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Old February 10th, 2008 #1
Alex Linder
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Default United States: Informal Censorship


[Chet Coppock]


ESPN Radio suspends Coppock for anti-Semitic remark

By Ed Sherman | Tribune staff reporter

February 8, 2008

Quick, somebody has to invent a vaccine. There's an epidemic of broadcast personalities who can't control what comes out of their mouths.

Chet Coppock is the latest to suffer from this dreaded malady. WMVP-AM 1000 has suspended the veteran sportscaster until Feb. 23 after he made an offensive remark about Jews on his show Feb. 2.

During an exchange with Ben Finfer, Coppock was asked to spell Jewish. He replied, "Money, M-O-N-E-Y."

After hearing the remark, WMVP general manager Jim Pastor took Coppock, who works weekends, off his show Sunday and will keep him on the sidelines for the next two weekends.

"We're extremely sorry," Pastor said. "The comment was offensive and uncalled for. We do not tolerate this kind of behavior from any of our hosts."

In a statement, Coppock said, "I made an offensive comment I truly regret. It doesn't reflect my views or those of WMVP. I sincerely apologize."

There has been a lot of apologizing in the last month. It began with the Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman and her "lynch him in a back alley" remark about Tiger Woods. That led to Golfweek editor Dave Seanor being fired over the use of a noose on a cover story about Tilghman. ESPN's Dana Jacobson was suspended for vulgar remarks about Notre Dame in a public appearance.

Now Coppock. I have known him for a long time, and in no way do I consider him anti-Semitic.

But that's not the point. He should know better—you simply can't make offensive jokes on the air, especially in the wake of what has occurred lately. Everyone's sensitivity level is way off the charts.

Who's next? Here's hoping that vaccine will come soon, before the epidemic claims another victim.

[email protected]

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune....,4098093.story

Last edited by Alex Linder; March 2nd, 2008 at 04:30 PM.
 
Old February 10th, 2008 #2
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Default Re: United States: Informal Censorship

[Don Imus]

Don Imus also called them "money grubbing".


I'm speculating, but I think the "nappy headed ho's" thing was just the vehicle they used to get rid of him. The jews were angry at him for speaking the truth about them, and if they did get rid of him due to the jew comment openly, then that would have had the nation confirming that they really do rule the Kwa.

What's the big deal? I've heard jews go on talk shows and say, "I'm jewish, and money is the most important thing to me."

A kike and his money. Fireworks and the 4th of July. Butter and bread. These things go together.

Last edited by Alex Linder; March 2nd, 2008 at 04:30 PM.
 
Old February 19th, 2008 #3
Alex Linder
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Default U.S.: Informal Censorship

[Context: mass media are dominated by jews]

[This article on jews in media helps you understand how filtered the mass media are. Anything against the jewish agenda does not make it through. Anyone against the jews' agenda is smeared and silenced.

The United States does not have laws against Holocaust denial or hate speech, although the jews running the country would like it to. What it has is not legal censorship but effective informal suppression. No 'respectable' publication would print that facts that, say, a Robert Faurisson adduces. Neither would any 'respectable' publication report that, say, Robert Faurisson had been beaten by jewish thugs within an inch of his life for reporting the facts about Auschwitz.

For practical purposes, the U.S. might as well have formal anti-speech laws if it were not for the Internet, which allows precisely the speech jews would like to suppress to be heard by thousands.]



Do Jews Dominate in American Media? And So What If We Do?


by Philip Weiss

February 17, 2008

At least a half dozen times in recent months, the suggestion has come from serious people that Jews predominate in the American media--that if we are not dominant, we are a major bloc. In a Yivo event on Jews in journalism I've blogged about, a questioner said that Jews' outsize proportion in the media has granted us "a large influence over power." In his groundbreaking paper on the New York Times's role in shaping American policy toward Israel, Jerome Slater spoke of "religious beliefs and identifications" that affected the Times, and cited former executive editor Max Frankel's admission in his memoir (one also cited by Walt and Mearsheimer): "I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert."

Lately broadcast reporter John Hockenberry related that he wanted to do a piece on the hijackers' motivation after 9/11 but that NBC executive Jeff Zucker scotched the notion:

"Maybe," Zucker said, "we ought to do a series of specials on firehouses where we just ride along with our cameras. Like the show Cops, only with firefighters."... He could make room in the prime-time lineup for firefighters, but then smiled at me and said, in effect, that he had no time for any subtitled interviews with jihadists raging about Palestine. Weiss's emphasis

Then last month at a forum at the Nixon Center, former Bushie Dov Zackheim said, Jews don't dominate the policy-making process, but the media is a different story...

I don't know that anyone has visited the simple question raised by these statements: Do Jews dominate the media? This is something I know about personally. I’ve worked in print journalism for more than 30 years. I’ve worked for many magazines and newspapers, and for a time my whole social circle was editors and writers in New York. I don’t know television. I don’t know Washington journalism well. I don't know the west coast. My sample is surely skewed by the fact that I’m Jewish and have always felt great comfort with other Jews. But in my experience, Jews have made up the majority of the important positions in the publications I worked for, a majority of the writers I’ve known at these place, and the majority of the owners who have paid me. Yes my own sample may be skewed, but I think it shows that Jews make up a significant proportion of power positions in media, half, if not more.


Before considering what this means, let me make my experience concrete:

My serious journalism began at the Harvard Crimson in the 70s. A friend said the paper was a Jewish boys club; it was dominated by middle class Jews-- as apparently today there are a lot of Asians. Many of these Jews are now powerful presences in the media. Zucker is one of them. My first paying job was in Minneapolis. Five Harvard guys started a weekly; four of them were Jewish, including the publisher paying our meager salaries. I remember our editor walking the halls parodying the jingle we had on the radio. The jingle went: "We’ve got the news, we’ve got the sports…" He sang it as “We’ve got the Jews, we’ve got the sports.” Funny.

I was hired by a Jewish editor at my next job, the Philadelphia Daily News in 1978, and when I started freelancing in 1981, Jewish Harvard friends got me work at the Columbia Journalism Review and the Washington Monthly. A gentile brought me in at Harper’s and the New Republic. It was at the New Republic, a launching pad for any number of highly-successful journalists, that I briefly associated with Marty Peretz, and did a story for him mocking the United Nations, whose judgment he seeks at every turn to nullify because the U.N. is critical of Israel.


Fast forward. In New York, I have worked for a dozen magazines. Most of my editors have been Jewish. Both my book publishers were Jewish. At one point at one publishing house, the editor, his boss, and her boss were all Jewish, and so was the lawyer vetting the work—I remember her saying she would never travel to Malaysia because of the anti-Semitic Prime minister. Oh--and the assistant editor was half-Jewish.

I should point out that I have worked with many gentile editors and writers, and I have never been aware of any employment discrimination against them (though I may not be the best source). In fact, at Spy, the three top editors were all non-Jews and when I used the epithet WASP it was removed from my copy. But that is the exception. Generally it’s been Jews Jews Jews. When I hear NPR do a piece with its top political team and both are Jews... when a Jewish friend calls me and gossips about lunches with two top news execs at major publications who are both Jewish and who I’ve known for 20 years... when a Jewish editor friend tells me that Si Newhouse would be disturbed if Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter-- who has done such courageous work against the Iraq war-- did anything to expose the Israel lobby... and when I say that my income has been derived overwhelmingly from Jewish-owned publications for years—this is simply the ordinary culture of the magazine business as I know it.

I have some ideas why Jews have predominated, but that’s not the purpose of this posting. Last year Senator Russ Feingold, buttonholed on CSPAN about why so many speakers on air were Jewish, said, “Well, we’re good at talking…” That'll do for now.

The real issue is, Does it matter? Most of my life I felt it didn't. It’s just the way it is, at this point in history. It will change (as Clyde Haberman pointed out at that Yivo event). Jews are the latest flavor of the establishment. In his landmark book, The Jewish Century, Slezkine reports that Jews were the majority of journalists in Berlin and Vienna and Prague, too, in the late 1800s, if I remember correctly.


Now I think it does matter, for two reasons. Elitist establishment culture, and Israel. As to elitism, I worry when any affluent group has power and little sense of what the common man is experiencing. I feel the same discomfort with my prestige-oriented "caste" that E. Digby Baltzell did with his calcified caste, the WASPs--when he called for an end to discrimination against Jews in the early '60s. The values of my cohort sometimes seem narrow: globalism, prosperity, professionalism. In Israel the values are a lot broader. None of my cohort has served in the military, myself included. A lot of our fathers did; but I bet none of our kids do. Military service is for losers--or for Israelis.


So we are way overrepresented in the chattering classes, and way underrepresented in the battering classes. Not a great recipe for leadership, especially in wartime.


Then there’s Israel. Support for Israel is an element of Jewish religious practice and more important, part of the Jewish cultural experience. Even if you're a secular Jewish professional who prides himself on his objectivity, there is a ton of cultural pressure on you to support Israel or at least not to betray Israel. We are talking about a religion, after all, and the pressures faced by Jews who are critical of Israel are not that different from what Muslim women who want greater freedom undergo psychically or by evangelical Christians who want to support gay rights. It is worth noting that great Jewish heretics on the Israel question suffer anger or even ostracism inside their own families. Henry Siegman talked about this on Charlie Rose once, I recall--that even close family were not speaking to him over Israel. And I have seen this for myself on numerous occasions. There is not a lot of bandwidth on this issue. Conversations about Israel even inside the liberal Jewish community are emotionally loaded, and result in people not speaking to one another. I lost this blog at a mainstream publication because the editor was Jewish and conservative on Israel and so was the new owner, and the publisher had worked for AIPAC. And all of them would likely call themselves liberal Democrats.

As former CNN correspondent Linda Scherzer has said, "We, as Jews, must understand that we come with a certain bias ...We believe in the Israeli narrative of history. We support the values that we as Americans, Westerners, and Jews espouse. Thus, we see news reporting through our own prism."


There are many American Jewish journalists who have done great independent work re Israel/Palestine. Richard Ben Cramer and the late Robbie Friedman leap to mind. But both these guys are exceptional, and had to overcome/ignore a ton of pressure that most of us would quail under. They had to step outside the Jewish family to do their work...

The result is that Americans are not getting the full story re Israel/Palestine. Slater says this dramatically in his paper--that the Times has deprived American leadership of reporting on the moral/political crisis that Israel is undergoing, one that Haaretz has covered unstintingly. At Columbia the other night, Jew, Arab and gentile on a panel about the human-rights crisis in Gaza all said that Americans are not getting the full story. Ilan Pappe has marveled in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, that the Nakba is all but unmentioned in the U.S.--while Haaretz has sought at times to document it, for instance a former officer saying in 2004 that if he had not helped to destroy 200 villages in southern Israel in '48, there would be another million Palestinians in Israel. To repeat Scherzer's admission: "We believe in the Israeli narrative of history..."


Why does the American press behave differently from the Israeli press? I think the answer is guilt. The Jewish cohort of which I am a part has largely accepted the duty that Max Frankel felt, of supporting Israel. This duty is rarely interrogated, and yet consciously or not we all know that American public opinion/leadership is critical to Israel's political invulnerability; and we think that if we take their fingers out of the dyke, who knows what will happen. That is a ton of responsibility. This responsibility is not executed with special care. Generally, my cohort hasn't been to Israel, hasn't seen the West Bank. But they do feel kinship with Israeli Jews, and--above all--have guilt feelings about the Holocaust, or the American Jewish silence about it during the event, the Jewish passivity; and they are determined not to be passive during Israel's neverending existential crises. And thus they misunderstand Israel and fail to serve their readers.

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweis...s-dominat.html

Last edited by Alex Linder; March 2nd, 2008 at 04:32 PM.
 
Old February 22nd, 2008 #4
Alex Linder
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[James Watson]

James Watson’s Ordeal

October 24, 2007

James Watson’s embrace of racial differences in intelligence once again shows the undiminished power of the left to control public discourse on critical issues related to diversity and multiculturalism. When Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray published The Bell Curve in 1994, it was greeted with a great sense of anticipation in some circles that at last issues related to race and IQ could be discussed openly and honestly. Finally, a book had been published by a mainstream publisher that dared to argue that not only were there racial differences in intelligence, but also that it was reasonable to suppose that these differences were partly due to inheritance.

But it never happened. One has to look long and hard to find mainstream media accounts of race differences in academic success that even propose genetic differences as a reasonable hypothesis. For example, recent state reports on school success have emphasized that economic differences do not explain the racial gap in school success. One would think that the failure of the favorite explanation of the cultural left would prompt reasonable people to at least suggest the possibility that genetic differences are involved. But that explanation is utterly taboo in the mainstream media.

Below the surface, however, in the labyrinths of academia, The Bell Curve has had an impact. Many new researchers are now studying general intelligence. Even the US military and much work in industrial-organizational psychology is taking the importance of “g,” the general factor of mental ability, into account.

Admittedly, the topic of race differences is still highly controversial. Nonetheless, even here there are real signs of progress. For example, an entire issue of the top-drawer American Psychological Association journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law was devoted to a review of Black-White IQ differences by J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen. Their paper (in 2005) entitled “Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability” concluded that Black-White differences were between 50 and 80 percent heritable. Most recently, Rushton and his colleagues published two studies in a paper in the July 2007 Proceedings of the Royal Society of London showing that the East Asian-European-South Asian-Colored-Black differences, mainly in South Africa, were substantially heritable.

However, these positive indications have not yet percolated up into the mainstream media. Watson was in some ways an ideal person to express his views on the topic and bring this material into the light of day. At 79 years old, he has little tangible to lose. He is a world-renowned figure with the sort of stature that can only come from making one of the central discoveries of 20th-century science. He is also a biologist with a professional understanding of genetic influences on behavior. Gene/behavior linkages are a major research interest of the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory that he led until being suspended because of his comments on African intelligence. Watson also has a deep personal interest in genetic influences on behavior because his son has schizophrenia.

Of course, the egalitarians are free to have as much of their say as they like, no matter how nonsensical. A good example is Steven Rose, an old-time warrior in the IQ wars who is mentioned several times in Ch. 2 of The Culture of Critique. He not only condemns Watson for expressing his opinion, but is quite happy to see that Watson's life has been upended, stating that “the repercussions are to be welcomed.” At least that far-left ideologue was honest enough to say he didn’t believe in free speech for scientists. Stalinism lives! Perhaps Watson deserves a long prison term in a psychiatric hospital.

It’s noteworthy that Watson has not caved in on the general point that natural selection may result in differences between human groups. He has defended himself by rejecting any implication that the entire continent of Africa is “genetically inferior” while nevertheless writing

We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things. The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science.

Watson believes that in 10–15 years we will get “an adequate understanding for the relative importance of nature versus nurture in the achievement of important human objectives.”

So is the clock ticking for the cultural left? Are we about to enter an age in which it will impossible to deny genetic differences on intelligence and we will be able to rationally discuss race differences in intelligence in the mainstream media? I think not. The cultural left has a long and largely successful history of being able to combat scientific ideas that it doesn’t like. This was the main conclusion of The Culture of Critique: The long and sorry history of Boasian anthropology, psychoanalysis, the anti-hereditarian and anti-Darwinian movements in the social sciences, and the Frankfurt School all masqueraded as science but they also wore their politics on their sleeves. Like other political movements, dissenters were simply excluded — drummed out of professional societies, publicly humiliated, and relegated to the fringes of intellectual life.

It’s a tradition that is alive and well in the 21st century. Watson has seen his book tour cancelled, he has been suspended from his position at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and has been subjected to outraged moralism from people who can’t hold a candle to his intellectual stature. And all for expressing his professional opinion on how the blind hand of natural selection may have operated to make people different.

http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/blog-Watson.htm

Last edited by Alex Linder; March 2nd, 2008 at 04:34 PM.
 
Old February 22nd, 2008 #5
Alex Linder
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[Context: jewish techniques for stifling debate]

[Jewish tactic: screaming to intimidate the honest and drown out the truth.]


Political Science Professor Emeritus, Manhattan Resident, Says We Need More Loud, Obnoxious Jews; etc.

From: Robert Weissberg (e-mail him)

Re: James Fulford’s Column: Saletan’s Scuttle And The Curse Of Jacob Weisberg

I read Fulford’s essay and agree with every word.

For the record, for my views about the myth of white racism have caused me much grief in my lifetime.

Years back, I wrote the lead article for the Weekly Standard on the fable that whites are racist.[White Racism: The Seductive Lure of an Unproven Theory, March 24, 1997, not online.]

See what the lack of a single "s" in one’s ideological DNA can bring—Slate editor and hate monger Jacob Weisberg vs. me, Robert Weissberg, that’s with "s" twice, aware about race reality.

Fulford makes a point that deserves additional scrutiny—winning arguments in New York by browbeating your opponents.

I spent most of my life in a research university setting where one argued with hard evidence—this study versus that study, my data versus your data, on so on.

When I recently moved to Manhattan, I was amazed at how one "won" arguments. I was equally amazed about how little so-called smart people knew, especially about race. But to listen to the smart alecks talk, they clearly think they have a true grasp on the subject.

Lucky for them that their profound ignorance hardly embarrasses them or anyone else since intelligence is not the currency of New York social life. Consumption outranks everything.

Those who perceive themselves as debate winners reject real science to instead offer a bag of verbal tricks and over the top emotional appeals. If all else fails, they try to destroy tangible evidence by claiming to "be offended" by the truth.

Sadly, these bullying techniques are all very "Jewish". And I say this as a Jew of good standing.

Interestingly, a few non-Jews have learned verbal abuse skills and are proud to have crossed over to the unenlightened camp where articulation triumphs over facts and skilled research.

The bottom line is that our side lacks a sufficient number of loud, obnoxious Jews willing to intimidate those who deny reality.

Weissberg is Professor of Political Science, Emeritus at the University of Illinois-Urbana, and occasionally teaches in the N.Y.U. Politics Department, Masters Program. His essay The Hidden Impact Of Political Correctness is available on MindingTheCampus.com. Others of his columns that appeared on Human Events are here. Weissberg is the author of The Politics of Empowerment and Polling, Policy, and Public Opinion: The Case Against Heeding the ‘Voice of the People.

Last edited by Alex Linder; March 2nd, 2008 at 04:35 PM.
 
Old February 22nd, 2008 #6
Alex Linder
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[Kevin Lamb]

[Human Events bows to SPLC pressure and fires Kevin Lamb]

The Leftward Course Of Human Events

By Kevin Lamb

"Fix New Orleans, Then Drill for Oil" read the headline in the September 5 post-Hurricane Katrina issue of the venerable Washington D.C.-based conservative weekly Human Events.

This betrays the modern mindset of the Human Events editors: Focus exclusively on "energy policy" wonkery and avoid the notorious lawlessness that flourished in New Orleans —murder, rapes, assaults, pillaging and looting—because that might mean mentioning its racial component.

As the former managing editor of Human Events, I can recall several instances in editorial meetings and private discussions in which race was simmering just below the surface—whether crime rates in the nation’s capital, immigration, or educational disparities in student achievement. When the conversation became increasingly awkward, one of the other top editors would caution: "I suppose we shouldn’t discuss that." Then they would quickly move on to a safer subject.

Mind you, this is from a group of conservative editors who would frequently boast of taking brave stands on other topics.

The New Guinean expression Mokita (truth that is widely known but rarely spoken) captures these Establishment Conservatives’ attitude to contemporary racial taboos. Certain truths are accepted, but are not to be publicly mentioned.

Politically correct radical egalitarianism—the belief that there are no natural differences between human groups—now reigns as unchallenged in the salons of the Conservative Establishment, as it does everywhere else in America’s political and social elites.

Last January I was forced out of my job at Eagle Publishing (home of the Conservative Book Club, Human Events, and Regnery Publishing) after serving nearly three years as managing editor of Human Events. The reason: editing, entirely on my own free time, another publication, The Occidental Quarterly (TOQ), that addresses important cultural, racial, ethnic, and political issues facing the future of Western civilization.

My work performance at Human Events was never questioned. I enjoyed my work, got along well with the editors, valued the camaraderie and good will of my colleagues at Eagle, and always put forth my best effort to meet my employer’s expectations to produce a solid, informative conservative weekly newspaper. Other staff members freelanced regularly on the side without losing their jobs.

However, one afternoon the Southern Poverty Law Center, the fanatical left-wing enforcer organization, called my office supervisors to inquire about my work for Human Events, the Evans and Novak Political Report (an Eagle newsletter), and a "white supremacist" publication (TOQ).

To my bosses, the SPLC’s Heidi Beirich was a faceless, nameless individual. Nevertheless, without hesitation or reservation, they accepted at face value her accusations and descriptions about my avocational work. Three years of collegial respect simply vanished instantaneously over accusations that were never questioned.

Much of the day passed on a routine schedule when late that afternoon, Tom Winter, the long-time editor in chief of Human Events, sternly demanded that I follow him to the office conference room. I sensed at that point we were not going to discuss a raise or promotion. Near the end of a ten-minute interrogation about my work with TOQ, the vice president of the company said, "How do you think we should handle this?" I was given a few seconds to decide to either resign or be fired.

I asked why I had to either resign or get fired. The response: "We think you know why."

For personal reasons, I decided to resign. We filed out of the conference room as people would leave a wake at a funeral.

As I was packing up my possessions in my office, Winter showed up and complimented me for my work as managing editor. I could sense a degree of unease about what had transpired. He didn’t seem to know much about the SPLC and their aggressive agenda to undermine any threat to egalitarianism. For conservatives of his generation, the embodiment of evil liberalism had always been the ACLU.

We talked briefly as I scrambled to find empty spare boxes around the office corridors for my family photos and personal mementos. He tried to smooth things out, but his own admission that I was a "good" managing editor was only a kick in the teeth.

It made me realize the full force of political correctness—imposed by the far left on a prominent “conservative” publication. My departure from Eagle was an expedient way to avoid the likely negative publicity that the SPLC could stoke if Eagle ignored their claims.

Although I had made it a point not to discuss my freelance work around the office, out of respect for my colleagues who might have strong opinions, individuals at Human Events knew of my involvement with TOQ—three Eagle employees, including a senior editor at my sister company Regnery Publishing and a former co-owner of the paper. Not to mention my working relationship with two members of the Regnery family, cousins—the one, Al Regnery, a member of Eagle’s corporate board and former publisher of Regnery; the other, William Regnery, a friend…and the publisher of TOQ.

My forced departure was wholly political. Further proof: articles by Marian Coombs and Wayne Lutton, two freelance writers I had used who also write for The Occidental Quarterly, were retroactively stripped off the Human Events website. (But this Soviet-style rewriting of history doesn’t work in the age of the internet: the articles can still be found in Google's cache,).

And the way Eagle abruptly dealt with my severance from the company was more callous than I could ever have anticipated. I received a few days pay and compensation for sick leave, vacation time and benefits. As the father of two precious daughters and a wonderful wife, I couldn’t imagine how a so-called "family oriented" employer could react so brutally.

It would have been one thing to say, "We see a conflict of interest, we don’t like how you spend your time outside the office, but in appreciation of your valued work for the company, here’s a few months compensation. We wish you the best of luck."

Nothing doing—I had to evacuate that evening and leave my access card to the building, as if I couldn’t be trusted to return and pack up my personal possessions.

Breaking the news to my wife later that evening, awaking her after our two daughters were asleep, was one of the most difficult experiences I’ve had to face. How do you explain to your wife that you lost your job—not for some work-related grievance—but for exercising your first-amendment rights and, as a freelancer, expressing a point of view?

The late syndicated columnist Sam Francis said that when he was similarly fired from The Washington Times, the experience was comparable psychologically to rape. As Sam put it, you feel personally violated, as if you needed to disinfect yourself by taking a thorough shower. I felt the same way.

One might think that the editors of Human Events would have brushed aside the SPLC’s effort to purge one of its employees. Eagle is an employer whose owner, Tom Phillips [email him], a mover and shaker in elite GOP circles, boasts about upholding "traditional American values of free enterprise, limited government, and individual liberty"—and presumably the U.S. Constitution. But Eagle executives were seemingly blind to the fact that the SPLC’s agenda actively tries to undermine the limited government and individual liberty of traditional patriotic Americans. The fact that such a radical left-wing organization could generate such a swift response out of, not just any conservative employer, but the flagship publication of social conservatives who politically remain entirely at odds with the SPLC’s outlook, is mind-boggling.

For example, in 2003 Human Events selected Judge Roy Moore for its man-of-the-year award for his principled stand in his fight to keep the Ten Commandments monument in his courtroom. The SPLC had filed the suit against Judge Moore that resulted in the removal of the monument.

Furthermore, SPLC’s founder Morris Dees said in March 2004, "The most dangerous threat in America today is not from the Ku Klux Klan and it's not from the Neo Nazis, it's from the religious right." Dees added, "I think of Judge Roy Moore in Montgomery, Alabama…. We took that case because it was a case of extreme religious intolerance."

The SPLC even lists the American Enterprise Institute as a "hate" group. [KL correction 10/5/05: In fact, AEI is not listed in the SPLC’s “hate group” page, but an article describes AEI “sponsored scholars” as having “views” that are “seen by many as bigoted or even racist”, citing Dinesh D’Souza, author of The End of Racism, and Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve.] SPLC’s sister organization’s website, Tolerance.org, has a glowing interview with former Weatherman and radical educator Bill Ayers, an unrepentant advocate of Communism, who as recently as 1995 described himself as "…a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist." As Ayers candidly admits in a published interview, "the ethics of Communism still appeal to me." Ayers is married to former Weatherman radical Bernardine Dohrn, who in 1969, according to the Claremont Institute, attended a Weather Underground "war council" in Michigan, in which she "gave a three-fingered ‘fork salute’ to mass murderer Charles Manson and gloated: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!"

To think that Human Events, a staunchly anti-Communist periodical that unapologetically defends Joseph McCarthy and Gen. Augusto Pinochet, would force a loyal employee to resign out of fear of the SPLC would have been, until very recently, inconceivable.

What explains this bizarre spectacle?

Unquestionably, Phillips’ takeover of Human Events in the early 1990s has subjected the once-independent paper to conventional corporate pressures. And Tom Winter, unfortunately, has been in poor health.

But over the years, especially since the 1980s, the American right has drifted leftward along with the rest of the political culture, especially on third-rail issues involving race, multiculturalism, and "diversity." Human Events is now far from the staunchly conservative views that it championed not so long ago.

Shortly after I had left the paper in January, Tom Winter was quoted in a UPI story as saying,

"In its 60-year history, Human Events had never ‘knowingly hired a racist, never published racist articles, and never tolerated racist sympathies…and we never will.’"

This may be true, but Winter had no problem granting The Citizen, the monthly publication of the segregationist Citizen’s Council, permission to reprint, in August 1979, the columnist M. Stanton Evans’ eyewitness account of the Rhodesian election that first appeared in Human Events.

Moreover, Human Events once published detailed critiques of egalitarianism, such as John O’Hara’s 1965 article, "Is There a Brotherhood of Man?" It also published the late David Brudnoy’s laudatory review of Jared Taylor’s Paved With Good Intentions in 1993. Brudnoy noted:

"Taylor’s analysis of the double standards operating in America and of the overall circumstance of the underclass is unsurpassed in a single volume intended for the general reader…a document of first-rate significance for analyzing where we are."

The irony of Human Events’ publishing this review is that it was Sam Francis’s affiliation with Taylor’s monthly newsletter American Renaissance that contributed to Francis’s banishment from Human Events. Throughout the late 80s and early 90s, his biweekly syndicated column frequently appeared in the paper, occasionally on the cover. But after Francis was purged from The Washington Times, his column likewise vanished from the pages of Human Events. Winter would edit his name from the text whenever it mentioned Francis favorably—just as the Soviets would airbrush an ex-comrade out of existence.

Earlier, contrary to Winter’s pronouncements against "racism," Human Events in fact had a long history of publishing provocative commentary on race and politics and maintaining affiliations with segregationist-minded politicians and journalists.

It ran the writings of Major Gen. J. F. C. Fuller, a leading historian of military strategy and a former supporter of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, and Professor Hans Sennholz, an economist and ex-Luftwaffe pilot who was also listed as a contributing editor of the John Birch Society’s American Opinion.

American conservatives once vigorously opposed radical changes that the left was forcing on society under the guise of racial equality—spawning the Brown v. Board of Education decisions, "civil rights" laws (including the "Open Housing" and "Voting Rights Acts"), affirmative action policies, court-ordered busing to achieve racial desegregation, the outlawing of merit-based employment testing in the private sector via the Griggs decision, and to a large extent, the current immigration crisis that has followed in the wake of the Immigration Act of 1965. Conservatives opposed this transformation of the culture, customs, and traditions (what the eminent sociologist William Graham Sumner called "Folkways") of America’s national character. They unabashedly represented the interests of their core constituents: white, middle-class voters—what Howard Dean has accurately identified as the base of the GOP. In another era, this constituency was known as the "Silent Majority." Today, this constituency is euphemistically referred to as "redstate America," "soccer moms" and "NASCAR dads."

Politically, this conservative continuum included Republican and southern Democratic politicians. Coalitions led by Sen. Barry Goldwater, who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Ohio Rep. John M. Ashbrook, and Senators Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and James Eastland stymied radical egalitarian reforms. Grassroots activists to the right of the emerging Conservative Establishment formed patriotic organizations. Broad coalitions of conservatives made possible the Reagan era, ushered in just twelve years after LBJ’s Great Society programs seemed to have swept the country.

It is true that over the years Human Events was careful in confronting the race issue. It never was explicitly a racial publication and it would be inappropriate to characterize it as such. But by the same token, it was never a champion of radical egalitarian social policies. It routinely opposed forced busing, Head Start, affirmative action, and aggressively exposed the Communist influence within the civil rights movement. The paper’s editors tacitly understood that grassroots cultural conservatives, such as Birchers and members of the Southern Citizen’s Council, formed a considerable core of Human Events’ readership base. The paper unapologetically looked up to prominent conservative public officials—including former segregationists such as Strom Thurmond—without being explicitly racial in outlook.

Times have changed. One dramatic example: Two years ago Human Events’ editor Terry Jeffrey [email him] insisted on using for the cover of the paper a color photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. making his historic 1963 speech to accompany Linda Chavez’s column criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy.

But historically Human Events had been enormously critical of King and his unreported Communist affiliations. In 1983, the paper reprinted in full text Jesse Helms’ speech detailing the full range of conservative objections to making King’s birthday a national holiday, including the infamous photograph of King attending the Highlander Folk School run by Marxist Myles Horton, which appeared throughout the South on billboards in the 1960s.

By publishing this large, laudatory image of King on the cover of Human Events, the editors must have made a number of older readers wonder if this is the same publication they were reading twenty years ago. (Hint: it isn’t).

In 1973, Human Events published "A Tale of Two Heretics," an article by M. Stanton Evans defending the research of Arthur R. Jensen, then at the University of California, Berkeley, and the late Richard Herrnstein of Harvard University. Jensen had published a controversial paper in the Harvard Educational Review in which he argued that the underlying cause of the black/white IQ gap, as measured by valid intelligence tests, was largely genetic in origin. It remains one of the most cited pieces of scholarship in the social science literature. Herrnstein’s 1973 book I.Q. and the Meritocracy received widespread condemnation from the left for arguing that class differences, poverty and economic disparities were not the result of capitalism or oppression, but primarily due to differences in IQ.

In a well-written summary of their work, Evans denounced the attempted censorship aimed against them in academic circles. He wrote:

"These parallel stories from our enlightened campuses tell us much about the condition of freedom of speech and publication in America today, as construed by radical activists and certain members of the liberal professoriate. Leftward tolerance of ‘dissent’ will obviously extend just so far and Herrnstein and Jensen have exceeded the limits. Where hereditarian heresies are concerned, the radicals will not permit expression and conventional liberals in many cases will not defend it—although there are various honorable exceptions to both rules."

Unfortunately, the Conservative Establishment in general and Human Events in particular is no longer an “honorable exception” to this repression.

Thus just over two decades later, in June 2002, Ann Coulter, the legal affairs correspondent for Human Events, wrote a first-rate column titled, "Murdering the Bell Curve." She lambasted liberals for suddenly discovering IQ tests—because they thought they could be used in court to get convicted murderers off death row.

I had been away vacationing that week and noticed, after it appeared in the paper, that one of our reporters had inserted the paperback release date (1996) as the initial publication of the book, which actually was first published in the fall of 1994. In the meantime, the late Jude Wanniski, one of the journalistic proponents of supply side economics, emailed the editors at Human Events, hysterically criticizing Ann’s favorable mention of The Bell Curve, denouncing it as a highly flawed book that rested on faulty social science research, citing Gregg Easterbrook’s critique from The Washington Monthly, [The Case Against The Bell Curve, Dec, 1994] and claiming that of the more than a hundred scholars who signed the statement of support that appeared on the op/ed page of the Wall Street Journal, no credible biologist or geneticist supported the book’s findings.

Wanniski’s error was to assume that no psychologist who supported The Bell Curve’s thesis had any adequate understanding of genetics. (A high school biology student would know that, based merely on his professional credentials as a self-taught economist, Wanniski would know even less about genetics than a psychologist.)

Anyone familiar with The Bell Curve controversy could easily spot these inaccuracies, as well as other wild, unsupportable assertions in Wanniski’s screed, including the number of scholars who signed the Wall Street Journal statement. (Actual number: 52). So I thought it would be a good idea to publish his letter, followed by an editor’s note explaining our error in botching the original publication date of The Bell Curve—and offering a point-by-point rebuttal to Wanniski’s blunders. I drafted a note and then provided Winter with a proof of the page to edit.

The next morning, I noticed Winter downstairs outside the Eagle office building proofing pages on his cigarette break. As I exchanged greetings and headed into the building’s lobby, he said he had one question about my comments on Wanniski’s letter. I figured he would drop by in a few minutes and raise the point.

But most of the day had passed when he finally came around to my office, a nervous wreck, leaning over next to me, explaining, "I’m just nervous about being called a ‘racist’," as he read off some of the scholars I had listed in the editor’s note. When he got to Arthur Jensen’s name, he had asked that I edit it out since he was told that Jensen was a "racist." Although I knew this wasn’t true, I complied with his request. Other than that, he had no other text changes.

As he was leaving the office, I had discovered that Winter had contacted several close friends and former associates throughout the afternoon to check to see if any of them had read The Bell Curve. He had faxed over a copy of the proof to Stan Evans (of all people) to see if he had read Herrnstein and Murray’s book, accompanied by an urgent note to get back to him ASAP.

I couldn’t help but think to myself: this is (pinch me) Human Events?!? The same publication that once vigorously defended Jensen and Herrnstein? What’s going on?

One of the issues that HE Editor Terry Jeffrey prides himself on is illegal immigration. As a former director of Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaign, he is tougher and remains more focused on social and cultural issues. (Winter would frequently describe cultural issues, such as multiculturalism and "diversity," as "boring.")

Consequently, Human Events has published some first-rate reporting on the problems of border security, terrorism, and lack of resolve on the part of public officials in halting the flow of illegal immigrants across our borders. One example: the recent cover story, "Is Your Security Guard an Illegal?”

Much of this reportage, however, has been through the post-9/11 prism of terrorism and national security. As important as it is, there are other aspects of the immigration issue that get far less attention—if any at all—in the pages of Human Events.

For example, where is the paper in the discussion on a moratorium on legal immigration? Why don’t it just come right out and admit that, generally speaking, some immigrants are more preferable than others? Why not just admit that "diversity" has its limits and this demographic trend is proving to be detrimental to our nation’s survival?

Unquestionably, some on the staff shared the Beltway Republican orthodoxy that Hispanic immigrants could be converted into dedicated Republicans and the country would be one harmonious giant Disneyland as a result.

Just as long as they’re not Democrats—then everything will be fine!

Historically, Human Events published occasional pieces on immigration. Some articles, like Palmer Stacy’s 1981 "Uncontrolled Immigration: Silent Threat to America," were exceptionally informative. But it must be said that, unlike National Review, at the time Human Events had peculiarly little to say about the 1965 Immigration Act, which historian Otis Graham has described as "the single most nation-changing measure of the era." The paper published one brief op/ed that first appeared in the Arizona Republic, "Limit Needed on All Immigration," in early October 1965 and a small news item, "Immigration Ceiling Advances," in September 1965.

This, however, was better than nothing. The paper’s current priorities were well illustrated by an instance last year. One of the paper’s more informative freelance writers, Jim Edwards, an adjunct fellow with the Hudson Institute, had submitted a piece critical of Utah Representative Chris Cannon’s amnesty program titled "Loose Cannon in Utah." The piece highlighted Cannon’s abysmal record on immigration legislation, which in many instances bucked his constituents’ interests, and triggered a GOP primary challenge by former state legislator Matt Throckmorton.

Winter always liked Edwards’ columns and suggested that we publish this one. He forwarded it to me for publication and to our web editor to post on the website. Subsequently, I worked it into the paper.

The next week, while on vacation, I received two frantic messages on my cell phone from Winter: "Kevin, I know you’re on vacation, but please call me as soon as you can." I returned his call and he seemed puzzled by the fact that we published Edward’s piece, especially with the "Loose Cannon in Utah" headline. The Phillips executive charged with overseeing Human Events had called him and hit the roof. Winter wanted me to describe the piece to him so he could explain what happened. He couldn’t remember proofing the article. I reminded him that Edward’s article had been up on the web and that I received the column from him to publish.

It had turned out that Rep. Cannon is related to Eagle board member Joseph A. Cannon, the chairman of the board of Geneva Steel, Inc. The Phillips executive was concerned about Cannon’s reaction to reading something so critical about his family member in Human Events and berated Winter for publishing it.

In March 2003, I approached Jeffrey about covering the LewRockwell.com "Lincoln Reconsidered" conference that was being held later that month in Richmond, Va. I thought it would make for a perfect "Conservative Forum" item in Human Events—just a brief description of the event from someone in attendance. He expressed interest in it so I called and received a press pass from Ron Holland, one of the organizers of the conference. He was thrilled to have Human Events cover the one-day forum.

A number of authors and scholars were scheduled for the event, including Emory University professor Donald Livingstone; Clyde Wilson, a contributor to Chronicles and professor at the University of South Carolina; Thomas DiLorenzo of Loyola College and author of The Real Lincoln (a hot-selling featured selection offered by Human Events’ sister company The Conservative Book Club); and Paul Gottfried of Elizabethtown College.

I wrote a brief description of the event and had it proofread shortly before our Thursday press deadline. Then Jeffrey came around to my office and said that he had second thoughts about publishing it. The event wasn’t exactly what he initially had in mind, and to publicize it would divide conservatives who were split on Lincoln’s legacy.

I complied with Jeffrey’s request and replaced the item. But I thought at the time that if someone approached Jeffrey and had argued that taking a rigid, pro-life position is "divisive" among conservatives—splitting social conservatives from libertarian-leaning conservatives—he wouldn’t have cared less. In his mind, conservatives are expected to be pro-life, if they aren’t, that’s their problem, not his. But when it comes to politically incorrect subjects, such as race, or even criticizing Lincoln or King, conservatives must now conform to conventional dogma.

The leftward drift of Human Events isn’t limited to the issue of race. Over the years, Human Events has been the leading pro-family publication among grassroots social conservatives, firmly opposed to the agenda of homosexual activists, such as "gay marriage."

Thus in 1960, Human Events published one of its most popular feature articles, "Homosexual International" by Countess Waldeck. The article began by noting that the Deputy Undersecretary of State Carlisle Humelstine had ousted 119 homosexuals from the State Department in 1951. One morning, I received a call from one of our readers in Arizona inquiring about how he could obtain copies. I asked Winter and he immediately recounted how popular the article was at the time it was published.

As late as the mid-1980s Human Events published numerous articles critical of the emerging, aggressive homosexual subculture, such as Stan Evans’ "AIDS: Homosexual Plague." Lengthy reviews of books such as The Homosexual Network by Father Enrique T. Rueda appeared on a regular basis.

Again, times have changed. One of Human Event’s editors who wrote hard-hitting copy about outrageous homosexual news items in the old blunt language regularly complained to me that Winter would make it a point to tone down the rhetoric, replacing "homosexual" and "sodomite" with "gay" in proofing the text.

Here too, Human Events was regressing to the media norm.

Similarly, Human Events dropped Ted Baehr’s mini reviews of films, a family-oriented feature popular with many parents because of his detailed ratings for foul language and nudity. But this wasn’t swank enough for the Phillips executive’s tastes (he would ridicule it in editorial meetings) and eventually it was dropped as a regular feature.

In his recent book Winning the Future, Newt Gingrich complains that

"Since the 1960’s, the conservative majority has been intimidated, manipulated and bullied by the liberal minority. The liberal elites who dominate academia, the courts, the press and much of the government bureaucracy share an essentially European secular-socialist value system. Yet they have set the terms of the debate, which is why ‘politics as usual’ is a losing proposition for Americans."

But the reason liberals have set the terms of the debate is that conservatives let them.

For many Beltway “conservatives,” attending events like the White House Christmas Party [VDARE.COM note: Er…Multicultural Holiday Party, see here, et cetera.] is the pinnacle of achievement. Everything else is secondary. Anything that jeopardizes this social standing is beyond the pale. Status is the fuel that drives the Conservative Establishment.

This explains why “conservatives” have given up so much ground on issues that were once important to them: truth about race, IQ differences, egalitarianism, decadent societal trends, immigration restrictions, and the threat that ethnic balkanization poses to the future of American society.

To regain that ground, new institutions—like VDARE.COM and my new employer, the National Policy Institute—will be necessary. [contact Human Events]

Kevin Lamb (email him) is the editor of The Occidental Quarterly and the communications director of the National Policy Institute.

http://www.vdare.com/misc/050922_lamb_events.htm

Last edited by Alex Linder; March 2nd, 2008 at 04:37 PM.
 
Old February 22nd, 2008 #7
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[Context: Real issues never discussed in mainstream media]

[Kevin MacDonald on free speech in U.S. and "our" Middle East policy]

The vast majority of Americans live under the comfortable illusion that theirs is a free country. They suppose that issues are openly and honestly debated in the newspapers and on talk shows. In this imaginary world, all issues affecting public policy are on the table and are constantly scrutinized by the best and the brightest.

But that is simply not the case. In fact, I would go so far as to argue the opposite—that virtually all of the really critical issues affecting the United States and its role in the world are actually excluded from discussion in the elite media or in the political arena.

http://www.vdare.com/macdonald/070131_mideast.htm

Last edited by Alex Linder; March 2nd, 2008 at 04:26 PM.
 
Old February 24th, 2008 #8
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[Duane "Dog, The Bounty Hunter" Chapman]

"Dog the Bounty Hunter" was the highest rated show on A&E

The network pulled series after Duane "Dog" Chapman made a racial slur

Chapman has apologized

A&E says it has decided to accept his apology and resume production

HONOLULU, Hawaii (AP) -- TV bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman is preparing a return to the airwaves.

The Chapman family confirmed Thursday that filming is set to resume on the A&E show "Dog the Bounty Hunter."

The show features Chapman and crew in pursuit of bail jumpers in Hawaii and other states.

It was the highest rated show on A&E before the network pulled it off the air in November.

Chapman was heard in a taped phone conversation using a racial slur in reference to his son's black girlfriend.

Chapman has apologized and tried to make amends with the network and the black community.

Network officials say that since the show is about second chances, they decided to accept his apology and resume production. No air date has been announced.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/0....ap/index.html

Last edited by Alex Linder; March 2nd, 2008 at 04:25 PM.
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #9
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[Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder]

SKOLNICK: Who's suited to take the heat?
Published July 8, 2003

"The black is the better athlete. And he practices to be the better athlete, and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes way back, to the slave period. The slave owner would breed this big black with this big black woman so he could have a big black kid. That's where it all started." -- Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder, 1988.

You remember that, don't you?

That was a sports figure speaking on the biological characteristics, and superiority, of modern black athletes as compared to whites, creating a firestorm and losing his job.

Saturday another sports figure spoke on the biological characteristics, and superiority, of modern black athletes as compared to whites. Yet his comments have hardly caused a spark. If he's feeling the slightest bit toasty, it's due to criticism of his All-Star selections, in particular finding a slot for his own starter, Kerry Wood, instead of the Marlins' Dontrelle Willis. He will manage the Cubs against the Marlins today, and the All-Star team next Tuesday, as scheduled. Life goes on.

He won't be Jimmy the Greek.

The comments by Snyder came to mind while considering the comparative absence of outrage regarding Dusty Baker's Saturday statements, a few newspaper columns aside. Similarly, a long-disparaged sibling came to mind for John Synodinos, as he surfed the Internet from his Ohio home and saw Baker's quotes.

"I'll defend my brother to the death," Synodinos said.

And long after it. Demetrios Georgios Synodinos, or Jimmy the Greek, died in 1996 at age 76. In its first sentence, The New York Times' obituary remembered the fixture on The NFL Today, football's signature pregame show, as "an oddsmaker and football personality who brought gambling to the forefront of televised sports but was fired by CBS Sports for saying that black Americans were better athletes than whites because of physical traits dating back to slavery.''

It is hard to imagine The Times including Baker's racial musings in his obit.

Yet is hard to find more than shades of difference between what the black Baker said Saturday, in explaining the Cubs' frequent summer struggles, and what the white Snyder said 15 years ago to WRC-TV in Washington, as he was finishing lunch at Duke Ziebert's.

"It's easier for me," Baker riffed on playing in the heat. "It's easier for most Latin guys and it's easier for most minority people. Most of us come from the heat. ... Weren't we brought over here because we can take the heat? [Blacks'] skin color is more conducive to heat than it is for light-skin people, right? You don't see brothers running around burnt. Yeah, that's fact."

It's also fact that Ernie Banks and Billy Williams, both black, were the Cubs' signature players for many years. But what is at issue here is not the validity of Baker's beliefs, but why they are more publicly acceptable than those Snyder expressed, especially when prominent blacks expressed views similarly rooted in biological determinism before The Greek did, and have since.

"It's happened so many times," said Angela Kayafas, Snyder's baby sister, when read Baker's comments. "It was unfair what they did to Jimmy. It was terrible. My brother was offered jobs all over the country after, but he was just cut to the core. Next to his family, CBS was his life, and the injustice of what they did to him, it was such a betrayal. Jimmy took it so hard, it affected his health."

Synodinos agreed "false condemnation" caused The Greek's illnesses: "He never was a racist, and they treated him like one."

It may not surprise you that Snyder's siblings strongly feel their brother was wronged, done in by confluence of events -- an expiring contract, the timing (Martin Luther King Jr. day), his plain-spoken nature, the lack of context. What might surprise you is neither believes Baker should be so censured. Quite the opposite.

"Nobody's making a big deal out of it," Synodinos said. "And they shouldn't. I don't care if the man is green. What he speaks is what he believes is the truth. You shouldn't crucify a man for saying what he thinks is the truth. Bigotry is something else."

"I don't think he should be punished for anything," Kayafas said. "By doing that, we are taking away the most valuable thing we have, freedom of speech. His views don't affect the way he does his job. He isn't denying anyone the right to play."

It should be noted, for instance, that Wood is white and Willis black.

Kayafas said too many people have "gone by the wayside" because of their speech, and a person's livelihood is too much to take. "The punishment should fit the crime," she said.

But shouldn't the first rule of punishment be sameness for all? That what is good for the goose be good for the gander, no matter what color the goose and gander might be?

Snyder's siblings may be too kind when each attributes the more muted reaction to the tenor of the times, and a mellowing public.

That doesn't seem so when you consider Bill Maher, the Dixie Chicks, Andy Rooney, Bob Ryan, Trent Lott and on. Calls for accountability are at an all-time high. But not for Baker. Not yet.

Is his race a factor?

"I wouldn't like to think that would make a difference," Synodinos said. "It would be insulting to the black race, if that was the case."

That might depend, however, on who was suggesting it.

Ethan J. Skolnick can be reached at [email protected]

http://web.archive.org/web/200307160...4864999.column

Last edited by Alex Linder; March 2nd, 2008 at 04:39 PM.
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #10
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[Al Campanis]


Al Campanis -- forever a racist?

WHICH IS WORSE?

"(Blacks) may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager." -- former Dodger general manager Al Campanis in 1987 on ABC's "Nightline"

Or "disadvantaged" students lack the "genetic hereditary background to have a higher average" on standardized tests. -- the president of Rutgers University, Francis Lawrence, at a meeting in November 1994

Al Campanis later explained his remarks, "When I said blacks lack the 'necessities' to be managers or general managers, what I meant was the lack of necessary experience, not things like inherent intelligence or ability. I was dead-tired after traveling when I went on the show. I got confused. It was like a telegram -- you try to say it in a few words, and it's implied differently." Lame, you say?
Former Dodgers manager,
Tommy Lasorda,
called Campanis,
"my mentor."

Consider President Lawrence's defense. He was thinking about the book The Bell Curve, which argues that, for genetic reasons, blacks fail to perform as well as others on standardized tests. See, Lawrence found the book so immoral that he refused to read it. But, apparently, it was, like, on his mind, causing him to say the very opposite of how he truly feels. Yeah.

Now, Al Campanis, who just died, lost his job for his "racial insensitivity." President Lawrence, on the other hand, withstanding protests and cries for resignation, retained his job. Why? Well, Lawrence's defenders portrayed him as pro-minority, pro-diversity and pro-affirmative action, citing his long-standing record in advancing causes sympathetic to minorities.

Well, what about Al Campanis' record?

When Jackie Robinson broke the modern major league color barrier in 1947, Campanis, then a Brooklyn Dodger infielder, offered, repeat offered, to room with him. Campanis taught Robinson how to turn a double play to avoid spiking by the charging, Robinson-hating base runners. Throw the ball at the base runner's forehead, Campanis advised. Do that a couple times, he said, and goodbye, human javelins.

As a player development executive with the Dodgers, Campanis signed, among others, Roberto Clemente, Willie Davis and Tommy Davis.

"(Campanis) didn't have a racist bone in his body." -- Vin Scully, longtime Dodger broadcaster and the most respected announcer in sports.

"What happened to him ... was unfortunate. He was just the opposite of what he was accused of being." -- Dodger third-base coach, Joe Amalfitano

"While in the minor leagues, Campanis once threw down his glove during a game and challenged an opponent who was bullying Robinson. He was also known to invite Robinson to eat with him while many other whites chose to keep their distance." -- Robert Kuwada, Orange County Register sportswriter.

"You hate that any man's career is ruined in a couple of minutes. What he said was wrong, but he was always cool to minorities when I was there, especially the Latin players, and the blacks." -- San Francisco manager Dusty Baker, and former Dodger outfielder.

"It's sad to think that Al leaves the world with an unjustifiable reputation. He never judged a player on the basis of color. The only thing he wanted to know was 'can he play?' He dedicated his life to the Dodgers and did more for Latin and black players than anyone in baseball. I'll stand on that statement." -- Dodger general manager Tommy Lasorda

"Mr. Campanis was a great person, a great human being. He treated everyone with a great deal of respect. He gave the Latin players a lot of opportunities to play in the Dodger organization. We called him the 'father of Latin baseball.'" -- former Dodger player and current coach Manny Mota.

"I've never been around a fairer man in my life." -- longtime Dodger infielder and former manager Bill Russell.

"I'm sad not only for his passing but for the way people will remember him. That's not the way I will remember him. There are a lot of racists in the world, on both sides, and he wasn't one of them. He helped Roy so much when he was coming through the major leagues. He molded a lot of young men into men." -- Roxie Campanella, the widow of former Dodger catcher Roy Campanella.

Jesse Jackson once called Jews "Hymie" and New York "Hymietown." He apologized. We forgave. Former President Harry S. Truman, in a letter, once called New York "Kiketown," yet his support was instrumental in the creation of the state of Israel. Richard Nixon made anti-Semitic remarks on the famous Watergate tapes, yet appointed the first Jewish secretary of state and had important and influential Jewish advisers.

Following the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls championship, an excited Vice President Al Gore said, "How about that Michael Jackson. That Michael Jackson is just unbelievable!" If Dan Quayle says it, that's at least five jokes on Leno. If Al Campanis says it, it's "See, I told you."

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/elder070298.html
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #11
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[Kelly Tilghman]

Broadcaster Kelly Tilghman has apologized. Tiger Woods has accepted it. But the Rev. Al Sharpton says it isn't good enough.

In events resembling the prelude to the fall of radio host Don Imus, Sharpton appears to be marshaling his forces for a fight with the Golf Channel, which suspended Tilghman on Wednesday for a racially insensitive statement made last week.

Tilghman uttered the remark during coverage of Hawaii's Mercedes-Benz Championship on Friday, while she and and co-host Nick Faldo were bantering about how young golfers might challenge ever-dominant Woods.

Faldo said, "To take Tiger on, well yeah, they should just gang up for a while until ..."

"Lynch him in a back alley," Tilghman interrupted with a chuckle.

Tilghman is a far cry from Imus, the morning show host who was canned after calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." Unlike the disc jockey, who is known for his off color humor and outspoken remarks, she has no history of stoking racial tensions.

But Sharpton says it is the word -- not the person or their history -- that matters. In a Wednesday interview, he compared Tilghman's statement to calling for a woman to be raped or for a Jewish-American to be sent to a gas chamber. Video Watch why Sharpton thinks apologies are insufficient »

"Lynching is not murder in general. It is not assault in general. It is a specific racial term that this woman should be held accountable for," the reverend said. "What she said is racist. Whether she's a racist -- whether she runs around at night making racist statements -- is immaterial."

Sharpton said he wants Tilghman fired, period. And if the Golf Channel doesn't comply, the network can expect to see Sharpton and his National Action Network supporters picketing its Orlando, Florida, headquarters.

At first, the channel said it had no plans to discipline Tilghman, who issued a statement saying she had apologized to Woods and wanted to further apologize to offended viewers for "some poorly chosen words."

Woods, who through his agent issued a statement saying he was friends with Tilghman and respected her, said, "We know unequivocally that there was no ill intent in her comments."

A spokesman for IMG World said Woods' agent, Mark Steinberg, would not be available for an interview, but it has been widely reported that Steinberg said Tilghman's remark was "a non-issue in our eyes. Case closed."

But as word of Tilghman's remark circulated via the media and video clips made their rounds on the Internet, the Golf Channel reconsidered its stance on Wednesday, suspending Tilghman for two weeks.

"There is simply no place on our network for offensive language like this," the network said in a statement. "While we believe that Kelly's choice of words were inadvertent and that she did not intend them in an offensive manner, the words were hurtful and grossly inappropriate."

Chat rooms and Internet message boards buzzed Thursday with calls for Tilghman's ouster. There were also a fair number of posts calling the remark "stupid" or "insensitive' but adding that Tilghman's intent did not seem racist.

"Though her comments were ridiculously insensitive, they weren't spewed with malicious intent," reads one post on a Black Entertainment Television message board.

"Was it offensive? Yes. However, Tiger does not care, so why should I?" reads another.

Other remarks seemed to back Sharpton's stance. "YOU CANT TAKE IT BACK," reads one. Another says, "Fire her!!! Now!!!!"

Kevin Miller, a newsradio host for KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said he believes Sharpton and his ilk are off base.

"What she said is wrong," Miller said of Tilghman's comment, which he called "flippant, adolescent, unfortunate."

However, he added in Tilghman's defense, "you have to look at the intent." The "politically correct vigilantes" calling for her job are inciting divisiveness in the country when they should be building bridges, he said.

"Lynch" is the offensive word du jour, Miller said. Tomorrow, it could be a different word, he said, suggesting that Sharpton should issue a book of words that Americans can and can't say.

"The word keeps changing all the time," Miller said. "Maybe we should just apologize in advance for everything."

But Sharpton insists it doesn't matter how profusely someone apologizes, no more than it matters who forgives Tilghman for her remark.

"It's not about Tiger Woods. It's about the station. It's about using public airwaves to offend people," Sharpton said. "Some things are beyond the pale of discussion."

Tilghman's comment may have been a mistake, Sharpton said, but he feels it was evident of a deep-seated and well-cloaked racism.

"I don't know why that would pop into her mind, but it popped out of her mouth, and she should be held accountable," the reverend said.
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Miller, conversely, feels it was an honest mistake, and she should be afforded a second chance, especially considering it was the first instance of her making insensitive remarks.

"I think it's a sad day in America when words can get people run from their jobs," Miller said. "I'm willing to send her a certificate of atonement."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/10/tilghman.woods/
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #12
Alex Linder
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[Dave Seanor]


Golfweek editor replaced over noose cover

By Gary Van Sickle
Senior Writer, Sports Illustrated

January 18, 2008

ORLANDO, Fla. — One day after a racially insensitive cover graphic of a noose snowballed into a national controversy, Golfweek magazine replaced its longtime editor and vice president, Dave Seanor.

Golf.com first learned of the decision on Friday morning from a source on the staff of the magazine who was not at liberty to speak for attribution. Golfweek then issued a statement confirming the report and naming Jeff Babineau, a senior writer, as the new top editor.

"We apologize for creating this graphic cover that received extreme negative reaction from consumers, subscribers and advertisers across the country," said William P. Kupper Jr., president of Turnstile Publishing Co., the parent company of Golfweek. "We were trying to convey the controversial issue with a strong and provocative graphic image. It is now obvious that the overall reaction to our cover deeply offended many people. For that, we are deeply apologetic."



Golfweek's cover story ran with the headline "Caught in a Noose?" and was about the now infamous "lynch" remark made by Golf Channel anchor Kelly Tilghman during the network's broadcast of the Mercedes Championship two weeks ago. The sub-title said, "Tilghman slips up, and Golf Channel can't wriggle free."

On Thursday, the cover about the controversy became a controversy in itself. The Tour's commissioner, Tim Finchem, sternly criticized the publication.

"Clearly, what Kelly said was inappropriate and unfortunate, and she obviously regrets her choice of words," Finchem said in a statement. "But we consider Golfweek's imagery of a swinging noose on its cover to be outrageous and irresponsible. It smacks of tabloid journalism. It was a naked attempt to inflame and keep alive an incident that was heading to an appropriate conclusion."

The story began during the Golf Channel's broadcast on Jan. 4 when analyst Nick Faldo joked that the young players of the PGA Tour may have to gang up on Tiger Woods to compete with him. His co-anchor, Kelly Tilghman, agreed and suggested with a laugh that Tiger's young rivals "lynch him in a back alley."

Tilghman later apologized on the air and directly to Woods. Mark Steinberg, Woods's agent at IMG, dismissed the incident, saying that Woods and Tilghman were friends and the comment was not malicious. Still, the network suspended Tilghman for two weeks after the controversy became a story outside the golf world and the Rev. Al Sharpton called for her dismissal.

Golfweek, one of two U.S. weeklies devoted to the game, has removed the cover from its Web site and copies of the issue from its booth at the PGA Merchandise Show, the golf industry's annual trade show, which is happening this week in Orlando.

"You can't say 'Sorry' enough," Babineau told Dan Patrick on his radio show. "We had several mockup covers. One had Jason Day on it. If we had to do it over, we wish we could put that one out ... I don't think enough thought was put into it. The noose was there to depict Golf Channel's tough situation. More of us connected the image of the noose to that."

Asked about the editor's firing, Babineau said, "It was something we had to do to show people we're very sorry. A very good friend of mine lost a job and it's a tough pill."

http://www.golf.com/golf/tours_news/...704872,00.html
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #13
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[Chris Brand]

In late March a book by Christopher Brand titled The G Factor: General Intelligence and its implications. appeared in UK bookstores. It was published by Wiley UK. On April 17, the New York office announced in an unprecedented action "After careful consideration of the statements made recently by author Christopher Brand (as reported in the British press), as well as some of the views presented in his work.. , we have decided to withdraw the book from publication. (Wiley) does not want to support these views by disseminating them or be associated with a book that makes assertions that we find repellant." (Holden, 1996). It is very unusual for a publisher to break a contract with an author and announce that the reason for the this action is to prevent the dissemination of certain views. The question naturally arises as to what are the views whose dissemination they wish to prevent, and what is the evidence for these views? While Wiley has not been specific as to just what views that were trying to prevent the dissemination of, one presumes they have to do with racial differences in intelligence and the implications for economics and educational policy. Wiley announced (McMillen 1996) that they acted because of "deep ethical beliefs", but what these were was not revealed. One suspects they were that racial differences and eugenics should not be discussed, but that is merely a guess.

Fortunately, the author of this review article had seen the Wiley prepublication publicity planned for the jacket (available at http://laboratory.psy.ed.ac.uk/DOCS/crb/new.html) and decided to review the book. He had obtained a copy, and started this review when the book was withdrawn. The fact that this book was withdrawn in an announced attempt to prevent the dissemination of certain ideas will modify somewhat the nature of this review. It will be longer than the usual review so that the reader will have the opportunity to know what Brand had to say. Also references will be provided so that the reader will be able to find the sources for what Brand claimed.

Incidentally, this will serve to make clear that the views that Wiley was trying to avoid disseminating were based on well established science. Brands book is not primarily about racial differences or eugenics (the major policy recommendations relate to educational policy). But since much of the controversy has dealt with these issues, and it appears that Wiley's goal was to prevent dissemination of Brand's views of these issues, a disproportionate part of this review will be devoted to these topics. This will serve both to inform the reader of Brand's views on these issues, and to frustrate Wiley's attempt to prevent dissemination of certain ideas.

There are several interesting features of Wiley's actions. In many countries there has been concern about domination of the economy by companies headquartered abroad. This concern has been especially strong with regard to national culture, and the industries that directly affect it including publishing, motion pictures, broadcasting, etc. Usually a multinational firm tries to leave the impression that key decisions affecting the culture or economy are made in the country affected.

Wiley's decision is unusual in that it was announced in New York and made in the name of the chief executive, Mr. Ellis, even though the major effect was to cause the withdrawal of a book from British bookstores and to hurt a Scottish author. The very short period of time between the start of publicity in Britain and the decision of Wiley's New York executives to withdraw the book make it very unlikely that anyone in New York had read the book in detail.

An interesting aspect of the Brand case, is that the Scottish Nationalist party, which is understood to believe that Scotland should not be ruled in all details from London, might have been expected to take the lead in preventing Scotland from being ruled from America.

However, their Leader, Mr Alex Salmond denounced Edinburgh and supported the decision of Wiley headquarters in New York to break their contract with Brand, and to remove his book from Scotland's booksellers That he made this decision shows the power of the taboo against discussing racial differences in intelligence. The author's royalties from books on intelligence will go not to Scotland, but to those Americans, such as Herrenstein and Murray, Jensen, Seligman, Rushton, Itzkoff (etc.) whose books say much the same as Brands, except with more emphasis on race. Nor will a UK publisher get the revenue, or UK workers get the printing jobs. That even a Scottish nationalist would support a NY decision to withdraw a book by a Scottish author from Scotlandís bookstores shows the strength of the taboo against discussing certain topics. As is well known, there is an organized effort in the US and elsewhere to suppress any discussion of racial differences in intelligence (Pearson, 1991).

In response to the furor caused by Brand, there were student protests on his campus, apparently left wing students who were opposed to the discussion of racial differences. They claimed that they were made uncomfortable by lectures in which racial and sexual differences were discussed. These complaints led to the announcement of an investigation of Mr. Brands teaching by his University. One suspects this was a result of political correctness since Brand had been lecturing at Edinburgh since 1970, apparently without significant complaints. Thus the investigation on its face appears an effort to penalize him for expressing controversial views. The withdrawal of the book by Wiley meant that debate about Brand's view had to proceed with many having actual access to the book in which his view were expressed. It is partially to remedy this problem that this summary of the book is provided.

What is really in this Controversial Book?

Actually, The g Factor: General Intelligence and its implications provides a good readable discussion of what is known about intelligence that differs in most aspects little from what other authors have said (Herrenstein and Murray,1994, Jensen, 1980, 1981, Seligman, 1992, Rushton, 1995, Itzkoff ,1994, etc). The title of The g Factor arises from the psychometricians' use of the letter g to stand for the general factor which can be extracted from performance on a battery of mental performance chapters. The book is relatively short consisting of only four chapters and a postscript.

The first chapter is devoted to discussing what is intelligence, and what do psychometricians mean by g. After a brief history of concepts of intelligence and of mental testing, the remarkable fact is presented that performance on most mental tests are correlated. Someone who does well on one test tends to do well on other tests. While this is sometimes described as an unsurprising finding, it is pointed out that the normal expectation is that skills are learned, and time spent on one activity comes at the expense of time spent on other activities. Thus, it is indeed surprizing that there is a positive correlation between different skills.

It is pointed out how many of the psychologists working on mental abilities have desired to make their mark by identifying a new mental ability that was uncorrelated with the already known. abilities. So far such attempts have failed. For instance, the Piagetian abilities that children master in the course of development were shown to be abilities well correlated with intelligence.

There is a good discussion of how such a variety of abilities, all of which are correlated, implies the existence of a common factor, g, which is useful for predicting school and job performance. The book deals nicely with the complaint that tests measure only "academic intelligence" pointing out that they provide the only way of predicting success in most occupations, with even noted critics admitting that lawyers, engineers, and chemists virtually never have IQs below 100. Even the military, an organization that is not usually considered to value academic aptitude, still finds tests useful. In one of many great lines in the book (p. 32), "By definition, it cannot be 'narrow academic skills' that boost efficiency ratings and remuneration across a wide range of jobs types: grasping capitalist employers and crime-busting police chiefs will surely not be taken in for long by mere scholasticism."

The theory that g is merely measuring the social class of the parents is refuted by pointing out that parental social class has only a modest correlation with the education attainments of the children by their early twenties. (p.35). White (1982) reviewed 100 studies in the US and estimated the correlation at about .22. As Brand puts it "Evidently parental socioeconomic status (SES) today scarcely correlates with, so simply cannot be influencing, such a crucial variable as educational attainment in young adults."

This chapter has a useful discussion of the lower performance of certain groups (notably blacks) on tests, drawing the useful distinction between the claim that the tests are a valid measure of ability but that some environmental disadvantage of the group (such as racial prejudice) has actually harmed the group, and the claim that the tests are actually biased against members of the group. Evidence is presented that measures of intelligence predict school performance equally well in both groups. (Scarr-Salapetek, 1971, 1972). Likewise, for adults IQ tests correlated just as well with job performance in all racial groups. "Actually, the tests slightly over-predict scholastic and workplace performance by blacks and are to that extent unfair to whites and Asians in competition for the same positions." (p. 37). The author of this review has provided in this journal a simple graphical exposition of why this is (Miller, 1994).

The possibility that minority children lack motivation for test taking is disproved by the fact that "black children do perfectly well at laboratory tests that are not correlated with g-such as drawing a straight line, threading beads, and recalling past events."(p. 37). It is pointed out that when particular items are identified by sociologists and educationists as appearing 'culturally unfair' to minorities, black children actually do a little better on these tests (often requiring memory and learning) than on items selected on the basis of being unbiased (and often requiring g).(p. 38). It is pointed out that at every age and every level of family income, that black children are no worse at the Weschler vocabulary than they are at block design (Roberts 1971, but yet vocabulary is probably more culturally influenced than the ability to copy block designs.

The second chapter of this short book deals with the bases for IQ differences, and in particular, the extent to which they are genetic. There is a nice simple discussion of factor analysis (with a numerical example for the centroid method).

There is then a fascinating discussion of the biological correlates of intelligence. While there is a brief mention of Jensen's decision time work, the emphasis is on the inspection time work which Brand himself pioneered (Brand & Deary, 1982). In inspection time experiments the subject is shown (often with a tachiscope) for a fraction of a second two markedly different lines (2.5 inches versus three inches) and asked to say which is longer.

The minimum time the subject must see the lines to determine which is longer is determined. This task is simple, and has no obvious relationship to intelligence. However, it does correlate with intelligence (as Brand discovered), and the author argues (p. 73) that overall "results are compatible with an estimate that the true IT/IQ r in the full population (including representative proportions of the young, the elderly and the retarded) would be .-75." The minus sign here indicates that that the time required to tell which line is shorter is less for the more intelligent.

Somehow it appears that the brains of the more intelligent function differently than the brains of the less intelligent, even on simple tasks where there is no learning involved. This is of course consistent with there being a genetic basis for many differences in intelligence.

The third chapter deals with issues of nature and nurture. There is now very little dispute among the experts that a substantial fraction of intelligence differences between people is for genetic reasons. Perhaps the most striking evidence comes from studies of identical twins raised apart. Their IQ's correlated .78. The other twin studies are reviewed, with mention of the study that involved the largest number of monozygotic twins (Lynn & Hattori, 1990) where the correlation for 543 pairs of monozygotic twins was .78 and for 161 pairs of dizygotic twins .49. Like other authors that have reviewed the evidence, Brand finds there is evidence for substantial heritability.

Brand does violate the taboo of drawing (even if weakly) the eugenic implications the role of genetics in intelligence. He contrasts the implications that might be drawn from a belief in "environmentalism" with those that might result from a belief that genes play a role. He points out that (p. 12) "If children of the future are to receive maximum intellectual and education levels and to be more employable, there would need to be fewer homes where parent and caretakers were un-stimulating, drug-addicted, neglectful, and themselves of low IQ-even assuming large environmental origins of g". He states, drawing on the Reed and Reed (1965) collected data on 80,000 descendants of the grandparents of 289 state colony patients having IQ's <70 (and without epilepsy), that the overall rate of retardation would have been reduced by 50% if handicapped people themselves had not had children, even though only 88 of the 289 patients were diagnosed has having retardation of definitely genetic origins. What is happening here is that those suffering from retardation of unknown origin are having children who are themselves retarded, which suggests a genetic cause for most such cases.

He points out that (p. 120), "A eugenic policy focused on IQ must be attractive to any would-be improvement of human happiness-whether hereditarian or environmentalist." To those that fear that acknowledgement of genetic influence might lead to state efforts to limit reproduction of certain individuals, he points out (p. 121) that "Acceptance of others' rights is what protects everyone from state manipulation of any kind; and such acceptance follows perhaps a little more easily from a belief in biologically based individual agency than from an environmentalism that stresses the power of society to shape and even 'construct' the individual."

The final chapter of the book is titled "Intelligence in Society", and sets out the policy implications. Since this section appears to be what got the book withdrawn, it will be summarized here, even though doing so risks making the book appear more social in nature than it really is. The discussion opens with a discussion of Jensen's 1969 article on the failure of Head Start, and his controversial suggestion that the problem was with the lower genetic IQ of black children. Brand comments that (p. 131) "Most educational experts agreed with Jensen and Eysenck that black IQ levels were low (for whatever reason) and that this deficiency helped to explain poor education records and later tendencies to crime and promiscuity. To recognize this deficiency (if not to publicize it) had remained tolerable while the racial differences in IQ seemed changeable." He suggested that recognizing this became intolerable once the failure of early childhood intervention to correct the problem had become apparent, and been documented by Jensen.

Brand points out (p. 134) how three events have blocked off lines of dignified retreat for crusaders against the 'Jensenist heresy.' First evidence was produced that the tests were as fair and valid for black children as for anyone else (Jensen 1980). Secondly it had become apparent in America that low IQ's were not generally characteristic of racial and ethnic groups that had experienced discrimination, as shown by Jews and Orientals in America. In Britain, Brand reports that Pakistani immigrants suffer from prejudice and maintain a language, religion, and moral code that distance them from their British hosts yet, their children have always tested as being of normal intelligence once they have learned English, and they slightly outperform English children educationally by mid-adolescence (Brand 1987c).

Brand points out that "almost the full Afro-American deficit, of some 15 IQ points, could be detected in children as young as three years, born to black mothers who were themselves college educated, married and had no pregnancy complication or health problem. (Monte & Fagan, 1988). Medically and socially matched, these young black children had a mean IQ of 91 and the white children tested at 104." As he points out, the matching for socioeconomic status and the use of college educated mothers eliminated most of the environmental theories for racial differences that are commonly proposed. At age three most children have not been in school, or been exposed to much of the world outside of their own family and community (i.e. any societal racial discrimination should not have affected them).

Brand describes the experiments with adoption of black children into the homes of white middle-class homes. This yielded (p. 135), "the usual 8 point IQ gain plus some narrowing of the gap between black and white adoptees at age 7; but by age 17, the black youngsters lagged the white by the usual 12-15 IQ points (Weinburg, Scarr & Waldman, 1992; Lynn, 1994)".

He points out (p. 136) evidence against the theory that blacks suffer from being in a white society is provided by the failure of blacks to perform conspicuously better in any of the countries or North American cities run by blacks themselves--indeed, they usually performed much worse.

Having dealt with the controversial topic of black white differences (this rather mild discussion was apparently the reason that caused Wiley to withdraw the book), the discussion moves on to the practical importance of intelligence. It is pointed out that IQ at age five correlated strongly (r=.50) with educational achievements when they were 15 (Brand did not provide the reference for this in the book, but he privately supplied, Yule, Gold, & Busch, 1981). It is pointed out that many studies in which IQ is unimportant are ones where restriction of range is important. IQ has seldom correlated better than .30 with college grades, but this is because of the restriction of admission to the better students, and because students sort themselves by ability into course of different difficulties.

The mental tests that correlated best among themselves (i.e. indexing g) turned out to be the main predictors of occupational success and income (Hunter & Hunter, 1984: Schmidt, Ones & Hunter, 1992). A statement in the text that upward inter-generational mobility is strongly predicted only by IQ is expanded on in a footnote where he points out that difference scores are particularly unreliable (since they are affected by the unreliability from both of the variables that contribute to them). Waller's (1971) finding of a correlation of .29 between father-son IQ differences and father-son socioeconomic differences would imply a "true" correlation of around .50. As an illustration of the ability of IQ to explain outcomes better than socioeconomic status, several results from the Bell Cure (Herrenstein & Murray, 1994) relating to the probability of dropping out of high school, probability of white males being unemployed for a month, and probability of white out-of-wedlock mothers going on welfare) are graphed.

The discussion then moves to the implications for educational policy of individual differences in intelligence. Brand points out how many students are forced to study material in school they have already mastered. In Montreal, 45% of the children know 60% of the school curriculum (in French and math) before the years work begins (Gagne, 1986), while in a study of 160 gifted English school children, 60% were found to be doing classwork at a level more than four years below their actual attainments (Painter, 1976). He points out that the top 10% of 7 1/2 year-old-children are higher in g than the bottom 10% of 15 1/2-year-olds (Raven 1989). Brand thus pushes the apparently common sense idea that students should be grouped in accordance with ability.

Brand points out that although modern educational ideology talks about allowing children to progress at their own speed within mixed ability classes, that as a practical matter this cannot be done since the teacher cannot teach at two levels at the same time. The argument that smaller classes would permit better mixed ability teaching is countered by pointing out that classes of even six would still have virtually the full range of abilities, and that empirical studies regularly show that educational outcomes are unrelated to class size (Walsh, 1995).

He proposes that the problem of matching children's mental ages be solved by putting the brighter eight-year-olds with the nine-year-olds, and the slower eight-year-olds with the seven-year-olds. The usual objection to this is that grade advanced children would not have sufficient maturity, emotional age, or moral development to associate with older children. Brand has dug up an impressive list of studies (p. 162) that the mental age predicts these better than chronological age. On 11 out of 12 measures of social and emotional adjustment, gifted children in Grade 3 were found to be more advanced than average children in Grade 6 (Lehman & Erdwins, 1981). He claims that there is no sound evidence that grade advancement will yield either social or emotional maladjustment (Silverman, 1989, and Feldhusen, 1991).

Brand proposes that children and parents should be free to pick scholastic programs that suit their abilities. It is surprizing that a book with such a mild conclusion should have caused such a furor. How unconventional are the views expressed by Brand, and summarized above. Actually, they differ little from those of other specialists who study intelligence. A survey sent to 1020 experts (Snyderman and Rothman, 1988) showed that there were three times as many who thought the racial differences were both genetic and environmental, as thought it was solely environmental.

Amazing, there a few other fields where admitting that one believes what is the mainstream wisdom will get one so soundly condemned.

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/stalkers/em_gfact.html
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #14
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[Michael Richards - "Kramer"]

Laugh Factory incident

On November 17, 2006, during a performance at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood, California, a cell phone video captured Richards[1][9] shouting "Shut up" to a heckler in the audience, followed by "He's a nigger!" to the rest of the audience[10] (using the word 6 times altogether), and also making a reference to lynching. [11] He was addressing a group of black hecklers.[12] Richards made a public apology for his remarks, during a satellite appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman.[13] He described going into a rage and said, "For me to be at a comedy club and to flip out and say this crap, I'm deeply, deeply sorry." He said he was trying to defuse heckling by being even more outrageous, but that it had backfired. Richards later called civil rights leaders Al Sharpton[14] and Jesse Jackson[15] in order to apologize, despite the fact that both of them have been known to use the term in the past. He also appeared as a guest on Jackson's syndicated radio show.[16] A Top Ten List featured on The Late Show in February 2007, titled "Top Ten Ways to Make the Grammy Awards More Exciting" and read by guest Christina Aguilera, mentioned Richards giving out the "rap and hip-hop awards".[17]

Kyle Doss, one of the members of the group that Richards had addressed, gave his explanation to CNN of the events prior to the cell phone video. He said that they had arrived in the middle of the performance and that, "I guess we're being a little loud, because there was 20 of us ordering drinks. And he [Richards] said, 'Look at the stupid Mexicans and blacks being loud up there.'"[14] Richards then continued with his routine. Doss added, "And, then, after a while, I told him, my friend doesn't think you're funny", which triggered Richards' outburst.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael...ctory_incident
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #15
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[J.C. Corcoran]

J.C. Corcoran on suspension for comments made on air

By Deb Peterson
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
02/08/2008

LIVE WIRE: Local radio bad boy, J.C. Corcoran, was suspended from his radio show on KIHT for two weeks without pay on Thursday because of shocking statements he made about AmerenUE.

Corcoran's comments were made on his morning show on Monday. He was upset that his power went out during the Super Bowl halftime show. His first hostile comments were directed at Richard Mark, Ameren's senior vice president of Missouri Energy Delivery. Mark is African-American, and Corcoran made racially derogatory comments about him in a voice that was intended to mock black dialect. He also criticized longtime TV anchor Karen Foss and said that since she had been hired to do public relations for the utility, she was "harder to find than Osama Bin Laden."

What really got people upset was when Corcoran talked about climbing to the top of Ameren's building "with an AK-47 and just start picking people off." Corcoran further made sexually tinged comments about Ameren executives. Some local groups who were offended by Corcoran's comments called, e-mailed and wrote letters to the station to complain. John Beck, local topper for Emmis Communications, which owns and operates KIHT, said in a statement: "In speaking with J.C., we know he deeply regrets his comments. We at Emmis Communications are deeply sorry for J.C.'s statements ... we sincerely apologize. In J.C.'s absence, the show will continue with co-host John 'U-Man' Ulett and Laurie Mac, Dave Murray and Carl The Intern." Corcoran also provides commentary on KTVI-TV (Channel 2) three times a week. Spencer Koch, GM of the station, said Thursday that Corcoran would not be back on Channel 2 pending further review of his transgressions on radio.

Later Thursday, Corcoran read a statement from Emmis' offices at Union Station. "I made a terrible mistake," he said. "I made some ill-conceived, hostile, on-air comments about Ameren. I spoke out of anger ... after 30 years on the air, you'd think I would know better. I apologize to our listeners, our community, our advertisers and the good employees of Ameren." About his suspension from KIHT, he said: "It's a punishment I fully accept."

Thomas R. Voss, AmerenUE's president and CEO, said the utility was "chagrined that J.C. Corcoran and other customers in his neighborhood lost power during a portion of the Super Bowl, however Corcoran's remarks Monday morning on K-Hits Radio went far beyond acceptable language." He said Ameren did not request any action be taken against Corcoran. "Only time will tell if today's apology is sincere and if today's action is appropriate and sufficient to prevent a recurrence," he said.

The Rev. B.T. Rice, minister of New Horizon Seventh Day Christian Church, said a two-week suspension wasn't severe enough to counter the words spoken by Corcoran.

"I don't think a slap on the wrist or to sugarcoat it is enough," Rice said in a telephone interview. "I think he really needs to go."

Rice cited the firing last year of radio personality Don Imus over a racial slur, and the 2006 firing of KTRS talk-show host Dave Lenihan after he made a racist comment about Condoleezza Rice.

B.T. Rice is the first vice president of the St. Louis County branch of the NAACP and said that he was speaking on behalf of the organization.

Corcoran is no newcomer to controversy. He was hired by KIHT in 2002 after unceremoniously parting ways with KLOU (103.3 FM) earlier that year. His career has also included stops at KMOV-TV (Channel 4); KSDK-TV (Channel 5); KSHE (94.7 FM); KMOX (1120 AM); and KSD (93.7 FM).

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/new...3?OpenDocument
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #16
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[Doug "Greaseman" Tracht]


The Silenced Greaseman
A Year After His Racist Slur, the Deejay Remains an Outcast

By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
March 9, 2000

The Greaseman wants his life back.

He wants the fame and the fans, the glamour and the glitz, the rapid-fire life of the million-dollar shock jock who makes a living shooting off at the mouth and firing people up, and putting 'em down, of making 'em laugh and making 'em mad, of saying just enough of the wrong thing to make his show outrageous and dangerous and to keep listeners coming back so they can hear what he'll say next.

That's how you make it big in the shock jock life. That's how you stay on top.

Except when you go too far. Except when you step over the line and say the absolute wrong thing at the absolute wrong time and it blows up in your face.

And then you've got a problem like Doug Tracht's, a k a the Greaseman, who until last year was the morning star at Classic Rock 94.7 in Rockville.

But last year the Greaseman crossed the line with a horrible racial slur. A day later, amid a firestorm of protests and outrage, he was fired.

Since then Tracht has been trying to rub the word "racist" off his life.

Just how do you erase the Scarlet R? Especially when this is your second offense, when this is the second time you've make a joke about black people dying.

Tracht's been moving from one venue to the next looking for a way to clean up the mess he made. And, he and his wife, as well as others around him, say he's done his time, performed his penance.

But there are plenty of people who don't care if the Greaseman ever hits the airwaves again. Who believe he's more than used up his time.

Two weeks ago was a case in point.

Tracht flew to St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, for a fresh start, or so he thought. A radio owner finally was going to put him back on the air.

Tracht made it as far as Puerto Rico. News of his impending arrival had beaten him to the tiny Caribbean island and hit with hurricane force. Residents protested and local politicians warned of a riot if he went on the air. The next day the station owner rescinded his offer.

An Attempt at Redemption

Flash back to one year ago.

On Feb. 24, 1999, Tracht played a clip of a song by black performer Lauryn Hill and said, "No wonder people drag them behind trucks," referring to the 1998 murder in Texas of James Byrd Jr., a black man who was chained to the back of a pickup truck driven by three white supremacists, dragged at high speeds and decapitated. Tracht made his comment a day after the first of those men had been convicted in Byrd's slaying.

The outrage and his subsequent firing shocked the shock jock. So Tracht tried to fix it. He apologized. And apologized.

Local black businessman Rock Newman, convinced that Tracht was sorry, spent the next several days ferrying him from one interview to another. Black media figures grilled and chastised him. Black Entertainment Television asked viewers what the Greaseman could do to prove he is sorry. Nearly three-quarters of respondents said "nothing." WTEM sports-talk host John Thompson suggested he seek counseling. Tracht wanted to apologize to the congregation at Union Temple, but the Rev. Willie Wilson wouldn't let him.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the flurry of activity was over.

At the D.C. Central Kitchen, at Second and E streets NW, staff member Susan Callahan heard Tracht say on television that he wanted to show he was sorry.

"It's hot and sweaty and dirty here, and if he wants to prove himself, this is the place to be," Callahan thought. Another staff member who knew Newman made a call, and suddenly Tracht was cleaning toilets at the kitchen, wringing out mops alongside George Whitson.

Whitson is the same age as Tracht, 49, but that's just about all they share. Tracht was born in the Bronx. He was reared and confirmed as a Lutheran and grew up in a neighborhood that was changing from white to racially mixed. It's where he developed an ear for mimicking multiethnic dialects. He was a skinny loner, a straight-arrow kid who got beaten up a lot. He graduated from Ithaca College in New York and went right to work in radio--the only career he's had. He rose steadily and, by the late '80s, was at the top of the Washington area market doing mornings at DC-101. After an attempt at national syndication failed, he returned to Washington radio in 1997, landing at Classic Rock 94.7 for a cool $1 million a year.

He has a home in Potomac and one in Los Angeles. He has a boat. His wife is beautiful and so are his female "workout partners" at the Rockville Pike gym where he exercises. He has blond highlights added to his hair.

Whitson is a black man. He was injured on a construction job, lost it, lost his apartment and moved into the Central Kitchen, a place that feeds the hungry and shelters the homeless. He is tall and slender, with graying stubble and a quick smile. He lived in the shelter for some time but now proudly shows off the keys to his new apartment. For three months, he worked alongside Tracht at the Central Kitchen.

Tracht volunteered four hours a day, two or three times a week, for about four months. Would this be his path to understanding and forgiveness? And would he learn a few things?

"It's the kind of place where you can rediscover yourself," Tracht says. "I did things I'd never done in my life. I went in there like an idiot, and now I know how to clean and mop, how to shovel and unload, how to slice and dice."

Years before, when Whitson drove a truck for Interstate Van Lines, he had laughed at Tracht's jokes. Now he knew that lots of people were mad at Tracht.

"Couldn't nobody tell me exactly what he said," Whitson says. "So I said, 'I'm just going to talk to the man and find out what's up.' "

Whitson says Tracht won him over, once taking him to his Potomac home.

Tracht remembers that day. "I took him to my house because we needed to borrow my truck to haul some supplies for the kitchen," he says in an e-mail. "I had driven my Cadillac to the Kitchen that day, and since George and I were building a project together, I took him with me, switched vehicles and off we went. We sat and talked for a minute, had soda."

"The only thing he ever did to me was be nice," says Whitson. "Sometimes, when you tell a joke, it comes out wrong. I don't think his whole life should be destroyed."

Defenses--or Excuses?

But what if it's happened before? Flash back even farther, to Martin Luther King Day 1986. While doing the morning show at DC-101, Tracht said: "Kill four more and we can take a whole week off."

That slur brought protests and death threats, but Tracht kept his job; the station suspended him for a week and offered scholarships for Howard University as a way to make amends. The Greaseman went on being the Greaseman.

The obvious question last year and now: Why would he do the same thing again?

"I always kept a certain sensitivity in mind that I got in trouble before," Tracht says. But then, he says, he noticed that more deejays were getting away with more racially offensive material.

"I mistakenly thought--not that I wanted to join the ranks of the race-beaters--that with those kind of broad parameters, I could slip in something that I intended as a joke, given what the business has come to," he says.

Joe Madison, a black morning show host on WOL, sees it another way: "What really bothered people about the Greaseman was, it wasn't just two off-color jokes but that both of the jokes undervalued the life and death of two black people."

'I Became Insensitive'

Tracht also decided to take up John Thompson's counseling suggestion. Through Newman again, Tracht started meeting with Lee Crump, a black clinical psychologist at Howard University Hospital. After about five visits, Crump, Tracht says, told him he that wasn't racist but invited him to continue the visits. A year later, Tracht still sees Crump about once a week.

Crump doesn't recall that specific language but says that "I saw nothing consistent with what I would expect to find with someone who is a 'racist.' " He adds that " 'racist' is an emotional term with no universally agreed-upon definition."

So what has Tracht learned about himself? He is unusually quiet for a moment, then reaches back to his first, short-lived marriage nearly 30 years ago, and rambles forward to the moment he joked about Byrd's murder:

"I became a little insensitive over the years," Tracht begins. "I was saddened by my first marriage and divorce. The whole thing tore me up in a big way. It almost makes you want to get a little shell around your heart in order not to be hurt like that again. And then, if you get into another relationship that ends badly . . ." He trails off, then resumes:

"Your heart goes out to anybody in a tragedy, anybody, but maybe you have enough hardness around your heart, you think, 'Well, you know, I'm brokenhearted for this person, but Lord knows I went through some hell of my own.' You become a little cynical, so you can find a joke like the one I told--that got me in trouble--fun."

Fear of Advertisers

"I've always been just a joke-teller," Tracht says. For years, he prospered by combining sound effects, a range of voices and an unusually fast wit to create theater-of-the-mind comedy radio. His taste ran to the risque and often raunchy, and, to get around Federal Communications Commission decency regulations, he substituted code words for potentially offensive ones. For instance, male sexual organs on the Greaseman show became "hydraulics."

It was during Tracht's first job after college in the '70s that he invented the Greaseman, a character unlike any other on radio. It was the Greaseman who paved the way for the Howard Sterns of the world.

But in the year since Tracht's firing, the radio industry has not come calling. A part-time actor, he appeared in an episode of "The FBI Files" on the Discovery Channel and did a comic turn on a cringingly bad infomercial for an Internet dating service.

Several radio companies, Tracht says, "expressed interest," but that's as far as it went. There are a couple of reasons for that, industry folks will tell you. Economics, more than anything else, is the main one.

Racist comments are part of the shock-jock world, where it's equal opportunity offensiveness. The most popular shock jocks make fun of women, foreigners, people with disabilities, senior citizens--you name it. Their audiences can be racially diverse but are mostly young and mostly white male. The N-word is often heard on Stern's show.

"If [Tracht] had some ratings like I do, he'd be able to get away with it," Stern said last year. It's true--about the ratings, at least. Tracht averaged half of Stern's ratings the year before he was fired.

Today there's no longer any guarantee that Tracht, with his skits and funny voices, can deliver the numbers he did 10 years ago. After the 1986 incident, Tracht got "30 to 50 job offers," he says. After last year's blowup: none.

The industry argument goes something like this: Tracht was fired by a station owned by a huge, publicly held corporation--CBS/Infinity--whose stock price could be hurt by allegations that it employs racists. Tracht was expendable.

A recent survey of a half-dozen local radio general managers and national syndicators showed a consensus: Tracht is a "hugely" talented radio personality whom they would not hire.

"The fallout from the advertisers alone would be tremendous," says Mark O'Brien, general manager of DC-101. "It would not be a good business decision to put him back on the air." O'Brien has not ruled out bringing Tracht on DC-101's morning show, but only as a guest.

Phil LoCascio, program director of Classic Rock 94.7, who helped fire Tracht last year, declined to comment.

Virgin Islands radio owner Jonathan Cohen says he reconsidered his offer to put Tracht on the air after being convinced it would do more harm than good. But, he adds, he was angry about being forced into that decision.

"It's a political year here," he says. "A lot of people are using this to gain some momentum in the upcoming election."

If Joe Madison were a radio station program director, would he hire Tracht?

"As a black man with a social conscience, no, absolutely no," he says. "Now, if I were a white PD in a predominantly white city who had no social conscience and was only thinking about the buck, then I might."

Reaching Out

Soon after his firing, Tracht switched on a radio at home. He heard the Rev. Crosby Bonner, pastor of the nondenominational Love International Church in Springfield, home to 1,000 souls and one radio show. Bonner was talking to Louvon Byrd Harris, sister of the slain James Byrd Jr. Tracht called the show and asked for Harris's forgiveness.

Harris said on-air that she could forgive Tracht but couldn't speak for the rest of her family.

The next day, Tracht and his wife, Anita, came to the church and met Harris. That began a surprising friendship. Harris and Anita Tracht now talk on the phone at least once a week. The Trachts set up a gospel event for Byrd's family at the House of Blues restaurant in Los Angeles.

A year ago, though, things were much different.

"The whole family was upset" when they heard about Tracht's slur, Harris says. "We heard he was apologizing on TV and our first reaction was, 'He's trying to get publicity to cover what he said.' Our family was very accessible; he could have picked up the phone directly to call us. So we thought this was more of a media stunt than anything."

Today, Harris says her family won't carry a grudge against Tracht.

"A lot of times we try to judge what's inside of a person, but the best way is to let them go out there and see what they're going to do."

Doug and Anita Tracht joined Love International. Tracht emphasizes: He is no Holy Roller but points to his heart and says, "Something's going on in here.

"No one wants to forgive because they realize they're going to have to make some changes in themselves first," Bonner says. "That legislator [who protested his hiring] over in the islands has never even heard Doug, but she won't even listen."

Madison knows that Tracht has spent the past year seeking atonement, but he wonders if Tracht still just doesn't get it.

"I believe in redemption, but this country can't afford a Greaseman," says Madison, who spent a pleasant afternoon with Tracht, Newman and others aboard Tracht's boat last spring.

"We've come through slavery, we've come from being recognized as less than human, we've struggled through Jim Crow, segregation, civil rights. We've come too far to go back."

The Albatross

Maybe, Tracht thinks, it's time to move on. He's considering setting up an Internet-only broadcasting studio in his basement. He just wants to get back on the air. He needs to be the Greaseman again.

Two weeks ago, just before heading to St. Croix, Tracht again appeared on "BET Tonight," hosted by Tavis Smiley.

Smiley told his viewers of Tracht's attempted return to radio. The host demanded to know what Tracht had done to prove he was sorry for what he said. The callers were angry and upset. For the first time in the year since his exile began, Tracht was combative.

"Let me down off this cross, will you?" Tracht told one caller.

After the show, in a dark parking lot outside BET's Northeast Washington studio, Tracht exhaled heavily and asked, "This can't go on forever, can it?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...30900-idx.html
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #17
Alex Linder
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[John Rocker]


Rocker on the Rack

by Steve Sailer
National Post
1/10/00

In the grand tradition of the Brezhnev regime, Major League Baseball is forcing Atlanta Braves relief pitcher John Rocker to undergo psychiatric testing for expressing dissident political and social opinions.

Rocker is on the rack for the neo-Orwellian crime of hating New York. "It's the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you're [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing."

Saturday Night Live's Colin Quinn commented, "I hate Rocker, but I have to admit the guy has ridden the 7 train."

Of course, when the charge is "multicultural insensitivity," the fact that one is telling the truth only worsens one's guilt.

No doubt, baseball commissioner Bud Selig and the rest of the thought police will be shocked, shocked, to learn from the shrinks that a young closer whose job is to intimidate batters by throwing 95 mph fastballs right under their chins is hot-headed and hostile.

But the rest of us should be shocked by the chilling effect that "sensitivity" is having on free speech.

Steve Sailer (www.iSteve.com) is the president of the Human Biodiversity Institute.

http://www.isteve.com/rocker.htm
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #18
Alex Linder
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[Paul Hornung]

Form The Lynch Mob! More Sports Heroes Commit Truth About Race!

By Steve Sailer

I've seen it a thousand times. But I'm still bemused that modern sportswriters form lynch mobs whenever sports heroes commit the unforgivable sin of not being boring about race.

Boston Celtic basketball legend Larry Bird and Green Bay Packer great Paul Hornung recently incurred the wrath of the sports scribblers for speaking frankly about the Great American Taboo.

Last week, Hornung lost his job broadcasting Notre Dame games for saying back in March that, because the Fighting Irish have some of the strictest academic entrance standards for football players in the country, they are routinely beaten by the speedsters at anything-goes colleges like Miami U.

Hornung’s proposal:

“We can't stay as strict as we are as far as the academic structure is concerned because we've got to get the black athletes. We must get the black athletes if we're going to compete."

William C. Rhoden at the New York Times immediately denounced him:

"Hornung's remarks were an insult to every athlete—black and white—who ever played for the university, earned a degree and added to its football legend.” "Hornung Has Failed to Meet Standard of Common Sense: April 1, 2004, Free version]

Nooooo! Calling for lower standards in the future in order to widen the pool of athletes eligible to be admitted to Notre Dame is a compliment to black grads of the past. As we now know, they were (mostly) admitted and earned a degree under higher standards than those of most colleges.

Of course, these nice liberals screaming at Hornung for saying that Notre Dame should lower its standard to admit more black athletes also strongly approve of Notre Dame lowering its standards to admit more black non-athletes.

That's called affirmative action!

The fact that the white-black gap in average SAT score is 206 points (see page 11 of this 820k College Board [PDF]) causes all sorts of fascinating problems for universities that have both high standards in the classroom and high hopes on the football field. But the gridiron scribes don’t want you to hear about them.

(You can read all my comments on the Hornung brouhaha here, including the inside story on how the Fighting Irish’s last national championship was won back in 1988 by temporarily lowering admissions standards to get top black athletes like quarterback Tony Rice.)

More recently, sportswriters turned their mindless rage on the great Larry Bird for his crime of telling the truth. Bird said:
bullet “… as we all know, the majority of fans are white America. If you just had a couple of white guys in there [in the NBA], you might get them a little excited.”

- “But it is a black man's game, and it will be forever.”

- “I just didn't want a white guy guarding me, because it's disrespect to my game.”

- “I mean the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.”

He’s right, of course. I covered this issue in depth in one of my best National Review articles way back in 1996: "Great Black Hopes.” As you can tell just by noticing the greater average muscle definition of black athletes, there are genetic differences between the races that give blacks, on average, more explosive muscularity of the kind that basketball, football, and sprinting particularly require.

Truth, however, is not a defense in America’s race wars. In a typical reaction, entitled Ignorance and Arrogance Collide, Live and Off-Color, [ June 10, 2004, Free version]New York Times columnist Selena Roberts whined:

“Do broadcasters and beat reporters need a ‘dump’ button for raving sports icons, too? Didn't ... Bird hear? The anything-goes entertainment culture of insensitivity is out. Self-censorship is in... Bird's offensive lapse was out of ignorance...”

Hmmm. What would H.L. Mencken say about newspaper reporters who vilify the rare honest source who doesn’t just give them same the old soft soap?

A common theme in sportswriters’ complaints last week was that Bird, who has been a successful NBA coach and is now the president of the Indiana Pacers franchise, is a poor white trash inbred retard straight out of the movie Deliverance.

Sports columnists, in contrast, all have doctorates in behavioral genetics.

Thus Mike Vaccaro in the New York Post hyperventilated about “logic-challenged hayseeds like Larry Bird espousing his own strange brand of sociology.”

Other outlets printed stories entitled “Bird's comments leave us at a loss,” “When it comes to race, best to shut up,” and “Bird comes off looking like bigot.”

But the truth is anything Mr. Bird says about basketball deserves respectful analysis. Let's take it from the top:
bullet Would more white American stars help slow the rapidly-declining popularity of the NBA? (U.S. ratings for the NBA Finals have fallen by about half since peaking in 1998)?

bullet Answer: Sure it would! It’s amusing to hear the same people who constantly accuse whites of being racist to then turn on a dime and say whites aren’t the slightest bit ethnocentrist.

The NY Times’ Selena Roberts cites the popularity of 7’-5” Yao Ming as an example of how fans are completely colorblind. But of course Yao's advertising appeal isn't based on his performance (he's a fine young player who may well mature into a mainstay of the league, although he’s not there yet). It’s the fact that he's a really tall Chinese guy.

The NBA front office loves Yao because a billion ethnocentric Chinese people love Yao. That translates into all sorts of NBA-licensed crud they can sell to the China market (although Red China's penchant for intellectual property theft might put a dent in their sales forecasts).

Similarity, the NBA’s popularity in other countries is fueled by an increase in the number of foreign players making it in the NBA.

White Americans are hugely less ethnocentric than the Chinese. Indeed, they are probably the most colorblind people on Earth (although that’s not necessarily saying much). But they aren't completely lacking in normal human feelings.

White Americans only make up about 12% of the NBA. African-Americans are 77%. Worse, following the retirement of the great point guard John Stockton, white Americans supply almost none of the stars. The only white American to play in the All Star Game the last two seasons has been Brad Miller, hardly a household name. The closest thing to a charismatic white American star is Canadian Steve Nash.

Some of the fun of being a sports fan is dreaming that somebody personally connected to you—your cousin’s hotshot young nephew, or whoever—might someday make it big. Indeed, one reason African-Americans are such fanatical NBA fans is because so many of them really do have some kind of semi-intimate connection to a basketball star. But, if you are a white American, that seems more and more like a pipe dream.

For example, during my youth I knew about a dozen kids who went on to play minor league baseball, about three who made it to the majors, and one who earned the Cy Young Award.

But I’ve never known anyone who became an NBA player. I doubt I ever will.

- Will white American fans be satisfied with the rapidly rising number of white European, Turkish, and Argentinean players? They now make up 45% of the white players and most of the white All-Stars.

- Answer: I doubt it. White Americans tend to like African-American a lot more than they like white Europeans. As we’ll see at the Olympics this summer, for white Americans, patriotism tends to trumps racialism, although the latter is hardly nonexistent.

- Why are whites who grow up in Serbia and Lithuania, thousands of miles from any blacks, doing better at the black man’s game than whites who grow up just 20 miles away from the inner city?

- Answer: Partly, I blame the adjustable height backboard poles that infest so many driveways lately. Too often I see white kids imitating their black heroes by dunking on eight foot baskets, rather than practicing the outside shots on regulation ten foot baskets that might get them to the NBA.

Larry Bird was the classic example of “White Men Can’t Jump.” But that didn’t stop him –because he didn’t try to play the black aerial game.

Or perhaps white parents are keeping their sons away from basketball because of its players’ (deserved) reputation for thuggishness. Witness the new book Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA's Culture of Rape, Violence, and Crime by Jeff Benedict. The blurb’s startling summary

"Based on a first-of-its-kind investigation into the criminal histories of 177 NBA players from the 2001–2002 seasons, Out of Bounds shows that an alarming four out of every ten NBA players have a police record involving a serious crime."

Plus, when Bird revealed, "I just didn't want a white guy guarding me, because it's disrespect to my game," I suspect he was thinking more about the end of his career than the beginning. It was certainly no sign of disrespect in 1979 when the 76ers assigned to him the Great White Defender Bobby Jones, who made the first team of the NBA’s All-Defensive squad eight years in a row, from 1977 through 1984. Up through that era, whites were typically seen as tending to be the more tenacious defenders. Blacks were seen as the greater offensive threats, but as frequent slackers on defense.

Former Celtics superstar Charles Barkley joked about Bird’s comments: "I'll tell you what was really funny was . . . we always thought it was an insult when they put [Bird] on one of us, because he was the worst defensive player ever." But in fact, Bird made the second team of top defenders three times early in his career.

But no white has been named to the All NBA Defensive First Team since Mark Eaton in 1989 (unless you want to count mulattos Jason Kidd and Doug Christie as more white than black). As recently as '77 and '78, whites made up a majority of the first team (Jones, Bill Walton, and Don Buse in both years).

Something good happened, though, to make defense fashionable among blacks – perhaps it was the John Thompson-Pat Ewing teams at Georgetown U. in the early 1980s. The huge improvement in black defensive play greatly raised the overall quality of NBA games over that seen in the mediocre Seventies.

But eventually the trend went too far. Blacks stopped practicing their shooting skills in favor of nonstop scrimmaging, so free throw and field goal percentages plummeted. Thus you see car crash games like the last of the Eastern Conference Finals, where neither team scored 70 points.

You only get good at defense by playing against others. You only get good at shooting by practicing by yourself. Of course, whites tend to have more driveways where they can perfect their shooting mechanics, but there are personality differences as well that push the races in different directions. Blacks tend to be more gregarious and thus prefer playing games to working out alone, while more whites are loners.

Unfortunately, the utter triumph of black basketball culture has damaged the game over the last decade. It has pushed it too far toward a contest of full-body athleticism, at which blacks dominate, rather than of hand-eye coordination, at which the races are more equal—with Bird being the all-time Grand Master.

Worse, the post-Michael Jordan generation of black players grew up listening to gangsta rap, which consists in large measure of young black men boasting how they have murdered other young black men who didn’t subordinate themselves to them. (If you have a strong stomach, check out the lyrics to, for example, NWA’s epochal “Straight Outta Compton.”) Not surprisingly, this kind of culture is not conducive to strong team play on offense.

So much of the modern NBA game consists of four players standing around on one side of the court while one guy with the ball on the other side of the court tries to manufacture a shot.

Off the court, much of the news consists of self-destructive Kobe-and-Shaq-style bickering between teammates over who should get the ball the most and who is The Man on the team.

This has provided an opening for European whites, who like to work on their shooting and don’t mind playing as a team.

This lead to the ultimate question:
bullet Will the white American superstar ever return to the NBA?

Major League Baseball is trying to lure black youths back to baseball with the RBI program (“Reviving Baseball in the Inner City”). The NBA should at least begin a national conversation about why there are so few top white American players.

Of course, there is a problem with free discussion: some people might not like the answers.

Because you can’t understand basketball today without thinking about race.

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/lynch_mob.htm
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #19
Alex Linder
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[Trent Lott]

The Righteous Right Fouls Up

By Steve Sailer

Let me see if I have this straight. According to 95% of GOP pundits:

A. As Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott was an utter disgrace to the fundamental principles of the Republican Party. His resignation from the Majority Leader position was an absolute moral necessity after his crime against humanity

B. As a U.S. Senator, on the other hand, Trent Lott remains a valued public servant. Any notion that he should resign from the Senate is unthinkable. For him to quit now, just because a few folks have said a few unkind words about him, would be a crime against humanity.

A contradiction, no?

The explanation, of course: Lott's resigning allowed Karl Rove to move his boy Bill Frist into what had been a power base independent of the White House.

But if Lott also resigned from the Senate, the Democratic Governor of Mississippi would appoint a Democrat, splitting the Senate 50-50. That would give the Democrats a good shot at luring a liberal Republican to switch sides, thus regaining the majority.

Okay, now that we all understand, let's chant along with the Righteous Right:

"DEATH TO MAJORITY LEADER LOTT!

LONG LIVE SENATOR LOTT!"

Just two weeks ago, on VDARE.COM, I was complacently discussing the likelihood that the Supreme Court would soon outlaw racial preferences in college admissions.

Well … that was a long time ago.

Now the question is how much of the wish-list of race hustlers like Jesse Jackson is going to be granted, due to the Republican meltdown.

Yeah, sure, Trent Lott should be hung up by his toenails in every town square in America and all that. But it's important to go over exactly what happened.

The fundamental fact is that this disaster was almost completely self-inflicted by Republican pundits. It was the “right wing” mouthpieces, not the liberals, who went hysterical.

The initial reaction of most Democratic politicians and journalists was that Lott was just blowing smoke to make an old man happy at his retirement/100th birthday party. Nothing important should be read into it.

As Howie Kurtz reported in the Washington Post on 12/16:

"A dozen reporters heard the Senate majority leader say the country would have been better off if Thurmond had won the presidency—and it was carried on C-SPAN—but only an ABC producer thought the remarks were newsworthy. Even then the story didn't make it to the network's main newscasts. Baltimore Sun reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis says there was so much 'tongue-in-cheek' talk at Thurmond's birthday party 'that a lot of us probably tuned out remarks that we might have been more careful listening to if it hadn't been such a jubilant atmosphere.'"

The very liberal retired Senator Paul Simon (D-IL) attended the 100th birthday party. He said later,

"I've worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and been at the forefront of civil rights legislation. If I thought it was serious, I'd be denouncing it. But I think it's being taken out of context, and that's not being fair to Trent."

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said,

"There are a lot of times when [Lott] and I go to the microphone and would like to say things we meant to say differently, and I'm sure this was one of those cases for him."

Soon afterwards, two of Clinton's attack dogs, Sidney Blumenthal and James Carville, sent out mass emails trying to peddle the story. The websites of a few Democrat picked it up. But the big-time liberal media still wasn't interested.

What happened next was the key. According to Jim Rutenberg and Felicity Barringer in the New York Times (December 17),

"Early, widespread and harsh criticism by conservative commentators and publications has provided much of the tinder for the political fires surrounding Senator Trent Lott since his favorable comments about the segregationist presidential campaign of 1948. Conservative columnists, including Andrew Sullivan, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, and publications like National Review and the Wall Street Journal have castigated Mr. Lott …"

Similarly, the Washington Post’s Kurtz wrote,

"Even after Lott's comments were reported, though, much of the establishment press ignored them for days. It wasn't until Lott apologized last Monday night that such newspapers as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today took note of the matter. In the meantime, Lott was pummeled by a number of online Weblogs - particularly by conservatives who agree with him on many issues - in a way that helped force the story into public view."

A Hundred- Candle Story And How To Blow It (washingtonpost.com)

Kurtz cited David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, and Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds.

David Frum is a longtime journalist and former Bush speechwriter. I can't really remember much of anything special about him other than that he wrote two-thirds of the "axis of evil" phrase, and that he's replacing the unique and iconoclastic Florence King on the back page of National Review, which is depressing. Maybe NR thought they were hiring David Brooks instead.

Andrew Sullivan is the world's foremost spokesman for Andrewism, which is best defined as whatever Andrew is worked up about at the current stage in his prescription testosterone cycle. (Click here for his 7,000-word ode to injecting the manly molecule, and to the wildly variable impact it has on his judgment.)

I rather like Andrew, in part for his brave advocacy of The Bell Curve, in part because he has elevated hypocrisy to an art form. The disjunction between what he preaches and what he practices is so stark that it somehow feels wrong to judge him according to the normal standards of truth, logic, honesty, and morality that apply to drab analysts like me. Instead, Andrew is more like the lead character in the great roman a clef novel (think of Saul Bellow's Ravelstein about Allan Bloom) that no doubt will be written about him after he's gone.

Instapundit is less interesting. Glenn Reynolds is a law professor who used his amazing skill at typing fast to invent "blogrolling," or online backscratching. Every day he skims lots of other web logs and jots down countless quick links to those who agree with him. This drives traffic to various lonely bloggers, who gratefully respond with adulatory links back to him. It’s mutual-admiration perpetual motion machine. Reynolds offers the usual libertarian-militarist ideology found online. But he distinguishes himself by being, even for a blogger, exceptionally self-righteous and self-regarding.

Despite the desperate idolization of Instapundit by other bloggers, however, the tracking service Alexa seems to show that VDARE.COM has more traffic. Hardly surprising. Visiting Instapundit.com is like being caught in a hailstorm of ping-pong balls. Apparently, Instapundit and Sullivan are more socially respectable to link to, but VDARE.COM is more interesting to read.

So as soon as these Righteous Righties decided that Lott's 100th birthday party bloviating was the most serious statement of considered belief since Luther's 95 Theses, the bloggers who take their direction in hopes of getting a link back began howling for Lott's head.

And it was only then that the New York Times and the rest of Big Liberal Media jumped on the story.

Instapundit, the All-Seeing Sage of Blogovia, has whined that it was "galling, and unjustified" that the Democrats were using his witch burning crusade to advance their agenda of racial preferences.

And Andrew has complained:

"Some of the sanctimony is now beginning to bug me. ...The equation of opposition to affirmative action or hate-crime laws or any other number of leftist policies with racism strikes me as a massively cheap shot. (I was on WBUR last night and paleo-lib Jack Beatty went straight to that knee-jerk point. Grrrr.) And the blithe assumption of moral superiority is equally galling."

Similarly, Frum has lamented that the Washington Post reported that the White House looked more likely to argue in favor of racial preferences in the University of Michigan quota case.

Of course, the establishment conservatives are trying to tell themselves that it will ultimately be all for the best. Noemie Emery writes in the Weekly Standard:

"It is now a great mess for the Republican Party, but one that has the potential to turn into a great opportunity, and one the party should eagerly seize. It is a chance for the GOP to clean up its act and its household, haul tons of old rubbish out of the attic, and banish some shopworn old ghosts."

Which sounds an awful lot like Greta Garbo playing the Soviet commissar in "Ninotchka." Asked the news from Moscow, she replied:

"The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians."

I now expect a concerted effort to silence anyone on the right suspected of crimethink about human biodiversity. Already, Frum has smeared my website www.iSteve.blogspot.com in his NRO column.

Of course, he doesn't make any arguments against anything I've written. He's smart enough to know that getting into a public debate with me over race is a losing proposition. (If he's brave enough, I'm ready to debate him anytime.)

He simply argues by labeling - hyperlinking to my site on the helpful words “inescapable racialism” and lumping me in with the "paleoconservatives."

I've certainly got nothing against the paleos. They have proven infinitely more interested in learning from the human sciences than have the increasingly anti-scientific neocons. (For a laugh, check out "Has Darwin Met His Match?" in the December 2002 edition of Commentary).

Still, I've never been a paleo. In 1999, John O'Sullivan wrote in National Review an article entitled "Types of Right." Number 5 was:

“Evolutionary Conservatives. This is an almost wholly intellectual group (e.g., Steve Sailer, John McGinnis, Charles Murray)— not a politician brave enough to stand with them — who have realized two things: first, that lessons of the new science of evolutionary psychology are largely conservative ones about an adamantine human nature, the natural basis of sex roles, and so on; second, that the knowledge gained from the Human Genome Project and the rise of genetic engineering will throw up some fascinating and contentious political issues in the increasingly near future.”

On the political front, the Establishment media is now enthusiastically answering the Weekly Standard's call for one, two, many purges. But they will conduct the hunts on their own liberal terms.

For Trent Lott is not some kind of unique locus of Political Incorrectness in the Republican Party. There are lots of Lotts.

Between 1/3rd and 3/8ths of the GOP vote comes from white Southerners. The vast majority of these citizens no more want the return of Jim Crow than they want the return of summers without air conditioners. But they do bear normal human feelings of loyalty and affection toward their parents, grandparents, and more distant ancestors - which are expressed through various exercises in symbolism, or through mere politeness.

A huge fraction of all Republican office holders are from the South. Virtually every one of them is on record committing Lott's Sin: saying something nice about a representative of the Old South.

In the feeding frenzy of the last week, we've been treated to one story after another about how all Republican victories since Kevin Phillips wrote The Emerging Republican Majority in 1969 were illegitimate because they were based on white Southern voters.

I believe the success I've had as a voter analyst stems in large part from my taking a moral stance that happens also to be a factual reality. I believe in the equality of American citizens. I refuse to fall for the increasingly common assumption that "While all voters are equal, some are more equal than others." I try to remind everybody that they still count everybody's vote the same.

For example, for 20 years the press has been telling us that the gender gap is going to devastate the GOP. But it never happens, because a man's vote counts exactly as much as a woman's vote. And men, although the media doesn’t care, tilt just as much to the Republicans as women do to Democrats.

Similarly, Democrats have often succeeded in delegitimizing Republican victories won with white votes. This isn't just symbolic. Democrats have actually scared Republicans away from strategies that worked in the past.

For example, George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign against Dukakis' softness on crime was permanently libeled as racist because the best example of Dukakis' foolishness was a furloughed murderer named Willie Horton - who happened to be black.

Similarly, the GOP has been brainwashed into believing that Pete Wilson's spectacular comeback in 1994 is now off-limits because it appealed to The Wrong Kind of Voters.

Well, I'm too much of a small "d" democrat to believe that there are Wrong Kinds of Voters—there are just voters.

But that's going to be an increasingly rare view as the fallout from the Righteous Right’s temper tantrum continues.

Great going, guys. Thanks a Lott.

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/lott.htm
 
Old March 2nd, 2008 #20
Alex Linder
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Join Date: Nov 2003
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[Stuart Nagel]

I had a distinguished colleague - Stuart Nagel - whose tale is worth telling. He taught public policy and one day explained that black businesses in Kenya were uncompetitive against Indian-run enterprises since blacks where too generous in granting credit to friends and family. He had been invited by the government of Kenya to study the situation and suggested better business training for black Kenyans. The topic was indisputably part of the course and thus totally protected by AAUP academic speech guidelines. Stuart was also extremely liberal on all racial issues.

Nevertheless, to condense a long story, an anonymous letter from irritated black students complained of Nagel’s “racism” and included the preposterous change of “workplace violence.” After a protracted and bungled internal university investigation, two federal trials (I testified at one), he was stripped of his teaching responsibilities and coerced into retirement. Interestingly, having been charged as “racist,” his departmental colleagues, save two conservatives, abandoned him. A few years later, partially as a result of this emotionally and financially draining incident ($100,000 out-of-pocket for legal fees), he committed suicide. I can only speculate that he believed that years spent being a “good liberal” (including service in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division) would insulate him from being denounced as a “racist.” Nor would he have anticipated that the university would spend the hundreds of thousands in legal fees to punish a famous tenured faculty member who “offended” two students. Nagel’s sad saga undoubtedly provided useful lessons to many others–stupidity can really be dangerous, even in a university. Better keep quiet.

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2007/...ip-in-academe/
 
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