From the WSJ Opinion Archives
'The Black Quarterback Effect'
Here's an odd twist on the Rush Limbaugh football kerfuffle: It turns out that
an academic paper published last October lends support to Limbaugh's comment,
which critics denounced as racist, that "social concern" led people
in the NFL and the media to hope Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb
would do well. The study, by Duke University economists Peter Arcidiacono, Jacob
Vigdor and Eric Aldrich, is titled "Race, Football and Television: Examining
the Black Quarterback Effect."
The three economists analyzed ratings for ABC-TV's "Monday Night Football" between 1997 and 2001 and found that "Monday Night Football games featuring black quarterbacks have Nielsen ratings 11% higher than otherwise identical games with two white starting quarterbacks." What accounts for this? Here's Vigdor's explanation, in an article posted Tuesday on the Web site of The American Prospect, a left-wing magazine: "The racial tolerance of the American public has increased dramatically over the past 20 years, at least in the world of sports. With this tolerance has come a true preference for diversity."
Now, here's where things get weird. In his article, Vigdor attempts to use his study to discredit Limbaugh's views. "If Limbaugh had done any research on the subject, he would have learned that the media's desire to see black quarterbacks succeed is not rooted in 'a little social concern,' but rather in good old-fashioned attention to the bottom line." Network executives, that is, cater to viewers' "preference for diversity" in an effort to drive up ratings and therefore profits.
Vigdor is setting up a false dichotomy. What is a "preference for diversity" if not a "social concern"? What's more, Limbaugh was referring not to executives and programming choices but to the opinions of sportswriters and commentators. Is there any reason to think they don't share the football-viewing public's preference for diversity?
At the same time as he is trying to distance himself from the congruence between his own findings and Limbaugh's views, Vigdor has removed the study itself from his Web site. Click here, where the study used to appear, and you get this message:
The paper "Race, Football and Television: Explaining the Black Quarterback Effect" has been removed from this site. Our contract with Neilsen Media Research requires us to refrain from posting the results of this study online.
Yet the study, published Oct. 29, 2002, apparently was available online, notwithstanding the Nielsen contract, for nearly a year. Yahoo has it cached here, though it's a PDF file rendered as HTML, which makes it hard to read in places. A comment in this blog entry, dated Oct. 4, links to the page where the study appeared. It would appear Vigdor decided to suppress the study only when it was linked to the Limbaugh comments, and he now expects interested parties to rely on his tendentious anti-Limbaugh explanation rather than see for themselves what the study said.
'There's
a Lot You Can Get Away With'
Here's an amusing, though mildly disturbing, little story from Teacher magazine.
It's an admiring profile of Colman McCarthy, the hippy-dippy erstwhile Washington
Post columnist who now teaches "peace studies." The magazine cover
has a photo of McCarthy smiling goofily and holding a sunflower. (Attentive
readers may remember McCarthy as the guy who, as we
noted in May 2002, objected to a campus speech by Condoleezza Rice because
she "advocates . . . sending U.S. pilots to kill human beings
in Afghanistan.") Teacher explains McCarthy's philosophy:
McCarthy's belief that peace can only be achieved through peaceful means is what drives him; it underlies every facet of his being. It is, for example, the foundation of his peace studies courses. Post-9/11, after suicidal terrorists attempted to kill as many people as possible with planes turned into bombs, does anyone honestly believe that "evildoers" can be stopped with peace, love, flowers, and not voting? McCarthy does. His courses examine the roots of aggression in the many forms they take--racism, sexual assault, poverty, patriotism, war. In each case, he argues that violence can be defanged with pacifist resistance.
"Peace through peaceful means" also explains McCarthy's classroom management style. He calls homework, tests, and grades "forms of academic violence." So, while he typically assigns two papers a semester and asks students to read essays by pacifists such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Leo Tolstoy, and Catholic social worker Dorothy Day, he doesn't require them to do anything. They don't even have to sit through his class if they don't want to be there, he tells them. And at the end of the course, McCarthy lets students choose their own grades.
Well, hey, it takes all kinds. What's a bit disturbing, though, is the article's closing anecdote, which takes place after a McCarthy speech to a group of teachers at the U.S. Institute of Peace:
McCarthy reluctantly wrapped up his speech at the 45-minute mark and was mobbed by several teachers who wanted to buy his books. Another group gathered in the back of the room to discuss what they'd just heard. While agreeing that McCarthy's in-your-face comments wouldn't fly with most school boards or parents, they excitedly talked about how radical pacifist ideas could enliven their own classes.
An elegant-looking teacher in her 40s wandered up and joined the conversation. The truth, she said conspiratorially, is that when you close your classroom door, you're in charge and there's a lot you can get away with. The others nodded in agreement.
Suddenly, the teacher registered with alarm that a reporter's tape recorder was running. She declared that her comments were off the record and abruptly walked away from the group. Reconsidering their candor, one by one other teachers in the circle requested that their comments, too, be considered off the record. Peace may have a chance in America's schools. But at least for now, the revolution will not be broadcast.
McCarthy's practice of letting students grade themselves may be eccentric, but it's benign by comparison with his acolytes' determination to indoctrinate kids and escape accountability.
Bloggers
on the Take
In an article on Howard Dean's fund-raising, The Hill, a newspaper that covers
Congress, offers the interesting revelation that as part of his effort "to
maximize his online fundraising punch," Dean has been "paying 'bloggers'
or professional Internet surfers to keep the enthusiasm up on his website."
We're all for free enterprise, but this does point up an advantage of "old media" over bloggers. Professional journalists may have their biases, but those of us who work for big-media outfits are bound by codes of ethics under which taking money in exchange for favorable coverage would be a huge no-no. Many bloggers, of course, genuinely are independent commentators, but there's no easy way of knowing which ones are on the take.
Those
Darn Republicans!
Democrats have essentially run California for the past five years; the party
controls both houses of the Legislature and currently holds all statewide offices,
though that will change with Arnold Schwarzenegger's inauguration as governor.
The message of this week's recall election would seem to be that the Dems have
made a mess of things, and in an extraordinary editorial today, the New York
Times implicitly acknowledges that's true. But guess whom the Times blames?
That's right: "Right-wing Republicans have been able to control their party's
nominating process, forcing a moderate-to-liberal populace to accept whatever
slate the Democrats deign to offer."
The recall, the Times sniffs, was a fit of "pique," which represented voters' "profound sense of irritation." Taking a more realistic view is Marc Cooper of the left-wing LA Weekly:
Refusing to validate or even recognize the raw voter resentment against the political cesspool of Sacramento, liberals wound up pinned up against the wall, on the losing side of an historic voter revolt. As the insurgency swelled, the best that liberal activists could do was plug their ears, cover their eyes and rather mindlessly repeat that this all was some sinister plot linked to Florida, Texas, Bush, the Carlyle Group, Enron, and Skull and Bones. By bunkering down with the discredited and justly scorned Gray Davis, they wound up defending an indefensible status quo against a surging wave of popular disgust. So gross was their miscalculation that the campaign ended last week with the lobbyist-infested state Capitol being surrounded by 10,000 broom-waving Arnold supporters instead of by what should have been an army of enraged reformers and progressives.
"The harder the Democrats now have to work to hold on to constituencies they'd rather take for granted, so much the better," Cooper writes. "One day they may actually get it." We suspect that won't happen unless the Dems suffer resounding losses in next year's election.
Metaphor
Alert
From a Washington Post piece on the recall and the media:
"This seems another step in the same muddy ruin of politics that we're trekking through," said Todd Gitlin, a journalism and sociology professor at Columbia University. "It's the same part played by Oprah in the process of sanitizing and normalizing Schwarzenegger as a legitimate politician." Schwarzenegger appeared with wife Maria Shriver on "Oprah," in one of his very few televised interviews during the campaign.
And Gitlin doesn't like this development. "I object to the power they harbor in the first place, and I object to the further erosion to such line as there has been between the spectacle and the political process."
You
Don't Say
"Recall May Be Sign of Trouble for Status Quo"--headline, Chicago
Tribune, Oct. 9
ABC
Smears Bush as a Racist
"Bush Congratulates Schwarzenegger, 'Proud' of Race"--headline, ABCNews.com,
Oct. 8
Nice
Guys Don't Finish Last
The race to replace Gray Davis featured a crowded ballot: 135 names, by the
San Francisco Chronicle's count. Finishing dead last, with 172 votes according
to official
returns, was one Todd Richard Lewis. Who is Todd Richard Lewis? According
to the Chronicle, he's the maker of the "controversial" film "Bumfights,"
whose existence we
noted in May 2002.
According to the Chronicle, Lewis didn't even get his own vote: "I voted for Arnold," he said. Lewis also observes: "Gray Davis is a dufus."
This
Just In
"Gore Criticizes Bush, Energy Companies over Global Warming"--headline,
WATE-TV Web site (Knoxville, Tenn.), Oct. 7
Good
News Watch
President Bush spoke at a New Hampshire National Guard base today, part of what
the media are inevitably disparaging as a "public relations campaign"
to call attention to progress in Iraq:
Who can possibly think that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power? Surely not the dissidents who would be in his prisons or end up in mass graves. Surely not the men and women who would fill Saddam's torture chambers, or the women in his rape rooms. Surely not the victims he murdered with poison gas. Surely not anyone who cares about human rights and democracy and stability in the Middle East. There is only one decent and humane reaction to the fall of Saddam Hussein: Good riddance.
Meanwhile, the Dallas Observer features an interview with Cpl. Lee Strange, a local Marine who's on leave from the First Battalion of the Fourth Regiment:
Only when prodded will he suggest that the media reports he's been made aware of in recent months "have put out things a little differently" from what he saw and experienced. Words like "quagmire" clearly are not part of his vocabulary. . . .
The names of the cities and hamlets soon became a blur--An Nasiriyah, Ash Shatrah, over the Euphrates to Ad Diwaniyah--as they advanced northward. "You could tell," he says, "that at one time it had been a beautiful country, before Saddam took all the money for himself. By the time we arrived, the towns were run-down, and living conditions were obviously not what they should have been."
It is, in fact, the people that have stayed with the young Marine, the faces of waving children peering from behind a mother's dress or hefted onto a father's shoulders as the American motorcade passed. Strange enjoyed handing out the small gifts he and his fellow soldiers carried with them. "You realize pretty quickly that all kids, regardless of their language or the country in which they live, love candy. And soccer is the main sport over there, so when we'd pitch a new soccer ball into a crowd of little boys, eyes just lit up."
Strange adds: "Being over there opened my eyes to things I'd never really thought that much about; the freedom we have here to do what we want and go wherever we please."
Zero-Tolerance
Watch
Fifteen-year-old Andra Ferguson, a student at Caney
Creek High School in Conroe, Texas, suffers from asthma, which she treats
with Albuterol, a prescription inhaler. One day last month, Houston's KPRC-TV
reports, she suffered an attack and had forgotten to bring her inhaler. Brandon
Kivi, her boyfriend and a fellow asthmatic who uses the same medicine, lent
her his inhaler. "It made a big difference," said Ferguson. It did save
my life."
You can guess what happened: "The next day, he was arrested and accused of delivering a dangerous drug. Kivi was also suspended from school for three days. He could face expulsion and sent to juvenile detention on juvenile drug charges."
Great
Moments in Public Education
Columbus
East High School in Columbus, Ind., "has canceled its student production
of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' because of concerns over a racially sensitive word
in the play's dialogue," reports Indianapolis's WRTV:
The school's drama teacher asked the play's publisher to let the students take the "N-word" out of the dialogue, but the publisher refused, Principal William Jensen said. . . .
Before the play was canceled, the drama teacher asked Gwendolyn Wiggins, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, what she thought of using the word in the play. Wiggins said she didn't want students to hear it.
"That would be giving another reason to say, 'OK, if they use it in the play, we can say it outside the play.' And that's not right," Wiggins said.
"The school's decision came as a local children's museum prepared an exhibit about discrimination that will feature the word in question," the report adds. The exhibit "will have a sign warning people that it contains strong language."
Have
You Stopped Mailing Your Wife?
"New Anti-Family Violence Stamp Goes on Sale"--headline, Associated
Press, Oct. 8
The Onion Imitates Life
"The Federal Communications Commission decided that U2 singer Bono's utterance of an obscenity during this year's broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards did not constitute a violation of the nation's broadcast indecency rules. . . . 'The word "f---ing" may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities,' the bureau wrote. 'Rather, the performer used the word "f---ing" as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation. Indeed, in similar circumstances, we have found that offensive language used as an insult rather than as a description of sexual or excretory activities or organs is not within the scope of the commission's prohibition of indecent program content.' "--Hollywood Reporter, Oct. 7
"The government agency responsible for enforcing broadcast-decency laws can do nothing to stop rampant use of the word 'friggin',' Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell said Monday. 'Everyone knows what it really means when someone uses that word,' Powell said. 'Still, we hear it all over the morning radio shows, all the time. Oooh, it burns me up. Those DJs aren't fooling anyone, certainly not us here at the FCC. But sadly, our hands are tied.' Powell suggested that users of the non-profanity just grow up."--the Onion, Oct. 8 (last item)
What
Would We Do Without Performers?
"Performer Says Tiger Attack Was an Accident"--headline, Reuters,
Oct. 9
Senseless
in Seattle
The Washington State Court of Appeals has approved a plan to spend $9 million
in taxpayers' money "to build a 75-unit apartment building and then stock
it with chronic alcoholics," reports KOMO-TV:
Said tenants would get free, or reduced, rent, along with meals and access to alcoholism treatment.
The only rub is that those with the alcohol problem will not only be allowed--nay, encouraged!--to drink in their new apartments, they'll also be allowed to invite others in to drink with them!
Sounds like a great place to watch tonight's Democratic debate.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Patrick Sullivan, Dave Bell, Elitza Meyer, Barak Moore, John Garber, Edward Schulze, Chris Keating, Harold Kurtz, Joel Engel, Martin Karo, Bernard Levine, Susan Petrarca, Doug Payton, Charlie Gaylord, Kevin Patrick, Chris Craft, David Schlosser, Leslie Petersen, Tom Stiff, Brian Herrick, Edward Hildebrand, Brian Tully, Bill Deeks, Charles Kalina, John Tuerck, Brian Ballard and Steve Sudhoff. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Californians send a message to the political class and the press.
- John Fund: Louisiana's next governor may be an Indian-American Republican.
- Mike Gonzalez: A Cuban dissident should win the Nobel Peace Prize, but probably won't.
- Clint Bolick: Make "No Excuses" for schools that fail black Americans.
- Political Diary: Postrecall anger management, winners and losers, etc.
