28 April 2006 @ 12:58PM >> Last month, I noted the greeting that a Christian group received when they arrived for a week-long retreat in San Francisco. (A sample, courtesy of Assemblyman Mark Leno: “[T]hey’re loud, they’re obnoxious, they’re disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco.”).

A gentleman named Paul Jimerson took issue with my highlighting the rude welcome put out by the supposed world capitol of tolerance. Here’s his e-mail, with my responses interspersed:

Hello Mr.Maloney,

As a liberal, progressive and especially as a resident of San Francisco I was most interested in reading your interpretation of the events you detail in your “Tolerance and Hospitality, San Francisco-Style” editorial.  After reading your article I thought about it for a few minutes and would like to share with you my thoughts on the matter.

First, Evangelical Christians who choose to come to San Francisco do so because they’re looking for a fight ....or for a confrontation at least.  By bringing their message to San Francisco they were attempting to soil our progressive nest with what we see as hate speech.

So, what you’re saying is, your “progressive nest” has no room for people who disagree with you. And that people who disagree with you are engaging in “hate speech.”

They had no intention of proselytizing or converting people.  Their actions were provocative and antagonistic....the only metaphor that seems appropriate is “flipping the bird”.  I hardly think that any of those in attendance  were surprised by the reception they met.  A lot of the people here came from small towns and I’m sure a lot of them came here to escape the animosity and hatred of the Evangelical Christians in their home town.  They were victimized, humiliated, beaten, and despised by Evangelical or other Christians until they came here.

All Christians are brutal thugs who beat people up. I’m glad to see that “progressives” have moved beyond the simple-minded stereotyping that exists everywhere else in America.

The counter-protesters were superior in number and they could have done anything they wanted with the Evangelical group who would have been helpless against them.  If you consider how Evangelicals have treated homosexuals throughout history in the countless situations where the homosexuals were the helpless ones, I’d say that your Evangelical Christians were treated VERY WELL.  I bet they didn’t even get spit on.

Wow! San Francisco is tolerant! You don’t beat people up who disagree with you! And you might not even spit on them, but you’re not sure about that.

Consider the following hypothetical scenario .... a small group of gay and lesbian activists come to a small very religious town and start making speeches and  broadcasting sentiment that condemns evangelical Christians for nothing more than being evangelical and christian....while this goes on they pass out leaflets that state un-categorically that God hates evangelical Christians because they engage in un-natural cannibalistic practices every Sunday.....Cannibalism hasn’t been socially acceptable for thousands of years and only the most savage and primitive of peoples today practice it (or so the fliers would say) and those who still eat human flesh ought to be wiped off the face of the earth for the good of all mankind.  After making their speeches and passing out their leaflets the group then proceed to hold a noisy protest/rally on the steps of the nearest big church in town. While they are there they form an effective block of the entrance and nobody can get in or out of the Church until they leave.

That’s a rather extreme hypothetical scenario I’m sure you would agree but these are extreme times and the scenario’s events were intended to be as offensive to you as the Evangelicals visit to San Francisco was to us.  If such a thing should ever take place in small town America what kind of reaction do you think they might receive from the town if/when they came back the next year to do the same thing?  How about the third year?  There would be blood shed and it wouldn’t take long either.  You know it and I know it and it’s typical of Christian tolerance or others and good will towards man.

I’m having a little trouble understanding your bizarre fantasy. On the one hand, you condemn a fictional town for being intolerant of gays in your hypothetical scenario, but at the same time, you applaud San Francisco for being intolerant of Christians in reality.

Either you want a country where a group of citizens can meet openly wherever they want without being harassed, or you don’t. Which is it?

And, I must congratulate you once again for showing such a great understanding of what it means to be a “progressive.” Being a progressive used to mean that you’ve progressed beyond hateful stereotypes. But you’ve just replaced one set of stereotypes with another. Can’t you see that you’re exactly the same as someone who hates a gay person simply for being gay?

I mean your position is rather funny actually.  Christians come to San Francisco and do little more than flip the bird at the entire gay community .. they do it every year on a schedule and then complain when people here get upset about it and give voice to their anger.   If the Perpetual Sisters of Indulgence got dressed up in their full regalia and marched through downtown Biloxi, Mississippi or Birmingham Alabama, all the while shaking their butts in the faces of the city’s residents and carrying on like the outlandish queens they are, taunting and ridiculing the people for being heterosexual, I seriously doubt that all of them would leave those cities alive.... such a thing couldn’t even take place without the National Guard coming in and lining the streets.  That is how tolerant you folks on the right are and you know it.

Yes, everyone on the right is exactly the same. They’re a bunch of intolerant neanderthal murderers. Thanks for pointing this out repeatedly. I was beginning to get the mistaken impression that people should be judged as individuals. But that’s pretty time-consuming. Your technique of condemning large masses of society is much more efficient.

If we on the left were as kind as you some Evangelical Christians would have perished when they first started coming here.  I think it might even be a good idea for the Evangelical Christians who came here to write a thank you note to San Francisco for treating them so well.  They should be especially thankful they didn’t receive a more christian welcome.  I’m a firm believer in treating people in the same manner they have shown to me.  It’s lucky for you that the gay and lesbian community here don’t hold to that philosophy, or the Christians would have all left here for the nearest hospital.  Please don’t misunderstand me ......I don’t engage in or condone violence Mr. Maloney.  I don’t savagely beat people who are different from the norm in my society.  But I have been beaten because I was the different one.  When you folks come here you’re the different ones, and yet we do not beat you for it.

Well, I’m very sorry to hear that you were beaten simply for being who you are. There’s no excuse for that, and I hope whoever did it got what was coming to them, several times over.

I am also very sorry that the lesson you’ve drawn from this is to assume that anyone who calls themselves a Christian is a hate-monger who will beat you up. If you dislike the stereotyping that led to your beating, then why do you continue to engage in it yourself?

It’s funny...... we on the left literally turn the other cheek when struck, we did not treat you as we have been treated by you.  Christian principles come naturally to those on the left it seems even though the last thing I would ever call myself is a Christian.  You should read what Gandhi said about Christians and Christianity sometime.   I couldn’t agree with him more. 

Sincerely,

Paul Jimerson

Thanks for the e-mail, Paul. I hope your future is happier than your past has been.

18 April 2006 >> Maybe I’m strange, but I love getting hate mail. There’s something satisfying about getting under the skin of someone who abhors my views. Don’t get me wrong; I like praise, too, but the bitter mail tends to be more creative. And for some reason, these last few days have brought me quite a bilious bounty. One of the more tame e-mails is from a guy named Rick:

From: Rick <ismore@spiritone.com>
Subject: the complete video set
Date: April 16, 2006 3:51:53 AM EDT
To: Evan Coyne Maloney

just picked up a copy of your video from the local library.
found it to be very amateurish.
you have a long way to go to become the “conservative Micheal Moore”.
where’s the humor?
what’s the point?
conservatives control the white house,
congress,
the senate,
the supreme court,
and virtually all major media outlets,
yet, your all white male crew seems to be whining about being disadvantaged.
anyone with money can make a movie,
and I think it’s safe to say that conservatives control most of that too.
it takes brains (and humor) to make a good movie.
so maybe you should sell the camera,
join the army,
move to Iraq,
and fight the good fight.
you’d look good in camo.

I rarely post e-mails that don’t address a specific argument I’ve made, but in this case, what I find interesting is Rick’s assumption that I use an “all white male crew.” (You forgot to critique the sexual orientation of the crew, Rick!)

The people who’ve helped me on my various videos are neither all white nor all male, but Rick wouldn’t know that because the crew has never been shown on camera.

Rick just assumes that, because I am white and male, everyone who works with me must be as well. There must be something about Rick’s world that would cause him to assume that white males don’t associate with anyone else. Perhaps Rick is a white male, and if so, I’d argue that his thinking is a form of psychological projection, where he takes his own internal mindset and assumes that everyone else in the world has the same prejudices. But I don’t know Rick, so who am I to assume that he is white or even male?

What’s also interesting is that Rick seems to think that the racial and gender makeup of the people who work with me on shoots has some relation to our political outlook. To Rick, only white males are allowed to be conservatives. People from other groups may only hold Rick-approved views. He must be ignorant of a number of powerful thinkers who are neither white nor male nor straight.

Rick must hate that, all those uppity non-white-males daring to think differently from how he believes they should. The funny thing is, this guy probably thinks I’m a racist.

7 April 2006 @ 9:18AM >> In response to yesterday’s story on Rudy Rios, a high school senior writes:

[W]hy is it that school administrators fail to see that there is no difference between using a school copying machine to spread this propaganda and using taxpayer-funded teaching time, for which these people are getting paid, to “teach” students liberal values. What Mr. Rios did was certainly wrong, but teachers that spend entire classes ranting about George Bush rarely face any consequences. People need to understand that situations like this are not just isolated incidents. Liberal educational bias is expanding beyond college campuses and into the world of impressionable high school students.

All I have to add is, Jay Bennish.

25 February 2006 @ 11:38AM >> Reader Matt Walliser writes:

Evan,

Recent news about iTunes hitting their billionth download made me think a little more about your post a while back about the recording industry not adapting to new mediums. If they’re not careful, they’ll obsolete themselves to Apple’s iTunes. Apple has made it so convenient to get music onto your iPod, that people don’t seem to mind paying a buck for a song. The lawsuits brought forth by the RIAA agianst people who download music can only serve to push people towards iTunes. If Apple creates their own label and plays their cards right, they could have channel dominance from top to bottom. The best part is, it’s being handed to them by the very channel they’re about displace!

While I’d hate for any one company to completely control music distribution, the massive success of iTunes is a wake-up call to an industry that has been hitting the snooze button on every previous wake-up call since the dawn of the Internet era. Maybe this time, the industry will pay attention.

23 February 2006 >> Reader Tim Coyne disagrees with my stance on the cartoon intifada:

I realize that we labor under the extant luxury of being ignorant of the sensitivities of the Muslim culture and approach. Reposting a cartoon that has been declared offensive under the guise of clarity is offensive. That ettiquette should be easily handled. The cartoon has been more fully explained than our Iraqi policy. The simple point is that the image of the prophet is not used by his adherents.

It’s been used by infidels. Nobody needs to publish it.

How many times do you explain a joke that disgusts your grandmother and friends? ‘Til they get it? ‘Til they submit to you and your filthy liberties rather than their own sensitivities? If they demonstrate a similar offense (the Virgin in elephant dung, the Infant of Prague masturbating, Christ on the cross as a flasher) are we all now just having a good time? Chuckle.

As for upbraiding a publisher for using sense, if not sensitivity, in deciding not to add fuel and redirect fire, perhaps if you posted your address (preferrably in a community well-represented by insulted Muslims), employed a largely open-door policy, built and posted a large sign and invited and encouraged a large staff to come and go at all hours under your assurance that all would be safe, you’d go through a few extra considerations before gratuitously piling on.

That boldness might be better spent and more honestly portayed in, say, interviewing young devout Muslim children on their views of what exactly is the coarseness of that (probably misguided cartoon)approach. Look for understanding rather than charges. Then, maybe you can extend some higher value rather than extol the baser performances.

I have a feeling this is one subject where we’re not going to end up agreeing.

If the cartoons had depicted Muhammad in a beaker of urine, I could understand people being offended. But the fact that the cartoons were so mild is a huge part of the story. None of them were any worse than your average political cartoon. Some of them were just depictions of Muhammad. And yet, they’ve led to dozens and dozens of murders around the world and untold destruction. Kind of makes you wonder what’ll happen when something makes them really mad!

Don’t get me wrong, Muslims have every right to be offended by the cartoons, however tame. We do not get to dictate what brings others offense. But the minute one person’s preferences are allowed to override another person’s freedom, you have just crossed the line into tyranny.

In free societies, the offended are able to vent steam by speaking out. Mobs don’t roam around the streets, randomly killing, setting buildings on fire, etc. Now, it is apparent that this does occur when people are offended in the Muslim world. These people obviously have different sensibilities.

But, we need to remember that Denmark is a sovereign country. Should the sensibilities of rampaging mobs in Libya get to dictate the bounds of speech in Denmark, or in any other western country where the cartoons were reprinted?

Because if we’re ready to cede our free speech rights when it comes to publishing political cartoons about Islam, what’s next? If it’s just easier to cave in and appease the mobs, what shall we do if the mobs decide that they don’t like an editorial that condemns the use of terrorism by radical Islamists? What then? Do we once again decide that we’d rather avoid all that unpleasantness and just keep our mouths shut?

Fascism has had many forms throughout history, but one pattern always repeats: weakness never leads to being left alone.

15 February 2006 @ 4:09PM >> In response to “Sharia Law Comes West,” reader D. L. Cameron e-mails:

I agree with your entire article until the end when you said, “Our media has just proven that fear will cause them to cover up anything that might ‘offend’ the mobs of Islamic arsonists.”

The media revels in covering and endlessly reporting on anything and everything that will offend mobs of Islamic arsonists and murders - as long as the resulting riots and murders are aimed at the American Government, our military, private citizens, children, women, etc...it’s when the Islamic rage is directed at THEM - that’s when they run like scared rabbits.

Good point!

8 February 2006 >> The recent discussion on the ideology of Hollywood has been generating a ton of e-mail. Here’s a sample. (And thanks to everyone who took the time to write!)

From Brian:

[You say:] “Yep. Increasingly, Hollywood is making films that Hollywood wants to consume, not necessarily what the rest of America does.”

I’m fairly skeptical about these sorts of claims, especially the “increasing” part. In so much as the movies you’re speaking of are lefty polemics rather than, say, The Island, we’ve seen remarkably few of these movies in comparison to the 90’s. Hollywood’s obviously a lefty town, and every year you’ll see the occasional Syriana, or Crash (or Brokeback Mountain which has more lefty street cred than politics), but that number’s gone down quite a bit in recent years, outnumbered a few thousand to one by comic book movies and big franchises.

What’s more is that, despite the doom-and-gloom rhetoric about Hollywood ignoring the masses, these small, left-ish films tend to end up with a tidy profit, and sometimes more - American Beauty, if I recall, took in well over a hundred million. I’m fairly certain that none of the Oscar nominees that have caused such a ruckus will end up losing money. Aside from bad conservative press (which, let’s face it, would happen anyway - it’s a sweet political schtick to milk), there just doesn’t seem to be much of a downside to the concept of a few little lefty films a year for a Hollywood executive.

My perception is that Hollywood is increasing the political content in its films. I don’t have hard data to back this up, but until 2004, I don’t think we ever saw a major movie release whose goal was to change the outcome of a U.S. presidential election (Fahrenheit 9/11). We also never before had a major movie studio dedicated to advancing left-wing politics (Participant Productions, creators of the George Clooney films Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck). It is also a fairly recent phenomenon that people now expect the Academy Awards to be used as political podiums by the Hollywood elite. So, to me, it does seem like Hollywood is becoming politicized to an unprecedented degree.

But even if my perception of this is wrong, the real issue isn’t the fact that Hollywood puts political messages in films or releases overtly-political films, the issue is that of the films with recognizable political content, that content almost invariably represents a left-of-center worldview. This is bad business.

Why? Well, for one, it serves to underscore the leftism of the more outspoken Hollywood pseudo-politicos. And that alienates potential customers who happen to have vastly divergent opinions. I know a lot of people who will never watch the Academy Awards because they don’t want to endure four hours of having their beliefs trashed by Hollywood’s condescending know-it-alls. That same frustration keeps people away from theaters, too.

Can left-wing films still turn a profit? Sure. But the fact that the only political films happen to be left-wing indicates that a huge market is going unserved. On talk radio, cable news and the best-seller lists, conservative perspectives do quite well in the marketplace. But with film, demand for this type of content is not being fulfilled because of—I believe—the political views of the gatekeepers.

From a business standpoint, it seems obvious that there is a downside to Hollywood’s current practices. Unfortunately, it’s hard to calculate the gross receipts of films that haven’t been made, so Hollywood has no way of knowing just how much money it is leaving left on the table. The market has to be proven for Hollywood to wake up. And for that to happen, some insider needs to take a chance, or technology will eventually render the current business model obsolete.

---

At Slate, Mickey Kaus says:

Matt Yglesias points out to me [video link] it’s not simply Hollywood’s films that skew “left.” Hollywood’s audience—largely young people, in cities—skews left also. There’s less of a mismatch there than Hollywood critics like Ben Stein and Evan Coyne Maloney like to claim. But this natural congruence also means a film can succeed at the box office without changing many minds in Bush country.

This factoid could just as easily prove my point as disprove it.

Let’s assume it’s true that Hollywood’s audience does skew to the left. Is that a cause or an effect? Does Hollywood churn out left-wing political films because they see their audience as left-of-center? Or are the audiences more left-leaning because conservatives see Hollywood’s output and decide that there are better uses of their time and money?

I wonder, have moviegoing audiences historically been left-of-center? Was it that way during the 1940s and 50s when Frank Capra and Orson Welles were kings? If not, why has the audience shifted left today?

---

Jeff God writes:

Passion of the Christ and Narnia have mopped up with the rest of America. I think a better explanation is that Hollywood, as any business, will make what people want. But Hollywood, as a political action committee, will reward the kind of movies that appeal to the members of the Hollywood PAC.

Remember that both The Passion and Narnia were created and distributed by people who are seen as fringe players by the rest of the industry. Sure, Mel Gibson was famous before The Passion, as an actor, but when it came time to find industry support for the film, he was locked out of Hollywood’s inner circle. Similarly, Walden Media, responsible for Narnia, is a bit of a renegade outfit. Walden was formed specifically out of a belief that Hollywood wasn’t making certain types of films.

---

Jeanne B. writes:

In reading the self-centered comments from the Hollywood gliteratti, I am flabbergasted at their total cluelessness.

Most striking is their seemingly universal conviction that the rest of us aren’t having a dialogue...aren’t paying attention. They think we’re oblivious to being “set adrift” by our government. If they can just yell loud enough and long enough, suddenly the masses will wake up to “the truth” and embrace Hollywood and its views. More, they think we’ll forever be in their debt for saving us!

Such ego. They don’t think we disagree with them. We’re just ill informed and too stupid to recognize how right they are. They really think they’re doing it for our good! Such gobsmacking elitism.

Well, maybe they do have a point. Perhaps one day I will evolve enough, become wise enough to take my political cues from the likes of Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon. Until then, I guess my ignorance makes me deserve their constant scorn.

5 February 2006 @ 1:53PM >> An e-mailer responds to “Hollywood to Continue Slow-Motion Suicide?“:

What also struck me about the Hollywood Reporter article was the myopic self-centeredness of the filmmakers cited, their inability to look outside their tiny enclave of culture elitism.

The Crash co-writer says, “People want films that have something to say; they’re tired of fluff.”

Crash director Paul Haggis: “It’s great for the films and great for the nation. It says people are embracing these issues, that they don’t want to go to the theater to forget. They want to be involved, to participate.”

Which “people” are they referring to? Who are “they”? Certainly not the American public.

Look at these box office figures. The average box office for the Best Picture nominees this year is less than $38 million. The highest-grossing nominee was Crash, with $53 million. It was the 48th highest-grossing movie of 2005.

Think about that. The highest-grossing Best Picture nominee earned less than 47 other movies released last year.

If Crash wins, it would be the lowest-grossing Best Picture since 1987. (In non-adjusted dollars: If you adjust for inflation, I suspect it would be the lowest-grossing Best Picture of all time.) And Crash is, thus far, the most successful of the nominated movies. (Granted, Brokeback is still in the theatres and is likely soon to surpass Crash, but not by enough to affect my underlying point.)

Then there’s Spielberg, who says: “Some of it is due to our own insecurity about the voices representing us in government right now.”

Uh, Steven, who do you think more accurately represents the American public — you in your Malibu bunker, or politicians who’ve won actual elections?

So when Haggis, Spielberg, et al. say “people,” they really mean “our kind” of people. Just look at the movies they make these days. They are increasingly turning the cameras on each other, on themselves, on issues that matter only to the Hollywood elite. And the more they do this, the fewer Americans will turn out to see their stuff.

Yep. Increasingly, Hollywood is making films that Hollywood wants to consume, not necessarily what the rest of America does. Hollywood needs to decide whether it wants to be a political party or whether it wants to entertain. They can continue to entertain themselves, but then they will continue to lose audience. There are simply too many other options vying for the attention of the people that Hollywood shuns.

Ultimately, I’m optimistic. There have to be a few people left in Hollywood who recognize that they’re in business, and that there’s money to be made by satisfying markets that are currently being ignored. The folks behind the Liberty Film Festival and the American Film Renaissance recognize this. There is a huge audience of people who are not being served by Hollywood, and eventually, enough breakthrough films will somehow slip through filter of the Hollywood left that this market will be proven. Either that, or technology will route around the current gatekeepers who are preventing alternative content from being distributed, and those gatekeepers will lose relevance.

Nature and capitalism abhor a vacuum. It won’t last forever...

22 January 2006 @ 12:41PM >> In response to the story that the British government pays for multiple sex change operations for indecisive Britons, reader Scot Walker e-mails:

Let’s pretend that I think I’m a dog trapped in a man’s body — what is the treatment for that? Do they give me an operation and attach floppy ears and a tail on me so I can be what “I really am”? Or do they treat me for a mental disorder?

By the way, San Francisco’s tax payers have to pay for sex change operations of city government employees. It costs around $50K, if I remember correctly.

20 January 2006 @ 4:10PM >> Commenter Brian DeSpain takes me to task at the On The Fence Films website over my Consumer Advocates at UCLA post from Wednesday, which was also cross-posted here. Brian says, “What’s a nice spin is how you gloss over what actually provoked those comments.” Since he raises some interesting points, I wanted to link to it here and include my response:

Brian,

I don’t believe I was spinning anything; I linked to the original article and to the site so that readers could make up their own minds. I still don’t believe that pointing out the classroom environment and political leanings of professors amounts to “reactionary” “McCarthyism,” “right-wing propaganda” and an “abhorrent” “witch hunt,” which is what is being charged about the Bruin Alumni Association.

That said, professors are free to hold whatever views they like, and they’re free to engage in any political activities outside the classroom that they wish. Those views and activities should not adversely affect their careers. They should not be fired or otherwise punished for their views or for their out-of-class activities. Nobody is calling for that, to my knowledge, nor should they.

But in an environment where professors overwhelmingly hold one worldview, it is relevant, because a lack of intellectual diversity means that students are being short-changed. Even the most conscientious professor is unable to present opposing viewpoints as convincingly as someone who actually believes them and understands their intricacies. And when professors go off on political rants in classes where it has nothing to do with the subject matter, students are being deprived of class time that should be spent on the topic that was advertised in the course handbook.

Perhaps you feel that the Bruin website conflates these two issues, and perhaps you believe that they are presenting their argument in a muddled fashion. Fair enough; several people have made that criticism, and I can see that point. But is it McCarthyism? When did expressing an opinion in this country become the same thing as leading a witch-hunt?

At least the members of the Bruin Alumni Association are expressing their opinions without charging anyone tens of thousands of dollars for it in some sort of educational bait-and-switch, which is what happens all too often on campus these days.

If anything, the exaggerated reaction of the professors simply serves to underscore the extremism that the Bruin Alumni Association is pointing out. Professors are not above criticism, and by comparing this criticism to McCarthyism, these professors are attempting to elevate themselves to a privileged status where they can spout whatever opinions they want—while billing other people for the time—without anyone ever disagreeing publicly. Sorry, but that doesn’t wash with me.

Thanks for taking the time to share your comments. I appreciate that you did so in a civil, reasoned fashion. I wish these professors would follow your example.

Hope all is well,
Evan

Update: UCLA graduate Gina Cobb has some additional thoughts:

The majority of the professors are politically neutral or at least fair-minded in their teaching approach, and generally stick to their course content. However, some of the professors are off-the-charts radical, liberal, socialist, collectivist and Marxist. That alone would not be a problem (the professors are entitled to believe whatever they want), but they force the entire class to listen to and parrot back their extreme politics. It’s not fair to students.

I had one professor who was so liberal that in writing down the name of the class on my notes one day I absent-mindedly wrote “Socialism” instead of the real course title, “Torts.” Socialism is what we were actually discussing just about every day.

[...]

The problem is professors who make courses having nothing to do with politics into venues for imposing their own political point of view on students.

[...]

The main thing I learned was how to “toe the line” — how to say whatever the person holding the Power of the Grade wanted to hear. This is actually a useful skill for the real world. However, since the reason that I was taking these courses was not to learn how to conform to anything, however unreasonable, but rather to learn specific subject matter and to sharpen my academic skills of research and writing, I would say that I lost more than I gained from the experience.

This new attempt by UCLA alumni to identify professors who go overboard in injecting politics into their courses isn’t a “witch hunt.” It’s an attempt to gather evidence and to rein in the professors who have gone way off the deep end in how they teach their classes. To grumble that the alumni group should not be willing to pay students for notes or tape recordings documenting the abuse is to focus on a detail about methodology in the hopes of distracting from the need for the overall effort. If the notes and tapes are handed over without payment, will that make the critics happy? (Answer: No.)

What the critics of this new effort and the fans of academic freedom need to think about is what they would consider a reasonable response if a university had a large number of its professors using their courses to promote fascism, as opposed to socialism. At some point, it would be reasonable to say, “Enough is enough. Teach what we are paying you to teach.”

22 November 2005 @ 12:49PM >> My earlier post on CNN’s X-ing of Cheney has been picked up by a number of websites and is driving a lot of readers here who are unfamiliar with my site. Some people are interpreting my position as a sign of my own bias. One reader e-mailed:

Puh-leeze....if Fox News had pulled this stunt by placing a “X” over Bill Clinton or Hillary or any Democrat for that matter, all hell would break loose. For you to give CNN a pass is showing your bias against Cheney.

The day I am accused of bias against Vice President Cheney is a day that I let out a robust belly laugh. But it is also a sign that people on the right can be too overzealous with their charges of media bias. Anyone who has read this site consistently knows the work I’ve done to document the media’s left-leaning slant. The key word there is document. Absent of any evidence, you can’t just assume that an apparent video glitch is the same thing as a doctored quote, an omitted set of facts, or an artfully crafted phrase. In those cases, a conscious act must be committed by the journalist in order to skew the reporting. We can’t tell whether the “X” mark is the result of a conscious act.

I am willing to be proven wrong on this, but it will take evidence to do so. In the meantime, I hope that conservatives don’t go too far down the road of conspiracy-mongering. Recently, that has been the exclusive domain of the left, much to their detriment. Such a mentality can be equally destructive to conservatives if they’re not careful.

30 September 2005 >> After reading about Bucknell’s problem with the phrase “hunting terrorists,” an alumnus suggested that I give the new university president, Brian C. Mitchell, the benefit of the doubt. More >>

16 September 2005 @ 1:33PM >> “Chanman,” a public school teacher, wrote in to describe his own experience with Islamic prayer in school:

Two years ago, I taught at a high school in the Sacramento area. One day during lunch, I walked to the lounge of the social studies department to make some copies. There were two girls wearing hajibs, standing outside the door of the lounge. They stopped me from entering because, “our friend is praying in there.” Their friend, a Muslim, was using our teachers lounge to pray toward Mecca because she felt funny about doing it outside. Meanwhile, I am stopped from performing my teacherly duties because a Muslim was using the teachers’ area to pray. Of course the head of our department was all for this and was quite tickled with himself at his showing of tolerance and compassion. I couldn’t help but wonder, would he have shown the same tolerance and compassion if a Christian girl had asked if she could use our teachers lounge to pray? To ask the question is to answer it.

14 September 2005 @ 12:54PM >> An e-mail in response to “Prayer in School? Only for Muslims” points out an imprecision in my argument:

From: darwin
Subject: prayer in school
Date: 8 September 2005 5:20:04 AM EDT
To: Evan Coyne Maloney

You wrote: “Everybody knows that prayer isn’t allowed in school—for Christians.”

As I understand it, this ruling is nothing new... Christians can pray in schools, privately, during non-class time. As this case appears to be about a Muslim girl who wants to pray during lunch (not class time) I don’t see what the big deal is.

I’m a fan of Brain Terminal and your movies, but I think you’re overreacting to [this case.]

=darwin

Darwin,

Yes, as I now understand it, voluntary student-initiated prayer is permissible during non-class time. If that were the extent of the case, then I don’t think there would be much discussion. I don’t have any problem with Muslim students praying in public schools, so long as the rules for them are the same as for anyone else. So, if this portion of the original news item is the only salient point, then it seems the Muslim student has a legitimate gripe:

While her classmates were eating lunch, she wanted to go off by herself for a few moments to pray. The 14-year-old was told she couldn’t, and went home distraught that afternoon in October 2003.

However, the same article, entitled “Schools loosen limits on prayers,” implies that some sort of special consideration is being sought:

Her case was part of a nationwide grass-roots effort by Muslim parents to make public schools more friendly and accommodating to Muslim students.

...and that schools are changing their procedures in response to that effort:

“You’re seeing a lot of schools becoming more sensitive this way,” said Michael Yaple, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association.

If the schools are following the existing rules, then they accommodate Muslim, Christian, Jewish, etc. students equally. If they are not following the existing rules and are somehow treating Muslim students worse than any other group, then that is wrong and it should stop. But it sounds like the problem is that because strict Muslims need to pray five times a day, they are asking for special consideration from the schools beyond what is granted to anyone else.

Should American school schedules be reworked to make it easier for Muslims to pray? That’s a point that can be debated. But it seems to me, over the last 50 years, American schools have become much less welcoming to the practice of Judeo-Christian faiths during school hours. So I find it odd that as our society continues to stamp out any trace of our own religious heritage, we would start bending over backwards to embrace the religious practices of others.

1 September 2005 >> A reader responds to my recent post on the viability of saving New Orleans:

From: Gary Dannenbaum
Subject: Can New Orleans be Saved?
Date: 31 August 2005 10:27:21 PM EDT
To: Evan Coyne Maloney

Evan,

As usual I appreciate your insight to issues large and small that you cover on [Brain Terminal], however I must take exception to your recent posting regarding the Crescent City.

You are a smart man, Evan. You think rationally and in a logical manner. You obviously are not from the South. This disaster known as Hurricane Katrina is not the first storm that has virtually wiped out New Orleans. Why do you think the cemeteries are built above ground? Sewage and foul matter have run in the streets many, many times since the inception of what is affectionately known as “The Big Easy.”

New Orleans will come back. They can’t sanitize it. The best way to describe why New Orleans will never go away is this. Please pardon the French. Laissez faire bon temp roulez!

Kindest regards,
Gary Dannenbaum

There’s a little Bourbon Street in all of us. I only regret I never visited while I had the chance. May the spirit of New Orleans live on, in whatever form the city takes next.

8 June 2005 @ 9:40AM >> For some reason, my comments on the TV show 24 yielded more e-mail than any recent post. A friend of mine even left me a voicemail defending the show!

Of the e-mailers who’ve seen the show, the unanimous verdict is that 24 is quite excellent. People were split, however, on whether the show was becoming weak-kneed and politically correct in its portrayal of terrorists.

Lydia Brodeur wrote:

Augh! Your last post at BT almost had me writhing on the floor.

Admittedly, I haven’t seen the fourth season of 24 yet. My fiance Ben and I
always wait for the DVDs to come out, and they haven’t yet. 24, being
a show mostly about stopping various threats to the country, can’t
avoid tidbits of political commentary. But that article you
apparently drew your opinion from is NOT representative of the show.
It makes the show seem so shallow, when it’s not! The show is really
thrilling and the story is always fantastic. Edge-of-your-seat,
literally. Ben and I would stay up until 4 am sometimes watching the
DVDs because we always had that “Oh, just one more episode” attitude.
Just
couldn’t put the remote down. Any of our friends that weren’t
watching WITH us just assumed we were unavailable on Friday and
Saturday nights for a few weeks every time we got a new season on DVD.

[...]

Look, my point is, please don’t swear off 24 because of that article.
It’s just not representative. If you get the chance to watch 24,
please do. Just make sure to watch from the beginning. It’s not a
show you can jump into the middle of.

Jon Koolpe said:

Regarding your comments on “24,” I felt compelled to write you a quick note. While I do agree that the producers/writers very much whitewashed Islam by the end of the season by removing almost all references to this religion, I do feel that the show was well done and did expose some of the liberal hypocrisy and naivete that is so prevalent in this country.

For instance, when the heroes had a suspect in custody that was not cooperative, the first thing that the Marwan character did was to contact a liberal lawyer in what was an obvious swipe at such “humanitarian” groups as Amnesty International and the ACLU in order to get a lawyer to delay the proper interrogation of the prisoner. AI has certainly managed to up the ante in their foolishness this past week with their absurd “Gulag” claim....

[...]

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I truly enjoyed “24” and found it worthwhile even though I was also pretty upset at the obvious changes that the producers undertook due to Islamic pressure groups. There was still enough there to enjoy and at least this one TV show had some cajones in this case, even if they weren’t as steadfast as I would have preferred...

15 May 2005 @ 12:32PM >> David Clemens, a professor at Monterey Peninsula College, wrote in to comment on the recent discussion on Roget’s New Millenium Thesaurus:

Hi, Evan,

The Roget’s synonyms for “liberal” and “conservative” reveal a sloppy methodology.

Dictionaries and thesauri are either “descriptive” (telling how a word IS being used) or “prescriptive” (telling how a word SHOULD be used).

The good Dr. Kipfer seems to have adopted a “descriptive” approach, simply creating a somewhat incoherent laundry list of associated words based on what she thinks people mean by them. Her synonyms for “liberal” and “conservative” probably derive from how people use them . . . on her hallway at Greenwich University. The result is that we can now say that liberals, who favor ecological and energy conservation, are “obstructionist, bitter-ender rednecks.”

The semanticist S. I. Hayakawa famously declared that no words are truly synonymous. (He actually said that the only synonymous words are “furz” and “gorse,” two names for a kind of grass—he was being funny, but then he was Canadian, eh?)

I thought I would generate an alternate list of descriptive synonyms based on my own experience:

conservative: rational, well-mannered, respectful, protective, sober, modest, patient, judicious, moral, pious, patriotic, virtuous, polite, gentlemanly or ladylike.

liberal: relativistic, tribal, hyperbolic, ends justify the means, fearful, authoritarian, do-gooder, self-righteous, utopian, dogmatic, patronizing, licentious, Orwellian.

As Glenn would say, heh.

Dave

23 April 2005 @ 2:25PM >> Reader Court Sansom wrote in to ask about my recent article “The Campus Political Establishment“:

From: Court Sansom

Subject: Re: The Campus Political Establishment

Date: 20 April 2005 10:59:56 PM EDT

To: Evan Coyne Maloney

Hi Evan!

I had to e-mail you about this little sentence here:

“When some female students saw that the [Women’s Resource Center] was in the business of arranging trips to political protests, they asked for similar help setting up a trip to a rally with a different political philosophy. The students were turned down.”

I’m just curious if you have any additional details about which rally we’re talking about here. I could almost feel you batting your eyelashes innocently when I read that, so I’m wondering if these other female students weren’t attempting to be demonstrative. I know in the past here at [my university], I’ve seen exactly this type of behavior. A group is offended by some attention their opposition is receiving from the University, and asks for permission to do something completely out of the question just to get the “no” answer. It’s happened *quite* a few times recently.

On the other hand, I’ll just go ahead and concede your general point that these groups tend to be affiliated with more liberal than conservative philosophies. Except at Bob Jones University...

Hope all is well!

Always,

Court

Court,

The rally that the Women’s Resource Center sponsored was the “March for Women’s Lives,” which was billed as a pro-choice rally, but from all the pictures and videos I’ve seen, it was indistinguishable from any other anti-Bush administration rally. (Perhaps there was a higher percentage of hand-drawn vaginas on signs that bore the slogan “Bush out of my Bush,” but I’ve seen those at anti-war rallies as well.)

The female students approached the WRC about sponsoring a trip to an anti-abortion rally.

Their request seems pretty fair and legitimate to me—perhaps not to others, the WRC being an obvious example—and in my mind is another bit of evidence showing that the WRC has a political agenda that goes beyond merely “serving women.”

Thanks for writing,

Evan

11 March 2005 @ 11:03AM >> Occasionally, I get an e-mail from someone who disputes the contention that, overall, the establishment media has a liberal bias. Some of those e-mails claim that the media is largely unbiased, with the notable exceptions of Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times. In such a world, media bias doesn’t exist except for the handful of outlets that can arguably be described as conservative.

Other people write me to claim that the media has a generally conservative bias, and they often point to President Bush being in the White House and the Republicans controlling Congress as evidence of that bias. By this logic, voters are lemmings who pull the lever for whichever candidate or party the media supports, and that nobody can get elected without the support of the media. Also by this logic, if the media had a conservative bias in 2004, then it had a liberal bias in 1992, 1976, 1964, 1960, etc.

Apparently, Jeffrey Dvorkin, NPR’s ombudsman, receives similar e-mails from disgruntled listeners on both the right and the left. What’s interesting is the line of reasoning employed by his left-of-center correspondents and what it says about their view of the news media’s purpose:

From the left, I sense that some of the e-mail nastiness has to do with frustration over the re-election of President Bush. These listeners feel that the media was unwilling or unable to stop Bush’s ascent to victory.

So, in their world, the purpose of the media is not to dispassionately report the facts, but to actively prevent certain politicians from winning elections. This is really a gripe about the effectiveness of the establishment media, not it’s bias. After all, what was the goal of CBS’s phony memos if not to “stop Bush’s ascent to victory”?

Liberals may recognize the lessening effectiveness of the media’s inherent bias and assume that it means the media is shifting to the right. I would argue that the bias of the press hasn’t changed, it’s just that in today’s new media environment, impact of that bias is now diminished. This may really be what rankles the liberals who fume at folks like Dvorkin.

10 February 2005 @ 6:20PM >> A professor from the Miami University (of Ohio) recently sent a rather nasty e-mail that illustrates quite well the environment that many students face on campus.

Check out the e-mail over at AcademicBias.com.

19 January 2005 >> In response to my two previous posts on Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, one reader says:

While I agree with you, let me point out an oft-forgotten point: the military doesn’t have any control over whether or not gays serve. Congress does. If a person is discovered to be homosexual, his/her Commander is required by law to initiate seperation action. There is no choice in the matter. For the issue to change, Congress must revise the applicable Military Law.

The same goes for troop levels: the Pentagon can’t arbitrarily increase troop levels anywhere it wants; it must consider it’s total allowed effective strength, and meet treaty-obligated force levels in various places. South Korea and Europe have a min-manning that MUST be met, because Congress and the President have entered into treaties that require it.

If I remember it right, Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell started as an executive order signed by President Clinton, which means it can only be rescinded by another executive order or, as this reader points out, by an act of Congress.

If this is the case, it has interesting implications for my current film project. A number of schools ban ROTC and refuse to allow military recruiters on campus. Although these bans go back to the Vietnam War, the current stated reason is that Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell discriminates against gays, so banning the military from campus is a protest against Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell. But if the military has no control over the policy, then why are these schools punishing the military for something they don’t control? It’s like punishing people for the color of their eyes.

I’ve created a discussion topic about this; if anyone has more information about the legal details of this, please join the discussion and let us know!

14 January 2005 @ 2:53PM >> An e-mail in response to yesterday’s post:

Your post: “Pentagon’s ouster of valuable translators continues” makes me prouder of our American military. It is good to know that someone is still concerned about morals.

If utilizing the skills of gay citizens prevents an attack in which other American citizens would be killed, then in what alternate reality can we pronounce it “moral” to boot gays out of the military?

We know that there’s a tremendous backlog of documents waiting to be analyzed because we don’t have enough translators fluent in Arabic and Farsi. We also know that, on the morning of September 11th, 2001, there were documents not yet translated that contained clues about the attacks. Now, I’m not saying that September 11th would have been prevented if openly-gay translators were allowed to serve, but it certainly doesn’t help to artificially constrain the number of people who can take part in the defense of our nation.

How many documents sitting today in some translator’s overflowing inbox contain information that could be used to prevent a future terrorist attack? Of course, we’ll never know until those documents get translated. Let’s just hope we don’t find out after an attack, when it’ll be too late.

I’m not a military expert, and I’m willing to accept that some concessions might need to be made in order to integrate openly-gay people into the military. There are issues of housing and the sharing of facilities that might complicate matters, just as there are with women. I would imagine that it’d be distracting for a gay man to be surrounded by a barracks-full bunch of half-naked men, just as I might have a little difficulty doing my job if I were surrounded by a horde of half-naked women. Those issues need to be resolved, but I don’t think they’re insurmountable, and I certainly don’t think they should be used as excuses to refuse the service being offered by good Americans who want to help us win a war.

Let’s face it: gay people are going to be gay whether they’re in the military or not. If they’re willing to lend a hand in the defense of America, then we might as well take them up on it.

30 December 2004 >> Did I just receive an e-mail from Nick Coleman?

Yesterday, I forwarded Mr. Coleman a link to my article entitled Nick Coleman: Media Meltdown Case Study. Although I have not yet heard back from Mr. Coleman, I did receive a bizarre e-mail from a sender who routed the message through an “anonymizing” service. What struck me was the similarity between the anonymous e-mail and Mr. Coleman’s writing. The e-mail appears indented and in italics, with my comments interspersed:

From: anonymous

Subject:

Date: 30 December 2004 3:09:03 AM EST

Your Media Meltdown Case Study is full of holes. Everything Mr. Coleman has said about those Right Wing air/wind bags at Powerline is correct.

My story is full of holes, although precisely where those holes are located is not stated. Also, the PowerLine guys are apparently both air and wind bags; a single-bag insult wasn’t sufficient to convey their bagginess, I guess.

The sender also makes the bold claim that everything Mr. Coleman said about those PowerLine bags is correct. One of Coleman’s claims is that PowerLine “is the spear of a campaign aimed at making Minnesota into a state most of us won’t recognize. Unless you came from Alabama with a keyboard on your knee.” Coleman cites no evidence for this conspiratorial “campaign”, but apparently, Alabama is not a state that he would recognize. Whether this is a sad commentary on our educational system or evidence of judgmental provincialism on Coleman’s part is an exercise left for the reader.

If you’re keeping score at home, in only two sentences, there were two assertions made without any backing and two ad hominem attacks directed at PowerLine (assuming you count each bag reference separately). So far, that’s a rather Colemanesque ratio.

The mysterious e-mail continues:

I think the more likely scernerio [sic] of a meltdown is in your own backyard. Why don’t you keep the focus on yourself.

There’s a meltdown in my backyard, apparently. The writer didn’t elaborate on what this means, so I had to try and figure it out for myself. I looked out my back window at the concrete and barbed wire and determined that none of it was flammable. Crisis averted.

And as far as the suggestion to keep the focus on myself, that would suit me fine. I’ve got a film project to promote, and any additional attention would be most welcome. (When your name isn’t Wonkette, you have to work at getting noticed!) If the anonymous writer has any ideas for keeping the focus on myself, I’m open to suggestions.

The final paragraph begins with a series of rapid-fire insults:

Their blog is ridiculous, silly, vituperating and embarrassing, all in one fell swoop.

In the past, I’ve been ridiculous, silly and embarrassing, and I will even admit to some youthful vituperation. But to manage all four in one fell swoop, well... that must be one hell of a show. I’ve gotta meet these PowerLine guys!

The closing of the e-mail is odd:

What a bunch of crap...now what is your story? Are you just brown nosing for “points with the boys” or is their [sic] something more to it?

Apparently, one can’t express an opinion without it amounting to either “brown nosing” or “something more”. If that’s the case, then it makes me wonder about Coleman. Where is his nose? What’s the secret agenda at play when he expresses his opinions? Or is it just the folks who aren’t part of the traditional media that must be up to something shady when we exercise our First Amendment rights?

Now, I don’t want anyone to think I’m claiming that Nick Coleman wrote this e-mail; to do so would be to make an accusation without any evidence. And we all know that to be below journalistic standards.

Still, the e-mail does manage to pull off a hat trick that I’m sure Mr. Coleman would appreciate:

• Angry tone? Check.
• Unfounded assertions? Check.
• Delusions of conspiring enemies? Check.

In the years that I’ve been editing Brain Terminal, I’ve gotten a lot of hate mail. This was the very first time, out of many tens of thousands of e-mails, that I’ve ever gotten an anonymous e-mail. Even the people sending me threats had the guts to do it from real accounts. So it is strange that the sender of this rather tame e-mail felt the need to hide behind an anonymous remailer.

If Nick Coleman did send this e-mail, then he’s more web savvy than I thought. I wouldn’t have expected someone who’s so clueless about blogs to know about anonymizers.

And if Mr. Coleman didn’t send it, then I have a message for the person who did: if you ever find yourself out of work, contact the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. You’re perfect for them.

17 August 2004 @ 9:46PM >> This e-mail came yesterday from a perturbed reader:

I recently read with amusement and consternation your journal entry “The Baby Lobby: The Next Militant Constituency“.

To be blunt, you come across as a selfish ignoramus.

A mother’s first priority must be her child’s well-being, this includes promptly changing them out of a soiled diaper. Any society that tries to discourage such a natural preeminence of affection for a mother towards her child is inevitably leading itself to its own extinction.

I must assume you are not a parent yourself, Mr. Maloney. Perhaps you will never be one and will have no descendants to notice your own personal extinction. But I ask you to consider the burdens of those of us who have taken a personal stake in the continued existence of the human race beyond our lifetimes. Raising children is an expensive, time-consuming, often difficult affair. It is a commitment of decades and requires, especially in the first few years of life, a constant attentiveness. I do not exagerate in describing the attention required as constant. An parent must be prepared to care for their infant 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So perhaps you might understand that with such a truly awesome and difficult task that a parent will take small consideration at your mild inconvenience at a public cafe.

There is no greater nor a more important task for a society than the raising of its children. The legacy of children even trumps in importance your being free of momentary distractions at a Starbucks.

Excelsior,

Michel Evanchik

Thanks for the friendly e-mail, Michel.

I think you’re missing the point, though: if seeing and smelling the contents of a soiled diaper is merely a “mild inconvenience” that I have no right to complain about, then why did the mothers feel it necessary to get up from their group, move halfway across the store and sit down next to me in order to change their babies? Why couldn’t they change the babies at their table?

I find it interesting that these mothers were unwilling to subject their own friends to the nasal assault, but were more than happy to expose strangers to the products of their babies’ digestive tracts.

I doubt the future of the human race rests, as you imply, on mothers having the right to change babies next to people who are eating in cafes. Then again, we ignoramuses are often wrong...

Take care,

Evan

24 November 2003 >> In response to Character Assassination by E-mail, several readers wrote in to comment on Snopes and to suggest additional websites for researching online hoaxes. More >>

14 October 2003 >> A reader writes to share his experience with belligerent protesters in Las Vegas. More >>

15 August 2003 >> A reader asks: “I was just wondering if there was anything about Bush you don’t like?” More >>

12 August 2003 >> Is the Bush Doctrine dead if it can’t be applied to North Korea? More >>

7 August 2003 >> A reader writes in to claim that “most of the world considers [the United States] the greatest threat to peace” and goes on to say: “If I do not wait until the physical threat has manifested itself, then I am the aggressor, not him, and I lose the moral high ground, and the status of victim. I am the criminal.” More >>

16 July 2003 >> The immediacy of Internet reporting can be a double-edged sword, as this reader points out: “The speed of dissemination occurs much faster than any attempt to monitor the accuracy of the information.” What is the basis of trust for the open-source media? More >>