Caveat lector

TRAINED SEELYE (PART 3)! Kerry was “out of the mainstream,” Spinner One says. But check out her hopeless examples:

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2004

KINSLEY’S RETURN: This morning, Michael Kinsley is back, doing what a real press corps must. In recent weeks, Bush and his team have made a joke of your discourse with clowning charges against Candidate Kerry. These charges insult the public’s intelligence. But we’ve reached a point where it’s almost impossible to insult the intelligence of the press corps. We never thought we’d see the day when a Post Pundit stood up and fought.

This morning, Kinsley defends the public interest against Bush’s latest deception—the laughable claim that big-spending Kerry raised taxes 350 times in his Senate career. Bush is laughing right in your face. At last, today, Kinsley stands up.

TRAINED SEELYE (PART 3): Is Kerry weak on intelligence? Soft on defense? Last Saturday, “Kit” Seelye pretended to study this claim in a lengthy piece for the New York Times. And the Times’ unparalleled Spinner One suggested that Kerry has some troubling history. “Since the late 1990’s Mr. Kerry’s votes on the military and intelligence have fallen more in the mainstream,” she hissed, early on in her piece. Then, in one of her many ESL constructions, Seelye tosses Kerry this bone:

SEELYE (pgh 12): While Republicans accuse him of voting to eliminate numerous weapons programs, by the end of 19 years in the Senate Mr. Kerry also voted for many to be continued.

But when we look for examples of Kerry’s malfeasance, we find that Seelye is clowning, as always. What is Seelye’s list of horribles? In 1995, Kerry proposed a $1.5 billion cut in intelligence funding over five years (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/22/04). Seelye doesn’t say that this represented one percent of the intelligence budget, and that Senate Republicans passed a bill that same year—a bill which cut intelligence by $3.8 billion, more than twice as much as Kerry’s proposal! And Seelye presents another complaint; in 1994, she says, Kerry had already authored a shocker. This time, “his measure would have cut $1 billion from the nation’s intelligence services and $3 billion in military programs,” once again over five years. In the area of intelligence, this was roughly one-fourth the size of the cut which Republicans passed the very next year. Meanwhile, the $3 billion in military cuts would have been a relative pittance over five years. But these are the only troubling proposals by Senator Kerry which Seelye is able to cite.

For the record, Seelye offers one more complaint about Kerry’s Senate record. What put the solon out of “the mainstream?” Seelye makes her complaint early on:

SEELYE (pgh 9): In the 1990’s Mr. Kerry voted against three defense authorization bills—in 1991, 1996 and 1997. He opposed the bill in 1991, he said, because it did not reflect changes in the post-cold-war world. He said the other bills were loaded with pork-barrel spending, and he favored transferring the money to domestic programs.

(10) Since the late 1990’s Mr. Kerry’s votes on the military and intelligence have fallen more in the mainstream…

Is Kerry actually weak on defense? Seelye devotes over 1800 words to this topic, but all we get are two proposals from the mid-1990s that seem to be well within “the mainstream” (although Seelye is careful to keep you from knowing that) and three votes on “defense authorization bills” that she makes almost no attempt to explain. In fact, this article provides almost no information about John Kerry’s actual record. What it does provide is something more crucial. It does provide silly spin about Kerry. And it does provide cover for Bush.

Where does the cover for Bush come in? Over the course of the past few weeks, Candidate Bush and the Bush campaign have aimed two stinging accusations at Kerry. Bush himself has said that Kerry was “willing to gut the intelligence services” when he proposed that 1995 cut. As we’ve seen, this accusation is patent nonsense—and Seelye omits the information that would let readers know that. And, as Seelye notes in passing, the Bush campaign has “accused Kerry of voting to eliminated numerous weapons programs” over the course of his Senate career. In Slate, Fred Kaplan argued that this charge has also been deeply deceptive. But Seelye takes a pass on Kaplan’sclaim. Her strangely incoherent paragraph 12 (see above) is all she has to say on the question. It’s one of the principal charges that Bush has made—and in an 1845-word report, Seelye knows enough to avoid it. Instead, she worries about proposed minor cuts, being careful not to keep you from knowing how “mainstream” those proposals really were. This is also cover for Bush—the man who said, in his latest Big Lie, that the proposals would have “gutted” our intelligence.

Bush is lying—and Seelye is hiding it. But then, some things never change in our public discourse. We might even say that it is as it was—as usual, Seelye is all about spin. Is Candidate Kerry soft on defense? You’ll never find out if you read Spinner One. Tomorrow, we look at some errors, we look at some spin—and we whisper about Seelye’s sources.

ICON CONDI’S CLOWNING CLOWNISTRY: What can we learn from Richard Clarke’s book? Nothing at all, absent careful analysis. But clowning clowns were out quite early trashing Clarke after 60 Minutes. Case in point: On Monday morning, Condoleezza Rice showed up on the clowning “news” program, Fox & Friends. If you enjoy being laughed at by Big Major Pols, you must check out Condi’s performance.

Needless to say, store-bought Steve Doocy knew his role—he had to trash the infidel, Clarke. In his initial query, Doocy displayed the clowning Fox style, referring to a claim that is made “in this new book that this guy is trying to sell today.” All questions of integrity safely put aside, Doocy popped the question to Rice: Had she ever heard of al Qaeda before her initial briefing by Clarke? Rice laughed in the face of every Fox viewer when she offered this clowning reply:

RICE: That’s ridiculous. Of course we all heard of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. We had of course heard that in 1998, when Dick Clarke was the counter-terrorism czar, al Qaeda had bombed United States embassies. We of course heard that al Qaeda was suspected of bombing the Cole in 2000 when Dick Clarke was counter-terrorism czar. And we understood that plots against the United States had been hatching since the 1990s, when Dick Clarke was counter-terrorism czar. So yeah, I think we had a clear picture of what was going on.

In this utterly foolish exchange, we get a clear picture of our modern discourse. A store-bought shill rolls over and dies. And the president’s national security chief is allowed to insult your intelligence. But then, Icon Condi is a press corps untouchable. To this day, no one has ever dared to ask about her most amazing statement—the claim that no one could have imagined using planes as missiles (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/4/03). Your press corps’ social judgments come first. Your national discourse always comes second, deep-sixed by store-bought losers like Doocy, and by the rest of a simpering class that has made Icon Condi their star.

They had a clear picture that Clarke was a loser. But they kept him on as counter-terrorism czar! It’s good enough for the fools at Fox. And it makes a rank joke of your discourse.

MORE CLOWNING: To see more consummate White House clowning, check out Jim Wilkinson on Monday’s Hardball. The White House spokesman clowned extra hard. Just click here.

Annals of urban education

BUT WHAT WILL WE DO WITH THE OTHERS: Readers keep sending questions about social promotion in our urban schools. Yesterday’s e-mail raised obvious questions. What the heck! Let’s post it again:

E-MAIL: It appears that you are advocating promoting students despite their inability to succeed at the appropriate grade level, only to create special “below-grade-level” classes for those same students once they are in the higher grade. Doesn’t this complicate things greatly, as opposed to, for example, teaching sixth-grade math to all students who are learning at that grade level, regardless of age? Moreover, doesn’t it simply postpone the ultimate problem? Under your solution, if I understand it correctly, you might have a class of 8th-grade students working at a 3rd-grade level, which presumably would advance to a 4th-grade level by the time the students are in 9th or 10th grade, and then a 5th- or 6th-grade level by the time the students reach 12th grade, whereupon the students will graduate, having failed to learn anything at even a high-school level.

Today, we post another e-mail, this one about readable textbooks. Like yesterday’s post, it asks a question people sensibly ask when they first hear the truth about our challenged urban schools:

E-MAIL: I’ve loved reading your recent posts on problems with our public schools, especially pertaining to reading levels of text books. Your concern with the reading level of textbooks sounds logical to me. I’ve forwarded on these discussions to the teachers that I know. I have one question though. If schools were to adopt your advice and tailor the text to the reading level of the class, what do you do with those advanced students for whom the new text would prove simplistic and boring?