Those Stubborn Facts: The News Media’s Priorities

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Amber Heard, celebrities, election 2016, Hillary Clinton, Johnny Depp, journalism, media bias, Michael Sussmann, misinformation, news, priorities, Those Stubborn Facts, Trump-Russia

Number of Google News search results today for “Michael Sussmann trial” (regarding misinformation and the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign): 16,300

 

Number of Google News search results today for “Johnny Depp trial”: 1.92 million

Im-Politic: Who’s the Real Adult-in-the-Room on Mask-Wearing

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CCP Virus, celebrities, coronavirus, COVID 19, election 2020, entertainment, Face the Nation, facemasks, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Margaret Brennan, masks, Scott Gottlieb, sports, Trump, Wuhan virus

Joe Biden is not only big on masks. He clearly views them as a super-weapon against the CCP Virus.

At last week’s final presidential debate, the Democratic candidate said “The expectation is we’ll have another 200,000 Americans dead between now and the end of the year. If we just wore these masks, the president’s own advisors have told him, we can save a 100,000 lives.”

So it seems he believes that masks can cut forecast upcoming fatalities by 50 percent – no doubt why he also declared that “What I would do is make sure we have everyone encouraged to wear a mask all the time.”

The former Vice President is also clearly a believer in what I like to call “The Science” – apparently believing that there’s a strong consensus among the relevant medical authorities (i.e., not your family GP, or brain surgeons, or others in the healthcare field not specializing in epidemiology or respiratory diseases) on all anti-virus efforts and strategies, including on the power of mask-wearing.

So I found myself decidedly amazed this morning upon listening to Scott Gottlieb‘s take on the matter. Although he served as Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Trump, Gottlieb (an M.D., but an internist,by the way) has been a leading critic of the Trump anti-CCP Virus policies. And that’s fair enough. By the same token, however, it’s noteworthy that he came out with a distinctly non-Biden-y take on masks’ effectiveness.

When asked during his latest weekly Face the Nation appearance by host Margaret Brennan (who cited a claim by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that “masks are the best plan for the moment”) to “Walk us through what the safest masks are,” here was Gottlieb’s response:

“Remember the masks serve two purposes. One is to protect other people from you, so if you’re asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic, if you have a mask on, you’re less likely to expel respiratory droplets that can affect other people. The other purpose is to provide you some measure of protection if in fact you’re around people who are infected. So if you want a mask to afford you some protection from other people, quality matters. A cloth mask may be 10 percent to 30 percent protective. A surgical mask, a Level Two or Level Three surgical mask, procedure mask, may be about 60 percent effective. An N-95 mask or equivalent, like a KN-95 mask, which is the Chinese equivalent, or what we call an FFP 2 mask, which is the European equivalent to an N-95 – that could be 90, 95 percent protective. So if you want a mask to afford you a level of protection, wear a higher quality mask. If you can only get a cloth mask, thickness matters, and cloth masks with polyester in them, that combination of polyester and cotton, do better.”

He did add that “A national mask mandate could be put into place,” but also stated that, “It doesn’t need to be backed up with fines or stringent enforcement. We have other requirements that we expect of a civil society that we enforce with political jaw-boning, leadership. We give people warnings at first. So I think masks are one thing that we could be doing.”

Neither Gottlieb nor Biden would limit the virus response to more mask-wearing – not by any means. But even when viewed in isolation, Gottlieb’s cautious and indeed extremely nuanced assessment contrasts strikingly with Biden’s practical fetishization of masks, and in particular with the idea of a national mandate – unless you think it would be a game-changer with or even without “fines or stringent enforcement.”

Gottlieb’s views also contrast with Mr. Trump’s long-time mockery of mask-wearing in general. But contrary to mask enthusiasts, and generally consistent with Gottlieb’s caution, there are any number of reputable studies casting doubt on the masks-as-panacea meme – either showing negligible effects outside clinical and other obvious settings, or coming to inconclusive results. (See here for a useful summary.)

And since the Biden stance is so widely echoed by so many leading American influencers (including not only Mainstream Media journalists but figures from the sports and entertainment worlds), and since the former Vice President is equally widely portrayed as the adult in the room, it seems legit to emphasize that his position arguably is no more scientifically grounded than the President’s.

As for me, because I’m a law-abiding person, and these are the Maryland regulations, I wear masks when in indoor public and crowded outdoor spaces, but nowhere else. They’re all cloth of varying thicknesses, though.

Im-Politic: Why the Cancel Culture Can Be Really Useful These Days

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1619 Project, Adam Silver, Adrian Wojnarowski, arts, Ben & Jerry's, Black Lives Matter, cancel culture, celebrities, China, Dan Snyder, entertainment, ESPN, free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, history, human rights, Im-Politic, Jefferson Starship, Josh Hawley, National Basketball Association, NBA, Nike, police brutality, racism, Roger Waters, sports, Starbuck's, The New York Times, Washington Redskins, wokeness

Of course, what sports reporter Adrian Wojnarowski thinks about Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, or the Black Lives Matter movement, or racial justice and police brutality issues generally, or even the proper role of politics in sports, has no intrinsic importance.

I mean, he’s a…sports reporter. As a human being, he’s entitled to his views, and in principle he’s entitled to express them in public. But although he’s great at scooping the competition on the latest roster moves by the Minnesota Timberwolves or whoever, he brings no special qualifications to these matters, and based on what we know, has no distinctive, much less especially valuable, insights to offer. Indeed, he does’t even apparently have any interest in offering them (unless you’re the kind of person impressed with the eloquence of an F-bomb).

Nonetheless, Wojnarowski’s outburst, and suspension by his employer, ESPN, represents a particularly informative opportunity for explaining why the industries like sports and entertainment should stay away from politics not necessarily for the good of the country (a subject that’s unexpectedly beside the point for this discussion), but for their own good. Just as important, his moments of fame outside the professional basketball world make clear that the so-called Cancel Culture that’s emerged with special force recently in the United States has some genuinely constructive uses in these current fraught times.

To recap, Wojnarowski covers pro basketball for sports cable network and website ESPN, and clearly has strong feelings about racial justice/policing etc issues. We know this from his reaction last Friday to message sent by Hawley to the National Basketball Association (NBA) protesting its decision for allowing players to wear “messages that promote social justice on its jerseys this summer but not allow messages that support law enforcement or are critical of China’s Communist Party.” He responded by emailing his F-bomb to Hawley, who proceeded to send out a tweet containing the communication’s image. (See this account for the details.)

To his credit, Wojnarowski has apologized completely, and with apparent sincerity for showing disrespect. But regardless of what you think about the issues above, the NBA’s decision under Commissioner Adam Silver, to “uphold” and even “stand for” values that no one of good will could object to in the abstract is bound to be a recipe for continuing trouble and a hornet’s nest it would do well to avoid for two main and overlapping reasons.

First, what non-arbitrary yardsticks, if any, does the NBA, or a similar organization, use to decide which views it endorses. As widely noted, the NBA is a strongly majority African American league, and Silver has explained that he therefore has tried to be sensitive to the concerns of black players, many of whom have experienced firsthand the varied socioeconomic problems and forms of prejudice that have plagued the black community for so long. That’s perfectly fine, and in my opinion laudible, when it comes to supporting these players expressing their views off the court, as individuals. But as representatives of a team or entire league? And when the league itself takes stances?

This is when a raft of thorny issues rears its head, especially if the league’s policy isn’t “anything goes.” For example, what if – as Hawley suggested – a player wants to wear on his jersey a pro-police or pro-military slogan, or perhaps “All Lives Matter”? Would the league allow that? And if not, on what grounds? Does the NBA really want to permit some forms of Constitutionally protected expression but not others? Would it be willing to establish an issue-oriented inspired litmus test for permission to be drafted or otherwise sign a contract? Would non-playing employees be subjected to the same requirements, too? Or would the league impose a “shut up and dribble”-type rule on players who dissent from its orthodoxy?

These questions may seem academic. But what if the day comes when most NBA players aren’t African Americans? As the league keeps proudly observing, athletes from abroad keep pouring in even now. Maybe they’ll care a lot about police brutality in America’s inner cities, either because they’ve been following the issue closely or because their consciousness has been raised by their African American teammates. But what if, some day, Bosnian-born players wanted to wear jerseys decrying what they see as Serbia’s ar crimes during the Balkans wars that broke out in the 1990s? (Intra-ethnic tensions in the region remain high to this day.) What if Lithuanian-born players wanted to use their uniforms to protest Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent designs on their homeland? If enough European players filled NBA rosters, would the league relish the thought of taking institutional stands on these matters? And if it did, how would it decide which positions to take? Majority vote of the players? The owners? Both? The fans?

Or take an international issue on which (as Hawley noted) on which the league has already made clear it prefers not to speak out – human rights in China. What if a player wanted to wear a slogan that slammed Chinese dictator Xi Jinping? What if a player of Chinese descent sought to protest Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong? What if one of the NBA’s Muslim players wanted to publicize atrocities committed by China against his co-religionists in the Xinjiang region? Would such players be censored? That option certainly can’t be ruled out, because the league’s lucrative China business has unmistakably led it to tread warily on this ground – even though its influence in the People’s Republic is considerable precisely because of the huge numbers of ardent Chinese NBA fans. But could the league proscribe this or any other kind of selective censorship on the basis of principle? Good luck with that. In fact, as with the other international issues mentioned above, it’s hard to imagine a better formula for sowing bitter divisions up and down league rosters and throughout the fan base. What intelligently led business would want to stir up that hornet’s nest?

Which brings us to the second major reason to de-politicize the NBA – and the related entertainment industry: They’re businesses. Any efforts to impose official orthodoxies will antagonize significant shares of their customer bases as sure as it’s bound to please others. And the league would expose itself to the Cancel Culture – which would have every right to rear its head, and which in these circumstances arguably would serve useful social, political, and economic purposes. After all, if it’s OK for the NBA as a business to take a stand I don’t like, it’s just as OK for me to register my dislike, and/or try to change its mind through the most effective legal means available to me and other individual customers – our pocketbooks.

These actions would by no means amount to calls to censor the NBA, or deny it or any of its franchises a right to free speech. If business owners want to use their assets to push certain agendas, that’s their prerogative. (I’m much less comfortable with permitting businesses to use unlimited amounts of money to fund campaigns for political office – but let’s leave that subject for another time.) It’s anyone’s prerogative, however, to object by not purchasing the product – just as it’s anyone’s prerogative to turn the channel if they decide they don’t like a TV or radio program. If these consumer actions endanger a business’ profits – too bad for them, and no great loss for the nation. If these organizations aren’t willing to pay a commercial price for their principles, chances are they’re not that deeply held to begin with.

The same rule of thumb, by the way, should apply to organizations as such that are resisting becoming politicized – like the Washington Redskins football team, which just yesterday announced that it will be changing its name because many (though no one knows exactly how many) view that monicker as a racial slur. As I see it, owner Dan Snyder has the God-given right to name the team anything he wants. And fans have the right to object by avoiding games in person or on TV, shunning team merchandise etc.

At this point, it’s crucial to note that skepticism about the wisdom of sports leagues and their teams (and other businesses) taking institutional stands on public issues doesn’t automatically translate into opposition to individual athletes or owners or other employees of sports leagues and other businesses taking such positions as individuals, without identifying themselves with their employers. That freedom needs to be respected – or at least that’s how I see it.

But how I see it, it turns out, isn’t the law. Private businesses generally can fire employees for any reason they like, including speaking out politically outside the workplace, as long as the reason has nothing to do with race, religion, gender and, now, sexual orientation. One reason surely is that such actions can reflect poorly on a business, reduce its earnings, and wreak non-trivial collateral damage – e.g., via a revenue drop big enough to endanger salary and wage levels, and even jobs. In other words, in most cases, you as an individual worker can legally be canceled.

Another reason evidently is that this kind of firing doesn’t inherently prevent you from expressing yourself. It simply prevents you from expressing yourself and holding a particular job. Given how important jobs are, that can easily look like a distinction without a difference. But again, if a principle is held strongly enough, it should be worth an economic price.

Speaking of reflecting poorly on business, that’s apparently what the Washington, D.C. pro football team’s sponsors decided when they started threatening Snyder recently with withdrawing sponsorships if he didn’t relent and drop “Redskins.” In effect, they told him they’d fire his business, as they had every right to do And Snyder quite understandably decided that his profits were more important than preserving his memories of his boyhood sports idols. (He’s a native Washingtonian and lifelong-fan,)

Celebrity status, as in sports, of course, creates interesting wrinkles – mainly, a team could in theory fire an athlete for expressing a view that owners consider objectionable, but enough fans might disagree strongly enough to retaliate commercially against the team. In these cases, the only reasonable conclusions to draw are that (1) life is sometimes unavoidably unfair and (2) some decisions are risky, and businesses that employ and even foster outspoken stars, like sports franchises, need to hope they have the judgment to come out on top. The same goes for keeping or dumping controversial names and mascots.

Generally speaking, Cancel Culture-type entertainment issues play out like Cancel Culture-type sports issues, but some crucial differences should be taken into account. Principally, whereas sports as such have absolutely nothing to do with public issues, literature, music, theater, the movies, and the like have always been closely connected with these matters. How could they not? Of course, the arts have created any amount of pure fluff. Much so-called serious art plays purely to our pure emotions, too.

But from their beginnings, the arts have represented expressions of ideas as well, and any healthy society that wants to stay healthy should hope that individual artists and organizations keep sounding off vigorously on “politics.” Moreover, logically speaking, there’s no built-in problem with entertainment companies and those institutions that organize the industry (and administer awards) championing and condemning specific positions as well.

By the same token, however, whether you denigrate the practice as intolerant Cancel Culture or not, it’s any art or entertainment consumer’s right to choose not to patronize any individual entertainer or artist or entertainment business or organization they disagree with about anything, and even to encourage others to join in. The market and the consciences of individuals and companies and organizations in the arts and entertainment fields will decide what kind of arts and entertainment products will be produced, with whose sponsorship (if any) and how influential and commercially successful they’ll be.

The real dilemmas for consumers come in when, say, your favorite singer makes terrific music but expresses offputting ideas on public affairs. In those cases, there’s no reasonable alternative to each individual figuring out which he or she values more – the instrumentals and vocals, or the lyrics – and there’s no ready formula for doint so. For me, it’s how I justify continuing to play Jefferson Starship’s musically magnificent but politically infantile (putting it mildly) 1970 album “Blows Against the Empire,” but also how I’ve decided that I’ll probably keep ignoring Roger Waters’ new material because I find the Pink Floyd co-founder’s anti-Israel invective so despicable.

Of course, Cancel Culture-type issues have arisen in connection with other industries as well. For me, because they generally have nothing to do with ideas and values, the sports rules of thumb seem to be appropriate for them, too. So I’ll keep passing up Ben & Jerry’s – and not simply because they always put in too many fill-ins and too little ice cream. Ditto for Nike’s various social justice kicks (which the athletic shoe company apparently views as being perfectly compatible with its massive job and production offshoring). And since I can now get a good cup of joe, find a comfortable place to sit, take a load off, and use free WiFi at any number of coffee bars around the country, so long to Starbuck’s and its insufferable in-my-face “commitment to racial justice and social equity.”

Whatever you think of the above arguments, they still leave unresolved three big aspects of the intertwined rise-of-institutional “wokeness/“Cancel Culture debate still unresolved.

The first, concerning historical monuments, markers, and names etc. I’ve already dealt with extensively, and you can examine my views by entering terms like “Confederacy” or “history” in RealityChek‘s search engine.

The second concerns the view that the kind of voting with your pocketbook that I’m recommending clashes with the idea that vigorous debate is a cornerstone of any sound democracy. I strongly agree with that notion. But it strikes me as naive to believe that at present, or in the foreseeable future, the conditions exist or will exist for any kind of helpful debate about the emergence of woke corporate culture.

For decisions like the NBA’s to take up certain causes (but not others) didn’t result from any engagement with the fan base. I’m sure some polls have been taken, but those were undoubtedly market research exercises to try to see whether such moves would pass muster with its customers – or whether they mattered at all. But to my knowledge, neither the league nor any of its corporate counterparts offered the general public the option of commenting substantively, much less indicated that these comments would be taken into account. The decisions were made by fiat. And given the vast disparity between the power and influence of a huge, well-financed business on the one hand, and individual customers or fans on the other, who can reasonably doubt that these debates won’t even happen until it’s clear that fan objections are impacting bottom lines?

If anything, these points are even stronger when it comes to institutions that are widely supposed to be in the debate-fostering business themselves, at least in part. It’s true, I’ve argued, that at least when we’re talking about the news media, or the broader information industries, these suppositions are largely misconceptions. It’s also true that I wouldn’t advise anyone to stop reading, say, The New York Times, because it’s chosen to enter the field of education and create the (in my view recklessly slanted) “1619 Project” to rewrite American history, or because its news coverage too often seems to be shaped by a widely held staff view that the sins of President Trump are great enough to warrant abandoning traditional journalistic ideals like objectivity.

But these Times decisions also were made by fiat, with no substantive input sought from readers. So if at some point I or anyone else concludes that the Times‘ reporting and analysis has become so unreliable as to be useless, I’ll cancel my subscription with a perfectly good conscience, and hope others do likewise.

The third dimension of the wokeness/Cancel Culture debate concerns wrongs committed or controversial remarks made by high profile individuals, and the proper responses both of the general public and of whatever employers or constituencies to which they’re responsible. Simply put, should such words and deeds be forgiven or punished, and if the latter, is there a statute of limitations?

Clearly, some of the deeds (like sex crimes) bring into the picture the criminal justice system, which I assume everyone views as the way society should deal with these actions. More difficult to decide, at least in principle, is how to treat those convicted once they’ve paid their debt (assuming they get released). At this point, I don’t see any viable alternative to engaging in or avoiding Cancel Culture-type responses, since the offenses cover such a wide range of actions, and since the subsequent behavior of the guilty is certain to vary greatly as well. Therefore it seems impossible to figure out a cookie-cutter blueprint for forgiveness or lack thereof. Case-by-case seems to be the best strategy for their employers, too.

Nor do I see any viable alternative to dealing with case-by-case to speech that’s legal but that offends for all sorts of valid reasons. In other words, there’s no escaping judgment calls.

So let’s give the Cancel Culture one or two cheers (as opposed to the full three). I just wish I was more confident that America’s national supply of judgment was adequate or increasing strongly.  

Following Up: More Evidence of Hollywood Immigration Hypocrisy

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2018 elections, Better Call Saul, celebrities, crime, entertainment industry, Following Up, Hollywood, illegal aliens, Immigration, Media & Society, midterms 2018, Norman Lear Center for the Study of Entertainment, OMG WTF, television, Trump, University of Southern California

If America’s entertainment industry has made anything clear since President Trump’s run for the White House began in mid-2016, it’s that it detests the chief executive, and that his stance on illegal aliens and immigration more generally is one big reason why. .

That’s why I wrote with such astonishment last month about Hollywood’s failure to come down like a ton of bricks about the popular cable dramedy Better Call Saul – whose portrayal of Latinos in New Mexico seems taken straight out of Mr. Trump’s campaign launch speech describing many illegal aliens as criminals, rapists, and (especially relevant for Saul) drug dealers.

Yesterday, however, my jaw dropped further when I came across a report finding that Saul was anything but an anomaly. According to a study just put out by the University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center for the Study of Entertainment, Media & Society (what a mouthful!) American television overall presents a significantly distorted and misleadingly negative picture of immigration and immigration issues.

And prominent among these alleged distortions: “Immigrants are disproportionately associated with crime and incarceration on TV.”

More specifically:

“On TV, one-third (34%) of immigrant characters were associated with a crime. This does not match reality. 2018 studies by the CATO Institute and the Marshall Project both reiterate what several other studies have found: both undocumented populations and immigrants as a whole commit less crime than native-born Americans.

“Eleven percent of TV immigrants are associated with incarceration. This means there was either a reference to a previous incarceration, they are currently incarcerated or there is a reference to a future incarceration. This is substantially higher than the less than 1% of foreign-born people incarcerated at the state and federal level in the U.S., excluding immigration offenses, according to the CATO Institute.”

In this post, I’m not going to get into the debate over whether legal immigrants or, more important, illegal aliens, commit crimes to a greater or lesser degree than native-born Americans. (Here’s my take on the subject.) Rather, the main point here is that, as actors and comedians and talk show hosts focus on demonizing President Trump for cruel, unfair, racist, fascistic, and xenophobic immigration policy priorities, they’ve apparently been working in an industry that’s vigorously propagated the very stereotypes they say they abhor (and not just on crime, but on immigrant education levels, poverty rates, and legal status).

Entertainment industry figures recently started a political action committee named OMG WTF to support Democratic political candidates in key states in next month’s midterm elections. As the Lear Center report reminds, that acronym obviously also applies to Hollywood’s hypocrisy about immigration.

Im-Politic: From Virtue-Signaling to Real Compassion on Immigration

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asylum seekers, celebrities, DACA, family separation, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mainstream Media, Sanctuary Cities, Trump, virtue-signalling

As should have been clear from the start, President Trump’s decision to halt the practice of family separation for supposed asylum-seekers who try to enter the United States outside of designated ports of entry will by no means end this phase of the immigration policy wars.

After all, this reversal has come via executive order, and the administration’s new policy – which would prevent family separation by detaining both children who have sought illegal entry into the country along with the adults that have accompanied them until their asylum claims are approved – appears to clash with a 2015 Federal court decision appearing to mandate quick release of both the children and the adults, whether asylum claims have been vetted or not.

In addition, avowed immigration rights advocates have made unmistakably clear their dissatisfaction with the new administration stance – strongly indicating in the process that their main concern has never been family separation, but the practice of detaining any of these family members until their asylum claims can be examined.

In other words, these advocates want a “catch and release” policy to be applied to these newcomers as well – even though many and possibly illegal border crossers never comply with orders to return to immigration courts once their cases are up for judgment. So court challenges are inevitable, as is pressure on politicians to loosen such border control practices further, as the outcry over the previous administration policy appears to be widespread (though its depth remains unclear, as suggested by these Gallup results).

And since even ultimately the President has shown that he’ll allow apparent public opinion to override his restrictionist immigration instincts, it’s reasonable to expect the U.S. illegal immigrant population to resume rising, and to surge strongly if Mr. Trump loses a reelection bid in 2020. And don’t forget: Washington could well turn on another powerful magnet for more immigration, especially from the very low-income countries of the Western Hemisphere – broad amnesty for the DACA population, residents of the United States who were brought to the country as children by illegal immigrant parents.

It looks, therefore, all too likely that a new outburst of virtue-signaling fomented by the Open Borders lobby will generate major new costs for the American economy, including both the native-born population, recent legal immigrants, and even recent illegals. Principally, downward wage pressures will increase on workers from these groups with less than exceptional educations or skill levels. And taxpayers at all income levels will need to pay for the government-provided services these newcomers will need.

These services, moreover, aren’t simply confined to various forms of welfare (since a large majority of these arrivals themselves will be poorly schooled and largely unskilled). The population increases they fuel will need new schools, public transit, and fire and law enforcement capabilities, just to name a few. (For a shocking example of the price of failing to provide these new services, check out this recent Washington Post piece on a middle school located right near where I live in a Maryland suburb of D.C. that’s becoming dominated by MS-13 recruiting and recruits in part because of a ballooning student body attributable to the surge of unaccompanied Central American minors in 2014.)

At the same time, those Americans who reap most of the benefits from supercharged immigration flows will represent a much smaller group. As I showed in this 2014 Fortune column, it will be dominated by families high up the income ladder, who disproportionately use the cut-rate landscapers, housekeepers, and nannies who account for so many illegal immigrant workers; and from businesses and entire industries (like construction, hotels, and restaurants) which profit so handsomely from the continuing flood of cheap labor.

As I also wrote in that column, these inequities are far from inevitable, and reducing them is hardly rocket science. How? Through policies that result in the main beneficiaries of illegal immigration paying the lion’s share of the costs. Four years ago, I suggested a new tax on the super-rich, and on industries that heavily employ illegals. That’s still entirely appropriate. But other possibilities abound, too.

For example, how about channeling these newcomers to sanctuary states, and cities and other localities? Or to states that voted for Hillary Clinton for president in 2016? Or to the Congressional districts represented by the loudest critics of the family separation and other elements of the President’s immigration policy? (Yes, there’s lots of overlap here.)

Moreover, let’s not forget the celebrity world. Via social media campaigns, maybe the Samantha Bees and the Robert de Niros and the Kathy Griffins could be pressed to provide some financing for this new – or newly legalized – population. (And here, it’s vitally important to specify that big contributions to advocacy groups focused on indiscriminately helping newcomers work the system, and thereby encouraging greater numbers, a la the Clooneys this week, doesn’t cut it.) Considering its sometimes reckless, often hysterical, and usually one-sided coverage of this complicated issue, the Mainstream Media should be targeted for similar “shaming.”

It’s all about applying to immigration controversies a fundamental principle of fairness – user pays – and adding to it the idea of “cheerleader pays” And even if this proposal falls flat on its face, it will at least achieve a crucial goal: helping Americans distinguish between the virtue signalers and the genuinely compassionate.

Im-Politic: This was Paul Krugman’s Finest Hour

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celebrities, Im-Politic, Paul Krugman

Having been slimed by him in print (debating an issue on which I was right!), I’m no fan of Paul Krugman’s. I also disagree with the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist on any number of economic and other issues, and strongly object to his habit of dismissing nearly all those differing with him as ignoramuses and/or toadies of America’s plutocrats. (Not that there aren’t lots of commentators and analysts falling into one or both categories.)

But I believe Krugman richly deserves praise for a recent display of intellectual honesty that urgently needs to become a lot more common in America these days: He admitted he didn’t know enough about a subject to warrant writing about it extensively. Thus Krugman didn’t dwell much on President Obama’s foreign policy record in his recent Rolling Stone article defending the president’s overall record. His explanation?  “The truth is that I have no special expertise here….”

Let me be clear here. I am not saying that Krugman – or anyone else lacking academic training, professional experience, or any other obvious qualification – lacks the right to opine on foreign policy, or on any other subject. Foreign policy and national security, in particular, have only the scantest claim to be seen as academic disciplines, and certainly many practitioners have turned out to be complete incompetents, whether academically trained or educated in the school of hard knocks.

Nor am I saying that expertise in one field is never transferable to another. Moreover, “It’s a free country.” In fact, I wish everyday Americans would speak out more on major public issues, and that the political, economic, policy, and academic establishments would pay them more heed.

At the same time, it should be clear that we’ll have the most useful national debates if those with legitimate expertise or experience in certain fields don’t simply assume that these qualifications entitle their views in other fields to any special status. Indeed, more often than not, because their privileged lives tend to undermine their common sense, experts speaking out of school tend to produce the worst of all possible analytical worlds. As a result, it should also be clear that the media must start exercising better judgment in seeking commentary.

But few of the high and mighty demonstrate any self-discipline, and the media keep  uncritically worshipping any form of prominence, no matter its source, and so we have the constant spectacle of valuable ink and airtime eaten up by know-nothing celebrities discoursing on any number of national and international issues with make-or-break potential for America and the entire world.

That’s why Krugman’s admission in Rolling Stone is so noteworthy. Even better, it shows he has a learning curve, for he wasn’t always so self-effacing. And maybe the biggest blessing of all is his modesty’s appearance in a magazine widely read in the entertainment world. Maybe Rosie O’Donnell and Ben Affleck will take the hint?