward, wholesome
Typical Careers: judges, business administrators
In literature: ESTJs are likely to assume the role of stubborn, albeit commendable leaders, be it bosses, parents, judges or military personnel, like Borimir from “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.Recall Gene Kranz from “Apollo 13” and, well, Apollo 13.
On a somewhat lighter note, Elias Scultori applied Myers-Briggs to Disney, and came up with …
(Apparently The Guardian can’t talk.)
How about the work of art that is Looney Tunes? According to this online thread, ESTJs could be …
While we’re at it, why don’t we throw in Harry Potter? So says this site:
I suppose we might as well finish with, yes, the Myers-Briggs Asshole Index:
ESTJs are the “other people” in “Hell is other people.” They are bureaucratic and sycophantic, they are the cultists standing in the middle of the town square selling you books on dianetics. They are the middle-managers with the smiles entirely disproportionate with how important they are for the company and their only job is to tell you to work harder, which they enjoy. They are the coach for your kids’ sports team who base their entire self-worth on the team and breaks down when it inevitably loses, and they are the aunts who “hold together” the family by silencing anybody who does not smile in the family portrait.
They cannot grasp that others might not value the same things they value, and the way they cannot grasp this is very very firm.
You do not have a relationship with an ESTJ, you have a deal. An ESTJ does not have a totem animal because ESTJs are awful and horrid, and animals are cute.
Bureaucratic? No. Sycophantic? Cultists? Read what I write about Republicans.
As for the author, he later wrote:
You know what’s amazing? Someone on the Internet psychoanalyzed this index and came to the conclusion that while almost all of these are insults, the INFJ ones are just whinings about how hard life is for me.
So what does this have to do with fiction? According to Paula L. Fleming, more than you might think (remember that unlike real life, fiction has to make sense):
Opposites attract — and conflict. Felix and Oscar; Jeeves and Wooster; Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser; Spock and McCoy; Mulder and Scully. Having sparks fly between two strong characters makes a gripping story. An easy way to differentiate two characters is, for instance, to make one exuberant and the other withdrawn. However, just as in real life, superficial differences cause only superficial annoyances and interest. It takes fundamental differences to create real chemistry.
If you’re writing about a middle-aged, by-the-book cop who teams up with a drug dealer to fight some larger evil, don’t just make the drug dealer young and impudent. After digging a little deeper into the backgrounds and personalities of these characters, you might profile the cop as follows:
Alysha, who joined the force to help people and society in a hands-on way (E), is finally burning out, her enthusiasm dimmed by the realities (S) of the job, especially the violence she sees and the lack of appreciation she receives (F). She takes refuge from the daily assault on her emotions in the structure of the job: the uniform, the regulations, and the group norms of the force (J). Alysha is an ESFJ.
On the other hand, our drug dealer looks like this:
Highly imaginative but an unidentified dyslexic, Chris tuned out of school, preferably by staring out the window and making up stories in his head (I). By high school, he was cutting class to walk down the railroad tracks, smoking a joint and imagining where the steel road might lead (N). Although quiet, he enjoyed the company of other people and strived to make them happy, and for this reason he tended to be susceptible to peer pressure (F). Because he needed structure but couldn’t find it in school, he eagerly joined a gang (J). Also, he could see the entrepreneurial possibilities in controlled substance sales and quickly became a leader in “community business development” (N). Chris is an INFJ.
As Alysha and Chris work together, they will mesh well in some ways and clash in others. Both will favor a systematic approach to their investigation (J), and each will be concerned about the other’s emotional state (F). This sounds cosy but may lead to conflict. Given their different backgrounds, Alysha’s systematic approach probably differs from Chris’. As Js, they will both be loathe to bend to an unfamiliar way of working. Likewise, their sensitivity to each other’s feelings may mean they fail to communicate when what they have to say isn’t nice.
In addition, their different sources of energy may make it hard for them to work together. As an E Alysha may want to talk through a complicated situation to understand it, while as an I Chris would prefer to think it through in solitude. Chris may see Alysha as intrusive and distracting, while she may see him as withholding and aloof. Furthermore, Chris may perceive the S Alysha as too bogged down in detail to see the overall pattern, while Alysha may view the N Chris as sloppy and forgetful about the facts in front of him. Their challenge as partners will be to use one another’s different strengths, while learning to tolerate the weaknesses.
Opposition to authority or “the system” is a staple of speculative fiction. In general the establishment is more likely to view Ps, with their hang-loose style and unwillingness to commit, as potentially seditious elements. However, unless pushed hard, many Ps are willing to do what it takes to get along. It’s the decisive, rigid Js who may be more likely to rebel, and when Js try to overthrow the system, they will have a plan.
Ts are more likely to be set off by something they see as unfair, while Fs are more likely to go into revolt over something that causes pain to someone they know. An S may confine himself to small acts with known outcomes, like sabotaging computer code to prevent rockets from being launched, while an N may envision overthrowing the world order to replace it with utopia. Es will usually work with other people, perhaps launching a populist movement, while Is will work alone, with a small group, or through a close group of advisors.
If your characters take an active role in shaping their destiny, then at some point in the story they will probably make an important decision. While a J may make this decision at the beginning of the story, then spend the rest of the story living (or dying) with the consequences, a P may delay to collect more information and change her mind several times. With a P as a protagonist, the story becomes about the investigation or deliberation leading up to the decision.
Ts will base their decision on abstract principles of what’s right or fair, while Fs will consider what will do the most good for people. Ss will work with data or observable facts, and their decision will address the current situation, whereas Ns will focus more on overall patterns and focus on future outcomes. An I may write in his journal before arriving at a decision, while an E would prefer to talk things through with friends.
So since police officers keep showing up in these lists, as an ESTJ who is far too nearsighted to be a cop, I should write police fiction with my protagonist who “would prefer to talk things through with friends,” and works “with data or observable facts,” then makes an important decision “to address the current situation” based on “abstract principles of what’s right or fair” at the beginning of a story, then “spend the rest of the story living (or dying) wiht the consequences.” Interesting.
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Today is an august day in Southwest Wisconsin.
Four of Southwest Wisconsin’s football teams are playing in the WIAA Football Championships at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison. Black Hawk, of the Six Rivers Conference, will play defending Division 7 champion Glenwood City at 10 a.m. Darlington, of the Southwest Wisconsin Activities League, will play Shiocton for the Division 6 title at 1 p.m. Lancaster, Mrs. Presteblog’s alma mater, will play Stanley–Boyd (the team, not a person) for the Division 5 title at 4 p.m.
And then, at 7 p.m., Platteville, with a 9–4 record, will play Winneconne, with an 8–5 record, for the Division 4 championship, at 7 p.m. in what someone has already called the Cinderella Bowl. That’s the game I get to announce, one week after this two-hour-long heart attack.
All of the games will be on wglr.com, and I assume there will actually be no non-football programming between the Black Hawk pregame 9:30-ish and the end of the Platteville game around 10 p.m. WGLR should stand for something like Wisconsin Gridiron Live Radio or something like that.
(More thoughts on the subject here.)
Then, 13 hours after kickoff, I’ll be on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin Week in Review segment Friday at 8 a.m.
Wisconsin Public Radio’s Ideas Network can be heard on WHA (970 AM) in Madison, WLBL (930 AM) in Auburndale, WHID (88.1 FM) in Green Bay, WHWC (88.3 FM) in Menomonie, WRFW (88.7 FM) in River Falls, WEPS (88.9 FM) in Elgin, Ill., WHAA (89.1 FM) in Adams, WHBM (90.3 FM) in Park Falls, WHLA (90.3 FM) in La Crosse, WRST (90.3 FM) in Oshkosh, WHAD (90.7 FM) in Delafield, W215AQ (90.9 FM) in Middleton, KUWS (91.3 FM) in Superior, WHHI (91.3 FM) in Highland, WSHS (91.7 FM) in Sheboygan, WHDI (91.9 FM) in Sister Bay, WLBL (91.9 FM) in Wausau, W275AF (102.9 FM) in Ashland, W300BM (107.9 FM) in Madison, and of course online at www.wpr.org.
This is the second time this year that I’ve done a WGLR/WPR doubleheader. The first one, though in reverse order, ended in a Platteville win. So perhaps that’s a portent of tonight.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 