This Week:

“Quote”-O-Rama

“Wage Gap Still Rankles;” Solution Out of Bounds

Due to “Silly” Salesman, Views of U.S. “Darken”

Greetings,

Just between you and me, Nygaardians, I am having a serious problem in finding space for all of the things that merit discussion lately. There are huge events coming up on March 20, for example, the one-year anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. There are exciting things happening with health care, especially on the state level, and also with corporate law reform.

And while the media goes berserk with the issue of gay marriage—which is a crucial human rights issue, for sure—the unbelievable federal budget submitted by the “President” has gotten very little attention, indeed. Next week I hope to have a bit to say on all of these issues, along with some websites and resources for keeping up with some of this stuff.

I may have to resort to a couple of double issues to catch up. I know some of you tell me that you don’t even have time to read the single issues, but what’s a general-interest journalist to do? You can zero in on the issues that interest you, and ignore the rest. Right?

I really appreciate all the letters and comments I’ve received recently from all you readers. You really keep me on my toes! I’m sorry that I have been a little delinquent in responding; I’ve been under the weather for a week or so, and am just recovering. And, again, WELCOME to the new readers this week. Let me know what you think!

Until next week,

Nygaard

“Quote”-O-Rama:

Normally in this space I run the “Quote” of the Week. But there were far too many unbelievable quotations in the news this past couple of weeks to limit myself to just one “Quote. So, here are a bunch of “quotes,” all deserving of the honor.

“QUOTE” #1: From the New York Times, February 14, 2004, front page. Headline: “Chaos and War Leave Iraq's Hospitals in Ruins,” here are two assessments of the state of Iraq’s hospitals.

First, from Eman Asim, the Ministry of Health official who oversees the country's 185 public hospitals:

“It's definitely worse now than before the war. Even at the height of sanctions, when things were miserable, it wasn't as bad as this. At least then someone was in control.”

And, from Bob Goodwin, an American health adviser for the Coalition Provisional Authority “who has been working with the Health Ministry since last summer”:

“I've been all around the country and we're better than prewar levels across the board.”

Good for Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman for putting these comments on the front page, within an inch of each other!

“QUOTE” #2: Also from Iraq, this journalism is deserving not of kudos, but of disdain, as it hints at how fundamentally wrong is the “angle” of the reporting on the ongoing violence against U.S. occupation forces—and their local allies—in that country.

Two bombs were set off in Iraq on February 10th and 11th, at an army recruiting center and a police station, killing about 80 people. The New York Times, in their report of February 11th (possible due to time differences), reported that “dozens of Iraqi men stormed the ruined police station after American soldiers left in the late afternoon. ‘No, no to America!’ they chanted while swarming past the charred hulks of cars.”

Add this to the endless other stories of attacks and demonstrations against the occupation, and a picture begins to emerge. Still, when it came to assigning some sort of meaning to the events of February 10 and 11, here’s what the Times came up with:

“[T]he bombing showed that the Americans still have not won the Iraqis’ full trust.”

“QUOTE” #3: Hennepin County is Minnesota’s most populous and urban county, home of Minneapolis. Now, from the Star Tribune of February 17, here is a comment from Hennepin County Sheriff Patrick McGowan, in a letter to the Hennepin County Commissioners:

“Almost everything we do today must be analyzed and treated as a potential terroristic threat or event.”

“QUOTE” #4: From the Star Tribune of February 11th, in a story headlined “Bush Will Endorse Ban on Gay Marriage” (which, of course, he now has done), comes the following comment:

“The White House strategy, designed to minimize alienation of moderate voters, calls for emphasizing that Bush is for traditional marriage, not against gay people.”

In case the problem with this “strategy” is not obvious to readers, let me point out that this sort of formulation — “We’re not AGAINST this, we’re FOR that.”—is the standard rhetoric of the most reviled hate groups we’ve seen in this country. If you think I’m making this up, consider this quotation from Jeff Berry, the Imperial Wizard of the Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in a 1999 interview:

“The reason The Klan is in existence is for equal rights. We're not against Blacks.”

“Wage Gap Still Rankles;” Solution Out of Bounds

You’ll almost never see a headline these days pointing out that government regulations sometimes are effective, or explaining how they might bring about outcomes that are supported by the overwhelming majority of our citizens. The ideology that is dominant in the early-21st-Century United States is that The Free Market does everything better than The Government ever could do or hope to do. I’m not an advocate of “Big Government” but, given the choice between Big Government and Big Business, well... Just look at the following story from the local press.

In the Business Section of the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) of November 29th ran an article headlined “Wage Gap Still Rankles; Little Change in Pay Differences Between Genders.” The article reported that “the wage gap between men and women hasn't budged much in 20 years, according to a report released last week by the General Accounting Office.” As the headline indicates, the Star Trib appears to assume that this is undesirable for many (most?) of its readers; thus the gap “still rankles.”

The article explains how bad the situation is and throws out some theories as to why this gap is still so large. The reporter apparently went to a local coffee shop and talked about the report to a couple of women who were there. (They were “disgusted.”)

“Women's groups have been somewhat muted in their response to the report,” the article claimed, and backed that up with a quotation from the lead author of the GAO report, who said, “We haven't heard any outrage.” (Apparently they don’t go to the right coffee shops.) The report itself said “Our model could not explain all the earnings difference” between men and women. Still, the Star Trib reporter was able to find several sources who claimed that the problem was women themselves. (They “don't know how to go out and get what they deserve,” they “need to consider changing job categories within their fields to get ahead,” or they “play down their strengths.” Blah, blah, blah.) The reporter must have mentioned these theories to her coffee-house friends, as one was quoted as saying “Here we are, blaming the victim for the situation.”

OK, back to the role of regulation. In the very last paragraph of the 800-word story, on page 10 of the Business Section, the reporter referenced the comments of a “spokeswoman for Business and Professional Women USA.” Here is that last paragraph:

“Lawmakers can do much more, [the spokeswoman] said, applauding a Minnesota law mandating pay equity for government employees. As of last year, women working for the state made 97 percent of what their male counterparts earned. ‘That's a model for the nation,’ she said.”

So, what’s the unspeakable lesson here? It looks like “government regulation” has really worked for publicly-employed women in Minnesota, while the behavior of the Free Market “still rankles.

Due to “Silly” Salesman, Views of U.S. “Darken”

There’s little debate about the falling popularity of the United States around the world since September 11, 2001. Many United Statesians have been devoting some thought to why this might be the case. The media is no exception.

As an example, consider a major article (eleven reporters helped write it!) that appeared on the front page of the New York Times on September 11th, 2003—the second anniversary of the attacks—headlined “Foreign Views Of U.S. Darken After Sept. 11.” The article was loaded with important information, but framed in a very odd voice, sort of a combination of “Why does the rest of the world have such funny ideas?” and “Maybe they don’t really mean it.” Here are a few excerpts from that article, which I think reflects a certain elitist interpretation of this data.

Here’s the uncontroversial lead paragraph:

“In the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, the view of the United States as a victim of terrorism that deserved the world's sympathy and support has given way to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.”

In the article were lots of telling explanations for why this is so. For example, “[W]hile the United States probably feels more threatened now than in 1989, when the cold war ended, Europe is broadly unconvinced of any imminent threat.”

“A [recent] poll...found Americans and Europeans agreeing on the nature of global threats but disagreeing sharply on how they should be dealt with. Most striking was a difference over the use of military force, with 84 percent of Americans but only 48 percent of Europeans supporting force as a means of imposing international justice.” [Editor’s note: “ONLY 48 percent”?!]

These are all good points, and one way to place them in context would be to consider the history of U.S. power—and the abuse of that power—in the post-World War II and post-Soviet Union period in shaping today’s differences of opinion on the role of the U.S. in the world.

Or, alternatively, one could do what the Times did, which was to attempt to put a Smiley Face on the facts, implying that the situation isn’t all that bad. As in paragraph 6: “The subject of America in the world is of course complicated, and the nation's battered international image could improve quickly in response to events. The Bush administration's recent turn to the United Nations for help in postwar Iraq may represent such an event.” It “could.” It “may.”

Here’s an odd comment, found in paragraph 41: “Still, broad sympathy for the United States exists in many areas. Students from around the world clamor to be educated in America. The United States as a land of opportunity remains magnetic.” Someone should perhaps tell the Times that “clamoring to be educated in America” has about as much to do with “sympathy for the United States” as street begging has to do with “sympathy” for the wealthy patrons being solicited.

Here’s more reinforcement of popular U.S. mythology “[T]he war in Iraq seems to have been the defining event, the division of Europe into ‘new’ and ‘old’ halves, defined by their willingness to support the American-led war.”

I addressed this ‘new’ and ‘old’ Europe nonsense ‘way back in Nygaard Notes #132 (“Act of War? Or Crime Against Humanity? The World Weighs In”) I pointed out back then that overwhelming majorities of the actual population (as opposed to their political leaders) of all of Europe have opposed the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq from Day One. The only way the “new” and “old” Europe idea makes sense is if “new” means “having leaders willing to defy their population in service to U.S. foreign policy,” and “old” means “having a functioning democracy.” And that is pretty much what it means when stated by elites in this country and parroted by the media.

Bad Public Relations?

As always—and here’s how the increasingly-prevalent Advertising Mentality shapes the news—the Times sees that a big part of the problem is nothing more than bad PR. Under the sub-headline “Bush As Salesman,” for example, the Times says, “Crucial to global opinion has been the failure of the Bush administration to persuade large segments of the public of its justification for going to war in Iraq.” [Note: It’s not important to HAVE justification, but to get people to believe that they did. JN]

The Times again: “In striking contrast to opinion in the United States, where polls show a majority believe there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda terrorists, the rest of the world remains skeptical.” In case you are among the non-skeptical, let me remind you that there is still no evidence of any connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Unless you use as sources the documents produced by the same people who “knew” that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction all over the place in Iraq.

The Times continues: “A recent survey...showed a growth of anti-American sentiment in many non-European parts of the world. It found, for example, that only 15 percent of Indonesians have a favorable impression of the United States, down from 61 percent a year ago. This turn for the worse has occurred despite a $10 million program by the State Department in which speakers and short films showing Muslim life in the United States were sent last fall to Muslim countries, including Indonesia.” Funny, they seem to be saying, our PR usually works...

Just to close on an amusing note, here is a Londoner that the Times found, Philip Gawaith, who attempted to explain why George W. has been “a very poor salesman for the United States” around the world: “Whether it's Al Qaeda or Afghanistan, people have just felt that he's a silly man, and therefore they are not obliged to think any harder about his position.”

A silly man, perhaps, Mr. Gawaith, but one who is the commander-in-chief of the most awesome military force in the history of the planet. And, for that reason alone, we are all obliged to think very hard about the positions taken by the “President” of the United States.