The Good Ol’ Vietnam War Days
Writing about his retirement, former Washington Post managing editor Robert Kaiser (2/28/14) recalled that he “loved the politicians” he covered when he was a young reporter, “people who knew and cared a great deal about governing,” whereas today “lies and intellectual inventions are now typical of our public life.” Kaiser’s first professional job at the Post was in 1964, the year of the Tonkin Gulf Incident—an “intellectual invention” that led to the deaths of millions of people in the Vietnam War.
Ronald Reagan, Peacenik
USA Today columnist Jonah Goldberg (3/3/14) said that President Barack Obama was insufficiently supportive of US policies during the Cold War. Goldberg’s Exhibit A—no kidding—was a college paper Obama wrote in the ’80s, where he criticized the “twisted logic” of the Cold War, America’s “war mentality” and the “distorted national priorities” of President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup, arguing instead that the US should work for a “nuclear-free world.”
“There’s precious little evidence,” Goldberg wrote, that Obama’s views have changed. “In his first term, President Obama’s biggest priority with Russia was to get the two countries on the path to that ‘nuclear-free world.’”
One wonders why Goldberg didn’t cite the president’s statement that he aimed to reduce nuclear arms “with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth.” Maybe because the president who said that was Reagan (10/27/86).
‘We’ = You, Me & the Koch Brothers
The March 7 front-page USA Today headline declared: “We’re 9 Trillion, 800 Billion Dollars Richer”—to which the vast majority of people might well respond, “Huh?”
The story began, “A booming stock market and recovering home values boosted Americans’ household wealth by nearly $10 trillion last year, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday.” The inevitable “but” soon followed:
But the gains since the crisis have not been equally distributed. Most of the recovered wealth has come from higher stock prices, and many Americans are not in the market. The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans own 80 percent of stocks.
Why use “we” over a story about an increase in the value of stocks that most people do not own? USA Today seemed to try to fudge this in the conclusion: “Even so, the economy benefits because people spend more when they feel richer. And consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of US economic activity.”
The trouble is, it’s hard for people to “feel richer” when they’re not—even when headlines tell them they are.
The ‘Can I Have Some More?’ Loophole
“Please, sir–I’ve discovered a loophole!”
“States Use Farm Bill Loophole to Stem Food Stamp Cuts”: That’s how the Washington Post (3/26/14) headlined a story about states changing their heating aid programs to keep poor residents eligible for additional federal food stamps. The food stamp law formerly gave extra help—known as “heat and eat”—to people who received as little as one dollar in heating aid. The Republican-led House, wanting to make food stamps harder to get, rewrote the law to require at least $20 a year in heating aid to qualify for the supplement. So governors in eight states said they would comply with the law by raising their heating subsidies to that amount—a completely predictable response that the Post labeled a “loophole.”
The Post made clear what it saw as the important point: The story led with the heating aid change “potentially wiping out billions of dollars in savings Congress agreed to last month,” while the last sentence noted that if every state followed suit, “all $8.5 billion in cuts would disappear.” It’s like describing Oliver Twist as the story of a conniving orphan scheming to bust the poorhouse budget by demanding seconds of gruel.
Why Does Richard Cohen Hate Poor Kids?
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (3/18/14) was “mystified” that some people are critical of wealthy donors’ support for charter schools. “They’re helping poor children,” he insisted—claiming that “by the usual measurements—test scores, etc.—they are succeeding,” in contrast to “the old system,” in which “failure was a certainty.” Opponents of charter schools, he suspected, “would rather hurt the rich than help the poor.”
Online, Cohen linked the phrase “test scores” to a Washington Post article (7/30/13) headlined “D.C. Students Reach New Heights in Annual Standardized Tests.” Note that the subject of the headline is “D.C. students,” because that story reported gains by students in both charter schools and the “old system” alike.
But not quite alike: Over the past seven years, D.C. charter schools have raised test scores by an average of 15.0 percent—while the old system, where “failure was a certainty,” has raised them by 17.2 percent. In other words, the “usual measurement” pointed to by Cohen as proof of the value of charter schools actually suggests that charter school students are slightly worse off.
