Category: Current Affairs

Pope Anathema I, or: ALL YOUR BENG ARE BELONG TO US!!!

Okay, I’m about to break one of my own rules (no names in the main blog area), but this situation overrides the usual rules. It is a day of Great Rejoicing!

Beng . . . IS ALIVE!!!

For those who may not know, Beng is a Catholic Indonesian gentleman who frequents the blog as well as Steve Ray’s message board. (That’s his avatar on the left.)

I was chilled to the core when a blog reader told me that Beng was in Indonesia at the time of the tsunami.

Working in cooperation with the folks on Steve Ray’s board, I and others tried desperately to verify that Beng was okay and to make contact with him. No luck. As time passed with no word from Beng, a lot of us were getting more and more concerned, but still trying to reassure ourselves that he was probably okay. Just yesterday at work I was seeing the horrific and mounting death toll and doing the math against Indonesia’s 200 million population to reassure myself that Beng was overwhelmingly likely to be okay.

Then when I got home, a kindly reader told me by e-mail that Beng had posted on Steve Ray’s board.

Then I discovered an e-mail from Beng himself! He wrote:

Jimmy, I really, really, really REALLY apreciate the concerns and you
is positively included. I can’t thank God enough for the fellowship
that we have on the net.

whew!

PRAISE GOD!!!

Glad you’re back online, Beng! You’ve been sorely missed!

Over on Steve Ray’s board, there is MUCH rejoicing.

One of the great things about Beng is his wonderful way of expressing himself, which frequently involves the word "anathema." One poster on Steve’s board wrote (tongue-in-cheek and yet in those dark days still-assured that Beng was really still alive):

I’ve trying to lighten my mood and picture Beng shaking his fist at the tsunami yelling at it that it is "Anathema".

Now folks are proclaiming the election of Pope Anathema I.

What was lost has now been found.

All 99 of us sheep who were not out of touch are now rejoicing.

JOIN THE FESTIVITIES!!!

AP Breaks News Promise

HERE’S A STORY IN WHICH THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CLAIMS THAT A "CARDINAL SAYS BUSH BROKE IRAQ PROMISE."

Trouble is, the article shows the cardinal (Pio Laghi) saying nothing of the kind.

It quotes him as saying:

"When I went to Washington as the pope’s envoy just before the outbreak of the war in Iraq, he (Bush) told me: `Don’t worry, your eminence. We’ll be quick and do well in Iraq,’"

"Unfortunately, the facts have demonstrated afterward that things took a different course — not rapid and not favorable."

"Bush was wrong."

I’m sorry, but "Bush was wrong" does not mean "Bush broke a promise." The first statement attributes to the President a misperception of fact (how things would go), while the second attributes to him a moral failure to perform actions that were reasonably within his power to bring about–or a moral failure by making promises regarding something that one unreasonably believed to be within one’s power to bring about.

The Cardinal attributes neither of the latter to President Bush.

Opponents of the President might wish to attribute these to him, though based on what the Cardinal says I severely doubt that Bush was understood to promise a specific outcome. It would be more natural to understand the President as making a commitment to act expeditiously and making a prediction (not a promise) that things would go well. The first (commitment to act expeditiously) is a promise. The second (things will go well) is not.

In any event, but the Cardinal does not say that Bush broke a promise, and by headlining the article the way it did, the Associated Press misportrayed the Cardinal’s remarks–and simultaneously portrayed itself as a petulant organization willing to spout Democratic Party spin as if it were a pouting child suffering a disappointing loss.

Since the AP says it subscribes to the Associated Press Managing Editors’ ethics statement, it’s interesting to note that this statement says:

The newspaper should guard against inaccuracies, carelessness, bias
or distortion through emphasis, omission or technological manipulation.

The newspaper should deal honestly with readers and newsmakers. It should keep its promises [SOURCE].

Well, the AP didn’t sufficiently do these things in crafting the headline of this story. It therefore is also interesting to note that the APME ethics statement also says:

It should acknowledge substantive errors and correct them promptly and prominently.

Somehow, I doubt the AP will issue a retraction.

Now, someone might nitpick that I haven’t demonstrated that the AP broke a promise because the ethics statement only says a paper should guard against inaccuracies, not that it is committed to preventing them.

Fair enough. If the AP is not committed to preventing inaccuracies then it has not broken one of its commitments.

But my headline is at least as accurate as the AP’s.

Let’s Suppose . . .

. . . that there are two guys running for president. Call them Candidate X and Candidate Y.

Suppose further that there are parties attacking the military records of Candidate X and Y and bringing up all kinds of allegations about what they did or didn’t do during the Vietnam War.

Suppose that there is a TV network that at first refuses to cover the allegations made against Candidate X by a large number of sources and then, when the story becomes too big to ignore, heaps scorn on those making the allegations, trying its best to shoot holes in their account.

Suppose finally that the same TV network eagerly hops on the allegations made against Candidate Y by a single source and, when virtually the entire blogosphere shoots holes in the allegations, the network stiffly and rigidly defends the allegations.

Could you fairly conclude that the TV network and the people at it who were involved in these stories were biased against Candidate Y in favor of Candidate X?

How then can the CBS Rathergate pannel say something like this?

The question of whether a political agenda played any role in the
airing of the Segment is one of the most subjective, and most
difficult, that the Panel has sought to answer. The political agenda
question was posed by the Panel directly to Dan Rather and his
producer, Mary Mapes, who appear to have drawn the greatest attention
in terms of possible political agendas. Both
strongly denied that they brought any political bias to the Segment.
The Panel recognizes that those who saw bias at work in the Segment are
likely to sweep such denials aside. However, the Panel will not level
allegations for which it cannot offer adequate proof [LINK–Evil file format (.pdf) warning!].

I don’t think there’s anything "subjective" here. I think the bias is blatantly obvious. Viewing the Rathergate sandal in the context of the overall election, it is obvious what was happening: This was a desperate attempt to get a military record story on Bush to neutralize the effect of the Swiftvet story on Kerry. Only a "myopic zeal" for focusing on the Rathergate story in isolation from the Swiftvet story could lead one to think that there is not adequate proof of bias in this case.

Let's Suppose . . .

. . . that there are two guys running for president. Call them Candidate X and Candidate Y.

Suppose further that there are parties attacking the military records of Candidate X and Y and bringing up all kinds of allegations about what they did or didn’t do during the Vietnam War.

Suppose that there is a TV network that at first refuses to cover the allegations made against Candidate X by a large number of sources and then, when the story becomes too big to ignore, heaps scorn on those making the allegations, trying its best to shoot holes in their account.

Suppose finally that the same TV network eagerly hops on the allegations made against Candidate Y by a single source and, when virtually the entire blogosphere shoots holes in the allegations, the network stiffly and rigidly defends the allegations.

Could you fairly conclude that the TV network and the people at it who were involved in these stories were biased against Candidate Y in favor of Candidate X?

How then can the CBS Rathergate pannel say something like this?

The question of whether a political agenda played any role in the

airing of the Segment is one of the most subjective, and most

difficult, that the Panel has sought to answer. The political agenda

question was posed by the Panel directly to Dan Rather and his

producer, Mary Mapes, who appear to have drawn the greatest attention

in terms of possible political agendas. Both

strongly denied that they brought any political bias to the Segment.

The Panel recognizes that those who saw bias at work in the Segment are

likely to sweep such denials aside. However, the Panel will not level

allegations for which it cannot offer adequate proof [LINK–Evil file format (.pdf) warning!].

I don’t think there’s anything "subjective" here. I think the bias is blatantly obvious. Viewing the Rathergate sandal in the context of the overall election, it is obvious what was happening: This was a desperate attempt to get a military record story on Bush to neutralize the effect of the Swiftvet story on Kerry. Only a "myopic zeal" for focusing on the Rathergate story in isolation from the Swiftvet story could lead one to think that there is not adequate proof of bias in this case.

Have you noticed?

Advertising is changing.

No, I’m not referring to the advent of spam and noxious pop-ups. I’m referring to standard TV and radio advertising. One particular element that had been a staple in such advertising is going the way of the dinosaur. According to some,

THE JINGLE IS DEAD.

And good riddance.

The jingle actually isn’t completely dead yet, but it is present in ads a lot less than it used to be. Advertisers now are not trying so much to create a short, memorable melody that they can drill into your brain with such ferocity that they can create a legion of zombie shoppers (Supermarket of the Living Dead).

But what are they doing?

Well, they’re licensing a lot of songs that I have never heard of and have no interest in hearing as I’m totally checked out from the junk that passes for popular music these days. They’re also licensing some old standards (and by that I mean Beatles tunes). The idea seems to be to create advertising that is less offensive, that has music people actually like (as opposed to can’t extirpate from their brains).

As far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing. Obnoxious advertising, bad. (But fire, good!)

What I find odd is that they barely mention their products in many ads now, leading me to wonder whether this kind of advertising works and, thus, whether it will last.

In any event, I’m enjoying the less-obnoxifying trend in many ads.

I do have a question, though: Right now Cox has an ad out whose background music is a really catchy tune that seems to consist entirely of different kinds of phones ringing in an office environment. I don’t know if this is a jingle or one of those many, many recent songs that I haven’t heard before.

Anyone know what it might be?

An Unexpectedly Dark Angle On The Tsunami Disaster

This won’t go up until Friday, but I’m typing it on Thursday night while watching The O’Reilly Factor, as I sometimes do. (I find much of the reporting on this show quite good, but I find Bill O’Reilly’s ego intrudes into the show a bit too much.)

Tonight he ran a story that absolutely Turned My Stomach.

You’ve probably heard about sex tourism in Asia. I’ve heard about it, but don’t know much about it. Apparently, what it involves (at least some of the time) is selling orphaned/abandoned/missing children into sexual slavery.

According to O’Reilly’s guest, an expert in this subject, the traffickers who sell these children are now looking to prey upon the large number of children who were orphaned or lost touch with their families as a result of the tsunami.

The reason the guest is an expert is that he works with an organization called International Justice Mission, an Evangelical organization that seeks to thwart the child traffickers. One way they do that is they go over to Asia posing as child buyers, and get intelligence on the child sellers, and then get that info to people in the (often corrupt) local governments who will slap the child sellers behind bars. 

They’ve had a lot of success!

God bless them for their work!

I just can’t imagine how they’re able to do it. The idea of going anywhere near that slimy underworld, much less posing as members of it, absolutely makes my skin crawl.

I still need to learn more about this ministry–how Catholic-friendly they are–and whether there is a Catholic organization that does equivalent work, but IJM may end up as an organization I financially support.

Somebody needs to protect children in this way.

LEARN MORE.