Conservatives hate Freakonomics, that book by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner that takes on more than a few sticky issues that most people don’t normally consider to be within the purview of economics. (See also the Freakonomics blog).

Publisher’s Weekly notes:

There isn’t really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it’s wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious issues, including a detailed look at Levitt’s controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. Levitt has a knack for making that principle relevant to our daily lives

See, conservatives like conventional wisdom because it supports things the way they are and counsels against change. And conservatives especially dislike Levitt’s theories in Freakonomics because one of them suggests crime rates are causally linked to abortion and that the drop in crime rates in the late 90s was caused by the legalization of abortion in 1973 (read the book to understand it).

That’s why conservative icon Bill Bennett was criticizing the book. Not only did Bennett misunderstand Levitt’s argument, but he tried to make a false and intentionally racist corollary: “I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could [...] you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” Well, that made a sound.

In the list of those who understand how wrong Bennett was stands Harry Shearer, host of the radio program Le Show. His October 2 program (RealAudio stream, start at about 33 or 34 minutes in) of Le Show brought this to my attention and highlighted Bennett’s attempts to backpedal. Le Show, incidentally, is also available by podcast.

tags: abortion, bill bennett, conservative, conservatives, criticism, economist, economy, freakonomics, harry shearer, levitt, racisim, steven d levitt, steven d. levitt, steven levitt, theory, william bennett, william j bennett, william j. bennett

While I’m anxiously working to better fit libraries into the Google Economy, a few paragraphs of Barry Glassner’s The Culture of Fear, got me thinking about its role in politics.

Glassner was telling of how a 1996 article in USA Today quoted the National Assocation of Scholars saying that Georgetown University had dumbed down its curriculum and dropped Shakespeare requirements. Of course, nothing could have been farther from the truth, a point confirmed by the Georgetown’s dean. In fact, more, not fewer Shakespeare classes were required, but this correction ran only as a letter to the editor some time after the falsehoods of the first story had taken hold in popular culture.

That’s how it came to pass that Robert Brustein of the American Repertory Theater was quoted saying “most English departments are now held so completely hostage to fashionable political and theoretical agendas that it is unlikely Shakespeare can qualify as an appropriate author.” Political Correctness, was then and remains today a contentious issue on university campuses. The NAS and other groups had been so successful controlling media reportage on it throughout the 1990s that Brustein and many others could get quoted without being asked to offer evidence or qualifications for the claim. Still, University of Chicago grad student John Wilson looked into the claim.

Here again, the facts (as collected by Wilson and repeated by Glassner) contradicted the hype. The MLA data showed that 97% of English departments at four-year colleges offered at least one Shakespeare course and almost two thirds required Shakespeare courses for English majors. Further, the MLA online bibliography cited nearly 20,000 works related to Shakespeare, more than three times as many as for James Joyce, the runner up, and 36 times the number for Toni Morrison.

In short, the old bard was getting as much attention as ever, but as before, the correction never received the recognition it needed, and the falsehoods, not facts, shaped public opinion.

So the challenge to those who care about truth is to make it available and linkable online. It wasn’t so long ago that Googling “jew” returned a hate site as the top hit (I’m linking to the Wikipedia article to help correct this). Credit goes to David Rothman for pointing out this aspect of the Google economy to me, but now Google uses their sponsored link slot to link to an explanation:

If you use Google to search for “Judaism,” “Jewish” or “Jewish people,” the results are informative and relevant. So why is a search for “Jew” different? One reason is that the word “Jew” is often used in an anti-Semitic context. Jewish organizations are more likely to use the word “Jewish” when talking about members of their faith.

This certainly isn’t the first time people have noticed that similar search terms yield very different results. During the 2004 election, it became clear that conservative news sources used full names, so searches for “George Bush” or “John Kerry” were skewed with a very conservative bias. Meanwhile, searches for just “bush” or “kerry” were more neutral. So it should be easy to understand why Googling “political correctness” reveals pages of conservative blather, but it’s impossible to find any links that suggest Shakespeare classes have actually been cancelled or requirements dropped (searching for “shakespeare classes cancelled” mostly reveals registration data that shows Shakespeare classes full and registration for them closed).

There’s no real satisfaction in those last points. Being right (but ignored), or winning the battle long after the fact have little effect on public opinion. What might help, however, is having a large collection of online linkable resources. Political arguments today include battles fought in the blogosphere, where links and Google rank are essential. Imagine the argument today: a conservative blogger complains about Georgetown, but a comment links to the English department’s program requirements and class schedule showing a full complement of Shakespeare classes. Well, that’s how it might work if conservative sites allowed comments.)

tags: bloggers, blogosphere, conservative, culture of fear, falsehood, falsehoods, georgetown, georgetown university, google, google economy, libraries, nas, national association of scholars, politics, shakespeare, william shakespeare

David Rothman points to a Daily KOS story that points to a MyDD story titled “Aristocratic Right Wing Blogosphere Stagnating.” What’s the point? Of the top 40 political blogs, more than half are ‘liberal,’ and more importantly, they support community involvement — including basic features like comments — that the conservative blogs shun.

of the five most trafficked conservative blogs (over 200,000 page views per week), only one [...] even allows comments…

[...]

Community moderated blogging platforms [...] have provided us with an excellent means of finding new voices, and these are the voices that are generating the accelerated growth in the liberal and progressive blogosphere when compared to the right-wing blogosphere.

Chris Bowers may have a point. He’s certainly got the numbers and I suggest taking a look at the links above to get the full weight of the story.

Though I’ve had my own frustrations with comments here, I keep them open because I believe that honest debate is the center of democracy. I keep them open despite my concerns about the tone of comments in stories like this, and despite the comments from conservative snipers in a number of my political stories. Republicans are working hard to stifle debate in our traditional news media and our universities, it’s no surprise they’re doing the same for new media too.

Technorati Tags: aristocratic, blog, blogging, blogosphere, blogs, chris bowers, comment, comments, community, conservative, daily kos, dailykos, david rothman, debate, democrat, differences, difference, honest debate, liberal, mydd, politics, progressive, republican, snipers, stifle, story

Welcome the flacks. I don’t get many comments on stories here at MaisonBisson, so I was interested when I found a comment to my story about the Outfoxed documentary just an hour after I’d posted it.

Here’s my theory, and it’s supported by stories in Eric Alterman’s What Liberal Media and Al Franken’s Lies: conservative groups spend a huge amount of time identifying and attacking every liberal criticism. This mysterious Matt (perhaps from Ohio?) is a brownshirt on a mission. Are such personal attacks fair? No, but neither are Matt’s attempts to reframe my stories. It’s that reframing that so identifies the comments as conservative.

Answer the point, Matt. The question is about Fox news, an organization soundly criticized as biased and inaccurate by darn near every liberal, a bunch of centrists, and even a number of it’s own staff. You’re rhetorically and logically wrong to think you can disprove that by claiming other sources are more biased. But that’s how conservatives work: think Obi Wan as a republican saying “this is not the argument you’re looking for. You liberals should go chase your tail while we rewrite the constitution and shift your tax money to the rich.” Or something like that.

And that’s what’s happening in Matt’s comments to the Farenheit 9/11 story. Oh no! “Farenheit 9/11 contradicts itself.” But the Hitchins quote you offer as proof is less coherent than he claims the movie was. Here’s a fact, and let me suggest you watch Fog of War and read some psychology texts to understand it, people are not always logical, reasonable, or consistent. Furthermore, it seems people — heads of state included — will often tolerate extreme cognitive dissonance while in pursuit of money and power. The Hitchins quote plainly illustrates this fact, further darkening the sad conclusions Moore makes.

I will, however, compliment Hitchins’ rhetorical style. The play of equally unlikely and exaggerated opposites (“they do, or they do not; he is, or he isn’t”) create a lulling rhythm that leads nowhere, but appears sound.

As for Moore’s facts, let me repeat what I wrote in my earlier story: “Collectively, Bushwacked, Lies, and The Iron Triangle all lead the reader to the same conclusion Moore comes to. These authors’ references show a diversity of well researched primary sources — including government documents and qualified informants — that paint a fairly clear picture. It’s this brush that Moore uses for Fahrenheit 9/11.” I’ll gladly listen to any equally detailed and documented rebuttal, but please, no more empty accusations and false claims.

Finally, however, I’m amused by the apparent criticism of Moore for suggesting that troops should never have been sent to Iraq. That’s the point. Isn’t it? Our troops are suffering death and disability and and our nation deficits and diminished civil liberties in a war with no end in sight. This like like Vietnam and McCarthyism all it once if you think you can silence Moore and others for saying so.

[UPDATE]: Matt’s still at it….

Fox News is undoubtedly the most conservative news channel, and any argument to the contrary is intentionally misleading or stupid. Anybody who can count can tell you that Hannity gets three times as much air time as Colmes, and a mildly perceptive time counter will tell you that Colmes’ boss, Hannity, doesn’t allow him any time or opportunity to cross, correct, or criticize him. And that’s what happens when centrists are allowed any voice at all. Yes, one example is sufficient to characterize the entire network.

The problem isn’t that Fox News is biased, anybody who understands the history of journalism can tell you that the idea of unbiased news coverage developed sometime during WWII, peaked around 1970, and has been fading since. Democracy actually thrives amidst the cacophony of biased news outlets, so long as there is diversity and sufficient numbers of them. The complaint against Fox News is that they falsely claim the banner of “fair and balanced” despite contradictory evidence.

This is one of the reasons that former Fox News news anchor Jon Du Pre is speaking out against the channel. This is why former contributor Jeff Cohen is doing the same.

What is reframing? I put up a story about Outfoxed, you try to dismiss the argument with a comment that claims the source is too liberal to be listened to. I put up a story about Fahrenheit 9/11, again you try to dismiss it by claiming Moore is self contradictory. Another reader comments that he too has a family member in Iraq and is glad to find bumper stickers with a message he appreciates, and you dismiss him too. You ask what it means to (attempt to) reframe these stories? Clearly you know better than I do. Not once have you addressed the facts of any of these stories; you’ve made no attempt to demonstrate contradictory evidence.

What makes a liberal or conservative? The authors I name use primary evidence to discuss facts. Facts, by definition, can be neither liberal nor conservative. The authors don’t agree with my perspective, they’ve presented logical arguments based on independent evidence. That these authors make conclusions based on these facts that are offensive to people like yourself does not make them or their work liberal. You paint yourself as a conservative by claiming they’re liberals. Once again, these are facts, and nothing you’ve written here contradicts them.

But you knew that, you knew all of this. Why would you write such misleading comments in this blog, so far from the rest of the world? What motivation could you have? In the big picture, this conservative sniping serves a purpose, and I have to commend your efforts. But aren’t they sort of wasted here? In a larger forum, there’d be at least one idiot who didn’t see through you and would instead join with in wearing me or another blogger down with endless arguments about points off from my message.

Today, my message is about how conservatives like yourself are doing everything they can to snuff the flames of opposition. I’m up for a debate, but this isn’t debate. It’s a delay and distraction tactic. So here are your options: reveal yourself and enter a real debate with evidence to back your arguments (include citations), or leave. Further comments that do not meet this criteria will be edited or deleted as the commercial speech they are. This is an odd decision to make, as I believe strongly in the first amendment protects to free speech, but I also agree with the courts that commercial speech is subject to lesser protections. Further, I won’t let my blog, a media I pay for, be used as a mouthpiece for lies and deception in support of a candidate and ideology I oppose. That is to say, you can’t have both Fox News and my blog, but I’d gladly trade.

Technorati Tags: al franken, blog, colmes, conservative, conservative groups, conservatives, deception, eric alterman, farenheit 9/11, fog of war, fox news, hannity, liberal, media, news, obi wan, outfoxed, personal attacks, political, politics, progressive, psychology, reframing, republican, tax money, taxes