![]() RACE AND THE RACE (PART 1)! Its the law! When the Times considers race, it includes at least one bungled fact: // link // print // previous // next //
TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2008 COKIES VACATION PLANNING: At TPM, David Kurtz called her observations mind-numbingly banal. If anything, he was being too kind. For the record, lets memorialize Cokies vacation planning. From Sunday mornings This Week:
She knows Hawaiis a state! For the record, candidates have routinely vacationed in the summer of election years. Theyve sometimes done so during the other partys convention, but the conventions come quite late this year. Its always hard to capture the know-it-all tone of this particular arbiter of all things Inside Washington. (To watch the tape, just click here.) That said, we thought two points were worth making about Cokies vacation planning remarksthe very first statement she offered the world during Sundays program. First, Obama wasnt tied in the polls as the doyenne spoke. At RealClear Politics, he was leading by an average of 4.4 points. (Today, the lead is 4.8 points.) And no, standard margin of error doesnt apply to an average of polls. Polls can be wrong in a whole lot of ways. But Obama wasnt and isnt tied. At present, Obamas ahead. More annoyingly: For years, pundits like Roberts have rolled their eyes about the way the deeply phony Bill Clinton once polled his familys summer vacation. Just last week, Lisa Wangsness recalled this very bad character episode in the Boston Globe:
It was a famous symbol! Back then, everyone trashed big phony Bill Clinton because he didnt vacation in the place he preferred. Now, Obama vacations in the place he prefers, and Cokie pops up with a better idea: He should have consulted the polls! But then, this is the way this banal cohort has long made a joke of your discourse. We have one small complaint about David Kurtzs post; he says, This is the sort of mind-numbingly banal observation that passes for political analysis these days (our emphasis). In fact, this banality has driven our discourse for yearsfor well over a decade. Progressives shouldnt miss the chance to tell voters: This has gone on for a very long time. Its time for these losers to go. Banality, fall-of-2000 style: On October 22, 2000, world history hung in the balance. But so what? For a taste of Cokies banality on that crucial day, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/8/06. Two words: Dingell and Norwood. How they get so banal: Yesterday, searching for that old profile of Mike Wallace, we stumbled upon another old piece by Howard Kurtza piece about Cokies big money. The piece was adapted from Hot Air, Kurtzs 1995 book about pundit gasbags. It appeared in the Washington Post. (This is Howard Kurtz, not David.) With surprising candor, Kurtz discussed Cokies mid-90s buck-raking. This was big money back in the day, more than twelve years ago:
Uh-oh! That sort of thing was bad enough, but Kurtz tattle-taled like the worst of class traitors in his actual book. What became of the guy who wrote what follows? Twelve years later, this reads like a dispatch from a different, lost world:
Much of that was speculative, of course. But good God! Can anyone remember the world in which Kurtz wrote copy like that? Today, Kurtz writes very different booksbooks in which he helps multimillionaires like Brian Williams tell you how much they love shopping at Target. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/6/08; scroll down toGallatin chic. For the first three parts of our series on Kurtz and Williams, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/14/07.) Please dont make us show youagainthe house where Tim Russert summered. Progressives should tell the public two things: These people have made a joke of your discourseand many of them are exceptionally wealthy. We would assume those two things go together. Kurtz once believed the same way. Third and fourth things progressives might mention: Third thing: Todays big pundits work quite hard to keep you from knowing about their wealth. Fourth thing: Many young career liberal pundits may have their eyes on that wealth too.
About that old McCain profile: We knowwe owe you that 1999 McCain profile, by that local Arizona reporter. Well post it by the end of the week. Sorryits not on-line. PART 1FIRST, YOU BUNGLE: Its hard for people to understand how unimpressive the mainstream press really is. Bias is one thing in reporting and punditrybut ineptitude is another. To wit: In Saturdays New York Times, a statistic was prominently featured in Charles Blows op-ed columna statistic which is (take your pick) either wrong or grossly misleading. (In April, Blow became the Times visual Op-Ed columnist. His columns appear on alternate Saturdays.) We were struck by his mistake, partly because his topic is so important, partly because the mighty Times cant seem to stop bungling basic data when discussing this general area:
That statement is part of the graphic which accompanies Blows piece (just click here). It was prominently featured on Saturdays op-ed page. For the record, the statistic is wrong. Whites represent 85 percent of registered voters? That number seems to be wrong, unless you lump Hispanics in with whites, an unusual practice which wasnt followed in the New York Times/CBS poll from which Blow derived the rest of his data. According to this official report from the Census Bureau, 78 percent of registered voters were non-Hispanic whites in 2004. (111 million out of 142 million. See Table B, page 4.). The same percentage obtained in 2006 for the congressional elections. (107 million out of 136 million total. Click here, see Table 2, page 4.) Actually, nowhites dont represent 85 percent of registered voters. In fairness, Blows error doesnt contradict or negate anything he says or implies in his piece; it doesnt negate his critical claim that race could prove to be pivotal in the presidential election this year. But a basic question came to mind when we looked at this latest error: Does the New York Times ever get its basic facts right when discussing a serious topic like race? After all, consider this: Dowd does visceral prejudice: In that recent New York Times/CBS News poll (click here), 31 percent of white voters expressed a favorable view of Obama. In the same poll, 35 percent of white voters expressed a favorable view of McCain. Nothing about those data should have been surprising or shocking; in contemporary politics, white voters typically favor the Republican White House candidate. (Among all voters, Obama led McCain in the poll, 45-39.) But how did Maureen Dowd handle those data? Simple! In her column, she omitted McCains low favorable ratingthen claimed that Obamas low favorable rating represented visceral racial prejudice. (She threw in Obamas high ratings among blacks, thus creating a meaningless contrast. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/5/08). It would be hard to bungle simple data more perfectly. Simple data about our most important political/cultural topic. Then too, consider this: Bazelon does striking improvements: In a recent New York Times magazine piece, Emily Bazelon reported on educational progress in Wake County, North Carolinaone of the nations largest school systems. This is a very important topic. But Bazelon presented these basic datadata she bungled:
In fact, that 40 percent figure was simply wrong, according to official state data; the actual figure should have been 51.6 percent. (North Carolina officials have told us that they stand behind the official data on the states education web site. Bazelon said she got the lower figure from an Ohio State researcher.) And in fact, scores for black students got better over the same time period by almost exactly as much statewide as they did in Wake CountyBazelons suggestion to the contrary notwithstanding. Bazelon urged New York Times readers to think that Wake Countys particular policies had produced the striking improvements in questionstriking improvements shed in fact overstated, striking improvements which had been matched statewide. In fact, her statistical work had been bungledagain. (In September 2005, a front-page report in the Sunday Times had made the same types of statistical bungles.) Dowd and Bazelon bungled simple statistics. Now, we get Blow talking about race and racismand he (and his editors) cant even report the most basic fact about voter registration. Hence the vast discontent that swept through our analysts ranks when they first glanced at Blows piece. But then, Blow asked a question of giant importance: Could racial voting by some white voters change the outcome of Novembers election? In Saturdays piece, Blow started with a bungled statisticbut this seems to be the law at the Times. Things got somewhat better from there. And his topic is very important. As Blow notes, this is a difficult topic to poll. But its also a critical topica topic thats well worth discussing. Tomorrow, well start to review the rest of Blows stats. You can decide how well he handled the datathose he chose to include, and those he chose to leave out. TOMORROWPART 2: The 5 percent confession.
Discourse on method: Weve e-mailed Blow twice about that statistic. So far, no reply.
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