United States: Informal Censorship

[Alex Linder]

[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.

esherman@tribune.com

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/cs-080208chet-coppock-suspended,0,4098093.story

[Flame Baiter]

[Don Imus]

Don Imus also called them "money grubbing".

YouTube - Don Imus: CBS Bosses Money-Grubbing Jews

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.

[Alex Linder]

[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

[Alex Linder]

[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

[Alex Linder]

[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.

[Alex Linder]

[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

[Alex Linder]

[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

[Alex Linder]

[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

[Alex Linder]

[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? 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 eskolnick@sun-sentinel.com

[B]http://web.archive.org/web/20030716053610/http:/www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/columnists/sfl-skolnick08jul08,0,4864999.column

[Alex Linder]

[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

[Alex Linder]

[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.
advertisement

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/

[Alex Linder]

[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."

http://img.timeinc.net/golf/i/tours/2008/01/jan17_golfweek_299x355.jpg

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/article/0,28136,1704872,00.html

[Alex Linder]

[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

[Alex Linder]

[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_Richards#Laugh_Factory_incident

[Alex Linder]

[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/news/columnists.nsf/debpeterson/story/7E1A1CD16B99B168862573E90012BF43?OpenDocument

[Alex Linder]

[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/WPcap/2000-03/09/041r-030900-idx.html

[Alex Linder]

[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

[Alex Linder]

[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 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.

[B]http://www.vdare.com/sailer/lynch_mob.htm

[Alex Linder]

[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

[Alex Linder]

[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/2007/09/15/self-censorship-in-academe/

[Alex Linder]

[Context: Blacks say whatever they want, never get fired (scroll, near bottom)]

http://vdare.com/bradley/080212_remarks.htm

[Sean Gruber]

stupidity can really be dangerous, even in a university. Better keep quiet.

Stupidity means blacks. Blacks are dangerous. These subhuman vermin, these low-grade morons, these NIGGERS (that's exactly what they are, and how they behave) don't like freedom, civilization, intelligence. It's all about "DON'T YOU BE DISSIN ME." Say the word "niggardly" (definition here (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/niggardly))? Discuss the problems of the black community in a straightforward and factual manner? Don't dare to! These homegrown Hutus, crying "offensiveness," will sharpen their machetes on your skull, with all the righteousness of a barbarian slaughtering a rival tribesmember.

You can have blacks, or you can have a civil society. You can't have both.

As Thomas Jefferson observed, "These two races [black and white], equally free, cannot live in the same government." The entire history of America, including its downward curve over the past 40 years, confirms it. Go walk through a "no-go" area if you doubt it.

[Alex Linder]

[E. Michael Jones]

Catholic University Cancels Anti-Semites’ Lectures
Posted in radical traditionalist Catholic, Anti-Semitic by Heidi Beirich on February 12, 2008

http://www.splcenter.org/images/imglib/J/dozen4_ejones_200.jpg

A lecture series featuring presentations by two virulently anti-Semitic “radical traditionalist Catholics” was cancelled by The Catholic University of America on Monday after Hatewatch contacted the university to ask about the events. Radical traditionalist Catholics deny certain Vatican teachings, particularly the Second Vatican Council’s reforms of the 1960s, and most hold anti-Semitic views that are rejected by the Roman Catholic Church. Many radical traditionalists have been excommunicated by the church.

E. Michael Jones was scheduled to speak Wednesday at the university’s Edward M. Crough Center for Architectural Studies as part of a lecture series “exploring how to create new communities based on the tradition and teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.” The lectures are sponsored by an off-campus, private group called Building Catholic Communities, which describes itself as “an informal confederation of scholars, architects, religious and lay leaders who are hungry to rediscover the rich history and tradition of community life based on Catholic principals [sic].”

Jones, a former hippie who spent his honeymoon in traffic trying to reach Woodstock, has a long track record of anti-Semitism and his writings run through all the usual anti-Semitic canards — that “Jewish media elites” run the country, that Jews are “major players” in pornography, and that Jews are behind Masonry and the French Revolution. And that’s only the start. Jones also publishes a “continuing series on the Jews,” looking into the various evils Jews have allegedly caused, in his magazine, Culture Wars. The magazine’s cover stories give a flavor of its message: “Judaizing: Then and Now,” “The Converso Problem: Then and Now,” “The Judaism of Hitler,” “Shylock Comes to Notre Dame,” and so on. Jones has also described the Holocaust as “a reaction to Jewish messianism (in the form of Bolshevism).”

According to Victor Nakas, associate vice president of public affairs, the university was unaware of Jones’ anti-Semitic views. Shortly after Hatewatch contacted him to inquire about the lecture series’ sponsorship, Nakas sent an E-mail saying, “The individuals you reference below will not be speaking on our campus.”

Building Catholic Communities, which the university says is run by Tim Ehlen, also had a man named John Sharpe slated to deliver a lecture on April 23. Sharpe, a former public affairs officer on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, is another particularly hardline radical traditionalist. He has attended major white supremacist events and blamed the 9/11 attacks on “Judeo Masonry,” which he considers the “current and historical mortal enemy of Christian civilization.” He runs two hate groups, the Legion of St. Louis and IHS Press, which Building Catholic Communities’ website links to. The legion’s material brims with propaganda from the likes of Ernst Zundel, the neo-Nazi publisher of such books as The Hitler We Loved and Why, along with Holocaust deniers and other Jew-haters.

After Sharpe’s anti-Semitic beliefs were disclosed by the Intelligence Report in 2006, the Navy began an investigation into him, suspending him his post on the aircraft carrier. Officials said last fall that they were in the process of reassigning him.

[SPLC attack on traditional Catholics]

The New Crusaders

The radical traditionalist Catholics, who reject the teachings of the modern papacy, may form America's largest group of anti-Semites.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=719

Lecture Series

Building Catholic Communities
A lecture series exploring how to create new communities
based on the tradition and teaching of the Roman Catholic Church

Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family
4250 Harewood Road, NE
Washington, D.C.

The Shrine is just down the street from the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception on the left side of the road. Park in the rear and enter the building through the four large wooden doors on the front of the building.

February 11 – April 30, 2008

All lectures will be digitally recorded and posted on the website:
www.buildinigcatholiccommunities.org

All lectures are free and open to the public

Philip Bess
E. Michael Jones
Milton Grenfell, Moderator
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
5:30 PM

"A Symposium on the Nature of Community"

http://www.buildingcatholiccommunities.org/main.cfm?r1=4.00&ID=19&level=1

lecture series sponsor: Building Catholic Communities
http://www.buildingcatholiccommunities.org/main.cfm?r1=1.00&ID=49&level=1

[loxist profile of E. Michael Jones]

The Dirty Dozen Page 3

E. Michael Jones
CULTURE WARS/FIDELITY PRESS
South Bend, Ind.
E. Michael Jones, a former hippie who says he spent his honeymoon stuck in traffic while trying to reach the 1969 Woodstock Festival, started down the road of radical traditionalism in 1981, when he founded Fidelity magazine after being fired as a professor at South Bend's Catholic women's college, St. Mary's. According to religion scholar Michael Cuneo, Fidelity was devoted to exposing wrongdoing in the church with a special emphasis on sex, a topic Jones seems obsessed with. Jones developed a reputation for his frequent clashes with other radical traditionalists, notably Father Nicholas Gruner. (For his part, Gruner told Cuneo that Jones was "secretly a Jew.") In 1996, Jones changed the name of his magazine to Culture Wars, and he has increasingly focused on the alleged evils of the Jews as he adds to his "continuing series on the Jews." The magazine's cover stories over the last year or so are instructive: "Judaizing: Then and Now," "John Huss and the Jews," "The Converso Problem: Then and Now," "The Judaism of Hitler," "Shylock Comes to Notre Dame" and so on. Jones runs through all the usual anti-Semitic canards -- the ideas that "Jewish media elites" run the country, that Jews are "major players" in pornography, and that Jews are behind Masonry and the French Revolution -- but that's only the start. He also accuses Jews of poisoning society with thinkers such as Karl Marx (a devotee of Satan, says Jones) and Sigmund Freud (who set off an epidemic of sexual sin, he says). And he describes the World War II Nazi genocide of the Jews as "a reaction to Jewish Messianism (in the form of Bolshevism)." Last April, in an article raging about a new president of Notre Dame University, Jones charged that anyone who went to a mainstream university would emerge "with a Jewish world view … and maybe a Jewish spouse." Jones, who has written nine books and hundreds of articles, regularly cites extremist sources, especially the American Free Press run by veteran anti-Semite Willis Carto. He also has taken up race, most obviously in his "Rooted Culture" conferences that include a trip to Germany. The 2005 trip theme would be familiar to any neo-Nazi -- "the continuing deracination in Germany." Jones has one other line of business that would be familiar to the racist right: the "neo-ethnic songs" he sells as part of a bid to create what he calls a true "Volk" music.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1299


The Dirty Dozen Page 4

LEGION OF ST. LOUIS/IHS PRESS
Norfolk, Va.
John Sharpe Jr., a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a former submarine officer and media spokesman for the Atlantic Fleet, runs both the Legion of St. Louis (LSL) and IHS Press -- two of the most nakedly anti-Semitic organizations in the entire radical traditionalist Catholic pantheon. LSL explicitly pledges in its vision statement to unite Catholic men around the teachings of Father Denis Fahey and other anti-Semites, particularly Hilaire Beloc, author of the anti-Semitic book The Jews. It calls for the creation of self-contained communities of Catholic "militants" who intend "to wage ... real ideological and political war" against their enemies, "the Judeo-Masonic tendencies of the modern social order." LSL's bulletin brims with anti-Semitic materials from the likes of Ernst Zundel, the neo-Nazi author of The Hitler We Loved and Why who is now in prison in Germany for Holocaust denial, and the American Free Press, a newspaper run by veteran American anti-Semite Willis Carto. Sharpe blames the 9/11 attacks not on Al Qaeda, but on "Judeo-Masonry." "The temporal power that the Jews have achieved since … 1789 is both pervasive and relatively unchallenged," he writes. "[T]he current and historical mortal enemy of Christian civilization is Judeo-Masonry." At the 2006 conference of American Renaissance, a racist magazine specializing in theories of race and intelligence, Sharpe sold his two-volume set Neo-CONNED!, which has several articles by racists and anti-Semites. LSL also serves as the U.S. distributor for Britain's St. George Educational Trust, which sells a catalogue of anti-Semitic books including works by the late "radio priest" Charles Coughlin, Holocaust denier Michael Hoffman's Strange Gods of Judaism and Henry Ford's The International Jew. The trust's board includes convicted Italian terrorist Roberto Fiore, who Sharpe has described as a close personal friend, Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) priest Michael Crowdy, and other hard-liners. Sharpe also has written articles for The Angelus, published by SSPX, including "Judaism and the Vatican," which blames Jews for three centuries of political liberalism. In The Angelus' June 2003 issue, Sharpe approvingly cites the assertion of his mentor, Father Denis Fahey, that "every sane thinker must be an anti-Semite." Sharpe's parents, John Sr. and Judith, run a similar radical group, the In the Spirit of Chartres Committee, which sponsors regular conferences in Phoenix and hosts an array of radical traditionalist speakers.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1300


Extremists in the Military
Navy Extremist Disciplined, Reassigned





Sharpe

http://www.splcenter.org/images/dynamic/intel/report/42/ImageAdmin.retrieve_johnsha.jpg
John Sharpe Jr.

The Navy has declared a "finding of misconduct" and issued a formal letter of reprimand to Lt. Comdr. John Sharpe Jr., according to his parents. But Sharpe reportedly was disciplined only for criticizing President Bush and the war in Iraq — not for his extensive anti-Semitic activities.

Jim Brantley, a spokesman for the U.S. Fleet Forces Command, would not confirm the report in a letter from Sharpe's parents that was published on the site of the left-wing journal Counterpunch. He said that the Navy "normally doesn't discuss non-judicial punishment," but added that Sharpe would be reassigned. Non-judicial punishment is administrative, and does not equate to a criminal conviction.

Sharpe was suspended from his job as spokesman for the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson last spring, following an exposé by the Intelligence Report detailing his anti-Semitic activities. Sharpe blames Jews for the 9/11 attacks, for instance, writing that a "conspiracy" organized by the "Zionist New World Order … plan[ned] to push the entire world into World War III for the glory of Israel." He has attended a white supremacist conference, been on the board of a neofascist British group, and still runs two groups listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

According to the letter from his parents, the Navy chose not to charge Sharpe under Navy Regulation 1167, which bans supremacist activity and requires a court martial. Officials also declined to use Uniform Code of Military Justice provisions that ban "conduct unbecoming." Instead, he was charged under UCMJ Article 88, banning "contemptuous words" against the president and other high officials, based on comments in two books Sharpe edited for his IHS Press that were critical of the Iraq war and suggested that Bush was responsible for the murder of Iraqis.

Sharpe also has connections to Arab extremists that were ignored. On his website, for example, is an interview with Ibrahim Ebeid, a Baathist and supporter of Saddam Hussein. Ebeid says in the interview that "neo-cons and Zionists" are responsible for a "vicious criminal war" against Iraq and Palestine.

Another case of extremists in the military came to light in June, when two privates attached to the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., were arrested and charged with selling narcotics and equipment stolen from the Army to an undercover FBI agent posing as a white supremacist. Joffre J. "Trey" Cross III and Jason Scott Niewoit also allegedly offered to procure military weapons. Cross had a myspace.com web page that listed various Nazi officers as his heroes.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=837

[Alex Linder]

By Christopher Donovan

Arun Gandhi: Another Casualty of Jewish Censorship

Just how unable are we to discuss Jews and their attitudes and behavior? An amazing admission from the Washington Post's ombudsman recently tells it: very unable. As in, don't even think about it, or you'll lose your job.

Deborah Howell, in a Sunday center-of-the-page column, responded to the controversy surrounding an online column by Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, which was solicited by the Washington Post's online "On Faith" website for reactions to the PBS series "The Jewish Americans" (no need to wonder about where that presentation was coming from, trust me). Gandhi? That's right. The grandson of the Gandhi.

Gandhi's sin? The question put to the panelists, of which he was a member (but now may be removed), was, "PBS is airing a series on 'The Jewish Americans.' We know what 'Jewish identity' has meant in the past. What will it mean in the future? How does a minority religion retain its roots and embrace change?" Gandhi's response, said Howell, included the following:

Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the Holocaust experience... It is a very good example of how a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends...The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger. . . . The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. . . . We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity.

Needless to say, any suggestion that Jews have done anything untoward creates a hysterical reaction, even when the suggestor is the grandson of a veritable god of pacifism. Under Jewish pressure, Gandhi resigned from his post at the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at the University of Rochester. How's that for Jewish commitment to peace?

As for Howell, she simply condemns Gandhi's article, without any specific refutation, and declares that "the piece should not have been published." End of story.

But of course, for racially conscious whites and others, the Washington Post's censorship of criticism of Jews is not the end of the story. The criticisms should be made, heard, and weighed for credibility. The course of action chosen by the Post — and those calling for Gandhi's head — creates a dangerous corking of legitimate discussion. That same corking has contributed to unchecked policies of open immigration and Middle East warfare, both of which have hurt whites — to say nothing of Palestinian suffering.

Christopher Donovan is the pen name of an attorney and former journalist.

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.com/authors/Donovan-Gandhi.html

[Alex Linder]

[June Griffin]



Cleveland Condemns Newspaper After 'Racist' Column

Bill Estes and six other Cleveland councilmen publicly condemn the March edition of "The People News of Bradley County."

"It was so heinous and over the top, something had to be said," says Councilman Bill Estes, who brought the issue up at this week's meeting.

The council passed a resolution disapproving the paper and it's [sic] writer June Griffin.

http://www.wdef.com/system/files/images/P+Weekly+Paper+Boycott-PKG2.topStory.jpg

In her column titled "A Female Manifesto", Griffin writes that she is "mad at the Blacks[sic]."

She goes on to write, "Your music is awful, for instead of the beautiful hymns which our forefathers taught you...you have turned to the filthy and unclean authors of confusion from New Orleans and called it a good sound...I have sought to do business with the Black People and have suffered long with them often enduring their late payments, accepting their excuses and praying with them to be prospered to pay their mortgage."

"I would call it racist speech and certain parts of our society would certainly call it hate speech," says Estes.

Griffin is a regular columnist for the People News of Bradley County, which has a circulation of about 10,000. The free newspaper can be picked up at places all throughout Cleveland, including the inside of the Bradley County courthouse.

In 2006, Griffin pled not guilty to violating a shop owners [sic] civil rights. She was accussed [sic] ripping down a mexican flag which she says offended her citizenship [sic].

Drew Robison is a prominent Cleveland prosecutor.

"It's trying to incite people and I just have a hard time dealing with that," he says.

"I commend Bill Estes and the City Council for saying that this type of hate speech is not going to be tolerated."

Neither Robinson or Estes want to speak to Griffin directly. What they want is for Cleveland businesses to do the speaking for them, and stop carrying the People News.

http://www.wdef.com/news/cleveland_condemns_newspaper_after_racist_column/03/2008

[Alex Linder]

[RateMyCop.com]

GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com

By Kevin Poulsen

March 11, 2008

A new web service that lets users rate and comment on the uniformed police officers in their community is scrambling to restore service Tuesday, after hosting company GoDaddy unceremonious pulled-the-plug on the site in the wake of outrage from criticism-leery cops.

Visitors to RateMyCop.com on Tuesday were redirected to a GoDaddy page reading, "Oops!!!", which urged the site owner to contact GoDaddy to find out why the company pulled the plug.

RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he'd been shut down for "suspicious activity."

When Sesto got a supervisor on the phone, the company changed its story and claimed the site had surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, a claim that Sesto says is nonsense. "How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,00 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?"

Police departments became uneasy about RateMyCop's plans to watch the watchers in January, when the Culver City, California, startup began issuing public information requests for lists of uniformed officers.

Then the site went live on February 28th. It stores the names and, in some cases, badge numbers of over 140,000 cops in as many as 500 police departments, and allows users to post comments about police they've interacted with, and rate them. The site garnered media interest this week as cops around the country complained that they'd be put at risk if their names were on the internet.

"Having a website like that puts a lot of law enforcement, in my eyes, in danger because it exposes us out there," Officer Hector Basurto, vice president of the Latino Police Officers Association, told ABC television affiliate KGO.

Since undercover officers aren't in the database, and the site has no personal information like home addresses, that fear seems unfounded. Chief Jerry Dyer, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, voices what sounds like a more honest concern: that officers will face "unfair maligning" by the citizens they serve.

Sesto says police can post comments as well, and a future version of the site will allow them to authenticate themselves to post rebuttals more prominently. Chief Dyer wants to get legislation passed that would make RateMyCop.com illegal, which, of course, wouldn't pass constitutional muster in any court in America.

Unfortunately for the startup, the company it chose for hosting is known to be quick to censor its customers. In January of last year, GoDaddy took down entire computer security website -- delisting it from DNS -- to get a single, archived mailing list post off the web.

On that occasion, at least, it gave the site's owner 60 seconds notice. GoDaddy notified Seto by posting its "Oops!" message to his public website.

"You put on my website for me to call you, when you have my phone number?," says Sesto.

A GoDaddy spokeswoman says the company can't comment on the RateMyCop takedown due to its privacy policy. Sesto says he's already arranged hosting elsewhere, and hopes to have the site online Tuesday night.

March 12, 2008 | 6:00:00 PM RackSpace Cops Out. Sesto says he'd arranged for the Texas-based hosting firm RackSpace to take over permanent hosting for RateMyCop.com, and paid them $2,000 for the first two months of service. But he heard from RackSpace's lawyer minutes ago, and the deal is off.

"We believe that the website to be found at www.ratemycop.com as described to our sales representative could create a risk to the health and safety of law enforcement officers," wrote general counsel Beth Sherfy, in an e-mail to the startup provided by Sesto.

Sherfy didn't immediately return a phone call from THREAT LEVEL.

At the moment, the site has temporary hosting on its own server, but Sesto says it won't be able to handle the kind of traffic he expects as RateMyCop.com becomes more popular. He doesn't sound too worried, and there's little doubt that he'll be able to find a hosting company.

Our prediction: A year from now RateMyCop.com will have won public service awards. Good cops, and clean departments, will have come to think of the site as a friend, and its founders will be sought-after speakers at police gatherings. Hosting companies that reject them on "health and safety" grounds will look like fools and cowards.

March 12, 2008 | 19:40:00 PM GoDaddy Breaks Its Silence. The company insists the RateMyCop.com takedown had nothing to do with the content of the site.

"The site's operator has publicly disclosed the concerns were over bandwidth," spokeswoman Elizabeth Driscoll writes in an e-mail "More accurately, GoDaddy's concerns were about how the RateMyCop site was far exceeding the amount of server usage for which it had contracted."

I asked for clarification, and Driscoll agreed with Sesto that RateMyCop.com hadn't exceeded its monthly bandwidth allotment. But the spike in popularity that followed the police backlash resulted in far more simultaneous connections than GoDaddy can handle under the low-budget shared hosting plan Sesto signed up for.

There's no hard contractual limit on the number of connections a customer can receive at once, but Driscoll says GoDaddy pulled the plug under a broad provision of its terms-of-service that lets it "remove your website temporarily or permanently from its virtual dedicated servers if GoDaddy is the recipient of activities that threaten the stability of its network."

"Basically, he was paying for compact car, when he really needed a semi-truck," Driscoll writes. "The customer was not willing to work with our staff to resolve the issue."

Sesto refutes that last part, and says GoDaddy didn't contact him before cutting off the site.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/godaddy-silence.html

[Alex Linder]

[Gary North shows how ideas are censored by college accreditation agencies.]

There is a tiny Christian college – then unaccredited – that has pretensions of being a first-rate Christian university for conservatives. The librarian put a book by a certain historian on its shelves. This scholar had written some unconventional books regarding certain controversial aspects of World War II. This book was not one of them.

Some bonehead faculty member came to him and told him to remove this book. He refused. She then told the administration. The librarian was ordered by the administration to remove the book, because a library-review committee was scheduled to visit the school. This team could revoke the library's accreditation if certain kinds of books or authors with certain views were found on the shelves. The librarian quit, as he should have. The book was then removed.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north748.html

[Alex Linder]

[cops bust a bloggeress]

'Uh-Oh They're Here'
A persistent blogger annoys police -- and winds up in jail.

Monday, August 10, 2009

A 34-YEAR-OLD woman, the mother of a 12-year-old girl, has been locked up in a Virginia jail for three weeks and could remain there for at least another month. Her crime? Blogging about the police.

Elisha Strom, who appears unable to make the $750 bail, was arrested outside Charlottesville on July 16 when police raided her house, confiscating notebooks, computers and camera equipment. Although the Charlottesville police chief, Timothy J. Longo Sr., had previously written to Ms. Strom warning her that her blog posts were interfering with the work of a local drug enforcement task force, she was not charged with obstruction of justice or any similar offense. Rather, she was indicted on a single count of identifying a police officer with intent to harass, a felony under state law.

It's fair to say that Ms. Strom was unusually focused on the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement task force, a 14-year-old unit drawn mainly from the police departments of Charlottesville, Albemarle County and the University of Virginia. (Her blog at http://iheartejade.blogspot.com, expresses the view that the task force is "nothing more than a group of arrogant thugs.") In a nearly year-long barrage of blog posts, she published snapshots she took in public of many or most of the task force's officers; detailed their comings and goings by following them in her car; mused about their habits and looks; hinted that she may have had a personal relationship with one of them; and, in one instance, reported that she had tipped off a local newspaper about their movements.
ad_icon

Predictably, this annoyed law enforcement officials, who, it's fair to guess, comprised much of her readership before her arrest. But what seems to have sent them over the edge -- and skewed their judgment -- is Ms. Strom's decision to post the name and address of one of the officers with a street-view photo of his house.

All this information was publicly available, including the photograph, which Ms. Strom gleaned from municipal records. The task force's officers may have worked undercover on occasion, but one wonders about their undercover abilities, given that Ms. Strom was able to out them so consistently. Chief Longo warned Ms. Strom that her blog posts were scaring off informants and endangering the officers and their families, but he provided no evidence. At no point did Ms. Strom's blog express a threat, explicit or otherwise, to police or their sources.

Ms. Strom is not the most sympathetic symbol of free-speech rights. She has previously advocated creating a separate, all-white nation, and her blog veers from the whimsical to the self-righteous to the bizarre. But the real problem here is the Virginia statute, in which an overly broad, ill-defined ban on harassment-by-identification, specifically in regard to police officers, seems to criminalize just about anything that might irritate targets.

It should not be a crime to annoy the cops, whose raid on Ms. Strom's house looks more like a fit of pique than an act of law enforcement. Some of her postings may have consisted of obnoxious speech, but they were nonetheless speech and constitutionally protected. That would hold true right up through her last blog post, written as the police raid on her home began at 7 a.m.: "Uh-Oh They're Here."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/09/AR2009080902126.html

[Mike Parker]

The New American McCarthyism:

Policing Thought about the Middle East

:jew:Joel Beinin

Department of History

Stanford University

Stanford , CA 94305-2024

Beinin@stanford.edu

Since the September 11, 20001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, s upporters of George W. Bush's Manichean view of the world have mounted a sustained campaign to delegitimize critical thought about the Middle East . The have exploited the understandable fears of the American people to intimidate and defame ordinary citizens, public figures, scholars who study the Middle East and the Islamic world, and elected officials who have publicly criticized the Bush administration's war on Afghanistan, the prospect of an endless “war on terrorism,” the assault on Iraq, and the indulgence of Israel's repression of the Palestinian people. Universities and colleges have been a particular target of policing what may be thought and said about the Middle East because they are among the few institutions where intelligent political discourse remains possible in the United States .

The Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) has been subjected to a barrage of intemperate attacks. MESA is the largest organization of scholars who study the Middle East . Its members include students, teachers, and interested individuals from all the academic disciplines and are citizens of North America , Europe , and the Middle East . Conservative pundits accuse MESA members, not the FBI or the CIA, of bearing responsibility for what befell us on September 11 because we failed to warn the American public about the dangers of radical Islam. They do not consider that President Bush might be held responsible for his failure to attend to terrorist threats the summer before the September 11 attacks. For the neo-conservative true believers, the buck never stops where a Republican president is sitting. Scholars who stray from their doctrine are a much easier target.

The current campaign of vilification, guilt by association, guilt by ethnic or religious affiliation, and delegitimization of dissenting opinions recalls the early years of the Cold War. Then the American people were whipped into an anti-Communist frenzy by the infamous Republican Senator from Wisconsin , Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). McCarthy and his minions epitomize the tendency in American political life that conflates dissent with treason. C laiming to find Communist conspiracies in every corner of American life, McCarthy and HUAC conducted modern-day witch hunts. Scholars of East Asia were blamed for “losing” China , and the Rosenbergs were blamed for the Soviet Union 's development of nuclear weapons. Then, as now, fear of a foreign enemy and an unfamiliar ideology was deployed to bully the American people into abandoning customary standards of civil liberties, academic freedom, and common sense. There are, of course, important differences between the two historical periods. But the similarities are nonetheless striking.

The hysterical tone and political character of the effort to muzzle criticism of the Bush administration's foreign policy is exemplified by the inflated rhetoric of Americans for Victory over Terrorism (AVOT) , founded in March 2002 by former Secretary of Education, former Drug Czar, and moralist to the nation, William Bennett. AVOT is a subsidiary of the Project for a New American Century, the think tank distinguished by its energetic efforts to promote a U.S. war on Iraq since 1998. Its principal funder is Lawrence Kadish, chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which aims to bring Jews into the Republican Party. AVOT aims to “take to task those who blame America first and who do not understand – or who are unwilling to defend – our fundamental principles.” On March 10, 2002 Bennett published an open letter as an advertisement in the New York Times describing the external and internal threats to the United States . The external threat comprises “radical Islamists and others.” The internal threat consists of “those who are attempting to use this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of ‘blame America first.''' AVOT's list of internal enemies includes former President Jimmy Carter. Carter's offense was to criticize the ‘axis of evil' notion President Bush advanced in his 2002 State of the Union address as “overly simplistic” and “counter-productive.” Other internal enemies include congressional representative and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland and Democratic representative Maxine Waters of Los Angeles .

The first post-September 11 expression of the link between the neo-conservative political agenda and the attack on critical thinking about the Middle East was a report issued by t he American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) in November 2001 entitled “Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done about It.” As the title suggests, ACTA maintained that criticism of the Bush administration's war on Afghanistan on campuses across the country was tantamount to negligence in “defending civilization.” and proof that “our universities are failing America .” ACTA alleged that American universities were brought to this sorry state by inadequate teaching of western culture and American history. Consequently, students and faculty did not understand what is at stake in the fight against terrorism and were undermining the defense of civilization by asking too many questions.

ACTA was founded by Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice-President Dick Cheney. Former Democratic presidential candidate Senator Joseph Lieberman is a member of its national council. Although she is no longer officially active in ACTA, a lengthy quote by Ms. Cheney appears on the cover of the report, giving the document the appearance of a quasi-official statement of government policy.

The original version of “Defending Civilization” named and quoted comments by 117 university faculty members, staff, and students in reaction to the September 11 attacks. ACTA's ire was aroused by my statement that, “If Usama bin Laden is confirmed to be behind the attacks, the United States should bring him before an international tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity.” Other remarks in the report's list of unacceptable speech included “Ignorance breeds hate” and “[T]here needs to be an understanding of why this kind of suicidal violence could be undertaken against our country.”

Of course, ACTA's attack on American universities in the name of “defending civilization” was a ruse for its objective of suppressing any form of dissent from the militarized policy response to the September 11 attacks. By vilifying those who attempted to engage in a debate over the efficacy of a war against Afghanistan and by creating a list of those who did not religiously endorse the line of the Bush administration, ACTA revealed its affinity with the McCarthyite tradition in American political life. After receiving considerable criticism for resuscitating the tactics so infamously deployed during the McCarthy era, ACTA removed the appendix to the report containing the names and quotes.

Some of those named in the ACTA report were teachers and students of the Middle East and Central Asia . But like AVOT, ACTA's effort to quash free speech and political debate did not discriminate by specifically targeting them. ACTA is an equal opportunity defamer, and considers anyone who criticizes Bush administration foreign policy an enemy of civilization.

A band of neo-conservative pundits with strong allegiances to Israel took on the task of launching a more focused assault on Middle East scholars. The principal players in this drama are Martin Kramer, who authored a hot-headed and poorly researched tract attacking MESA published by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), and Daniel Pipes, who directs the Middle East Forum, which hosts the neo-McCarthyite Campus-Watch web site. Kramer and Pipes have Ph.D.s in Middle East studies; but they are considered eccentric and marginal by most of the scholarly community. Hence, they have retreated from academia to WINEP and the Middle East Forum – think tanks with close ties to Israel 's ruling circles. Somewhat less prominent, though equally persistent, is Stanley Kurtz, a contributing editor of National Review Online and a fellow of the Hoover Institution, a veteran conservative think tank located on the campus of Stanford University . Kurtz has a Ph.D. in anthropology with a specialization in south Asia but has no Middle East credentials. Bit players include Jonathan Schanzer, sometime co-author of columns in the New York Post with Pipes, Jay Nordlinger, Managing Editor of National Review , and Marc Rauch and David Horowitz of FrontPageMagazine.com . Horowitz is the most notorious of the erstwhile sixties radicals who turned on his former associates with a vengeance.

T he gist of the neo-conservative attack on Middle East scholars is that MESA has been taken over by a crowd of post-colonial studies/post-modernist extremists inspired by the late Edward Said's book, Orientalism . These un-American radicals, they claim, have imposed an intellectual and political orthodoxy on the study of Islam and the Middle East . Martin Kramer's Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle East Studies in America , is the fullest expression of that argument. Kramer argues that Edward Said is responsible for what went wrong in American Middle East studies, and a good deal else besides.

Why Kramer decided that Said is such a bogeyman is unclear. Perhaps it is because Bernard Lewis, in addition to exemplifying the style of scholarship Said disparaged, was Kramer's teacher at Princeton University and is, along with the late Elie Kedourie and P.J. Vatikiotis, an intellectual patron of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University , of which Kramer is a former director. Said and Lewis had an ugly exchange in the New York Review of Books incited by Lewis's harsh review of Orientalism . Subsequently, Said overwhelmed Lewis in a public debate on the topic of “The Scholars, the Media, and the Middle East” held at the annual MESA meeting in November 1986. But Said was never a regular presence at MESA and did not even belong to the organization until he was made an honorary fellow in 1999. His 1986 appearance at the MESA annual meeting was his first. He did not return for a second time until 1998, when he attended a plenary session dedicated to assessing the impact of Orientalism twenty years after its publication. Kramer attended that session and threw a public tantrum.

Said's Orientalism certainly has affected American Middle East studies, and rightly so. It is an important and intellectually impressive work. But it is not without flaws. Hence, it was not and should not have been received uncritically. Nor did it eliminate other approaches and understandings of the Middle East .

Kramer's claim that wholesale adoption of Said's views by the leading members of MESA led to the failure of the entire edifice of American Middle East studies is contradicted by his own evidence. He cites a critical review of Orientalism published by the late Malcolm Kerr, a former MESA president, in MESA 's International Journal of Middle East Studies – the leading scholarly publication in the field. Kramer also quotes former MESA president Nikki Keddie, who wrote that while Orientalism was “important and in many ways positive” it had “some unfortunate consequences” among them that “Orientalism for many people is a word that substitutes for thought and enables people to dismiss certain scholars and their works…It may not have been what Edward Said meant at all, but the term has become a kind of slogan.” These critical comments by former MESA presidents who are highly regarded by their peers demonstrate that there is no orthodoxy and no wholesale adoption of Saidian ideas.

Kramer explicitly denigrates several scholars whose approach to modern Islam he deems faulty: John Esposito, John Voll, Richard Bulliet, and Fawaz Gerges. But any careful reading of their work will reveal that while they differ with Kramer's understanding of modern Islamic movements, their work does not reflect the slightest intellectual influence of Edward Said, cultural studies, post-colonialism, or post-modernism – all things Kramer abhors. Similarly, Kramer pours scorn on Roger Owen, Philip Khoury, Robert Fernea, Elizabeth Fernea, Michael Hudson, Rashid Khalidi, and Augustus Richard Norton for their interpretations of modern Arab politics. But, with the partial exception of Khalidi's Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness , their rather traditional, empiricist methods also reveal no evidence of Said's intellectual influence. What is common to all these scholars is that despite the variety of their work and their negligible affinities to post-anything, they are more critical of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians than Kramer and his enthusiasts are willing to tolerate. And since their opinions are also more critical of Israel than the views commonly presented in the U.S. mass media, it is possible to make a case – a woefully uninformed one to be sure – for Kramer's position.

The unstated but never entirely concealed agenda of shielding Israel from criticism links the efforts of Kramer and Pipes to earlier attempts to monitor teaching and research on the Middle East . After the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the demise of the Black-Jewish coalition that was central to the American civil rights movement, the American Jewish Committee, whose mission includes strengthening “the basic principles of pluralism around the world, as the best defense against anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry,” the B'nai B'rith Anti Defamation League (ADL), whose purpose is to expose and combat anti-Semitism, and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading Zionist lobbying organization, sounded alarms about the increasing influence of “Arab propaganda” on university campuses. They began to monitor the activities of students and teachers they considered “anti-Israel” and they frequently suggested that criticism of Israel was equivalent to anti-Semitism.

During the 1970s public criticism of Israel and Zionism increased, in large measure due to the activities of the newly formed Association of Arab-American University Graduates and the bold interventions of Noam Chomsky. However, it remained a phenomenon limited primarily to the academy. Even in colleges and universities, few non-Arab teachers or students had the mettle to face the inevitable charges of anti-Semitism or the even more ludicrous “self-hating Jew” routinely directed at those who opposed Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (along with the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights) and supported the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. This began to change when the former terrorist leader, Menachem Begin, became Prime Minister of Israel in 1977. The expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank during the Begin regime (1977-83) signaled that occupation and annexation might become a long term affair. Some Palestinian leaders, in the occupied territories and abroad, began to seek Israeli and Jewish partners for a struggle against Begin's policies. This posed a substantial threat to the likes of the AJC, the ADL, and AIPAC because it reduced the credibility of the charge of anti-Semitism aimed at critics of Israel .

One of the initial public sorties reflecting the more aggressive posture of American Jewish organizations who adopted as their mission protecting Israel from criticism was the Tucson Jewish Community Council's charge in 1981 that the outreach program (i.e. activities aimed at the general public and K-12 teachers) of the Near Eastern Center of the University of Arizona and its coordinator were guilty of anti-Israel bias. An external investigating committee dismissed the charge of bias. Unsatisfied with this outcome, the American Jewish Committee commissioned Gary Schiff to prepare a report which surveyed centers for Middle East studies at several universities. The Schiff report expressed concern about “possible bias in outreach programs dealing with the controversial issues that surround the Middle East .” Schiff considered it ominous that, unlike Arabic, Turkish, and Persian, federally funded fellowships were not available for the study of Hebrew because the U.S. government does not define Hebrew as a “critical language” (i.e. a less commonly taught language whose study should be encouraged to enhance national security). Finally, Schiff was troubled about the provision of funding by Arab states to centers for Middle East studies at universities such as Princeton and Georgetown .

In November 1983 the New England Regional Office of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, reacting to increased criticism of Israel following its invasion of Lebanon in 1982, distributed a booklet designed “to help Jewish students deal with anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic activities on college campus.” Once again, there was no clear distinction between the two. The booklet lists “anti-Israel” organizations and individuals with an emphasis on those in New England and northern California . The same year the national ADL published Pro-Arab Propaganda in America : Vehicles and Voices, a Handbook . These were the first efforts to compile lists of university faculty and staff whose opinions did not accord with the Zionist doctrine. They were not the last.

In 1983 the London monthly, The Middle East , reported, “AIPAC puts a lot of effort into monitoring anti-Israel speakers. Tapes and notes are collected and files compiled.” In 1984 AIPAC compiled a 187-page college guide whose objective was to “expos[e] the anti-Israel campaign on campus.” A twelve-page questionnaire filled out by students who volunteered to do so (i.e. those sympathetic to AIPAC's world view) provided the basis for the information in the guide. Students were invited to “name any individual faculty who assist anti-Israel groups. How is this assistance offered? (If there is a Middle East Study Center , please elaborate on its impact on campus.)”

MESA responded to these activities of the ADL and AIPAC by passing, after a hotly contested debate, a resolution at its 1984 annual meeting which described the publications of the ADL and AIPAC as “factually inaccurate and unsubstantiated” and “unbalanced.” The resolution called on the ADL and AIPAC to “disavow and refrain from such activities.” This resolution signaled that a majority of MESA 's most active members were no longer intimidated by fear of being labeled anti-Semites when discussing the Arab-Israeli conflict. Therefore, MESA became a dubious institution among American Jewish organizations, like the ADL and AIPAC, whose identity is dependent largely on their uncritical support for Israel . Some of the minority of Middle East scholars who shared the views of the ADL and AIPAC – most visibly concentrated at Princeton and Johns Hopkins universities – stopped attending MESA meetings.

It is worth noting in passing that organizations like the ADL and AIPAC do not, in fact, speak for a majority of Jews in the United States . About half of American Jews belong to no Jewish organization whatsoever, some of them precisely because they do not wish to be associated with uncritical support for Israel .

The ADL went beyond merely monitoring people and institutions and individuals it considered “anti-Israel” and/or “anti-Semitic.” In April 1993 San Francisco police seized over 10,000 files from the ADL's local office. The files were compiled from information provided by Roy Bullock, who had worked as a “fact finder” for the ADL since the 1960s. Bullock sold information to the ADL, the South African intelligence agency, and possibly also to the Israeli Mossad, and he worked occasionally for the FBI. He compiled dossiers on some 10,000 individuals and 600 organizations labeled “pinkos,” “right,” “Arabs,” “skins,” and “ANC” (the African National Congress, which led the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa ). Among those subjected to surveillance were the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, the Oakland Educational Association, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Irish Northern Aid, the International Indian Treaty Council, the faculty of Mills College , and the Asian Law Caucus. San Francisco police estimated that 75 percent of Bullock's information was illegally obtained. Police Inspector, Tom Gerard, had supplied Bullock with confidential information about his targets in exchange for an $8,000 fee. Gerard was indicted for illegal use of a police computer in 1994 and fled to the Philippines . Ultimately he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of illegally accessing government information. The ADL made out-of-court cash settlements with the city of San Francisco , the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and three individuals.

Despite the illegal over zealousness of the San Francisco office of the ADL, from the mid-1980s until the September 11 terrorist attacks, there were only occasional efforts to defame individual Middle East scholars who were critical of Israel and U.S. Middle East policy. Some unknown number of professorial appointments and promotions was tainted by political pressure. But in part because of MESA 'S resistance to the agenda of the ADL and AIPAC, there was no concerted campaign.

Publication of Kramer's Ivory Towers on Sand heralded a new the beginning of such a campaign and a new phase in the efforts to subject critical thinking in Middle East studies to surveillance. Kramer and his ilk were emboldened by their links to officials in the upper-mid levels of the Bush administration such as Richard Perle, former chair (and still a member) of the Defense Advisory Board, and Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Douglas Feith, Deputy Secretary of State, and Elliott Abrams, National Security Advisor for the Middle East. They had mutual affiliations with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Project for a New American Century and other conservative think tanks whose ambit is broader than the Middle East .

The neo-cons have much more powerful political connections than the AJC, the ADL and AIPAC were able to mobilize for their campaigns of defamation in the early 1980s, which largely failed to silence criticism of Israel and U.S. Middle East policy in American universities. Because of September 11 and the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, the Middle East is more prominent topic in public culture, albeit largely in a caricatured form, than ever before. Moreover, internet technology has enabled the neo-cons to reach a much broader audience.

The pretentiously-named Campus-Watch website established by Daniel Pipes purports, in language removed from the website after it aroused a storm of criticism because of its naked McCarthyite character, to “monitor and gather information on professors who fan the flames of disinformation, incitement, and ignorance.” Campus-Watch alleges that Middle East scholars “seem generally to dislike their own country and think even less of American allies abroad. They portray U.S. policy in an unfriendly light and disparage allies.” Campus Watch asserts that “ Middle East studies in the United States has become the preserve of Middle Eastern Arabs, who have brought their views with them. Membership in the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the main scholarly association, is now 50 percent of Middle Eastern origin.” Therefore, MESA is, Campus-Watch implies, an unpatriotic and not truly American organization.

These assertions are false and brazenly bigoted. Expressing dissent from prevailing foreign policy is no indication of whether one does or does not like the United States . Such dissent is in the tradition of democratic patriotism. The majority of MESA members are not of Middle Eastern origin. Moreover, casting aspersions on scholars, or anyone else for that matter, because of their national origin violates the fundamental spirit of American liberties and misrepresents the history of the United States as an immigrant society.

The unabashed racism in the statement of purpose of Campus-Watch is not a one-time slip of the tongue. Pipes has described Muslim immigrants to Western Europe in language suggesting he may or may not endorse this view as, “brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene. Muslim customs,” he wrote, “are more troublesome than most.”

On the basis of such scholarly insight and empathetic understanding of foreign cultures, in the spring of 2003 President Bush nominated Pipes to a seat on the board of directors of the federally funded United States Institute of Peace, whose mission is to sponsor research promoting peaceful conflict resolution. After massive expressions of opposition to Pipes' nomination from a broad spectrum of individuals and organizations, including some Jewish groups, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions declined to approve Pipes' nomination. Nonetheless the President partially had his way by making a recess appointment after the Senate adjourned for the summer. Pipes may serve on the board, but for less than a full term. This episode signaled that what began as an apparently arcane debate among scholars had assumed national political significance.

In June 2003, Stanley Kurtz testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce that, “ Title VI-funded programs in Middle Eastern Studies (and other area studies) tend to purvey extreme and one-sided criticisms of American foreign policy.” He urged legislators to take action to ensure “balance.” Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan) obliged by introducing a bill designated the International Studies in Higher Education Act (H.R. 3077). The bill passed the House of Representatives by a unanimous voice vote in October 2003. In March 2004 the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions had the measure on its agenda. Its fate is undecided as of this writing.

HR 3077 reauthorizes funding for Title VI of the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and the Higher Education Act of 1965, which provides about $95 million for graduate fellowships, language training, and community outreach to 118 centers for regional area studies. It would also establish an International Education Advisory Board with investigative powers “to study, monitor, apprise, and evaluate” activities supported by Title VI. The advisory board is charged with ensuring that government-funded academic programs “reflect diverse perspectives and represent the full range of views” on international affairs. Three of the board members are to be appointed by the Secretary of Education; two of those will represent government agencies with national security responsibilities (the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, etc). The leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate each will appoint two more.

Everyone understands that “diverse perspectives” in this context is code for limited criticism of U.S. Middle East policy in general and of Israel in particular. The legislation is not motivated by concern with what centers for Latin American or East Asian studies are doing. The International Studies in Higher Education Act would immediately impact only the 17 federally-funded national resource centers for Middle East studies at U.S. universities. But this is clearly a dangerous precedent portending the possibility of direct government interference in teaching, public programming, and research.

The activities of AVOT, ACTA, Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes, Stanley Kurtz, Campus-Watch, and the introduction of HR 3077 bear the marks of a concerted campaign. The principal figures involved have more than a casual attachment to Ariel Sharon's understanding of the Middle East . The core proposition of that in the post-September 11 period, which Sharon has successfully sold to the Bush administration, is that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are equivalent to Usama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. The effect of this campaign has been to open the door to a host of other statements and political initiatives that imperil free discussion of the Middle East , and potentially much more.

Academic freedom and open debate on Middle East-related issues were very badly served by the widely reported sloppy thinking of Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, formerly Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration. At the start of the 2002-03 academic year, he addressed a student prayer meeting and argued that harsh criticisms of Israel were “anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.” Among other things Summers was referring to a petition signed by 600 Harvard and MIT faculty, staff, and students to divest university funds from companies that do business in Israel as a protest against Israel 's continuing occupation of the West Bank , the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem . Similar efforts with a range of formulations of the target were subsequently launched at over forty colleges and universities. One need not support the substance of the demand for divestment in order to discern the difference between even the most vehement criticism of Israel and its policies and anti-Semitism. Whatever one thinks of the demand for divestment, it is directed at specific policies of the state of Israel . It is, therefore, not inherently anti-Semitic.

Summers may have thought he was expressing himself in a reasoned way to an academic audience. But the conflation of criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism was an already well-established ploy. The endorsement of this notion by the president of the country's most prestigious institution of higher learning authorized others to go on the political offensive without fear that they would be criticized as boorish enemies of academic freedom.

The B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, the Likud-affiliated Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Committee, and the Hillel Foundation (the parent body of the largest Jewish student organization) sought to convince federal legislators that there is a wave of anti-Semitism on American campuses. The ADL's “annual audit” of anti-Semitic activity in America detected an increase of 24% in anti-Semitic activities on U.S. college campuses during 2002. However, the entire increase in incidents of anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses, according to the ADL's own statistics, amounted to 21 actions.

Among these were several high profile incidents, most of them motivated by opposition to Israel 's policies towards the Palestinians. Paradoxically, by failing to make a clear distinction between anti-Semitism, which should always and everywhere be opposed, and anti-Zionism, which is a legitimate political opinion, the ADL and like-minded organizations exposed American Jews to attack because they were identified with Israel .

In the spring of 2003 several Republican Senators and aides attended met with the representatives of the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, the Likud-affiliated Zionist Organization of America, and the Hillel Foundation. Shortly thereafter, the third-ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate, Rick Santorum (PA), announced that he planned to introduce so-called “ideological diversity” legislation that would cut federal funding to colleges and universities that permit professors, students, and student organizations to openly criticize Israel . Like the ADL and some other organizations that purport to represent American Jews, Santorum considers criticism of Israel equivalent to anti-Semitism. Santorum has not yet formulated his announcement into an actual bill.

Most of those who have attacked the Middle East Studies Association and individuals identified as foreign policy dissidents spend their days in think tanks where they are paid to hobnob with foreign policy makers and mass media opinion makers. They mainly write op-eds and policy think pieces. They do not, for the most part, engage in the primary recognized activities of scholars: teaching and research. These individuals a re on the far right margin of the Bush administration's power base. They serve as its attack dogs. It is easy to show that their scholarship and commentary on the Middle East is ludicrously defective. In fact, most Middle East scholars have long ago rejected their views. That is one of the sources of their unhappiness. It would be reasonable to conclude that perhaps scholars who study the modern Middle East know something worth listening to even if it does not accord with the views of right wing radicals. But the neo-McCarthyites already know what they want to hear.

Having failed to win in the marketplace of ideas, the neo-McCarthyites seek to use the power of the state to suppress wayward ideas. Consequently, this is a political fight, not merely a scholarly debate. The battle for ideas is surely a component of this struggle, but academic freedom is likely to be severely attenuated if the professoriate restricts itself to that arena. Even if only in self defense, students and scholars who want to preserve their right to think and speak and write critically about the Middle East , and potentially much else beyond, need to expose those who are assaulting our liberties and take the case for academic freedom to the public.

http://www.stanford.edu/~beinin/New_McCarthyism.html