Today in 1956, Nat King Cole became the first black man to host a TV show, on NBC:
The number one single today in 1966:
Today in 1971, Elvis Presley performed at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minn. To get the fans to leave after repeated encore requests, announcer Al Dvorin announced, “Elvis has left the building.”
Only in the world of Donald Trump can impeachment be a good thing.
How? Consider Trump’s Democratic opponents, including Elizabeth Warren.
Over the weekend I got an email from a very smart, plugged in friend about where Elizabeth Warren’s campaign is, and where it’s heading. I asked him if I could publish it and he agreed, on the condition that he be identified only as “Deep State Bob.” What follows is his:
Let’s say you’re the little voice of reason inside Elizabeth Warren’s head. You ask her a couple of questions: What do you want your campaign to be about? And what you do you want the campaign to be about?
Paired together, the first question gives the candidate an opportunity to describe her perfect-world scenario. The second should—should—lead her to describe the real-world in which her campaign is taking place.
In a perfect world, the United States’ domestic politics would be relatively stable and voters would wish—above all—for creative alternatives to the current mixed-market economic arrangement, which they believe hurts them and their communities. In that world, Warren would want her campaign to be a referendum on crony capitalism and certain private markets—of which Trump, partly by his background and partly by his marriage of convenience to the GOP, has been an exponent. She’d push her Accountable Capitalism Act. She’d rail against the injustices of for-profit health insurance and medical care. She’d decry competition in public education.
In the real world of America in the Year of Our Lord 2019, the United States’ domestic political situation is relatively precarious. Is it as bad as it was in 1860? No. Not even close, thankfully. But are things as bad as they were during the 6-year stretch from 1968 to 1974? Well, that’s an open question.
The absolute best you can say is that American political life is as unsettled as it has been in two generations.This is a positive, not a normative, statement. The president of the United States is pulling out all the stops to maintain his power: openly inviting foreign governments to be oppo research groups, beating the drums of populist sentiment ever louder, asking his deputies to break the law for him so he can fulfill his campaign promises. Trump is the most aspirationally authoritarian figure ever to hold the presidency and the only reason things aren’t worse is that (a) he’s incompetent and (b) our government was designed with more antibodies to authoritarianism than your replacement-level democracy.
Meanwhile, the public is disgusted with the nation’s economic policies, but it can’t articulate why beyond saying that China and Wall Street have too much financial influence on the life of average Joe. It doesn’t know what it wants. All that it knows is that the system in which elected representatives make new laws to address the public disgust is moving too slowly for their liking.
In this world, Warren—and any of Trump’s opponents, for that matter—would make her campaign a referendum on Trump himself. He’s historically and consistently unpopular. It is no stretch to say that a soft majority of America, perhaps 55 percent or so, is fed up with his defective personality.
And the choice between which of those two worlds she wants to campaign in, Warren seems to have made up her mind. She’s going with the “perfect world” scenario:
What do you think will happen when Republicans get to frame the election as a choice between center-right/populist economics and progressive/socialist economics not because that’s the best ground for them to fight on but because it’s exactly the battle the Democrats asked for?“Elizabeth Warren wants to take away your health insurance.”
“Elizabeth Warren wants to force your children into failing schools.”
“Elizabeth Warren wants to raise your taxes for government-run health care and government-run education.”
“Who do you trust to make the best medical and education decisions for your household: your doctors and your family, or Elizabeth Warren’s government?”
Can Warren defend this ground successfully? I don’t know. Maybe? But why would she want to?
The path to 53 percent of the popular vote runs through Trump, not the Center for American Progress Action Fund. In the real world we live in, the Democratic candidate for president would say that he or she should be president because Trump absolutely cannot be—that we can’t stand four more years of Trump because his vision for the nation is basically Judge Dredd’s. So let us now step back from the precipice, acknowledge that our national identity is confused and our national purpose is lacking, and reinvigorate the middle-class with infrastructure, or cracking down on China, or protections from predatory financial schemes. Whichever combo platter suits the nominee’s fancy.
Trump cannot win if the 2020 election is a referendum on who he is and the damage he’s done to the presidency and the country. He absolutely might win if the election is a referendum on remaking America’s economic order.
As it stands right now, Trump has a decent shot of winning.
Democrats took a tremendous gamble by formally voting for an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on Thursday. While polls suggest Americans support the inquiry, the general public is divided on whether or not Trump should be impeached and removed from office. Those in key swing states are more likely to oppose impeachment and removal, suggesting that the impeachment battle may help Trump’s reelection in 2020.
“We’ve known for a long time that everybody in California and New York want Trump to be impeached, they’ve wanted that since the day he came into office,” an anonymous Trump campaign official told The Hill. “But in these states where the election is really going to be fought, we’re seeing that voters oppose impeachment, and there’s an intensity to that opposition.”
Indeed, a New York Times/Siena College poll released Wednesday showed that voters in six key swing states oppose impeaching and removing President Trump, 52 percent to 44 percent.
Most voters in Arizona (52 percent to 45 percent), Florida (53 percent to 42 percent), Michigan (51 percent to 42 percent), North Carolina (53 percent to 43 percent), Pennsylvania (52 percent to 45 percent), and Wisconsin (51 percent to 45 percent) say they oppose Congress’s potential removal of Trump from office.
Most voters in those states also support the impeachment inquiry, however — though by smaller margins.
Other polling found that even the inquiry is unpopular in some swing states. Last week, a Marquette University Law School survey of Wisconsin found 49 percent of voters oppose the inquiry while 46 percent support it. Most voters (51 percent) also opposed removing Trump from office, while 44 percent supported it. Independents proved colder to impeachment and to the inquiry, with only 33 percent supporting Trump’s removal and 35 percent supporting the Congressional investigation.
Trump won Wisconsin by a mere 23,000 votes — out of roughly 3 million. Late-breaking undecided voters went his way on Election Day.
In New Hampshire, a state Hillary Clinton won by fewer than 3,000 votes — out of roughly 700,000 — impeachment is similarly unpopular. Most voters oppose removing Trump (51 percent to 42 percent), according to a CNN-University of New Hampshire poll.
Respondents also oppose impeachment and removal in Arizona, a state Trump won by 3.6 percent but which Democrats have targeted for pick-up. Fifty percent of Arizona residents oppose “impeaching Donald Trump,” while 44 percent support it, according to a recent Emerson College poll.
Impeachment is a two-step process, and no president in U.S. history has been impeached and removed by Congress. The House of Representatives opens the process, with a bare majority of representatives required to impeach a president, opening the case up for a trial in the U.S. Senate. Only the Senate can remove the president, and that requires a two-thirds majority — extremely unlikely with the current Republican majority.
Polling on the issue can center on three separate issues: whether the House should open the impeachment inquiry; whether the House should vote to impeach Trump; and whether the Senate should vote to remove him.
Sadly, due to America’s stark partisan divide on the president, many Democrats and liberals have long wanted to remove Trump and were merely seeking an excuse to do so.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was correct when she said, “Impeachment is a very serious matter. If it happens it has to be a bipartisan initiative.” On Thursday, not a single Republican voted for the impeachment inquiry, while two Democrats voted against it.
As The New York Times‘s Nate Cohn reported, different polls have come to different conclusions about the nationwide sentiment on removing Trump from office. Trump criticized a Fox News poll showing 51 percent supporting removal and only 43 percent opposing it, while a Wall Street Journal survey found 49 percent opposed to removal and 43 percent supporting it.
Cohn drew attention to the group of swing-state voters who support the inquiry but oppose removing Trump. This 7 percent of voters skew younger (33 percent are 18 to 34) and independent (nearly half). A majority of them (51 percent) said Trump’s conduct is typical of most politicians — and indeed, Senate Democrats also pressured Ukraine to investigate their political opponent, Trump himself. Cohn noted that these voters “hold a jaded view of politics that would tend to minimize the seriousness of the allegations against him.”
Because Democrats have called for Trump’s impeachment since shortly after his inauguration, a jaded view of this latest push is warranted.
While Trump may be tainted with scandal if the House votes to impeach him, he will also be able to decry the blatantly partisan nature of the push to remove him from office. The Senate is extremely unlikely to remove him, and the impeachment charade may actually help the president in the swing states he needs to win for reelection.
This impeachment battle could backfire on the Democrats, badly.
UW–Madison graduate Jeff Greenfield has a provocative thought:
Have we ever had a president before this one who so disdains the advice and policies of those who have spent their lives working for the government he leads? Have we ever had a chief executive who is so skeptical of the judgments of career diplomats and military leaders, who rejects the advice of top intelligence leaders, who trusts his family more than those with a lifetime of experience?
Yes we have. His name was John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Kennedy and Donald Trump are hardly similar men, nor are they similar presidents. JFK’s 14 years of experience in the House and Senate, his knowledge of history and his prudence in public (as opposed to private) matters make that notion absurd. But in one way they are alike: Throughout Kennedy’s presidency, he came more and more to distrust the received wisdom of the “permanent government” or “deep state” or “military-industrial complex” or whatever term seems apt today. In his case, that skepticism may have saved the planet from nuclear annihilation.
During the tumult of the Trump years, generals like H.R. McMaster and Jim Mattis have been glorified as steadying influences in the room—military wise men whose opinions on everything from Syria to NATO Trump has recklessly disregarded. And that is true. Trump deserves censure for his refusal to listen to the advice of experienced hands, and his White House can be faulted for jettisoning decades worth of scientific, economic and military expertise.
But in the reflexive rush to criticize Trump, we risk forgetting the lesson of the Kennedy years: There is danger in relying too heavily on the “wisdom” of the elders. A president with a well-honed resistance to the certainties of experts and a strong sense of history can be a crucial protection against disaster. Unlike Kennedy, Trump possesses only one of these traits. But we shouldn’t let the current president’s lapses reset our expectations for civilian control over the military and foreign affairs.
JFK campaigned in 1960 as a conventional Cold Warrior, warning that the United States was falling behind the Soviet Union, arguing that a (nonexistent) “missile gap” was threatening our security, embracing the idea that the fall of any nation to communism would threaten surrounding nations—the domino theory. But he had also come to office with a strong belief that the power of nationalism was changing the dynamic of world politics. He’d been skeptical about France’s ability to hold Indochina in the early 1950s. And in his first days in office, Kennedy rejected the advice of his military advisers to place troops in Laos—advice that included the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
His skepticism about the military grew steadily. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, he said, “Those sons of bitches with all the fruit salad just sat there, nodding, saying it would work.” He was furious when it took hours for the army to deploy troops to deal with rioting at the University of Mississippi when the first black student was admitted. And in the closest brush with nuclear war ever—the 1962 Cuban missile crisis—Kennedy repeatedly refused to strike at Soviet missile installations on the island.
Side note: Those of us who went to John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Madison in the 1970s could tell you that Kennedy was in the Navy Reserve during World War II as a PT boat captain. Perhaps that’s where he got his disdain for higher military authority.
His judgment may well have made the difference between war and peace. But the military and intelligence heavyweights saw it otherwise. “The greatest defeat in our history,” Air Force Chief Curtis LeMay called it. Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson—the ultimate “wise man” who had confidently assured JFK that the Soviets would not respond to a military strike in Cuba—called the peaceful resolution of the crisis a matter of “luck” and later said, “We have to face the fact that the United States has no leader.” And Allen Dulles, the longtime CIA chief cashiered by JFK after the Bay of Pigs, said in retirement: “Kennedy is weak, not a leader.”
Kennedy, in turn, was sufficiently worried about his military advisers that he encouraged director John Frankenheimer to make a movie out of Seven Days in May, a novel about an attempted military coup, and even vacated the White House for a weekend to accommodate the movie’s shooting schedule.
By June 1963, Kennedy was signaling his intention to break with the Cold War consensus. In a speech at American University, he called for a new approach toward the Soviet Union. While condemning its totalitarian system, he said: “Let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
Lyndon Johnson inherited Kennedy’s “new approach” to the Soviet Union. So did Richard Nixon, who inherited one of LBJ’s advisors, Henry Kissinger. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter had the same approach to the U.S.S.R. It took Ronald Reagan to come up with better strategy: “We win, they lose.” In other words, the hawks ultimately were right and the doves were wrong about the Soviets.
Kennedy sought to lessen criticism of his proposed new approach to Moscow with huge increases in the defense budget. And he bears substantial responsibility for sending 15,000 “combat advisers” into Vietnam. But history suggests that he was looking for ways out of that quagmire, while dealing with the harsh domestic political realities. He told a friend: “We don’t have a prayer of staying in Vietnam. Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out. … But I can’t give up a piece of territory to the communists and then get the people to reelect me.”
Keep that last quote in mind for everyone who continues to lionize Kennedy more than 50 years after his death.
Kennedy pushed back against the “permanent government” by relying on different eyes and ears for advice and information. Most obvious was his turn to his brother, Robert Kennedy, as a key adviser on any and all matters, beyond RFK’s job as attorney general. During the Cuban missile crisis, JFK used ABC correspondent John Scali as a go-between with Alexandr S. Fomin, a KGB official in Washington and a personal friend of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. When Kennedy learned that French journalist Jean Daniel was going to interview Fidel Castro, he met with Daniel and asked that they meet again on his return. He encouraged Deputy U.N. Ambassador (and former journalist) William Atwood to maintain contacts with members of the Cuban delegation.
This was dramatized in …
No one can know, of course, whether JFK would have moved further from the Cold War consensus in a second term. What we do know is that throughout his presidency, he was one of the few voices pushing back against the assumptions of those around him. Virtually every “wise man”—McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow, Dean Rusk, the joint chiefs—argued for escalation in Vietnam, but Kennedy pushed back. He would say, for example, if you can convince Douglas MacArthur that a land war in Asia is a good idea, let me know. And after his death, his successor—far less grounded in history or foreign policy, and without Kennedy’s deep doubts about the wisdom of the military, presided over the full-scale tragedy that was Vietnam.
The wrong lesson, then, is that it is acceptable for a president like Trump to carry out an ignorant, narcissistic foreign policy. But it is equally wrong to think that presidents should mindlessly defer to their military and diplomatic advisers. It was “the best and the brightest” who led us into Vietnam; it was the counsel of seasoned, experienced leaders who led us into Iraq in 2003; it was a team of well-versed experts who presided over the descent into the Great Recession of 2008.
Under Trump, we have seen that a president without the gifts of knowledge and judgment is ill-served by ignoring advice from the grownups in the room. By relying on his own instincts in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president greatly strengthened the hands of Iran, Russia and ISIS while shaking our allies’ faith in America’s judgment.
The heavy costs of ignoring sound advice may lead the next president to reaffirm respect for the “deep state.” But if respect becomes veneration, if the next president does not know how and where to look for alternatives to the consensus, that could well lead to a new series of destructive policies. A president without the ability to thoughtfully contest the conventional wisdom, without the ability to argue for new alternatives to old problems, does the office and the nation no favor.
Today in 1963, John Lennon showed his ability to generate publicity at the Beatles’ performance at the Royal Variety Show at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret were in attendance, so perhaps they were the target of Lennon’s comment, “In the cheaper seats you clap your hands. The rest of you, just rattle your jewelry.”
Lennon would demonstrate his PR skills a couple of years later when he proclaimed the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus.”
The number one single today in 1965:
The number one single today in 1972:
Today in 1990, Melissa Ethridge and her “life partner” Julie Cypher appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine for its cover story on gay parenting.
I bring this up only to point out that Etheridge and Cypher no longer are life partners, Cypher (the ex-wife of actor Lou Diamond Phillips) is now married to another man, and Etheridge became engaged to another woman, but they split before their planned California wedding. And, by the way, Cypher had two children from the “contribution” of David Crosby, and Etheridge’s second woman had children from another man. And, by the way, Newsweek is no longer a weekly magazine.
The number one single today in 1956:
Britain’s number one single today in 1960:
The number one single today in 1962:
Today in 1964, a fan at a Rolling Stones concert in Cleveland fell out of the balcony. That prompted Cleveland Mayor Ralph Locker to ban pop music concerts in the city, saying, “Such groups do not add to the community’s culture or entertainment.” Kind of ironic that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ended up in Cleveland.
Wisconsinites know that the first radio station was what now is WHA in Madison. Today in 1920, the nation’s first commercial radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, went on the air.
The number one British single today in 1956 is the only number one song cowritten by a vice president, Charles Dawes:
The number one song today in 1974:
The number one British album today in 1985 was Simple Minds’ “Once Upon a Time” …
I have written here previously about the history of the far East Side Madison neighborhood where I grew up.
My source for this is Facebook Friend Eric Alver’s We Grew Up in Monona (and Cottage Grove) Wi … AND Are Happy We Did!!! Facebook page.
C & P Drive-In market sign, 3830 Atwood Avenue, featuring Borden’s Ice Cream and Waterloo Sausage Co. Also shows John Olson’s Standard Service Station sign. The location is the corner where Atwood Avenue ends and Monona Drive begins and Cottage Grove Road (Co. Highway goes off to the east.
By 1968, this is what Atwood and Cottage Grove looked like:
The C&P was built on a sloped lot, with the drive-up at the bottom of the east side of the building, at the bottom of a big ramp from the checkout lanes on the south side of the building. If you were the right age, you would of course race down the ramp.
Today begins with a non-music anniversary: Today in 1870, the U.S. Weather Bureau was created, later to become the National Weather Service.
Tomorrow in 1870, the first complaints were made about the Weather Bureau’s being wrong about its forecast.
Today in 1946, two New York radio stations changed call letters. WABC, owned by CBS, became (natch) WCBS, paving the way for WJZ, owned by ABC, to become (natch) WABC seven years later. WEAF changed its call letters to WNBC.
Because our country is so deeply split and so distrustful of its basic institutions, it needs solid, dispassionate reporting now more than ever. We are not getting it.
Americans know this, and we’re angry about it. Polls show we don’t trust the media any more than we trust Congress, the president, universities, or big business. And we don’t trust them at all. That’s deeply troubling since those institutions should be the secure foundations of our public life. Only one is still trusted by more than half the population — the military. Our men and women in uniform certainly deserve our trust and respect, but it’s grim news for a democracy when only the armed forces merit it.
The media has added to this sulfurous climate of distrust and division. Take the country’s most important newspaper, the New York Times. After badly misjudging voter sentiment during the 2016 election, the Times publicly promised to reevaluate its biases, take occasional trips across the Hudson, and try harder. That lasted about a week.
The Times soon joined every other media organization in the race to discredit Donald Trump’s election, imply it was the product of Russian interference, and paint him as an illegitimate intruder in the White House. Although they were right to investigate Russian interference, they were wrong to pump up a thinly based conspiracy story that served their political aims.
Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation showed the Russians did interfere, primarily to create chaos and assist Trump. The special prosecutor documented multiple Russian contacts with the Trump campaign, a troubling revelation for any fair-minded American. But the report did not show any impact on the election outcome or charge any Americans with aiding the Russians. Asked point-blank if the president had not been charged because he was in office, Mueller mumbled a befuddled answer (like much of his testimony) and eventually said “no.”
Mueller’s report left gaping holes. It made no effort to find out why the CIA and FBI began investigating Trump and his campaign in the first place, whether that was warranted, why a counterintelligence investigation became a criminal one, or why candidate Trump was never warned about Russia’s malicious efforts. The report never addressed whether James Comey’s FBI was secretly targeting Trump for partisan or illicit purposes or how it justified this unprecedented action. Ultimately, Mueller’s report was a dud, and his testimony a disappointment for those alleging a vast, treasonous conspiracy.
Did the proprietors of the Fourth Estate learn their lesson? No, siree. Like all true believers who have been thwarted, they have redoubled their efforts, reinforcing the impeachment drive by House Democrats. Even as Trump wrongly smears all news as “fake,” damaging our country (as well as his targets), those newspapers, online outlets, and cable channels are doing their best to prove him right. They have embraced their new role as active partisans, while still denying it. Who trusts their denials?
This media sinkhole was exposed once again after U.S. forces launched a daring raid that killed ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Washington Post beclowned itself with a headline, since changed, that depicted the murderous terrorist and serial rapist as “an austere religious scholar.” The Twitter universe responded with parodies. Bonnie and Clyde were called “wealth re-distributors in the banking sector,” John Wilkes Booth “a noted thespian and member of a prominent theatrical family.” My favorite is Osama bin Laden, who was “killed in a home invasion.” Note that all of them are true, just as the Washington Post’s headline was. They are funny because, like the Post headline, they miss the point so egregiously.
How did CNN do? Not well, but thanks for asking. At 3 p.m. Eastern time, when I tuned in, the news channel’s editors had decided that al-Baghdadi’s death was not the top story. The day after the raid. Really? They led with two minor pieces, neither of them urgent, and then took a commercial break. Afterward, CNN turned to the al-Baghdadi story, but its main point was that it was far less important than killing Osama bin Laden. I agree, but what was troubling was how CNN essentially stage-whispered to its viewers, “Trust us, this story is not that important and certainly cannot compare with President Obama’s achievement.”
Burying important stories is as significant as misreporting them. Over the next few weeks, we will learn about a huge one the mainstream media has buried in a shallow grave for nearly three years. It deals with surveillance on members of the Trump campaign, based on warrants the FBI and Department of Justice gained from a secret court charged with counterintelligence investigations. DoJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz will report on his extensive probe of those FISA warrants and whether top FBI and DoJ officials committed fraud on the courts in obtaining them. We may learn who leaked classified materials, a crime we know happened repeatedly in 2016 and early 2017. We may learn about massive, illegal access to intelligence databases by outside contractors, who were spying on Americans without court permission. Expect criminal referrals. Expect indictments on related matters being investigated by U.S. Attorney John Durham, a highly respected, non-partisan professional. Did the CIA, which cannot spy on Americans, simply outsource the task to foreign counterparts? This is likely to be big and ugly.
Our country’s leading news organizations have done almost nothing to investigate these issues and far too little to report on them. When they do report, they editorialize to downplay them. If the worst allegations turn out to be true — and we simply don’t know yet — they will have missed the biggest story since Watergate. Worst of all, they will have missed it deliberately because they feared any investigation might aid a president they hated. That position should be reserved for the editorial pages. In the news sections, such distortion and willful blindness is an abdication of journalists’ responsibilities. Democracy dies in that kind of derangement.
Speaking of deranged, Nick Gillespie reports a different form of derangement:
If you need more proof that free expression is under serious and sustained attack, look no further than The Washington Post, that legendary and often self-congratulatory bastion of First Amendment support, which has just published an op-ed calling for hate speech laws because “on the Internet, truth is not optimized. On the Web, it’s not enough to battle falsehood with truth; the truth doesn’t always win.”
What’s even more disheartening is that the author is Richard Stengel, a former managing editor of Time, chairman of the National Constitution Center, and Obama-era State Department official whose soul-searching apparently began when challenged by diplomats from a part of the world notorious for particularly brutal forms of censorship. As a journalist, Stengel avers, he loved, loved, loved the First Amendment and its commitment to free speech. But then he got stumped by unnamed representatives of unnamed governments who asked banal questions:
Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?
Is he kidding? “Why would a country founded in large part on the Enlightenment values of free speech and religious freedom allow free speech and religious freedom?” doesn’t seem like a tough question to answer. He doesn’t name the countries his “most sophisticated Arab diplomats represented, so we need to fill that detail in. Let’s assume they were from Saudi Arabia, a country completely unworthy of emulation when it comes to respecting basic human rights and whose Prince Mohammed bin Salman has taken responsibility for the brutal torture and murder of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. We allow the burning of the Koran for the same reasons we allow the burning of King James and St. Jerome Bibles, the desecration of the U.S. flag, and the potential libeling of elected officials: We believe that individuals have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With a few exceptions such as “fighting words,” “true threats,” and obscenity, we know that it’s better to allow more speech rather than less. Surprisingly, people get along better when they can more freely speak their minds. The search for “truth”—or at least consensus—benefits from free expression, too, as ideas and attitudes are subjected to examination from friends and foes alike. But the pragmatic answer is ultimately secondary to the expressive one: We allow free speech because no one, certainly not the government, has a right to curtail it.
As befits a man who helmed a legacy media outlet that is slowly being reduced to rubble like a statue of Ozymandias in the desert, Stengel is particularly distraught over “the Internet” and the “Web.” He implies that the “marketplace of ideas” worked well enough when John Milton and, a bit later, America’s founders pushed an unregulated press, but, well, times have changed.
On the Internet, truth is not optimized. On the Web, it’s not enough to battle falsehood with truth; the truth doesn’t always win. In the age of social media, the marketplace model doesn’t work. A 2016 Stanford study showed that 82 percent of middle schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labeled “sponsored content” and an actual news story. Only a quarter of high school students could tell the difference between an actual verified news site and one from a deceptive account designed to look like a real one.
If you’re basing the erosion of constitutional rights on the reading comprehension skills of middle schoolers, you’re doing it wrong. And by it, I mean journalism, constitutional analysis, politics, and just about everything else, too.
Stengel pivots from discussing truth in media to “hate speech,” a ridiculously expansive term he never defines with precision (he even writes, “there’s no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is”). But because mass shooters such as Dylann Roof, Omar Mateen, and the El Paso shooter “were consumers of hate speech,” it’s time to chuck out hard-fought victories that allow individuals and groups to express themselves in words and pictures. Hate speech, laments Stengel, doesn’t just cause violence (though strangely, violence is declining even as social media is flourishing), it also
diminishes tolerance. It enables discrimination. Isn’t that, by definition, speech that undermines the values that the First Amendment was designed to protect: fairness, due process, equality before the law? Why shouldn’t the states experiment with their own version of hate speech statutes to penalize speech that deliberately insults people based on religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation?
All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails. I’m all for protecting “thought that we hate,” but not speech that incites hate. It undermines the very values of a fair marketplace of ideas that the First Amendment is designed to protect.
A quick reading of the First Amendment would have reminded Stengel—the former chairman and CEO of the National Constitution Center, fer chrissakes!—that the First Amendment isn’t about limiting speech that bothers the sensibilities of people. It’s actually all about Congress not making laws that would create an official religion or restricting individual speech and freedom of the press; it also guarantees that we have the right of assembly and petition. The values it reflects involve pluralism and tolerance, not shutting down, regulating, or restricting speech that makers of “new guardrails” find offensive, annoying, or inconvenient.
If you grew up any time in the past 60 years or so, you’ve taken freedom of speech for granted. That’s due to a series of legal rulings that struck down the ability of elected officials to strangle speech they didn’t like, ranging from potentially libelous personal attacks to once-banned literary works as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Howl, and Ulysses, along with materials such as the Pentagon Papers and the rise of technology that made producing and consuming all sorts of texts, images, music, video, and other forms of creative expression vastly easier.
It’s incredibly dispiriting to see baby boomers like Stengel brush aside the incredible wins in free expression because of concerns about vaguely defined terms such as “hate speech.” He gives off a strong whiff of internet and Cold War paranoia—”Russian agents assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives and spread lies on Twitter and Facebook, all protected by the First Amendment”—that seems widely shared by his generational peers. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) is an increasingly strong presidential candidate who has vowed to regulate explicitly political speech, especially its online iterations …
Older boomers are syncing with millennials and younger Americans, who show a strong predilection to limiting “bad” speech (a 2015 Pew survey found 40 percent of millennials supported censoring “offensive statements about minorities”). These are not good developments, and neither is an op-ed in The Washington Post calling for an effective revocation of the First Amendment. Throw in bipartisan interest in regulating social media platforms as public utilities, the president’s interest in “opening up” the libel laws so he can more easily sue his critics, the rise of “cancel culture,” and we’re one Zippo lighter short of a good, old-fashioned book burning.
Today in 1963, Ed Sullivan was at Heathrow Airport in London just as the Beatles deplaned to a crowd of screaming fans and a mob of journalists and photographers.
Intrigued, Sullivan decided to investigate getting the Beatles onto his show.
Today in 1964, Ray Charles was arrested at Logan Airport in Boston and charged with heroin. Charles was sentenced to one year probation after he kicked the horse.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 