Tag Archives: responsibilities

Book or Smear?

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Bob Woodward wrote a book about President Donald Trump, and his “on-the-record” sources are coming out of the…woodwork…to deny they said the things Woodward claims they said or that they were misrepresented in misleading ways (redundancy deliberate).

I have to ask: does Woodward have any “on the record” sources about whom he hasn’t seemed to have lied? He claims to have tapes and transcripts of those conversations and of his claimed conversations with anonymous “sources.”

Regarding the latter, he should explain why we should believe anonymous sources who’ve demonstrated their dishonesty by speaking against their terms of employment if not their oaths of office.

Publish the tapes and transcripts, or there’s no reason to believe they exist.  If they don’t exist, there’s no reason to believe those “on the record” sources were honestly cited or that those anonymous “sources” actually exist.

Sadly, even the Wall Street Journal‘s author of the piece at the link, Rebecca Ballhaus, has chosen to go along with Woodward’s game.  Citing a statement by Rob Porter in which he said he was struck by the selective and often misleading portrait in the book, she wrote,

Mr Porter didn’t dispute any specific elements….

Gary Cohn said in a separate statement that that the book does not accurate[ly] portray my experience at the White House.  Ballhaus again:

He, too, didn’t dispute any specific anecdotes.

This is a cynically misleading over-parsing of their statements, carefully designed to leave the impression that Woodward’s claims are true, just because the two men chose not to enumerate and explicitly deny every jot and tittle of Woodward’s missive.

Timidity

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Sadanand Dhume had an opinion piece in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal decrying Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ decision to cancel a contest through which ” participants were invited to lampoon the prophet Muhammad.”  Wilders pleaded “security concerns” because of some protests in Pakistan.

On the whole, I agree with Dhume.  However, I’m less concerned with Pakistani whinings than I am with the cowardice displayed by Wilders and his cronies in canceling their contest.

A few short years ago, a similar “Draw Muhammad” contest was held in Dallas. The terrorists who tried to disrupt that contest were stopped in their tracks by ordinary American citizens.  The Dutch are not Danes, but I wouldn’t have thought them this timid.

Another Miss

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This time by The Wall Street Journal.  In an op-ed about the coward’s piece in The New York Times (if that individual actually exists, otherwise it’s the cowardice of the NYT editorial staff), the WSJ closed with this remark.

The tragedy of this Presidency is that his rants and insults—even toward people who work for him—threaten to overwhelm his policy achievements.

This is true only because the persons of the press choose to enable that. It’s their conscious editorial choice to give emphasis to President Donald Trump’s rants and insults over his policy efforts and achievements. It’s their carefully deliberated editorial choice to give primacy to form over substance.

Little Nations

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…and big nations.  There’s a meeting of 18 nations of the Pacific, the Pacific Islands Forum, occurring in the nation of Nauru, an island nation in the Pacific.  Nauru is 2500 miles north of New Zealand, and it would fit inside Providence, RI (in fact, it would fit inside my home town of Kankakee, IL).

The People’s Republic of China is present at the meeting as an observer; it’s not a member of the PIF.  You already know where and how big the PRC is.

Nauru formally recognizes the Republic of China, resident on the island of Taiwan, and it does not recognize the PRC—Nauru’s version of a One China Policy.  The PRC tried to take advantage of the meeting and the size disparity to force an opportunity for its representative to speak at the forum when it’s not otherwise authorized—that lack of membership bit.  Nauru President Baron Waqa said

[The PRC official] insisted, and was very insolent about it, and created a big fuss and held up the meeting of leaders for a good number of minutes when he was only an official.  Maybe because he was from a big country he wanted to bully us.

Waqa and the tiny island nation faced him down; the rep did not speak to the forum.

It would be good if some larger nations were inspired by this and also faced down the PRC.

Facts-s-s-s

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It burns-s-s-s….

Brown University has come under fire after censoring its own study on transgender youth, which found that social media and friends can influence teenagers to change their gender identity.

After all, the study’s findings might invalidate the perspectives of members of the transgender community.  Can’t have the narrative contradicted.

Here are examples of what its study found, according to the study’s author, Lisa Littman, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown, physician, and author of the study:

The transition often happens after teens use social media and watch online videos about transitioning to another gender.
“In on-line forums, parents have been reporting that their children are experiencing what is described here as ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria,’ appearing for the first time during puberty or even after its completion[.]
“The onset of gender dysphoria seemed to occur in the context of belonging to a peer group where one, multiple, or even all of the friends have become gender dysphoric and transgender-identified during the same timeframe[.]”

And

The parents [surveyed in the study] described “a process of immersion in social media,” such as binge-watching “transition videos” and excessive use of social media, immediately preceding their child becoming gender dysphoric[.]

And a part of the study’s conclusion:

The research goes on to suggest that teens could be influencing each other to promote certain behaviors through “peer contagion.”

Bess Marcus, School of Public Health Dean at Brown, rationalized the university’s censorship this way:

[The university] has heard from Brown community members expressing concerns that the conclusions of the study could be used to discredit efforts to support transgender youth and invalidate the perspectives of members of the transgender community.
The University and School have always affirmed the importance of academic freedom and the value of rigorous debate informed by research…[all studies] should be debated vigorously.
… At the same time, we believe firmly that it is also incumbent on public health researchers to listen to multiple perspectives and to recognize and articulate the limitations of their work.

But only so long as those multiple perspectives suit the predetermined conclusion.  That’s the critical limitation of any work.

There’s no doubt that gender dysphoria exists.  Understanding it, though, and preventing it or treating it where appropriate are impossible so long as today’s Galileos are to be kept locked away.