Call It A Comeback
The Note is reporting The New Republic will be making McBride the cover of an upcoming issues. Not that the New Republic influences that many votes, but it is a good buzz starter. I’m betting Cottle does the piece given her recent stuff on Jeb.
Kaus takes another swing at the Bob Greene situation and makes a very poor argument. Kaus compares the Chicago Tribune not releasing all of the details to Nixon. This is an absurd comparison. Nixon was President and had a public duty. The Chicago Tribune is a private company with fiduciary responsibility to its stock holders. This means that personnel decisions are generally private matters that are kept private to avoid legal liability.
Second, it has a relationship with its reader based on its credibility. I’d prefer to believe that the paper frowns upon reporters sleeping with subjects of stories. Call me old fashioned.
Third, this respects the privacy of the woman and Greene. We know the relevant details from Kass’s column. This doesn’t stop other reporters at other institutions from looking into the issue, but the Tribune has been clear on the standards it expects from its employees to its readers. That is all they should be expected to divulge barring some ACTUAL information that contradicts any of this.
Kaus then takes on Jim Warren’s argument about special privileges and says it is absurd. It is not. A journalist in the position of Greene has the ability to use that position to take advantage of a high school student. And he did. That privilege may not be some formal privilege, but most people understand it and understand using that privilege is wrong.
The Tribune has a code of conduct as Don Wycliff points out. Greene violated that code of conduct.
As Kass points out:
“I don’t care about sex lives of reporters or politicians. That’s not my business or yours either, as long as they’re grown-ups and as long as they don’t use the institutions they represent to close the deal.”
This was an abuse of power.
Was Clinton an abuse of power? Yes. Being fired (or accepting a resignation in this case) from a newspaper is a lot different than removing the President of the United States.
Unfortunately, this is about the same argument as Huntington makes int he Clash of Civilizations. Both are simplistic and unrealistic and avoid discussing institutional mechanisms that promote the sort of decay we see in much of the Arab World. If you are fascist pig, as Huntington is, it makes perfectly good sense to say Americanize them. It is virtually the same argument Pinochet makes.
If, on the other hand, you actually care to understand institutional mechanisms that affect culture the answer is a much more difficult. One might start by reading a little Laitin.
It might not be as satisfying since it does call for a war against the world, but it does explain how identity is formed. It also shows that it is possible to address many of the problems we see through institutional change.
I support military action in Iraq conditionally. However, the Huntington argument is simply Ann Coulter’s argument about Christianizing them dressed up in academia.
MyDD argues that McBride-Rossin is wise since they’ll have limited GOTV money. The Political Wire cites a US News is reporting McAuliffe is heading down to start a GOTV operation.
I hate McAuliffe, but go get ’em boy.
Rothenberg describes the circular firing squad A.K.A. the Illinois Republican Party. The big news is that Phelps may be ahead in the 19th. I hadn’t heard this and it is sort of amazing. It makes sense given the series of commercials Shimkus has launched.
The problem with an Arnold write in is that his advisors are from the Wilson administration. The same people who brought you the energy dereg bill that resulted in the California Energy Gouging. Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New York haven’t had a crisis–why has Cal? Riordan would be better.
Rothstein offers an excellent critique of the Leave No Child Behind Act.
You have to make a choice. Either you leave standards to the states and allow them to measure themselves or you institute standards nationwide. If you do it half-way, you create an incentive for low standards.
USA Today lists the number of failing schools by state that have to allow transfers to better schools. This isn’t really true because there isn’t enough room in other schools in the same district. But it sounds nice.
Here is a Rand Report on test scores over time to compare states.
Montana has more failing schools than does Missouri. Controlling for population that looks strange doesn’t it? Of course, it could be that Missouri has better students, right? Wrong, Montana does pretty good on nationally normed test compared to Missouri. So how are there more failing schools? Montana tries harder..
As Rothstein points out, even if you measure the same way, states performance is based on what their goals are. Arkansas has 0 failing schools? ROTFL….sure. Louisiana has 24? New Orleans itself should have 24 let alone the whole damn state.
Michigan has 1500? Michigan isn’t at the head of the pack, but it isn’t that bad. It is above average according to the Dept of Ed.
What does this mean for the future of education reform? Given state funding is dependent on this, states have every incentive to lower their standards. So it isn’t going to leave no child behind, it is going to leave every state behind.
One might also notice that Vermont and Iowa do better than the national average. Dean is pointing this out and how much it is going to cost states that have been effective in education in the past. It is a critical point.
A hell of an education president.
More on Bob Greene at Chicago Magazine. I think he covers the issues very well and much better than the weird posts by Kaus.
Additionally, in the move on category he offers up Steve Johnson as a potential candidate. I like the idea and Johnson did some great work on TV and Media. Zorn would be okay, but frankly his best columns are when he does hard news. He does it to seldom, but when he does he adds an interesting perspective.
Another option, now that Chicago Magazine is a part of the Tribune family—Steve Rhodes.
At the end, Rhodes mentions Neil Steinberg of the Sun Times. The quote is quite funny:
“?I hope that Smarmy Nostalgist isn?t an actual job slot at the Tribune that they have to fill,? he said.”
He adds to that at Salon
His descriptions of Greene’s extracuriculars makes it clear why him and Michael Jordan got along so well.
Kinsley does a fine analysis of the “it’s just evil.”
So let’s have a countdown to the first moron who says that the environmentalists were crying wolf over ozone depletion now that the ozone hole is being replenished. The real story is the Montreal Protocol worked perfectly.
Even better, the double screw-up when they confuse global warming and ozone depletion will come from somewhere (other than Freepers who are just too easy).
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