Today in 1899, the world’s first jukebox was installed at the Palais Royal Hotel in San Francisco.
No comments on Presty the DJ for Nov. 23
-
-
Facebook Friend Gary Probst:
Be grateful, today, that kindness reigns over incivility. According to Harvard psychologist and author, Steven Pinker, today’s new incivility is simply a growing pain for the human race. We are safer, healthier and have more to be grateful for than ever. I agree.
Although people seem to be at humanity’s collective throat, things are much different than a few hundred years ago. The only nations where people are starving are where despots cause the suffering, not from a lack of resources. Modern farming has made it so. Starvation stems from greed and politics, not a lack of supply.There have always been murders and violence. If you compare what we witness, today, to other times of human history, we are in a time of peace–not where we would like it to be–but better than before.
As life improves, our next goal is, naturally, to make it even better. We face a challenging future, as robotics that replace human jobs are on the horizon. However, we will endure. We will prosper. We will take care of each other. Anybody with parents or grandparents who lived though the Great Depression remember hearing stories of human kindness.
If times become rough, again, we will come together and care for each other. Its in our DNA. Its part of our very nature. According to Dr. Pinker, humanity continues to evolve, not devolve. We’re getting there. However, as with all growth, its never in a straight line of the rise. There are blips and bumps along the way.Take time, today, to be grateful we live in a nation where we are able to disagree and duke it out on social media. We have a right to be indignant and that is a blessing. Its part of human growth and development. Resistance makes us stronger.
Thank God for each other. The farmers will take care of providing the turkey and the turkeys on Facebook will provide plenty of opportunity for you to grow. The connection between each other, in spite of disagreement and tone, is what makes our creator happy on this day of thanksgiving.
This is also appropriate today:
-
My journalism professors wouldn’t be proud of me. Not only because I’ve spent my career satirizing the misadventures of America’s weirdos rather than uncovering corruption, but also because last week I cried at a city council meeting.
Reporters are taught to be dispassionate, objective observers. Getting emotionally involved had never been a problem for me before, except at the monthly disgraces they call meetings of the Sauk County Board, a body most politely described as a fly in the soup of American democracy. So tortured are the principles of good government and common decency that even a stoic feels moved to tears.
There isn’t supposed to be crying in journalism, but Baraboo is an emotional place these days, from City Hall to church pews to high school hallways. A photo depicting local prom-goers in an apparent Nazi salute was posted online last week, making international news and tying this community to hate speech. Locals feel outraged, attacked, disheartened and traumatized. We all lost the same loved one: Baraboo’s good name.
As one of the bereaved, I struggled to compose myself during last week’s council meeting. I listened to Jewish friends, good people thrust into a mess they didn’t make, call for healing and education. As the Chamber of Commerce president spoke, I thought of friends on the staff who spent the week fielding angry calls over a controversy they didn’t create, and may spend years working to overcome.
As a friend and alderman whose son appeared in the photo discussed the impact on his family, I thought of my own four children at the school who, despite not being pictured, may see the way they’re perceived — “You’re from Baraboo? Ick.” — change forever. I didn’t once think of the journalism professors who might say I’m friends with too many local newsmakers.
There’s much we don’t know about the circumstances surrounding the shooting and circulation of the photo. Each day, new accounts surface that move me to reject the face-value narrative that immediately spread around the world: “In that picture, the boys seem to be saluting like Nazis. It was taken in a mostly white community that must be a breeding ground for white supremacists.”
No, Baraboo is not.
I don’t believe it’s that simple. Yes, we live in a rural area, but we don’t wear ropes for belts. The shame in seeing Baraboo known only for that photo is that America might be surprised to learn this is a cosmopolitan little town. It supports the arts and public schools, and you can’t live here long without getting to know Jewish people and gay people and other minorities, such as those who think it’s OK to play Christmas music before Thanksgiving.
People don’t hide in terror behind the nearest tree when they approach or burn crosses on their lawns or break their Perry Como albums. Every community has its bigots, but I’d like to think that if we knew our high school was becoming a boot camp for Hitler Youth, the locals would be the first to step in.
We’ve learned this much: The view from the eye of a media — and social media — hurricane is terrifying. The instant a community is associated with hate, it becomes the target of that very thing. Whereas my Aunt Lucille, the Shakespeare of strongly worded letters, labored over her typewriter in upbraiding wayward CEOs and bureaucrats, today’s trolls with keyboard courage can tell you immediately and anonymously that you and your community are a pimple on America’s butt.
I can understand why the photo upset people, and I find calls for sensitivity training and Holocaust education entirely appropriate. I’d just like our knee-jerk, hit-send world to consider there may be more to the story than we know right now. Our modern world of social media and around-the-clock talking heads doesn’t much care for patience or complexity. But it’s best to evaluate events in context and resist the temptation to take them at face value. Maybe I learned something in all those journalism classes after all.
Whether we find out the photo depicts bigotry in action, an ill-conceived joke, a disastrous misunderstanding or something in between, the damage is done. An above-average small Wisconsin town bears a wound that won’t heal without leaving a scar. And that’s a crying shame.
-
Today in 1963, the Beatles released their second album, “With the Beatles,” in the United Kingdom.
That same day, Phil Spector released a Christmas album from his artists:
Given what else happened that day, you can imagine neither of those received much notice.
-
James Wigderson apparently doesn’t like the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but …
Unfortunately, the non-traditional Thanksgiving is an argument I lost long ago.
Perhaps I should use the process Karin Tamerius, a psychiatrist and the founder of Smart Politics, created for the New York Times. In “How to Have a Conversation With Your Angry Uncle Over Thanksgiving,” Tamerius creates a bunch of no-win (if you’re a conservative) conversation paths similar to the “build your own adventure” books for children. At the end of the process, everyone at the family Thanksgiving table will be in favor of nationalized health care, higher taxes, forced unionization, and even rooting for the Detroit Lions.
You start with a choice.The “Angry Uncle Bot” allows your leftwing family members to practice their bumper sticker psychology and new talking points before actually trying it on a real human being. The “Liberal Uncle Bot” helps conservatives recognize that their facts and figures don’t matter as much as liberal feelings.
No, really. Your liberal uncle will say, “We need Medicare for All. Health care is a human right.” You, as the conservative, have three options:
Of course, choosing either of the first two options are “wrong.” Your only correct response is, “O.K., can you tell me more about that?”My favorite part of the game was the liberal uncle’s statement, “Many people can’t even afford medications or primary care. If we expand Medicare to include everyone, those people can get the help they need.”
If you respond, “National health insurance is a disaster where it’s been adopted,” you’re wrong again. But not because of Sweden.
“Not a good choice. This response will turn the conversation into a debate over facts and figures,” Tamerius wrote. “Debate is problematic because people tend not be persuaded by evidence and may even end up believing more strongly in their original position.”
Bad: “debate over facts and figures” and “people tend not be persuaded by evidence.” Because why have a factual debate?
Instead, you’re supposed to choose, “So, you think the government has a responsibility to make sure every person has basic health care, is that right?”
Why? “…it’s important to show your understanding by reflecting what you heard. Good reflections paraphrase what the other person said and highlight emotions. Truly exceptional reflections are met with, ‘Exactly! I couldn’t have said it better myself.’”
I know what I could say better myself to the annoying liberal relative who says, “We need Medicare for All. Health care is a human right.”
“Great, we’re going to take your portion of today’s dinner bill and set it aside for the $32 trillion in higher taxes that you want. And just to show that there are no hard feelings, we’ll let you walk home so you don’t have to feel guilty about the burning of fossil fuels. No, don’t take any turkey with you. Meat production contributes to global warming. I want you to feel really smug and warm on that ten mile hike home. The rest of us are going to enjoy our dinner while thanking the Pilgrims for coming to this country, bringing Western civilization with them.”
There will be more dessert for us, and a whole lot less acrimony.
Or you could ban politics from your table and discuss a nice, safe, uncontroversial topic, such as whether Packers coach Mike McCarthy should be fired.
-
The number one British single today in 1954:
Today in 1955, RCA Records purchased the recording contract of Elvis Presley from Sam Phillips for an unheard-of $35,000.
The number one single today in 1960 holds the record for the shortest number one of all time:
The number one British single today in 1970 hit number one after the singer’s death earlier in the year:
-
In the late 1960s, the ACLU was a small but powerful liberal organization devoted to a civil libertarian agenda composed primarily of devotion to freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, and the rights of accused criminals. In the early 1970s, the ACLU’s membership rose from around 70,000 to almost 300,000. Many new members were attracted by the organization’s opposition to the Vietnam War and its high-profile battles with President Nixon, but such members were not committed to the ACLU’s broader civil libertarian agenda. However, the organization’s defense of the KKK’s right to march in Skokie, Illinois, in the late 1970s weeded out some of these fair-weather supporters and attracted some new free speech devotees. But George H. W. Bush’s criticisms of the ACLU during the 1988 presidential campaign again attracted many liberal members not especially devoted to civil liberties.
To maintain its large membership base, the ACLU recruited new members by directing mass mailings to mailing lists rented from a broad range of liberal groups. The result of the shift of the ACLU to a mass membership organization was that it gradually transformed itself from a civil libertarian organization into a liberal organization with an interest in civil liberties. This problem was exacerbated by the growth within the ACLU of autonomous, liberal, special interest cliques known as “projects.” These projects have included an AIDS Project, a Capital Punishment Project, a Children’s Rights Project, an Immigrants’ Rights Project, a Lesbian and Gay Project, a National Prison Project, a Women’s Rights Project, a Civil Liberties in the Workplace Project, a Privacy and Technology Project, and an Arts Censorship Project. This loss of focus led Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz to waggishly suggest that “perhaps the Civil Liberties Union needs a civil liberties project.”
Since the George W. Bush administration, the ACLU’s dedication to its traditional civil libertarian mission has waned ever further. With the election of Donald Trump, its membership rolls have grown to almost two million, almost all of them liberal politically, few of whom are devoted to civil liberties as such. Meanwhile, the left in general has become less interested in, and in some cases opposed to, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the rights of the accused.
Future historians will have to reconstruct exactly how and why the tipping point has been reached, but the ACLU’s actions over the last couple of months show that the ACLU is no longer a civil libertarian organization in any meaningful sense, but just another left-wing pressure group, albeit one with a civil libertarian history.
First, the ACLU ran an anti-Brett Kavanaugh video ad that relied entirely on something that no committed civil libertarian would countenance, guilt by association. And not just guilt by association, but guilt by association with individuals that Kavanaugh wasn’t actually associated with in any way, except that they were all men who like Kavanaugh had been accused of serious sexual misconduct. The literal point of the ad is that Bill Clinton, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby were accused of sexual misconduct, they denied it but were actually guilty; therefore, Brett Kavanaugh, also having been accused of sexual misconduct, and also having denied it, is likely guilty too.
Can you imagine back in the 1950s the ACLU running an ad with the theme, “Earl Warren has been accused of being a Communist. He denies it. But Alger Hiss and and Julius Rosenberg were also accused of being Communists, they denied it, but they were lying. So Earl Warren is likely lying, too?”
Meanwhile, yesterday, the Department of Education released a proposed new Title IX regulation that provides for due process rights for accused students that had been prohibited by Obama-era guidance. Shockingly, even to those of us who have followed the ACLU’s long, slow decline, the ACLU tweeted in reponse that the proposed regulation “promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused.” Even longtime ACLU critics are choking on the ACLU, of all organizations, claiming that due proess protections “inappropriately favor the accuse.”
The ACLU had a clear choice between the identitarian politics of the feminist hard left, and retaining some semblance of its traditional commitment to fair process. It chose the former. And that along with the Kavanaugh ad signals the final end of the ACLU as we knew it. RIP.
Conor Friersdorf adds:Last week, the NRA kept defending gun rights, the AARP kept advocating for older Americans, and the California Avocado Commission was as steadfast as ever in touting “nature’s highest achievement.” By contrast, the ACLU issued a public statement that constituted a stark, shortsighted betrayal of the organization’s historic mission: It vehemently opposed stronger due-process rights for the accused.
The matter began when Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos put forth new guidelines on how to comply with Title IX, the law that forbids colleges that receive federal funding to exclude any students, deny them benefits, or subject them to any discrimination on the basis of sex.
The most controversial changes concern what happens when a student stands accused of sexual misbehavior. “Under the new rules, schools would be required to hold live hearings and would no longer rely on a so-called single investigator model,” The New York Times reports. “Accusers and students accused of sexual assault must be allowed to cross-examine each other through an adviser or lawyer. The rules require that the live hearings be conducted by a neutral decision maker and conducted with a presumption of innocence. Both parties would have equal access to all the evidence that school investigators use to determine facts of the case, and a chance to appeal decisions.” What’s more, colleges will now have the option to choose a somewhat higher evidentiary standard, requiring “clear and convincing evidence” rather than “a preponderance of the evidence” in order to establish someone’s guilt.
The ACLU doesn’t object to any of those due-process protections when a person faces criminal charges. Indeed, it favors an even higher burden of proof, “beyond a reasonable doubt,” to find an individual guilty.
But the ACLU opposes the new rules for campuses. “Today Secretary DeVos proposed a rule that would tip the scales against those who raise their voices. We strongly oppose it,” the organization stated on Twitter. “The proposed rule would make schools less safe for survivors of sexual assault and harassment, when there is already alarmingly high rates of campus sexual assaults and harassment that go unreported. It promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused and letting schools ignore their responsibility under Title IX to respond promptly and fairly to complaints of sexual violence. We will continue to support survivors.”
One line in particular was shocking to civil libertarians: It promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused. Since when does the ACLU believe a process that favors the accused is inappropriate or unfair?
Not when a prosecutor believes she has identified a serial rapist, or a mass murderer, or a terrorist. In those instances, it is the ACLU’s enemies who declare that crime is alarmingly high and reason that strong due-process rights therefore make the world unacceptably unsafe. It is the ACLU’s enemies who conflate supporting survivors of violent crime with weakening protections that guard against punishing innocents. Those enemies now have the ACLU’s own words to use against it.
-
The number one British single today in 1955 …
… on the day Bo Diddley made his first appearance on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Show. Diddley’s first appearance was his last because, instead of playing “Sixteen Tons” …
… Diddley played “Bo Diddley”:
The number one single today in 1965 could be said to be music to, or in, your ears:
-
James Freeman on the CNN lawsuit against the Trump administration:
Here’s how the lawsuit describes the scene as the President showed up to share his thoughts on Tuesday’s midterm elections:
President Trump delivered opening remarks and then invited questions from the media in attendance. Acosta, sitting in the front row, raised his hand. President Trump called on Acosta to “[g]o ahead” with a question. Acosta was one of the first reporters the President called on for questions.
Speaking through a hand-held microphone, as did all the White House journalists who asked questions, Acosta asked a question about one of President Trump’s statements during the midterm campaign—namely, whether a caravan making its way to the United States from Central America constitutes “an invasion” of the country, a significant feature of the President’s messaging during the just-ended campaign.
This is not an accurate rendering of what happened. A video recording of the event shows that after four reporters took their turns asking questions, the President called on Mr. Acosta, who made it clear that he would not simply be asking questions and seeking information as reporters do but intended to provide a rebuttal to recent comments made by the President. “I wanted to challenge you on one of the statements that you made in the tail end of the campaign—in the midterms,” said the CNN commentator.Mr. Acosta mentioned Mr. Trump’s characterization of the immigrant caravan making its way through Mexico as an “invasion.” At this point Mr. Acosta did not ask a question but simply issued a declaration. “As you know Mr. President, the caravan was not an invasion. It’s a group of migrants moving up from Central America towards the border with the U.S.,” said the CNN correspondent.
So instead of simply serving as a reporter Mr. Acosta chose to offer commentary—and according to standard dictionaries he was wrong. The large group of immigrants had crossed illegally into Mexico and plainly intended to illegally enter the U.S.
Mr. Acosta may think that an invasion must include a military force but Mr. Trump’s use of the word is common. Merriam-Webster defines invade as “to enter for conquest or plunder,” but also “to encroach upon” or “infringe.” Other dictionaries have similar definitions, such as “to intrude” or “violate.”
Having wrongly asserted that the caravan could not be called an invasion and wrongly asserted that Mr. Trump knew he was saying something untrue, Mr. Acosta then asked why Mr. Trump had done so and if he had “demonized” immigrants. Yes, Mr. Acosta was now asking a question, but doing so while demanding that the President accept a false premise.
Mr. Acosta then interrupted the President as he tried to answer. Then Mr. Acosta editorialized again:
“Your campaign had an ad showing migrants climbing over walls and so on. But they’re not going to be doing that.”
Is Mr. Acosta now a spokesman for the caravan? After another interruption, Mr. Acosta insisted on continuing to talk after the President called on a reporter. Then Mr. Acosta fended off a White House intern as she attempted to retrieve the microphone to allow others to ask questions.The First Amendment prevents the President or anyone else in the federal government from restricting the ability of citizens to report and publish. Does it also require the President to listen to ill-informed lectures for as long as the lecturers choose to speak? Obviously if everyone had the right to refuse to surrender the microphone at press conferences the result would be fewer members of the press corps having an opportunity to ask questions, not more.
But there’s something special about Mr. Acosta and about CNN, at least according to the lawsuit. The suit argues that special White House access not available to the general public is “essential” for reporters like Mr. Acosta, and that CNN is suffering from his absence, even though many other CNN staff still enjoy such access.
There are no doubt myriad online producers and reporters who would love to have the privileges enjoyed by CNN and its star commentator. But are Mr. Acosta and his network entitled to such privileges?
-
The Supremes became the first all-girl group with a British number-one single today in 1964:
The Supremes had our number one single two years later:
The number one album today in 1994 was Nirvana’s “MTV Unplugged in New York” …
… on the same day that David Crosby had a liver transplant to replace the original that was ruined by hepatitis C and considerable drug and alcohol use:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 