The Counterpoint

New "Behind 'Behind the Headlines'" Podcast out

2011-07-28T14:36:00.000-04:00

A critique and response to Hyman's latest commentary (this one on the debt ceiling "crisis") can be had at the blog. The podcast is available in iTunes.

He's Back

2011-07-19T21:30:00.001-04:00

In case you haven't noticed, Mark Hyman is back on Sinclair networks with "Behind the Headlines." In terms of tone and content, it's simply "The Point" redux. Fortunately, it only appears once a week. I've started a new blog/podcast to offer both a critique and reply to "Behind the Headlines." You can find it here:

	http://behindbehindtheheadlines.blogspot.com/

You should also be able to subscribe to the audio podcast version in iTunes shortly. I'll post a note to let you know when it's live. I'll also post links to the new posts here.

Hyman Rides the Swiftboat Again (Hi-Ho Sinclair, Away!)

2008-10-26T22:25:00.003-04:00

I’ve joked in the past about “my scar tingling” in response to actions by Mark Hyman, former commentator for Sinclair Broadcasting. Last week it happened again, in rather disturbing fashion.

You might remember that Hyman left his commenting gig at Sinclair in order to spend “more time with his family.” This decision came only days after he was forced to issue an on air retraction of slanderous comments made about George Soros, the billionaire financier and long-time donor to liberal causes.

You might also remember that prior to his sudden departure, Hyman was waist deep in the Swiftboating of John Kerry during the 2004 election, pushing for the airing of sections of “Stolen Honor,” a “documentary” based on smears against Kerry.

Well, in a truly bizarre bit of coincidence, I had the sudden thought last week to Google Mr. Hyman to see if he was up to anything recently. I hadn’t done so for months and months; Hyman had vanished from the public scene. The last we had heard from him, he was ranting about the unfair “elitists” who dared to criticize the artistic merits of High School Musical 2.

No, I’m not making that up.

Anyway, I discovered after Googling him that Hyman had published an op-ed in the conservative Washington Times only the day before! Sixth Sense? Sick Sense? I dunno.

Anyway, it turns out that my man Mark is at it again, attempting an eleventh hour Swiftboating of Barack Obama. And he’s based his attacks on that same paragon of investigative ethos, Jim Corsi. He doesn’t mention Corsi in his piece (plagiarism, Mr. Hyman?). But he’s once again serving as an open conduit for the misinformation Mr. Corsi has tried to spread.

Corsi was a leader in the Swiftboat gang back in ’04, co-authoring the book “Unfit for Command.” The book and its charges were roundly refuted, but Corsi, a longtime conservative activist, has returned to the bookshelves with “The Obama Nation,” a book-length diatribe against the current Democratic nominee.

In his piece, which he opens with a gruesome description of a mass murder in Kenya, Hyman regurgitates the most absurd and grotesque of Corsi’s claims, particularly that Obama is a political ally of Raila Odinga, the now-Prime Minister of Kenya.

Hyman accuses Odinga of complicity in genocide in Kenya, and then lays this accusation at Obama’s feet, based on Corsi’s claim that Obama supported Odinga. He even reiterates the long-since discredited claim that Odinga and Obama are cousins (something Odinga had claimed, but which Obama’s Kenyan relatives explained was simply a way of saying that their families hailed from the same region).

Hyman breathlessly concludes his commentary thusly:

Mr. Obama's judgment is seriously called into question when he backs an official
with troubling ties to Muslim extremists and whose supporters practice ethnic
cleansing and genocide. It was Islamic extremists in Kenya who bombed the U.S.
Embassy in 1998, killing more than 200 and injuring thousands. None of this has
dissuaded Mr. Obama from maintaining disturbing loyalties.

The problem is that none of what Corsi or Hyman allege is true.

The non-partisan PolitiFact, an ongoing investigation of campaign claims made by and on behalf of both the Obama and McCain campaigns, has found Corsi’s contentions to be utterly false. In addition to simply being wrong in all sorts of ways about Odinga himself (for example, claiming he is an Islamic extremist when he is in fact Anglican), Corsi’s alleged evidence of an Obama/Odinga connection is based on emails that have been found to not only be not from Obama, but not from a native speaker of English. The claim Hyman makes in his piece that Obama and Odinga were “inseparable” during Obama’s trip to Kenya in 2006 misrepresents the truth: Odinga was eager to ride the coattails of the newly popular and powerful American politician with ties to Kenya and followed him around the country as a groupie. Obama maintained a fastidious neutrality in the Kenyan political scene.

Yet Hyman persists in alleging the merits of Corsi’s claims, despite being based on obvious and sloppy forgeries that have all the plausibility of financial offers from Nigerian princes.
.
Make no mistake: this is race politics at its ugliest. Corsi, in claims that could only be taken seriously by the “Crazy Lady from the McCain Rally” suggests that all of this hints at Obama attempting to adopt sharia law in the U.S. and that he would engage in “tribal violence.” All that is left out of this caricature is the image of Obama wearing the shrunken skulls of McCain and Palin around his neck and demanding to be referred to as Shaka Zulu by congressional leaders.

Hyman’s attempt to piggyback yet again on the ugliest of unhinged conservative smears against the Democratic candidate for president would be laughable if it weren’t so ugly. One can only hope that this is simply part of the death rattle of the McCain campaign and perhaps (dare we hope?) of the acceptance of this sort of racist ugliness, which we may duly place in history’s dustbin.

And that’s the Counterpoint.

My Scar Tingles Slightly

2007-08-26T23:42:00.000-04:00

It's been several months since the fall of He Who Shall Not Be Named, but there's the slightest of signs that he might be attempting to reinvent himself and get back onto the scene.

He has published columns in the conservative mag Human Events on the budgeting process (basically a recycled rehash of a some stale "Point" commentaries) and (wait for it!) the Fairness Doctrine ! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

While you're enjoying a chuckle over that, you'll also be amused to hear that he also popped up recently as an interview subject in a story posted on the right-wing news site CNSNews.com.

The topic of the story? Editorial political bias in the news media! BARHARHARHARHAR!!

Needless to say, if my scar starts burning, HWSNBN will be dealt with over at my new digs at Unfrozen Caveman Rhetorician, and if, God forbid, the campaign season lures him out into the light of day, we'll take The Counterpoint out of mothballs and break him over our rhetorical knee.

The Counterpoint 2.0

2007-02-21T12:53:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to leave a note here at The Counterpoint that I've got new blog with a somewhat broader scope (but hopefully some of the same spirit) now up and running. It's very much in a "beta" version at this point, but I'm working on getting it up to speed.

Hope to see you there!

The Rhetoric Garage
http://rhetoricgarage.blogspot.com

Cheers,

ted

And That's The Counterpoint

2006-12-04T11:14:00.000-05:00

And so “The Point” is done, going out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Hyman’s last commentary took one last Parthian shot at John Kerry, repeating the canard that in Vietnam, Kerry shot a “wounded soldier fleeing the field of battle” (stop hating the troops, Mark!). We also have a mention of the many “major awards” garnered by “The Point,” (no mention of the fact that the awards the segment won were “pay-for-praise” awards in which virtually anyone who submits the required paperwork and meets a minimal standard of quality gets an award).

I’d love to provide a link to the commentary, but almost as soon as Hyman delivered his final “Point,” the Newscentral.tv website took everything connected with “The Point” segment down.

Ultimately, what Hyman said in his last final bit of blathering isn’t as important as the fact that he’s off the air. While one shouldn’t make too much of this one small victory, it’s important to acknowledge the symbolic importance of Hyman’s ignominious departure.

The communication theorist Jurgen Habermas writes that the role of the public sphere in a democracy is, ideally, to be an open forum where people engage in rational discourse that acknowledges differences and attempts to forge consensus. Part of this public sphere is the media, whose main purpose is to scrutinize those in power and report accurately the facts necessary for an informed public discussion of the issues of the day.

As Habermas has noted, the situation today is far from this ideal, particularly in regard to the media, who increasingly operate to protect the private interests of their owners rather than acting as a public corrective on private interests of those in power.

I have a hard time imagining a better example of this degeneration of the public sphere than Sinclair Broadcasting and Mark Hyman. Sinclair’s tactics involve gutting local news organizations and replacing them with pre-packaged, one-size-fits-all “news” to maximize corporate profits. In the process, they strip away an important part of the public sphere in the communities in which they set up shop.

It would be bad enough if Sinclair simply took away from the public sphere in this way in pursuit of economic interests, but they distort the public sphere through their unashamed lobbying for their own narrow political interests (which are, of course, connected to an extent with their economic interests).

We have the owners of Sinclair giving tens of thousands of dollars almost exclusively to Republican candidates. They’ve created their own corporate PAC, which also gives money almost exclusively to Republican candidates. We know that Sinclair executives have used their journalistic resources to support candidates of their choice in elections. We also know they’ve given illegal “gifts in kind” to candidates they support (in the form of free helicopter rides). And they’ve engaged in quid pro quo relationships with the now-lame duck governor of Maryland.

We know that they’ve made major decisions on what to cover and how based on the political interests of the owners. Sinclair refused to provide its viewers with network programming when that programming was deemed (inexplicably) to be politically biased (i.e., the refusal to air ABC’s “The Fallen”). Yet, they chose to air large chunks of a propaganda film that attacked a candidate with whom they disagreed and labeled it “news” in an attempt to influence an election (i.e., the Stolen Honor fiasco).

And then, of course, we have Hyman himself, whose personal soapbox, “The Point,” often took up more broadcast time than the lead story on the news had. That would be bad enough, but Sinclair forced its stations to carry Hyman, regardless of the local community’s desires and needs. Rather than free and open discourse, “The Point” gave us a closed, monopolistic, and self-interested monologue.

Rationality? You didn’t find it on “The Point,” which regularly engaged in ad hominem attacks, deck stacking, appeals to fear, and a nearly endless number of other stock propaganda techniques.

Acknowledging differences and forging consensus? Again, “The Point” did the opposite. Hyman regularly dehumanized and smeared any who disagreed with him, saying that they weren’t simply mistaken or wrong, but were bad people who hated their country and fellow citizens. He wasn’t even above suggesting that people he considered antagonists were criminals or traitors.

All this would be bad enough, but it was all done not simply through the media, but through the publicly owned airwaves—airwaves owned by the people of the United States as a means of creating a thoroughly public sphere. Sinclair and Hyman appropriated these airwaves to advance their own private economic and political agenda, and did so in a way that demonstrably impoverished the public sphere.

The disappearance of “The Point” is only a small move back toward a more humane, civil, and productive public sphere. There is still much to be done in terms of rehabilitating this crucial part of our social existence, including making mainstream journalism more accountable to the truth than to its corporate interests, holding public officials to higher standards in their own public discourse, keeping alternative forms of media (such as the Internet) truly free and open to all, reinstating the fairness doctrine for broadcast media, and turning back the tide of media consolidation and conglomeration.

But we’ll take our victories where we can get them, and this is a welcome and wonderful first step, no matter how small it might be.

In closing, I just want to thank all of you out there who’ve read and contributed to this blog. It’s been a wonderfully affirming and exciting experience to have this little hobbyhorse of mine become something that has brought me in contact with so many thoughtful, insightful people.

Thanks in particular to those of you who’ve left comments and emailed me—you’ve kept me honest and kept me motivated. Special thanks to my friends at Iowans for Better Local Television (IBLTV) in Iowa City for their early and continued support, and their tireless efforts to make real changes on a local level. Thanks also to regular commentators and readers, some of whom I know in real life, and some of whom I know only via this blog. Special shout outs to Todd and John H. in Iowa City (buckle down!), Bradley, Hyman’s Turtle, and that tireless poster, “Anonymous.” And Mike B., I think I’ll miss you most of all! We busted Hyman!

Some of you have asked about the future of this blog. For now, it will go on sabbatical, ready to swing back into action if/when Sinclair-related news comes up or Hyman reappears. In the meantime, I’ll likely start up a blog that casts at least a slightly wider net but which has essentially the same purpose: being a watchdog keeping an eye on certain aspects of public discourse. I doubt I’ll start that before the end of the year, but probably not long after that, I’ll be getting the itch to take up my mouse and keyboard and blog anew.

If you want to reach me directly, you can email me at treming930@hotmail.com. If you like, I’ll send you an email whenever I get my next blog up and running. I’d love to have you stop by. Also, please let me know if you have any tips or info related to Sinclair or Mark Hyman. Let us be ever vigilant!

Thanks again everyone!

And that’s been The Counterpoint.

A P.S. to An Open Letter to Mark Hyman

2006-11-30T18:26:00.000-05:00

Almost everything important to say about “The Point” is captured in the statement in your penultimate commentary:

No doubt the most enduring foreign policy comment associated with
The Point is when the French were referred to as "cheese eating surrender
monkeys."

Indeed. What does it say about the impoverished nature of your editorials when *that* is your claim to talking-head fame?

Well, among other things, it serves as a microcosm of what “The Point” has so often been: infantile, mean spirited, unoriginal, and wrong.

Perhaps it’s fitting that the phrase you point to as the enduring legacy of your commentaries is a phrase cribbed from a cartoon, and which wasn’t even first used in a political context by you, but rather a fellow conservative pundit, Jonah Goldberg long before you uttered it. (Given your high standards when it comes to plagiarism, I assume citing the original source simply slipped your mind.)

While we’re at it, let’s take a whack at a few other items you’ve kindly teed up for me.
You talk about “checking in on the terrorist detainees” at Guantanamo Bay. I’m just wondering: how did you know all of the detainees were terrorists? Apparently, not even the government itself can be sure, since a number of people held there have since been released. And while you were “inspecting their cells” and “examining their medical care,” did you also give waterboarding a try?

You brag about going to Iraq, but oddly, in a commentary devoted to patting yourself on the back for your foreign policy insights, you don’t tout your support of the war in Iraq itself. Perhaps now that even those who were architects of the war are running for cover and disavowing responsibility for the disastrous policies there, you want to keep your cheerleading for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al, on the down low. Understandable. Not terribly forthcoming or honest, but understandable.

You talk about being threatened by viewer mail, but you don’t say anything about your own defamation of people like George Soros, who’ve you told outright lies about, or people like John Kerry, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, etc. who you have said hate the troops and support the terrorists.

You claim that the boycott organized against Sinclair after the Stolen Honor debacle “failed,” but you don’t mention that Sinclair’s stock plummeted, advertisers pulled ads from the broadcast of your propaganda piece as well as from Sinclair’s newscasts, and that the incident shone a bright light on the seamy underbelly of Sinclair’s business practices.

You also claim vindication in being allowed to show political propaganda as “news,” although you cynically refer to it as your “free speech position.” I can’t help but wonder: why does the Sinclair passion for “free speech” not extend to its own offices? When Jon Lieberman, your lead political reporter, argued that it was a mistake to air propaganda and label it news, you didn’t simply offer a thoughtful rebuttal in the spirit of open and free debate; you fired him. So much for Sinclair’s valuing of honest debate.

You say, "All in all, The Point has made an impression and a difference.”
Perhaps it would be better to say “The Point” has left a bad taste in America’s collective mouth.

As for a difference, I must admit that you have. Sinclair, and your commentaries in particular, have been the single best example of the dangers of media consolidation. Those who might have dismissed concerns about relaxed ownership regulations as unfounded have come to see that the threat is very real, and there’s been a groundswell of activism in the fight to take back the public’s airwaves. You’ve single-handedly advanced the cause of a more democratic media, despite the fact that this was the very last thing you wanted to do.

And for that, America *does* owe you its thanks.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

An Open Letter to Mark Hyman

2006-11-29T10:32:00.000-05:00

An Open Letter to Mark Hyman:

In your recent commentary in which you reflect on your tenure doing “The Point,” you make a number of claims about your role as a public voice that simply aren’t true. Specifically, you claim your commentaries have been thoughtful, that you’ve served regular Americans by giving them a voice, and that you honored servicemen who deserved to be heard.

All of these claims are at best disingenuous mischaracterizations, and at worst out and out lies.

In fact, virtually none of your commentaries have been “thoughtful.” Thoughtfulness means considering both sides of an issue, acknowledging complexity and subtlety in issues, and engaging in self-reflection.

Not only have your comments rarely shown any of these qualities, but they’ve provided vivid examples of their opposites. You not only don’t consider the opposing side of an argument, but suggest anyone who disagrees with you is morally or ethically bankrupt. Your arguments reduce complex issues into dumbed down “I’m right; you’re wrong” contests. And you have never shown any willingness or ability to recognize that your opinions are just that: your opinions.

You talk about your trips around the country and lambaste “cultural elitists” who you claim see people who don’t live in Manhattan, LA, or DC as “white trash,” “hillbillies,” and “red necks.”

Who are these “cultural elitists?” Can you name anyone who has said anything of the sort?

Moreover, I can’t help but notice that all of the derogatory categories you list as terms “cultural elitists” use for regular Americans refer specifically to white people. Are people who suggest that Hispanics are lazy and shiftless, as you have done, not elitists?

And what could be more elitist than the attitude you and your fellow Sinclair executives have toward your audience? Your big contribution to journalism, “Newscentral TV,” is based on the premise that those of us who live in smaller media markets don’t deserve to have our own local reporters doing stories about what happens in our communities. Sinclair regularly fires a majority of local journalists, many of whom have worked in the community for years, and replaces them with one-size-fits-all prefabricated news you create in your big city studios and pipe out to the rest of the country. What could be more elitist than that?

Well, maybe your commentaries themselves. In your self-satisfaction, you demand that stations across the country run your two minutes of blather, a length of time usually greater than the amount of airtime devoted to the lead story on the local newscast. You packaged yourself as simply a commentator, not revealing that you were a Sinclair executive, that you had no journalistic background, or even that you weren’t a local figure. Not until you outed yourself through your plans to run propaganda as “news” during the 2004 campaign did most viewers learn who you were.

You take time away from the newscasts that reach regular Americans, forcing yourself onto their publicly owned airwaves so that you can spout your particular opinions, rather than allowing local voices to be heard. You don’t even allow viewers to respond to your editorials—something that all legitimate journalistic enterprises do. And then you actually have the nerve to present yourself as the champion of middle America (or at least the white portion thereof). That isn’t just chutzpah; that’s arrogance.

And it’s this arrogance that led you to throw any pretension of journalistic ethics out the window when you chose to run political propaganda as “news.” Not that showing large chunks of Stolen Honor was your first foray into trying to affect elections under the guise of journalism. Those of us who’ve looked into your past found out about your attempts to help out Republican friends and allies, such as the recently-ousted Governor Bob Ehrlich, by running hit pieces on their Democratic opponents.

Using vague and wishy-washy language, you say of the Stolen Honor fiasco:

Our viewpoints have gained widespread attention. No one had more
earned their right to speak out regarding their experiences in Vietnam than the
hundreds of Americans held prisoners of war. We spoke up when the news
gatekeepers snubbed them.

Ah, yes! Those poor snubbed anti-Kerry vets. They didn’t get any airtime did they? Only so much that many people suggest that the smear campaign launched by the Swifties torpedoed the Kerry campaign.

And as you made this limp excuse for your running propaganda as news, you showed a montage of some of the men interviewed in Stolen Honor, including a man who had illegally worked with both the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth [sic] and the Republican party at the same time. Is this the sort of honest person who has “earned his right” to slander a fellow vet for political reasons?

Of course, truth telling isn’t a trait you put much value on, is it? More than a month after the group behind Stolen Honor and the notorious Swifties had signed a pact formally connecting their groups, you went on national television and denied that there were any connections between the folks behind Stolen Honor and the Swifties.

But most damning of all is your attempt in this defense of your actions to hide behind people who serve in the military. You couch your explanation in terms of recognizing the rights of servicemen who served and were captured in Vietnam. But the truth is that here, as in so many of your commentaries, you mock the very idea of honoring military service by deciding who should and shouldn’t be honored based on your political whims.

You desecrate the record of a war hero, John Kerry, because you don’t happen to support his political views today. You mock a mother who lost her son, even going so far as to imply she didn’t truly love him, because her views on foreign policy differ from yours. When a news program decided to offer a silent and apolitical tribute to servicemen and women who gave the last full measure of devotion in service to their country, you banned it from your stations because you thought it might make people question the policies of a president you’re a fan of.

And all the while, you claim that anyone who doesn’t agree with you hates the troops and the country. You don’t have the guts to stand on your own and argue your positions on their merits. You hide behind the sanctity we place on service to our country in times of war. You hide behind the esteem we have for those that put their lives on the line. You steal their honor for your political use.

There’s a word for someone like that: a coward.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Counting the Days to VH-Day

2006-11-27T23:12:00.000-05:00

A post Turkey Day short takes catch up, as we count down the final days to VH Day: Victory Over Hyman!

Mark Hyman recently repeated the canard about Kerry calling U.S. troops “stupid” in the context of an attack on Charles Pinning, a novelist and author of an essay that Hyman misidentifies as an “editorial” for a Rhode Island newspaper. In the piece, Pinning says many enlistees in today’s Army, as they were in Vietnam, are young people with few options because of the lack of financial and scholastic options.

Hyman predictably accuses him of hating the troops and patriotism, and says the high school graduation rates in the Army are higher than the national average and that “66% come from middle or upper” income homes.

Now, I think Pinning’s rhetoric is overheated and goes too far, but Hyman is simply dishonest when he suggests that lack of options doesn’t play a role in recruiting. No, our soldiers are certainly no dummies. Despite the recent relaxing of recruitment standards, a high school degree has long been a baseline educational level for recruits, so certainly a higher percentage of soldiers have degrees than the general population. But that doesn’t mean that the general educational level in the military is at or above the national average.

Not that this is a slam on the IQ of soldiers. You can’t be Rainman and drive an M1 Abrams tank. But a large percentage of soldiers *do* join because they don’t have the finances to pursue higher education on their own. Heck, that’s been one of the major recruiting carrots held out to potential recruits: money for college. That 66% figure? It sounds good, until you realize two things: saying that 2/3 of our troops come from middle OR upper income families doesn’t say anything about how many sons and daughters of the wealthy are serving. By combining these categories, Hyman distorts the numbers. Secondly, we still have a full third of our troops coming from lower income families.

Mark, it’s not a slam on our troops to say that their numbers are not representative of the entire socio-economic spectrum. It’s a slam on the policies that send a disproportionate number of working class kids to fight wars dreamt up by wealthy men.

In another editorial, Hyman mentions that in the recent “hubbub” (one of Hyman’s favorite words) about the election, the investigation into four member of the voter registration group ACORN in Missouri went unnoticed. They are suspected of filing false voter registration forms. He labels ACORN as a union-friendly group.

What he *doesn’t* tell you is that ACORN’s raison d’etre is registering poor and/or minority voters. He also doesn’t tell you that ACORN itself identified the fishy registrations and has supported the FBI investigation. He also doesn’t mention that the GOP in Missouri sent intimidating letters to those first time voters signed up by ACORN to try to keep them from voting.

He also doesn’t have anything to say about the shenanigans perpetrated in Maryland by his former boss, the defeated incumbent governor Bob Ehrlich, who along with GOP Senate candidate Michael Steele bussed in unemployed African Americans from around the D.C. area, put them in Ehrlich T-shirts, and had them pass around misleading sample ballots in Maryland that suggested that Ehrlich and Steele were Democrats and had been endorsed by prominent African Americans.

Speaking of the elections, in his Thanksgiving Day commentary, Hyman lamely tries to spin the Blue Wave that swept the country by saying that voters simply expressed “their unhappiness with about three dozen incumbents in Congress.”

Right. And the American Revolution was just an expression of unhappiness about the price of tea.

We have a farewell edition of the Mailbag segment, in which Hyman predictably quoted widely from letters that praised him, and quoted only a few contrary emails, all of which were picked and edited to make the writers seem unhinged or unfair (e.g., including a letter in which an expletive had to be deleted).

And finally, Hyman uses the “c” word about himself. In a commentary praising legislation putting limits on Congressional earmarks, Hyman labels himself a conservative.

Thanks for the news flash, Mark.

And those are the catch-up Counterpoints.

Who Knew Idaho Was a Blue State?

2006-11-21T17:07:00.000-05:00

There’s not much to be said about the latest of Hyman’s many, many returns to the Kelo case and the issue of eminent domain. This time, he’s mentioning that some states in the recent election voted to strengthen protections against seizure of lands, while other didn’t. He comically attributes the defeat of such measures to mobilization of urban voters, which might make sense if one of the states where eminent domain initiatives went down to defeat wasn’t Idaho (that bastion of big city, big government liberalism).

Actually, the key to Hyman’s comments comes when he mentions that environmental groups lobbied strongly against further limiting eminent domain.
The reason for this is simple. While people like Hyman portray eminent domain as an issue of protecting individual family homes, the much larger goal is to limit government regulation of land use, including restrictions on pollution. He wants to appeal to our fear of Big Brother taking our house away in order to protect private corporations from having limitations placed on their ability to befoul the air, water, and land on which they stand—air, water, and land that act as conduits for whatever pestilence they unload into it, bringing it to our own front door.

That’s all I’ll say on that for now. I’d refer you to this well-written article on the true motivations and sources of the eminent domain legislation initiatives that populated state ballots. It’s what Hyman doesn’t want you to know.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Careening Toward Irrelevancy

2006-11-21T15:54:00.000-05:00

The wheels continue to come off as Mark Hyman careens toward the end of his career as a media figure. He’s abandoned any attempt to make a sensible argument—or to make sense at all.

The latest example is the series of wild rhetorical haymakers he throws at the entity he refers to as “Hollywood.”

The commentary, which is apropos of nothing, imagines what a Hollywood treatment of Saddam Hussein’s life would be like.

For reasons known only to him, Hyman thinks Hollywood would create a loving ode to the former dictator. He imagines that . . .

The movie would tout his classrooms, in which textbooks referred to
Jews as pigs and gorillas, as the model for an educational system.

Well, only if Mel Gibson was directing. Actually, I’m sure Hyman’s right. After all, there aren’t many Jewish people in Hollywood in positions of power. It’s quite the hotbed of anti-Semitism.

Hyman’s other musings are just as nonsensical:

It would view his ambitions to invade Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and to
bomb Israel as statesman like.

No doubt it would characterize U.S. servicemen and women as criminal
terrorist thugs, the killers of women and children.

He ends with a gratuitous and ugly attack on Ted Kennedy:

After all, Hollywood is where Ted Kennedy is viewed as the conscience of
America and he left a woman to drown in the back of his sedan in 1969.

Unfortunately, Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

Classy.

Life’s too short to bother with such drivel. This isn’t simply pandering to the right wing, but to the most woolly-headed, dunderheaded of far right wackos, and I’m not sure how many of them would actually buy it.

This is simply a ritualistic display of a right wing tenet: those who create the media are against us. This tenet flies in the face of all evidence, including the corporate ownership of so much major media outlets and the need for commercial media to appeal to a wide audience to succeed.

Precisely because of its absurdity, it’s a tenet that must be invoked on a regular basis. It’s part of the conservative creed. It’s not intended to actually persuade anyone; it’s meant to invoke a sense of community among those who already believe it.

After all, the only people thickheaded enough to buy Hyman’s assertions in the first place are already right-wingers.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

What Is This "Irony" That You Speak Of?

2006-11-20T17:05:00.000-05:00

"Oh, ho, ho, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here."
--Steve Martin in Roxanne

Apparently irony is not something they “get” at Sinclair Broadcasting, either. Otherwise, Mark Hyman wouldn’t deliver a commentary accusing others of defaming U.S. troops in which he defames a decorated war veteran.

As we’ve noted before, Hyman loves sticking up for the supposedly sullied honor of U.S. troops. Of course, he’ll gladly defend those who send them to in insufficient numbers and with insufficient equipment to fight and die in an unnecessary war sold on faulty evidence and that has made us demonstrably less safe. But when it comes to being called names, Hyman draws the line.

Fair enough, but as we’ve also pointed out before, Hyman has no problem sullying the honor of selected members of the military (or their mothers) if it’s politically expedient to do so. Ergo, the mini-series of “Points” he delivered in September of 2004 accusing John Kerry of lying about his service, aiding the enemy, and shooting a wounded teenage Viet Cong.

Given that, it’s hard to take Hyman’s faux outrage seriously when he chooses to vent it at desired political targets for political reasons, as is the case in his recent attack on Seymour Hersh.

Hersh, the investigator who, among other things, brought the My Lai massacre to the public’s attention during the Vietnam War, recently gave an address in which he said that “there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.”

This sends Hyman into waves of prefabricated outrage, comparing Hersh to John Kerry (whose recent comments occasioned another soap-opera caliber acting performance by Hyman and others on the right).

Hersh was referring to videotape he claims to have seen of U.S. soldiers gunning down civilians after being targeted by an IED explosion.

Hersh hasn’t written about this footage yet, nor has it been seen publicly. If it doesn’t materialize, Hersh certainly owes the military an apology for attributing such actions to it.

But the problem with Hyman’s outrage is that it ignores the fact that we’ve already had plenty of documented atrocities in this war. Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and countless other incidents involving individual soldiers and civilians have surfaced.

And that’s just in Iraq proper. Atrocity is now official government policy, thanks to secret prisons, water boarding, and signing statements that relieve the president from dealing with the inconveniences of the “antiquated” Geneva Conventions.

That brings us to the wider point. Hyman doesn’t get (or pretends not to get) that the target of the attacks by Hersh and others on atrocities committed by American soldiers in Iraq, just as it was the target of Kerry and others when speaking out about atrocities committed in Vietnam, is not the rank and file military personnel, but the people who command them. (Hyman offers aid and comfort to those responsible by trying to paint attacks on “neo-conservatives” as anti-Semitism.)

Certainly, the individuals who pull the triggers deserve severe punishment for their actions. But the larger target are the policies that create the atmosphere that leads to such atrocities. To attack Hersh and to attempt to defend Bush, Hyman pretends that Hersh’s charges are leveled at the average U.S. soldier, rather than the actual target: the policy makers who implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, condone such actions and create circumstances in which some U.S. soldiers, having been placed in untenable and excruciating positions, occasionally break down.

By playing (or actually being) dumb, Hyman condones and defends the policies that have done such damage to U.S. troops on the ground that morale and leadership have broken down to the point where such atrocities can take place.

In his pseudo-defense of the troops, Hyman actually helps perpetuate their mistreatment, which in turn leads to the mistreatment of civilians—not by all U.S. personnel, but by a tragically predictable minority.

Ironic, isn’t it?

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 3.55

Hyman's Master Class in Fallacy

2006-11-20T13:06:00.000-05:00

Recently, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Britain suggested that there be a wider discussion about how to best handle cases of severely premature and/or disabled infants, and that this discussion should include consideration of if and when it was the moral and ethical thing to do to allow such children to die, and even if in some cases, it might be best to practice active euthanasia.

In his commentary on this suggestion, Hyman predictably takes an important and complex topic and reduces it to distorted talking points.

First, we have a combination of red-herring and guilt-by-association when he begins his commentary by talking about Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood, linking her to Nazism.

Sanger’s views on eugenics have nothing to do with the debate going on in Britain, but Hyman brings them in as a way of slamming Planned Parenthood, always a popular move among conservatives (despite the fact that Hyman has stated that he himself is pro-choice).

Then we have a distortion of the facts. Hyman says the RCOG, “recommended an element of eugenics -- euthanasia to dispose of disabled and other unwanted babies.”

This is wrong on a number of counts. First, the College specifically did not recommend any particular action; they simply said that discussion of medical ethics involving newborns should take up this topic. Second, Hyman’s characterization of the position suggests the college was talking about “disposing” of any disabled or unwanted baby.

In fact, the conversation primarily involves extremely premature infants who have little to no chance of survival, or those who, if they do survive, will likely live extremely brief lives with profound mental and physical disabilities. Hyman paints a picture of British doctors practicing infanticide on any newborn who is less than perfect, but that grossly and perversely misrepresents the discussion.

Hyman then offers us another red herring in the example of Stephen Hawking, and example that “being disabled doesn't make one's life worthless.” Of course, no one has said that. The question is whether infants with little to no chance of a life of any length without pain or the mental ability to understand, feel, and think should be kept alive at all costs. Stephen Hawking doesn’t this example.

Then we have the classic slippery slope argument:

“Where would such barbarism end? Sorry hon, we didn't get the
blue-eyed, blond haired, button-nosed baby we wanted. So, let's dispose
it.”

That’s an absolutely textbook example of one of the most elementary argumentative fallacies there is.

Now, to put all my cards on the table, I *do* have a great deal of sympathy with the argument that human life is inherently precious and should be protected even when many might say it’s not worth it. So I’m not necessarily disagreeing with the idea that euthanasia of newborns, even those too premature to live anything approximating a normal life, is morally wrong.

What I *do* disagree with is Hyman’s cheap trivialization of a profoundly important discussion. Not that this should surprise us. Hyman likely doesn’t care that much about the issue or have deeply philosophical or religious beliefs in the sanctity of all human life. Remember that this is a guy who is pro-choice himself, but happily jumps on the pro-life bandwagon, at least rhetorically, when it suits his political purposes.

No, what we have here is yet another wonderful example of the fact that it’s not so much Hyman’s views themselves that are objectionable, but the infantile way he argues. By polluting the public sphere with dishonest, cheap-shot arguments, Hyman makes it all the more difficult for reasonable, respectful arguments to be heard above the din.

At least we only have a few more days until this particular sewer pipe is stopped up.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.31

Hyman Repeats Terrorists' Nonsense

2006-11-17T17:10:00.000-05:00

Apparently, Mark Hyman takes terrorists at their word, but ignores the consensus opinions of U.S. intelligence agents.

In a recent harangue about the incoming Democratic Congress, Hyman cites several comments alleged to have been made by terrorist organizations he says show that they are happy Democrats are in charge.

That’s funny . . . I always thought terrorists basically said whatever they thought would infuriate or insult their enemies, not what they actually felt. I kind of doubt many members of al-Qaeda actually know anything about the difference between Republicans and Democrats, so I’m not sure why one would take anything a terrorist says about them as being authoritative, sincere, or even coherent.

But apparently Hyman does. Or at least he takes WorldNetDaily, the ultra-right wing website, as authoritative, since that’s where he cribbed the majority of his commentary, including all of the quotations from terrorists.

The WND article, penned by Aaron Klein, has been thoroughly dealt with by Terry Krepel at ConWebWatch. As Krepel points out, at least one of the alleged “terrorists” is living in exile in Ireland. Moreover, Klein is simply repeating terrorist propaganda (something that Hyman is participating in as well).

Thanks for defending freedom, Aaron and Mark.

Moreover, Krepel points out that Klein has long history of trying to tie terrorists as fans of the Democrats, including the suggestion that the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat wanted John Kerry to win in 2004.
So Klein and Hyman are repeating terrorist propaganda for their own political purposes. That’s immoral, but what makes it stupid is that it’s probably counterproductive. In fact, the CIA noted that when Osama bin Laden made statements on the eve of the 2004 presidential election, they were almost certainly intended to support the election of George W. Bush.

As Krepel notes, it’s difficult to know if the handful of terrorists Klein has developed relationships with are intentionally giving him disinformation, or if they’re just happy to be quoted spouting off in a way that will get them some ink from their right-wing buddy.

The more important question is “who cares?”

What we *do* know is that a recent National Intelligence Estimate has said that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had made the terrorist threat worse, not better. Not that this should surprise us: in issuing his fatwa in 1998 to kill Americans, bin Laden used the occupation of Muslim land by American forces and hostility toward Iraq to motivate terrorists.

The Bush administration and the neo-cons have played right into bin Laden’s hands, giving him the perfect propaganda victory he needs to motivate still more terrorists, regardless of how well or poorly things go on the ground in Iraq.

But cutting and running in Afghanistan in order to fulfill the neo-con fantasies of invading Iraq (fantasies that long predated 9/11), the Bush administration has destabilized the Middle East and, according to our own intelligence, put us at greater risk from terrorism.

Perhaps that’s why Americans ignored the propaganda of both the terrorists and shills like Klein and Hyman and voted overwhelmingly for a new course last week.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 6.60

Hyman Defends Criminals

2006-11-16T16:19:00.000-05:00

Hyman recently lobbied for the case of two border patrol agents to be “fast-tracked to resolution with President Bush pardoning both men.”

The offense they should be pardoned for? Shooting a fleeing unarmed suspect after catching him smuggling marijuana over the Mexico/U.S. border.

The two men were recently given more than 10 years each, not only for shooting the fleeing man, but for covering it up (they failed to report the incident, picked up shell casings, etc.). Hyman fails to mention that.

He also fails to mention that the Department of Homeland Security (that well-known bleeding heart organization) cooperated with the prosecution.

He also failed to mention that there are reports that the two men stated they were going out to “shoot some Mexicans” the night the incident took place,

Hyman doesn’t make a case why shooting a criminal who is running away from you and poses no direct threat is an okay thing. In fact, he has previously suggested that John Kerry committed an atrocity when he shot a Viet Cong soldier who was running away after using a grenade launcher to attack Kerry’s swiftboat during the Vietnam War. But apparently armed enemy soldiers deserve more rights than unarmed dope peddlers.

And that's The Counterpoint.

Hyman's British Blunders

2006-11-16T16:14:00.000-05:00

Hyman makes some elementary logical blunders in his commentary about “Big Brother” and alleged tax redistribution in Britain.

The subject is a recent reform of the Council Tax, the closest British equivalent of local property tax. Hyman is upset because the new tax system will base the value of a home not simply on the value of the property, but on a complex set of metrics that include quality of life issues.

Hyman wonders ominously whether Big Brother will come to the U.S. eventually.

Obviously, there’s an appeal to fear at work here, but that would be okay if the fear was justified and/or the thing feared was accurately described. But that’s not the case.

First, Hyman implies that the British plan would “redistribute” income from the well-off to those who aren’t. But in fact, the Council Tax is a local tax that contributes a rather small amount (25%) to the upkeep of the local government and all it oversees. In other words, those living in posh areas are paying more for the upkeep of their own posh areas; the landed gentry of Upper-Cummerbund-Upon-Thames aren’t subsidizing the buskers hustling coppers in the Tube.

Second, the plan, like it or not, is not that different from our local property taxes, which are based not only on the value of the property (which *is* influenced by all kinds of small, quality-of-life, variables, even if they aren’t factored in explicitly and individually), but on home improvements. Again, the British system is doing little more than codifying a process that’s more hazy and ill-defined in the States, but not altogether different.

So what we have is a slippery-slope argument based on false premises. Even if the British system were the Orwellian nightmare Hyman portrays it to be, there’s no reason to think that this will affect U.S. tax policy (although I’m sure Hyman’s intent is to make his listeners have a knee-jerk reaction against any change in the regressive tax policies of the Bush administration).

Moreover, the slippery slope he portrays ends up with something not too dissimilar from what we already have in this country.

An argument from false premises and a slippery slope: two, two, two big fallacies in a single “Point!”

And that’s The Counterpoint.

More on Hyman-Gate

2006-11-16T15:26:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, Mark Hyman recently offered a pseudo retraction for his smear of George Soros.

In his most recent “Short Takes” segment, Hyman claims that he was told by a representative of Soros that the philanthropist had made a mistake in answering a question posed in the “60 Minutes” interview Hyman cited in his smear, a mistake attributable to Soros not being a native speaker of English.

Hyman says the Soros representative explained that Soros was “hiding for his life” during World War II, not (as Hyman said) helping to identify Jews in hiding.

Now, I have not problem believing that a representative for Soros said this to Hyman. But I’m certain it isn’t *all* that was said. In fact, as we pointed out in this space earlier, Soros’s statements in the interview didn’t say what Hyman claimed they did. Whether or not Soros misspoke, nothing that he said could possibly be construed to mean what Hyman claimed it did.

Hyman is hiding behind a fig leaf, claiming his slander was just an honest mistake (and not even *his* mistake).

That’s utter nonsense. And the fact that Hyman offered any sort of retraction at all suggests he knows (or was told) how much trouble he had gotten himself into. As we know, Hyman’s not one to correct his misstatement of fact unless he’s absolutely compelled to. And even when he does, he does everything he can to cover up the extent of his dishonesty.

While the whole story behind Hyman’s imminent departure is yet to be told, this pseudo-retraction supports my working thesis that the Soros slander was the precipitating factor, and if that’s the case, we all owe Mr. Soros a big “thank you!”

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Is Hyman on Drugs?

2006-11-14T16:16:00.000-05:00

Hyman recently touted Wal-Mart’s announcement that it was discounting prescription drugs to prices as low as $4. This is an example, he claims, of the wonders of the free market, and that it’s bad old liberals who are spoiling the fun by, among other things, trying to force Wal-Mart employees to unionize even though they don’t want to.

A few facts:

The Wal-Mart discount on drugs is limited to handful of states.

Only a few of their medications are discounted significantly. Those who choose to go to Wal-Mart to get their prescriptions will likely be surprised when it turns out their particular medications aren’t part of the discounts.

Many discounted medications are already incredibly cheap, particularly basic antibiotics.

The same conservatives who praise Wal-Mart for limited discounts on certain medications have opposed allowing the government to do the same thing they praise Wal-Mart for: bargaining for the best price for medications.

As for Hyman’s predictable union bashing, he’s simply making stuff up. According to him, Wal-Mart employees are just so gosh darn happy and satisfied that they have no desire to unionize. (To see what it’s *really* like to be a Wal-Mart employee, read Barbara Ehrenreich’s chapter on it from Nickel and Dimed.)

What that fails to explain is why Wal-Mart managers are given extensive training in how to stop unionization in their stores. There have been plenty of people who’ve tried to unionize at Wal-Marts, but have been stopped through strong-arm tactics of Wal-Mart brass.

This is crucial, since this point is absolutely central to Hyman’s argument. His argument weakens considerably, at least in its popular appeal, if he admits the reality that Wal-Mart employees *have* been trying to unionize and have been stopped. To caricature unions’ attempts to represent Wal-Mart employees as solely self-interested, he’s forced to float the canard that the employees have no interest in joining a union.

Of course, he *could* argue that unions are bad, despite the fact that many employees belong to them and many more want to join them. But that would be an argument that would require some subtlety of thought and wouldn’t be nearly as clean and neat as just saying unions are trying to seduce innocent, satisfied employees.

Ironically, one of the main motivations behind the drive to unionize is the need for better health insurance. Currently, Wal-Mart employees are often forced onto government healthcare rolls because they don’t make enough to be covered by the company that employs them.

So in a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, Wal-Mart can offer discounts on a select number of drugs in part because they slash labor prices through not paying their employees a living wage.

If that’s Hyman’s idea of the wonders of the free market, he can keep it.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.78

Hyman Already Spinning for 2008

2006-11-10T11:03:00.000-05:00

Mark Hyman offers us his services as a political prognosticator, and in the process, gives us an example of one of the most basic argumentative fallacies there is: stating something as fact that is actually an unsubstantiated opinion.

In his handicapping of the 2008 presidential race, Hyman states unequivocally that “the majority of primary voters just don’t trust” John McCain. About Rudy Giuliani, he says cryptically that “he doesn’t have the juice to get the Republican nod.”

Hyman doesn’t even suggest why these statements are true; they’re just flat-out assertions. My guess is that these are simply things that Hyman hopes or believes to be true because neither Giuliani or McCain are sufficiently conservative enough for his tastes, given Hyman’s far right leanings. And who knows? He might be right. But as with so many of the claims he makes on “The Point,” Hyman offers no reason for us to believe him.

Note to Mark: making an assertion and making an argument are two different things.

Of course, we also get the gratuitous shot at Hillary Clinton, who is now “freed from the distraction of running for reelection” and probably sees Barak Obama as “a nuisance.”

Parenthetically, it’s striking that in the list of folks Hyman names as potential candidates in 2008, the Democrats have by far the stronger field. In folks like Clinton, Obama, John Edwards, and (less likely) Al Gore, and John Kerry, you have a stable of nationally-known candidates with credibility and gravitas. And in Gore, you’ve actually got a candidate who’s already won a presidential election.

On the Republican side, after McCain, you’ve got folks like . . . Newt Gingrich?! Sam Brownback? Bill “She’s Alive!” Frist? Please.

It’s nice to see Tom Vilsack join the race, the former Governor of Iowa. Although less well-known, he’s smart, charismatic, and a governor (governors have a far better track record of success in presidential elections than do senators). Heck, Bill Clinton was a relatively unknown governor from a small state before 1992.

Fortunately for Hyman, he’ll have plenty of time on his hands to do volunteer work for whatever GOP candidate he happens to favor, now that he’s finished with the “exhausting” work of doing “The Point.”

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 2.75

How Sweet It Is!

2006-11-08T11:27:00.000-05:00

As Mark Hyman’s commentary on the traditionally low voter turnout aired yesterday, history was being made.

As of this writing, the Democratic Party has picked up at least 28 seats in the House, and may well take the Senate, if thin leads in Virginia and Montana hold (and it looks like they will). Karl “The Architect” Rove’s house of cards collapsed—apparently hot air doesn’t make for much of a foundation to build on.

Particularly galling to Hyman must be the fact that his one-time boss and long-time Sinclair buddy Bob Ehrlich went down hard on Tuesday night.

It was particularly gratifying to see this after Ehrlich’s 11th hour dirty tricks, in which his staff circulated flyers attempting to associate him with popular Democrats in the state and imply that he was endorsed by them.

I’m sure those of you who have been following Hyman’s escapades and/or visiting this site are familiar with the sordid history of the quid pro quo relationship between Ehrlich and Sinclair. Well, now perhaps Bob and Mark can go golfing together or work on those “special projects” Hyman is supposed to be committing himself to.

It will be fascinating to see how Hyman spins the rout of Republicans on Tuesday. Perhaps this commentary was meant to set up a claim that, “Well, not that many people vote in midterms anyway, so this election doesn’t say all that important.”

Ah, I can’t wait to see what he’ll come up with. With the news of his own lame duck status, the signs suggest Hyman is going off the tracks on a crazy train (e.g., his appallingly bad commentary stating--not just implying--that Osama bin Laden would vote Democratic if he could).

It should make for some good viewing.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

I'm Osama bin Laden and I Approved this Message

2006-11-06T17:51:00.000-05:00

Praise be to Allah, and greetings American imperialist infidels! This is Sheikh Osama Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin, but you can just call me Osama.

I’m sitting here in an undisclosed location with my laptop computer and have hacked my way into the website of one of your despicable countrymen, Ted Remington (death unto him!) for purposes of corresponding with you. I will try to be brief—getting a stable wireless broadband signal on the Pakistani border is a bitch, I tell you!

It has come to my attention that I’ve been slandered by one of your media figures. This person, Mark Hyman (may locusts nest in his nose hair!) has made untrue statements about me. He has said that I would vote for your donkey candidates (I believe you call them “Democrats”) in your so-called “elections” tomorrow.

Why I would care whether you voted for a candidate that consorts with donkeys or one that claims to be an elephant is beyond me. If you ask me, I wouldn’t allow either sort of degenerate to break bread with me. Yet, I feel compelled to clear up some misunderstandings perpetrated by Mr. Hyman (may rabid goats copulate with his mother!).

Let me defend my—how do you say?—“homie,” George W. Bush (all praises and peace be unto him).

This Hyman suggests that Bush has been hard on me and that your donkey candidates would make life easy. Such calumny! How could such a thing be said? Does not this Hyman recall that Bush let me go when I was at Tora Bora and nearly killed by the invading infidel hordes? It would have been the work a moment to forcibly release me to Paradise, yet Bush allowed me to escape.

And does this Hyman not acknowledge that Bush gave up in Afghanistan to go after Iraq, allowing my friends the Taliban to reassert control? I think the phrase you Americans like to use is “cut and running”—yes? –Bush was kind enough to “cut and running” from Afghanistan.

And does this Hyman have so much camel dung in his ears that he has not heard that all the generals of your imperialist armies implored him that invading Iraq had nothing to do with the “war on terrorism” and would be a distraction to hunting me down? Did he not hear how Bush thankfully ignored them and “cut and running” from Afghanistan anyway to attack that bloated bastard Saddam?

This Hyman says your donkey candidates see...

“defeating Islamic fascism and defending our nation as something
dirty and disgusting that we should abandon. They believe if we stepped up
multicultural diversity training in our schools that people who fly jetliners
into skyscrapers would nod approvingly and then ignore the world's greatest
country.”

Okay, for starters, I don't know what "Islamic facism" is, but more importantly, I have heard no such promises from your donkey people. Indeed, it is President Bush (may 72 virgins greet him at the time of his passing) that abandoned chasing me! He said he wanted me “dead or alive,” but he has been gracious enough to not only allow me to live, but to get back to my old life again! Please, Hyman, do not praise your vile donkey candidates for what the honorable president himself has already brought to pass himself.

And it is almost difficult to believe, but it seems your Hyman doesn’t even read the National Intelligence Estimates of your own government. For crying out loud, even *I* read those! If he had, he would know that your hated CIA and other intelligence services have noted that the war in Iraq has been the best thing that could happen for a humble ol’ jihadist like yours truly. They have seen and written about how the Saddam war has enraged the Islamic world and brought countless souls to the point of sacrificing their earthly existence for the mere chance to kill imperialist Americans. Yet Hyman acts as if such a document doesn’t exist!

Not that you should have needed your American spies to tell you such things. I spelled it out for you myself. Back in 1998, when I ordered true believers to kill Americans whenever and wherever they can, I said very specifically it was because of the hostility toward Iraq. Listen,—I’ve always thought that Saddam was a SOB of the highest order. But your animosity toward the country of Iraq was a wonderful recruiting tool. In that fatwa, I actually gave no other rationale behind my call to kill you Americans than your occupation of Muslim soil and your aggression against Iraq. Go read the fatwa now! I command you! It’s short and sweet.

And now, how gracious has Allah been to lead Bush (long may his clan prosper!) to invade and occupy not only a Muslim country, but the very country whose plight I used in my 1998 fatwa! It’s a freakin’ two-fer, people! Yet your Hyman says that this invasion was some sort of act of aggression against me. How despicable of Hyman (may sand fleas reside in his pubis!) to say such things when all evidence proves the opposite. By using your aggression against Iraq and occupation of Muslim countries, my 1998 fatwa got a bunch of losers to fly planes into buildings and kill 3000 of you. Think what I can do now that Bush has *occupied* Iraq! What action could more obviously and completely play into my hands?

Now, don’t get me wrong. As generous as Bush (long may he reign!) has been to me, I don’t believe he likes me. What American could? I swear, I don’t get you people sometimes. I got people to crash airplanes into your buildings! Who among you could possibly not want to disembowel me and serve me in a falafel? Who could allow a woman to look on him without fear of shame if he did not despise me? Yet, you talk of whether donkey candidates or elephant people are “on the side of the terrorists.” What’s up with that? I thought *I* was supposed to be the hateful fear monger!

But although Bush may despise me in his heart, his actions have been models of beneficence. By making your countrymen afraid of me, but doing nothing to stop me, he does me great honor. By invading a country and living up to exactly the cartoonishly demonic caricatures of your country that I perpetuate, he has done me service that few of my 53 brothers would do for me.

If you wish, you may continue your silly battles over whether your donkeys or elephants hate me more. That’s fine with me. It suits my purposes, so by all means continue. Believe me when I say I know that no American would weep over my corpse. I have no friends there.

Yet, there are those whose actions are friendly to me and those that are not. And your Hyman (may scorpions sting his procreative parts!) makes a mockery of himself by not acknowledging that your president Bush's actions have been my greatest allies, even if he himself despises me.

So, vote for whatever donkey or elephant you want tomorrow. Despite what your Hyman says, I really don’t give a rip. Just please tell me you’ll continue to invade countries so that we may kill your soldiers and inspire the next generation of jihadists!

I’m going now. A few of us are riding into town to see that new Borat movie. It should be a hoot! I love the way he talks smack about the Jews. Ha ha ha! High five!

Oh, and one more thing: Death to America.

Osama, out.

K.O. KO's Hman

2006-11-05T23:33:00.000-05:00

So, I’m sure most of us have now heard the news--at the end of the month, Mark Hyman is apparently going to where all public figures go to die: to “spend more time with his family” and work on “special projects.”

I won’t really believe this until he actually signs off and doesn’t show up the next night. I’m reminded of my father’s comment when he heard that Richard Nixon had finally died: “I won’t believe he’s dead until they pry open his coffin and hammer a stake through that S.O.B.’s heart.”

There were a number of comments a few posts ago on this topic, complete with links to the Sinclair press release about Hyman’s departure, as well as a couple of news articles.

As I mentioned in my response to those comments, my personal fantasy is that this is linked to the sudden disappearance of Hyman’s slanderous commentaries on George Soros from the Newscentral.tv website a couple of weeks ago. In my dream, Soros calls up David Smith, CEO of Sinclair, and says, “Either you get that dolt off the air, or I’ll sue your asses for so much money that you’ll be lucky to get a Baltimore cable-access show going.”

At any rate, it looks like we won’t have Hyman to kick around anymore (another Tricky Dick reference for ya).

But it’s nice to see that some people are putting a last few steel-toed Kodiak work boots in his midriff before he disappears. If you haven’t seen it, go over to MSNBC and see the inimitable Keith Olbermann lambaste our Mark as “the Worst Person in the World” last Friday. On Hyman’s stated reason for leaving, being “exhausted,” Olbermann says, “Of course you are: it’s hard work carrying that much guilt around!”

We’ll continue to tap dance on Hyman’s head before we change our venue to his grave. After that, I’ll likely take a brief hiatus before returning to blog another day. I’ll probably return to the original idea I had before starting The Counterpoint, which was to do a regular critique of various notable mediocrities in public discourse. The problem was that I had a hard time finding anyone who could beat out Mark Hyman for that title, day-in and day-out; hence, the Hyman-centric blogging of the last couple of years (jeesh—has it really been that long?).

I’ll keep you posted as things develop, and if anyone else has news on the causes and details of our impending collective Hyman-ectomy, please share with the class!

tjr

Hyman Running Out of Gas

2006-11-05T23:02:00.000-05:00

The Mark Hyman’s recent attack on Democratic politicians who favor policies that would lessen our dependency on foreign oil and reduce our consumption of fossil fuels is an exercise in playground childishness.

His argument seems to be that it’s hypocritical to favor such policies if you arrive at public events with a motorcade (a la Al Gore) or don’t drive the most fuel efficient car on the market (he chides Harold Ford for driving a Tahoe, although the Tennessee Congressman actually is using a bio-diesel truck on the campaign trail).

This is, of course, dopey. I suppose Al Gore could bike to each and every speaking engagement on his Schwinn, with his bevy of Secret Security agents peddling furiously behind him, but that’s a bit impractical.

What’s more interesting is simply the way Hyman frames the issue. For him, taking steps to conserve fuel is punishment. What’s immoral about Gore et. al from his point of view is that they are telling us to punish ourselves by not using so much fuel, while they continue to do so.

That argument is shaky, even if one grants the frame he’s using. (For example, would having an overweight doctor tell you that you should watch what you eat and exercise reduce the validity of that advice? I think not.)

But the whole point of the move to greener energy sources is that it doesn’t have to be “punishment” for our “excessive use” of gasoline. The push to have more alternate fuels available, to raise mileage rates on cars, to improve public transportation, etc. are all things that can be done without asking for dramatic sacrifices, and they will produce dramatic results.

That’s one of the lessons of Gore’s film, and Inconvenient Truth. One doesn’t need to go live in the woods and eat bark to do incredible things to help the environment. If we all just used energy saving light bulbs, did curbside recycling, turned off electronic equipment we weren’t using, we’d have a huge impact on our nation’s energy bottom line, without doing much of anything to disrupt our current lifestyles.

(As an aside, let’s acknowledge that Gore gave up untold millions in potential private sector money to devote himself to in-depth study and advocacy of environmental issues, so the man’s paid his dues. Hyman’s charge that Gore “has been on the environmental bandwagon to keep in the public eye” is one of the more laughable statements he’s made lately; heck, Gore damn near built the bandwagon!)

But right wingers like Hyman don’t see it that way. In calls for sensible moves to make us more energy independent, they see simply calls for self-flagellation—punishment for the sake of punishment.

And if one sees it that way, then perhaps one can understand why they might take exception to those advocating for such policies who aren’t already taking them to an extreme themselves, even to the point of being impractical.

But that’s not what’s going on in the move toward more sustainable energy sources. No one’s suggesting that truckers try to pull their loads with a Prius, or that people in Minnesota commute to work in January on Segway scooters. People can and should still live their lives. And for public figures with entourages, far flung speaking engagements, and security concerns, that means driving trucks, using airplanes, and having motorcades.

The point is to broaden the scope of what’s available so that we can live our lives in a way that’s more sustainable and affordable in the long run.

Given how little we’ve bothered as a country to explore the benefits of sustainable energy, it’s not surprising that we have few choices when it comes to living our lives *and* being energy efficient. But that’s exactly what folks like Al Gore are trying to change, and through such change, we can live our lives and be sure that our children and grandchildren will be able to live theirs as well.

But for those, like Hyman, who see any calls for environmental action as nothing more than snarky browbeating and guilt-tripping, they’ll have a hard time seeing the big picture because of the way they choose to frame the issue. They’ll never see the forest for the ever-shrinking number of trees.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.59

Hyman Slanders Kerry--Again

2006-11-05T22:09:00.000-05:00

Man, I don’t want to write this rebuttal to Hyman. Not because it’s going to be tough. Quite the opposite. Does faux outrage really need to be rebutted?

Hyman joins (in a timely fashion—more on that in a moment) the caterwauling of right wing talking heads who’ve spent several days delivering dinner-theatre-level performances of pseudo-outrage at the alleged “slur” of American troops by John Kerry.

Never mind that Kerry’s prepared remarks showed that he was making fun of the president, not the troops, and merely flubbed the joke.

Never mind that even if you think Kerry is Beelzebub himself incarnate on earth, you can’t possibly believe he’d be stupid enough to make a scripted slam of American troops the week before midterm elections.

Never mind that even right wing zealots like Tom DeLay and Bill O’Reilly have said Kerry obviously didn’t mean to insult the troops with his comments.

Nope. Never mind all that. If there’s political hay to be made by willful ignorance, there are some, such as Hyman, who are only too happy to do it.

Hyman tries to claim this is just one of a long series of Kerry blasphemies regarding the honor of U.S. troops, tying it to his testimony in 1971 before Congress (ignoring the fact that Kerry was testifying on behalf of the troops and ripping the civilian leadership for sending them into a war, and lying that Kerry said U.S. troops “routinely” committed atrocities) and a comment on ABC news last year in which he said U.S. troops shouldn’t be “breaking down doors” of Iraqi civilians (ignoring the fact that Kerry’s remark was made in the context of saying why he—like the president—thought it was important for the Iraqi military to take a more active role in maintaining order in the country).

But the pattern isn’t in any alleged Kerry slander of the troops. Let’s remember, he was a combat soldier himself, for crying out loud!

No, the pattern is in Hyman’s continual willingness to lie about a decorated combat veteran because he disagrees with the man’s politics.

Let’s remember that during the 2004 campaign, Hyman delivered a slew of commentaries demeaning John Kerry’s war record, including charging him with shooting an unarmed, wounded child.

And let’s remember Hyman’s role in hyping the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth [sic] and the running of anti-Kerry propaganda on Sinclair stations days before the election.

While were at it, let’s add to Hyman’s list of repeat offenses his attempt to swing elections. I know from some inside folks at Sinclair that Hymn tapes his editorials about a week in advance. Given that schedule, I was expecting to have to deal with Hyman’s predictable piling on regarding the Kerry comment on Election Day, or so.

But Hyman clearly rushed back to the studio to crank this editorial out mid-week to get it out quick (the better to sway voters, my dear). Not only that, but it clocks in at a bloated 300 words, Roughly 75% longer than his editorials have run of late. And, if there was any doubt about his intentions, Hyman closes his diatribe with this little gem:

Imagine how much damage Kerry could do to the troops as Senate Armed Services Chairman.

Meanwhile, the theatre of the absurd that’s gone on this week, with right wingers pretending to be outraged and the rebuttals and corrections by others, including—groan—yours truly, has taken away time from talking about *real* affronts to our troops.

This past week, the Bush administration caved in to the Iraqi government by calling off checkpoints in an area where a U.S. serviceman was kidnapped. We’re now leaving soldiers behind when the ragtag government of Iraq, in order to curry favor with the likes of Moktada al-Sadr, tells us to take a hike.

Then, you’ve got Republican John Boehner defending Rumsefeld’s handling of the war by saying that he’s not in charge—it’s the generals on the ground.

This is shades of Condi’s infamous statement about how thousands of “tactical mistake” (i.e.,, mistakes made by the troops on the ground) have been made in Iraq, but no strategic ones (i.e., those made by Rummy, Cheney, and Dubya).

So tell us again Mark: who’s slandering the troops?

And that’s The Couterpoint.

Hyman Index: 6.00

Pardon Me?

2006-11-03T16:23:00.000-05:00

Mark Hyman dusts off a five-year-old scandal in a recent commentary, apparently in an attempt to embarrass presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. Specifically, he brings up the charges that her brother was paid to help get presidential pardons from Bill Clinton in 2001.

(Among the many other distortions in the piece: Hyman says, “Clinton dished out 140 pardons in exchange for payments to family members and associates.” Clinton pardoned 140 people in total. Even if one were to accept Hyman’s allegations that some of Clinton’s pardons were motivated by personal connections and donations, it doesn’t come close to suggesting all of his pardons were so motivated. Just another bit of dishonest and logically flawed argumentation.)

A couple of things are interesting about this. First, one can only wonder what words will be used to describe the pardons that will be gushing out of the Oval Office in January of 2009. If Hillary’s brother getting paid to lobby for pardons is “scandalous,” what adjectives will be needed then?

Second, if the misdeeds of a sibling are enough to tarnish the reputation of a politician, then let’s take a gander at the resume of one Neil Bush:

Silverado—Bailout of the savings and loan on whose board of directors Neil Bush served cost taxpayers:$1 billion.

Ignite! Learning—Neil Bush uses family connections and overseas funding to start an educational software company that is making millions directly from the “No Child Left Behind” policy put in place by . . . hmmmmm . . . who’s the president again?

Boris Berezovsky—a shady Russian “businessman” with whom Neil Bush has had a business relationshp with for many years.

Kopin Corporation—Neil Bush makes suspicious sales of stock in a company he’s been consulting for in 1999.

Sexual escapades—Neil Bush has sexual relations with seveal women in Thailand and Hong Kong, contributing to the end of his marriage.

Of course, these could only tarnish George W. Bush if the president didn’t already have destroyed his credibility as a man of character. Add up all of Neil’s sleaziness, and it doesn’t add up to even the value of a single life of a serviceman or woman lost in Iraq.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.00

Playing the NAMBLA Card

2006-11-03T15:45:00.000-05:00

Picture this: a mild-mannered college English teacher gets out of his car after driving to campus. He slings his book bag over his shoulder and starts toward the classroom building.

Suddenly, shots ring out. The teacher slumps to the ground, felled by assassin’s bullets. From a grassy knoll across the Quad, the shadowy figure of a member of the militant group, PAP, (Parents Against Plagiarism) disassembles a rifle, stuffs it in a gym bag, and steals away into the misty dawn air.

Why was the teacher shot? Because a commentator on national television had falsely claimed that he didn’t care if his students plagiarized or not. Despite the fact that he got plenty of students put on academic probation for turning in copied work, he lies dying in a pool of his own blood because a wacko anti-plagiarist got it into his head that he turned a blind eye toward students passing off other people’s work as their own.

Less humorously, what if someone had seen Mark Hyman call John Kerry a murderer and a traitor, and assassinated him as a result? What if someone had tuned in and heard Hyman slander philanthropist George Soros as a Nazi collaborator who identified Jewish people in hiding, and in a fit of rage, murdered Soros as a result?

According to Mark Hyman’s own logic, he would bear responsibility for these acts and could be sued for millions by the families of the teacher, Kerry, or Soros.

That’s what comes from Hyman’s recent trilogy lambasting the ACLU for defending NAMBLA in a lawsuit accusing the pedophile-friendly group of bearing responsibility for a murder of a boy by a man found with NAMBLA literature in his possession.

Calling ACLU the “Anti-Children Litigation Union” (perhaps we should assemble a scrapbook of the various witty plays on the ACLU’s name Hyman has used), Hyman slams the organization for taking the case and defending NAMBLA in the suit filed by the parents of the murdered boy against the organization. (The suit against the organization was actually thrown out of court, but it’s going ahead against several individual members of NAMBLA.)

In fact, Hyman actually claims that “the ACLU doesn't want to separate men from copulating with young boys.”

No. What the ACLU doesn’t want is for individuals to be held accountable for the unintended consequences of their words without having a chance to defend themselves in a court of law.

Remember that, in addition to NAMBLA, the ACLU has defended the rights of Nazis, Jerry Falwell, and lots of other individuals and groups who are hateful and whose views aren’t shared by the ACLU. The beauty of the ACLU is that they defend the principle of free speech regardless of who is practicing it.

Now, it’s certainly possible for an individual to be found civilly culpable for a wrongful death based on what they say, if a court finds that they intended to incite violence with their words (the best example of this is the Southern Poverty Law Center’s successful lawsuit against white separatist Tom Metzger).

But that bar is set awfully high, and for good reason. As morally culpable as Mark Hyman would be if someone killed George Soros based on the lies Hyman said about him, it would be another matter to find Hyman criminally or civilly liable for the crime. If every criminal could use the excuse that something they saw or read made them do it, then freedom of speech would be a thing of the past.

Not that NAMBLA is a group that deserves much sympathy. They are a microscopically small group of pathetic losers and criminals who get way more attention from the media than they deserve to get. But what they *do* deserve, as does every American, is to have their day in court if they are accused of something.

Hyman tries to portray NAMBLA as openly advocating violence against boys by calling some of their materials a “Rape and Escape Handbook,” a phrase that was coined by the lawyer filing suit against NAMBLA, not the group itself (although Hyman does his best to suggest otherwise). Any materials that are meant to facilitate statutory rape are despicable, but the NAMBLA materials apparently don’t advocate or advise how to commit violent acts.

NAMBLA is a disgusting group, and as such, couldn’t find a lawyer to defend them until the ACLU came to the aid of their members. Apparently Hyman thinks people should be convicted without trial if they belong to a reprehensible group or believe despicable things. But that’s exactly the sort of speech that needs to be defended. It might even turn out that the members of NAMBLA will be found liable for the child’s death, but that only has meaning if they received an adequate legal representation. That’s what the ACLU is providing, just as they provided it for Nazis, Falwell, and, if necessary, they would provide to Hyman if my wife sued him for instigating my death at the hands of a radical member of PAP.

So that’s the substance of the issue. The big picture, of course, has everything to do with the upcoming election. In recent weeks, Brent Bozell of the conservative Media Research Centre tried to link Nanci Pelosi to the ACLU/NAMBLA case, and the laughingstock of Ohio, Ken Blackwell, tried to link his Democratic opponent with NAMBLA in a debate last week.

This is apparently what you resort to when you’ve run out of ideas.

Or, in Hyman’s case, never had one to begin with.

And that’s The Counterpoint

Hyman's "Voter Fraud" Fraud

2006-11-01T12:56:00.000-05:00

With election day coming up, Mark Hyman wonders, “why on Earth would the government print foreign language ballots when naturalized citizens are supposed to speak English?”

We’ll tell you why in a moment, Mark, but first, let’s correct a few things.

You say “foreign language ballots reward those who choose not to assimilate into the melting pot of America.”

Is providing a document in someone’s native language that they will see likely no more than once or twice every few years actually going to disincline them to learn English?

And even if it did, it’s their right as an American citizen not to assimilate. We might not like it, but then again, I don’t like your insistence on not assimilating yourself into the reality-based community. Yet, it’s certainly your right not to. Moreover, if it would actually help you to better understand your ballot on election day by having leprechauns, unicorns, a photo of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden shaking hands, and other bits of fantasy in the margins, I’d support your right to have such a specialized ballot.

You say, “Foreign language ballots are ripe for election fraud.”

Why? What evidence do you have that such ballots have been particularly susceptible to fraud? What reasonable explanation do you have for why they might be problems in the future? Perhaps there is such supporting evidence, but you don’t provide it (I suspect because it doesn’t exist).

This is a sloppy bit of argumentation, one that, if it appeared on freshman composition essay, I’d immediately annotate with the words “WHERE’S YOUR EVIDENCE?!” scrawled in the margins in red ink.

Your final argument is that someone has to be “fluent” in English in order to become a citizen, and therefore its silly and wasteful to print up ballots in alternate languages.
But as you yourself note, the requirement is simply that a potential citizen have a basic working knowledge of typical, everyday words and phrases. I doubt “County Comptroller” or the niceties of

a voter recall of a governor are words and phrases that come up in daily conversation, yet they appear on ballots all the time. Heck, most native speakers of English could probably use a translation of some of the gobbledygook that appears on ballots.

The reason we print ballots in other languages in voting areas with a high density of non-native speakers of English is because voting is the most fundamental of rights in a democracy. Everyone, whether their ancestors stepped off the boat at Plymouth Rock centuries ago or at Miami a couple of decades ago, deserves the right to make an informed choice on election day. Printing a handful of ballots in other languages for those areas where languages other than English are still the norm, even for longtime U.S. citizens, is a small price to pay to ensure that right.

Not that the actual price, or even the supposed rewarding of non-assimilation, is your goal. Like unconstitutional voter ID bills, your proposal for all-English ballots is a transparent attempt to turn the clock back by discouraging or preventing people from voting—particularly people whom you suspect won’t vote the way you want them to.

Jim Crow attempts to disenfranchise voters were ugly in the past, and they are no less ugly now, even when gussied up in the vestments of “common sense.”

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 3.38

Getting caught up

2006-10-31T23:33:00.000-05:00

Hi all,

Sorry for the momentary hiatus. Midsem time has arrived and I've been clawing my way out from under a mountain of papers, as well as going to a conference. We'll be back on schedule on Wednesday with a commentary on Hyman's take on voting rights as well as a response to his three part trilogy on NAMBLA.

To quote John Stewart, how far down do you have to be before you decide to throw the "Hail NAMBLA"?

See you soon.

tjr

Two Words

2006-10-27T11:27:00.000-04:00

That whirring sound you here are the rotor blades of the black helicopters in Mark Hyman’s head.

Ignoring all evidence to the contrary (not least of which is the existence of Sinclair Broadcasting itself), Hyman continues to participate in the ritual excoriation of the corporate media as allegedly liberally biased.

This time around, his “evidence” is that the Mark Foley scandal was the subject of 235 articles and editorials in leading national newspapers in the week after the story broke, while “similar” scandals involving Democratic politicians Mel Reynolds and Barney Frank only got a fraction of the attention.

One could spend quite a bit of time pointing out in detail how the scandals were not “similar”: how neither the Reynolds or Frank affairs involved the outing of a closeted gay man, that neither the Reynolds or Frank were the chairs of a congressional subcommittee on exploited children who then had inappropriate contact with an underage congressional page, that neither Franks or Reynolds supported party positions that were homophobic while being homosexual themselves, that in neither the Franks or Reynolds case did party leadership tell wildly varying versions of who knew what and when, that in neither the Franks or Reynolds case did it come to light that congressional leaders knew about inappropriate action and looked the other way for political purposes, etc.

One could say all that and much, much more. But there’s actually a simple two-word rebuttal to Hyman’s point, one that not only explains why so many column inches were devoted to a sex scandal in 2006 when other scandals that happened more than twelve years ago received less attention, but also puts the lie to any contention that the allegedly “liberal” press looks the other way at Democratic scandal.

Here it is:

Bill Clinton

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.55

Is Hyman Pro-Stupid or Anti-Smart?

2006-10-26T15:44:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman has recently made two commentaries dealing with language, a subject near and dear to my heart.

His comments on Mouseprint.org are banal enough; the takeaway is that this website, which reveals the “catches” often included in the small print of advertisements, is a good thing.

I think that’s something we can all get on board with. I just wish Sinclair would provide *any* print, large or small, that tells its viewers that Mark Hyman is a non-local Sinclair executive, not a journalist or a local figure.

It’s Hyman’s next editorial that’s more interesting. He takes the Associated Press new style guide to task for dropping the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” and replacing them with “anti-abortion” and “abortion rights.”

Hyman claims that the AP “has chosen sides in the abortion debate.” But it’s clear that the AP’s terminology is meant to create more accurate labels that cut past the rhetorical packaging both sides in the debate have used.

Those who are against abortion rightly point out that “pro choice” equates choosing abortion with choice generally. They counter that they are *for* any number of choices about how handle the problem of unwanted pregnancy: having the baby, giving the baby up for adoption, using any one of a dizzying array of birth control methods, or simply not having intercourse. It’s only one particular choice, the artificial termination of a pregnancy, that they oppose.

Those who support the right to have an abortion similarly argue that “pro life” equates a fertilized ovum with human life, a premise they don’t grant, and it also suggests that valuing life is defined by treating an embryo as if it were fully human. What about the other “lives” at stake: the life of the mother which might be ended if she gets an illegal abortion, the lives of children that might suffer if their parent(s) must care for an unplanned child, the life of potential children that will not be born in the future when the parent(s) are better prepared to raise them because the parent(s) will have to sacrifice education, income, etc., to care for a child they aren’t ready to deal with?

And what about the lives of children who die soon after they are born because so many of those who oppose abortion also oppose universal childcare, a political decision that has led America to have the highest infant mortality rate in the industrialized world?

What the AP has tried to do is come up with terms that focus specifically on the issue of abortion, rejecting the use of the fuzzier labels proponents of both sides tend to choose. “Pro choice” and “pro life” are both terms that attempt to tie in the specific issue of abortion into larger values. This is a time-honored rhetorical technique, and those who use them shouldn’t be demonized for packaging their points of view to advantage.

But the AP is trying to *not* take sides in the debate by dropping terms that both sides object to, replacing them with labels that are more accurate in that they are specific to the abortion debate. Those who are against abortion are, logically enough, “anti-abortion.” Those who think abortion is a procedure covered by existing constitutional rights are advocates of “abortion rights.”

Let’s give Hyman his due: he’s almost within striking distance of a legitimate, and even subtle, point about language. It’s true that the prefix “anti” carries an automatic negative connotation, while “rights” carries positive connotations.

Of course, a lot depends on the words you pair them with. Anti-slavery, anti-apartheid, anti-drug, anti-cancer, anti-spam . . . these are just a few “anti” terms carried proudly as labels now and in the past.

The problem is that Hyman applies his logic in a biased way. Hyman says pro-life folks would say that “abortion rights” is a misnomer, since it implies that these “rights” exist in the first place, which is a premise the pro-life side doesn’t grant.

True enough, but same logic applies to the terms Hyman claims “pretty much give equal standing to both sides of the debate”: pro-life and pro-choice. The label “pro life” implies that the embryo, even at its earliest stages, constitutes human life, with all the moral import that connotes. But that’s a premise that pro-choice advocates don’t accept.

The fact that Hyman is blind to the way his argument against the AP labels also applies to the labels he champions is surprising if for no other reason than that Hyman has made it clear in the past that he is in the “pro-choice/abortion rights” camp, despite his conservative politics.

But maybe it’s not all that surprising after all. As we’ve seen, Hyman’s role isn’t as an independent thinker about issues, but as part of the right wing echo chamber. And given Hyman’s general lack of ethics when it comes to his political rants, it shouldn’t shock us that he’d sell his own values out to shill for the conservative party line. That, after all, is his bread and butter.

Hyman Index: 3.81

No Comparison

2006-10-25T20:53:00.000-04:00

An elementary logical fallacy is the false analogy: comparing one thing to another when the two items in question have little in common.

Mark Hyman gives us a wonderful example in his recent editorial about illegal immigration.

Yes, I know you think you’ve heard just about everything Hyman has to say on this issue, given that it’s the subject he discusses more than any other. But just wait! He’s got an ingenious twist in store for you!

See, this time around, he’s not talking about illegal immigration from Mexico. Instead, he’s talking about illegal immigration from Africa to the Canary Islands (which are Spanish territory).

He tells us of how the islands are being “burdened” by the “staggering numbers” of immigrants coming from Africa (Senegal, in particular).

With a wink-wink, nudge-nudge attitude, Hyman suggests the situation is parallel with the situation at the U.S. border.

In some interesting ways, they are. For example, the Canary Islands were seized by Spain many years ago, taken from their original inhabitants who had come from the African continent. Similarly, Mexican immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are doing so largely into territories formerly owned by Mexico and taken by force.

So in both cases, you have countries who used force to take control of a geographic area facing the unwanted return of the people they displaced so long ago, and calling this return “illegal.”

Sorry . . . didn’t mean to go all post-colonial on you, but you don’t have to be an outspoken advocate of open boarders to see the irony in the situation.

Another similarity is that in both cases, the people immigrating are doing so to find jobs, often to support families who have stayed behind. And in both cases, they have been charged with trying to freeload off of government programs and burdening the natives, despite no evidence of this.

Yet, the difference is much more important, and it's a difference that flies in the face of Hyman's central assertion. The Canary Islands are a geographically microscopic entity with limited space and economic resources, despite their connection to Spain. A sudden influx of immigrants entering the country illegally could conceivably do harm (although, as noted above, the immigrants are coming to find jobs).

The United States, on the other hand, is the wealthiest nation in the history of humanity. To compare a tiny group of islands dealing with an influx of immigrants to the situation of the United States is silliness.

This isn’t to say that national boarders shouldn’t be respected or that illegal immigration doesn’t create problems. But the use of invalid scare tactics and thinly-veiled racism not only demeans the people who are often risking life and limb for a chance to live the American (or Canary Island) Dream, but demeans the public sphere, where reasonable people should be able to talk intelligently, respectfully, and sincerely about the issue and how to best address it.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.56

Hyman Suffers from Thinkaphobia

2006-10-24T17:27:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman recently returned to the issue of Tariq Ramadan. He first brought up the prominent Muslim scholar in a diatribe against the ACLU, which defended Ramadan’s right to enter the United States.

At issue is the U.S. government’s revocation of Ramadan’s visa, a move that has angered those at the University of Notre Dame, who had invited Ramadan to come to the school as a scholar and teacher at their International Peace Studies program.

Why was his visa revoked? Good question. Some say it’s because of donations he made totaling a few hundred dollars to a Muslim charity that ended up being linked to Hamas. That might make sense except for the fact that the charity Ramadan donated money to weren’t blacklisted by the U.S. government until long after Ramadan had given money. The suggestion is that Ramadan should have known he was giving money to an organization that might in turn give it to Hamas. Yet the U.S. government itself hadn’t identified this charity as having connections to terrorists.

More frightening is the cacophony of innuendo that’s been used to bolster the case against Ramadan. Hyman repeats several slanderous accusations that have no support and in fact have been proved wrong (including calling one of the men responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as well as a high-level al-Qaeda leader, “close terrorist colleagues”; in fact, Ramadan has never met either man). As we know all too well, Hyman has no problems making up horrific allegations to smear someone he thinks he doesn’t like (I doubt he knows enough about Ramadan to actually have an informed opinion).

The scary thing isn’t simply that reactionaries like Hyman have resurrected Red baiting, but that they are targeting an individual who’s exactly the last person they should attack.

Ramadan, in addition to being named one of the 100 most innovative people for the coming century, has long argued that Muslims living in the West should embrace their adopted cultures and stop seeing being Muslim and being Western as mutually exclusive. He’s spoken out for modernization of Islamic beliefs, to such an extent that he’s been called “The Muslim Martin Luther.” He upbraided fellow Muslims who sought to scapegoat America, Israel, or other forces for the 9/11 attacks. British Prime Minister Tony Blair asked him to be part of a government taskforce to help root out Muslim extremists in Britain.

In other words, he’s precisely the sort of progressive Muslim voice we should hope gains a wider audience. Let’s not forget to mention (as Hyman did) that Notre Dame invited him to be part of their International Peace Studies program. Unless Hyman and others of his ilk (such as Daniel Pipes) want to argue that Notre Dame is a hotbed of subversive anti-Americanism that secretly wants to give a terrorist sympathizer a soapbox on which to preach violence, it’s difficult to reconcile any of the charges made against Ramadan with his actual views and intellectual mission.

Ultimately, what’s most frightening (but, alas, not surprising) is that Hyman and his ideological allies are arguing *against* having an open discussion involving provocative ideas. They aren’t actually worried about Ramadan advocating violence. They worry about his ideas (he’s seen as not being sufficiently pro-Israel or anti-Muslim enough to be a true voice of reform).

Heaven forbid we actually *discuss* things in this country. As we’ve seen not only from Hyman himself, but the Bush administration and the neo-con project as a whole, ideas, debate, and even thought are inherently suspect. Those skills that we’ve often considered central to having a well-developed intellect, often collectively referred to as “critical thinking,” are dismissed as irrelevant or subversive, even as they are paid lip service by the educational standards coming out of the “No Child Left Behind” initiatives. Look at a situation from someone else’s point of view? Hell, no! That’s for pussies!

It’s not Ramadan’s non-existent ties with terrorists, or even his politics, that offends Hyman and Co.; it’s the very idea he represents: that exploring alternative ideas that challenge the status quo is a healthy and productive thing.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.61

Victoire?

2006-10-23T12:54:00.000-04:00

It's certainly too early to call it a victory, but a recent perusal of the Newscentral.tv website shows that the two recent commentaries about George Soros that slandered him as a Nazi collaborator have been taken down.

This might simply be a coincidence. The Newscentral website is often squirrely and things go missing and reappear often without any reason.

Yet, the sudden departure of these particualr two commentaries following the notification of Soros's organization by a number of you along with yours truly might be linked. At the very least, it may be that someone in legal at Sinclair may have recognized after the fact that they were leaving themselves open for huge slander suit.

We'll wait to see what happens. If any one out there can confirm if Soros (or anyone else) pressured Sinclair to remove these posts, please share the good news.

Of course, this is not an adequate response, even if it turns out Sinclair has taken them down as a result of pressure. Hyman must publicly apologize and repudiate his statements. Please visit the Newscentral.tv website and keep the pressure on!

tjr

The People v. Mark Hyman

2006-10-23T12:39:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman uses a classic propaganda technique in his recent commentary about the evils of class action lawsuits.

This time around, his weapon of choice is using a specific, worst-case scenario to imply a wider problem.

Specifically, Hyman attacks the courts of Madison County, Illinois, for their generally pro-plaintiff stance in class action lawsuits, a quality that has led a disproportionate number of such lawsuits to be filed there.

Hyman paints a picture of greedy trial lawyers growing rich while winning settlements that net individual plaintiffs only a few bucks each.

While there’s no doubt that lawsuits lacking merit have been filed, there’s also no doubt that companies have cheated and mistreated customers and employees. The class action lawsuit is one of the few ways such groups can hold corporate behemoths accountable.

Think of it this way: if you found out your bank, energy company, insurance company, etc. had been charging you a fishy “utilization fee” buried in your monthly statement that was nothing other than a way of squeezing a few more dollars out of you without you noticing, you’d be mad. But would you sue? Probably not, given that the few dollars a month you’ve been cheated out of wouldn’t even begin to pay for a lawyer.

So, as long as the cheating they do is minimal, corporations can safely rob customers of millions of dollars, as long as the pain is spread out enough to keep any one customer from filing suit against them.

The class action lawsuit changes this, allowing groups of customers to band together to fight companies. Given the nature of the offenses involved, it’s true that the actual rewards to individual consumers are often small, particularly when compared to the money taken in by the law firm representing them.

But that’s not a fair way of judging the fairness of the suit. A better way would be to measure the *total* amount of money won for all the plaintiffs, and also (and this is important) figure in the costs (real and opportunity costs) incurred by the law firm trying the case.

After all, corporations have deep pockets and can spend millions on lawyers to defend them and drag cases out for years. No law firm will be able to stand up for customers if there wasn’t a substantial reward for them.

Make no mistake: Hyman isn’t simply against the Madison County courts; he’s against class action suits that protect consumers’ rights. This is the attitude that’s behind the evergreen conservative talking point, “tort reform.” In fact, tort reform means stripping away the rights of consumers to hold corporations accountable when they are mistreated or cheated by them.

Why do conservatives favor taking rights away from consumers? Because in their cosmology, what’s good for the corporate world is an absolute good. All the talk about accountability and values go out the window when attention is turned toward corporations. When it comes to making a profit, conservatives believe in the ethic of “by any means necessary.”

And in the case of Hyman, it’s particularly understandable why he’d live in fear of consumers having the power to hold a company responsible. Can you imagine what would happen if Sinclair viewers banded together and brought a class action lawsuit against the company for abusing the public resource of the broadcast spectrum?

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 3.88

The Cockeysville Lyin' Hymans

2006-10-23T12:04:00.000-04:00

Fortunately, there’s so little of import going on in the world that Mark Hyman has the time to devote two minutes of our local news broadcasts to the burning issue of college mascots.

Hyman bemoans the NCAA decision to not allow the University of North Dakota to use its current nickname, the Fighting Sioux, as part of its general moratorium on racially insensitive nicknames.

As one might expect, this has Hyman all in a lather, particularly since other schools using Native American nicknames (Florida State, Utah, Central Michigan University) have been given a reprieve from the NCAA.

Yes, this certainly sounds like a case of NCAA arbitrariness, and it would hardly be the first time it’s occurred.

But here’s what Hyman fails to mention. The schools who’ve been given permission to keep their nicknames all had one thing in common: the had received the formal, unequivocal blessing of the tribes themselves to use these names, while North Dakota hasn’t. Hyman claims they have, but this isn’t true. Several tribal organizations have formally protested the use of the Fighting Sioux nickname. Hence, the NCAA is sticking to its guns.

Nor is the controversy a case of recent political correctness run amok. The nickname has been the subject of controversy for more than thirty years, particularly given the large Sioux population in the state and on campus.

Sure, college mascots is a trivial issue, and there are more important things to get worked up over, even in the area of Native American issues specifically.

But precisely *because* it’s a trivial issue, why should North Dakota, Mark Hyman, or anyone else not simply concede, act like decent human beings, and change the nickname so that it doesn’t offend the very people they claim to be “honoring?” It doesn’t do any real damage to the university, and it’s treating people with respect.

One last point that Hyman glosses over is the fact that the nicknames at issue are Native American. He points out that there are lots of nicknames that refer to groups of people. Should these all be done away with?

What Hyman forgets is that almost none of the other nicknames he mentions refer to ethnic groups that have been almost wiped out. If any ethnicity has the right to be a bit more sensitive about the appropriation of their identity for entertainment purposes, it’s Native Americans.

But Hyman doesn’t acknowledge this, lumping in “Fighting Sioux” with nicknames such as Cowboys, Texans, Oilers, Vikings, Saxons, Saints, Railsplitters, Poets, and Engineers.

None of these groups has the same tragic history as the Native American peoples. Of course, the obvious exception is “the Engineers.” After all, who can forget that heart-rending memoir, Bury My Slide-Rule at Wounded Knee?

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 2.28

The Bad Citizen in Chief

2006-10-17T21:53:00.000-04:00

You might remember the Intercollegiate Study Institute. They’re a particular favorite of Mark Hyman and the folks at “The Point.” You might remember that about a year ago, they did a series in which they sung the praises of the ISI’s criticisms of higher education while never mentioning the organization’s clearly stated conservative agenda.

Hyman returns to them again, this time touting a recent study by the ISI purportedly showing that America’s colleges and universities are doing little, if anything, to improve students’ understanding of civics.

The study asked thousands of college students questions the ISI claimed tested their basic knowledge of American history and politics. The results were dismal, with students getting barely over half the questions right.

Sounds bad, but there are an number of problems with the study. First, we don’t know what those questions actually asked, because the ISI hasn’t released them. Given ISI’s stated right-wing agenda, it’s possible that questions were frame in a politically biased way, with answers that weren’t Right not considered right.

Also, Hyman claims the students were randomly selected. They weren’t. Apparently at one campus, students were bribed with the possibility of winning an iPod to participate. Reportedly, a student simply filled out the survey randomly so that he could be entered in the drawing.

The ISI also doesn’t say how many students from various schools were selected. While claiming the ability to rank schools on the basis of the results, it may very well be that some schools had hundreds of students taking the survey, while only a handful took it at other schools, thereby making the results invalid, at least in terms of comparisons.

Plenty has already been pointed out about the suspect motivations of ISI and the glaring errors in methodology, errors that Hyman glosses over or actually misrepresents. Even officials at the university that placed first in the ISI study dismissed the survey as bogus.

You’ll get no argument from me that college students should know more about history and civics than they do. It’s just another case for a strong liberal arts education, something near and dear to my own heart.

But let’s not confuse the ability to answer a multiple choice quiz with the ability to be a good citizen. After all, which is more important in being an informed voter: knowing which Amendment to the Constitution enfranchised women to vote, or having the critical thinking skills to detect propaganda techniques in political ads?

Even if the ISI study were a masterpiece of the survey-writer’s art, it only tests basic fact regurgitation. And while I’m all for being up on names, dates, and other such things, an ability to do this shouldn’t be confused with higher order mental skills involving synthesizing information, making comparisons, and reasoning through arguments.

To put it another way, Ken Jennings is a bright guy, but he ain’t no Einstein. There’s a world of difference between cleaning up on Jeopardy and coming up with the theory of relativity. The analogy is a stretch, admittedly, but you get my point: mastering trivia isn’t the same thing as mastering thinking.

Moreover, to the extent college students are uninformed about basic civics, can we really blame colleges and universities? Michael Berube has a clever post on his blog pointing out that the blame might lie elsewhere. To give you a hint of what he’s getting at, try answering these seemingly obvious civics questions—at least obvious before January of 2001:

True or false: American citizens have a right to not have the government spy on their private conversations.

True or false: In American jurisprudence, defendants are guaranteed a right to a lawyer, a speedy trial, and to see the evidence against them.

True or false: Congress has the sole power to declare war.

True or false: A Constitutionally mandated role of the Congress is to serve as a check on the Executive branch.

True or false: Identifying an undercover intelligence agent of the United States is a crime.

True or false: All Americans, regardless of race, creed, color, or county of residence in the state of Florida, have a Constitutionally guaranteed right to have their vote counted.

True or false: The role of the president is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

True or false: The United States government does not engage in torture.

Should it surprise us that young people who have become politically aware in the last five years might not be up to speed on basic civics?

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.88

The Truth Is DOA at "The Point"

2006-10-17T21:51:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman gives us yet another diatribe on how easy it is to be an undocumented immigrant in the United States. Too bad his facts are all wrong.

This time around, Hyman complains that the Massachusetts state healthcare system (MassHealth) has taken the draconian measure of forcing citizens to prove their identity before receiving benefits, while immigrants, including those in the country illegally, can simply ask for treatment and receive it.

I firmly believe that a compassionate society should provide
emergency medical services particularly for life-threatening injuries or illness
to everyone including non-citizens. MassHealth does just that. . .
.

However . . . illegal and legal aliens do not have to provide any
official documentation other than a signed statement that they fall within the
income guidelines to qualify for MassHealth coverage. . . .

What kind of thinking is behind a government program that requires U.S.
citizens to prove themselves but allows illegal aliens to be taken at their
word? See! There are benefits to breaking the law.

Those damn Massachusetts liberals coddling illegals while sticking it to honest citizens! How dare they?

Well, as a matter of fact, the reason they took this step is because of a law passed by the Republican Congress, largely along party lines, that is forcing them to do this. As part of the euphemistically titled Federal Deficit Reduction Act, state healthcare providers must make citizens prove their identity before receiving the treatment they’re due.

Since this is a federal law, it applies across the country, including in states like Florida (who’s the governor there, by the way?).

Moreover, Hyman is simply dishonest when he suggests that undocumented immigrants get the same treatment as legal citizens. MassHealth stipulates that they are eligible for emergency treatment. That’s it. In other words, it gives undocumented immigrants exactly what Hyman himself claims “a compassionate society” should provide.

Even legal immigrants are restricted as far as exactly what sorts of benefits they receive.

As shocked as you might be to hear this, Hyman is cynically taking an idiotic federal law passed by the GOP and blaming a famously blue state for following it, then fabricating evidence to engage in some good ol’ down home xenophobia.

As usual, Hyman’s argument and ethics are DOA.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.59

Hyman Serves Up Another Lemon

2006-10-17T21:49:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman revisits the issue of privatizing education in his recent editorial in which he compares failing schools to cars that turn out to be “lemons.”

The metaphor itself is wrongheaded for a number of reasons. First, education is not a product, like cars, toilet paper, or widgets. It’s a communal act of preparing children, all of them, for the future. That’s why those of us who don’t have kids also pay into the education system: it’s serving the good of the nation, not just the individual students and their families.

Having said that, Hyman compounds the inapt metaphor with the fallacy of a false dichotomy, suggesting that the choice is between funding public schools that are failing and allowing parents to use public money to send their child to private school.

The unconstitutionality of that aside, it’s ignoring the far more sensible alternative of allowing greater choice with in public schools. Such choice would truly allow all students to participate. Voucher systems, as we’ve pointed out here a number of times, essentially amount to a tax break for those wealthy enough to pay tuition at private schools.

Public school choice allows everyone to participate in choice (letting that wonderful invisible hand truly do its thing) and does not break our covenant with the next generation.

To put it another way, Hyman advocates a system in which some people could keep their children from riding in a car that was a lemon but didn’t do anything to keep their neighbors’ children from being driven off in a dangerously unsafe car. Is that the sort of morality we want in America?

How about we focus on actually fixing the car so that everyone gets where they’re supposed to go?

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.13

Hyman "U-Boats" George Soros

2006-10-13T13:00:00.000-04:00

There are many things that can be said about Mark Hyman’s commentary in which he participates in the “U-Boating” of George Soros: the appalling claim that he somehow collaborated with the Nazis when he was a child during World War II.

There are many things indeed, from the fact that he does so in defending a book by David Horowitz and Richard Poe that Media Matters for America revealed to be full of unsubstantiated charges and doctored quotes (a charge that Horowitz has claimed for a month or two he would systematically refute, but hasn’t) to the fact that lying about political opponents is something that Hyman has done before.

Then there’s the obvious fact that Hyman doesn’t argue the merits of any actual political position (or lack thereof) in the piece, but relies on attacking the actions of a 14-year-old boy 60 years ago.

But I just want to focus on one thing to avoid it getting lost in anything else: Hyman commits slander in this editorial.

Not slander as in saying something unkind about someone else. Not slander as in only telling a half truth that distorts reality. I mean actual, legal slander.

Hyman charges not only that Soros collaborated with the Nazis but that “he did identify wealthy Jews in hiding so that Nazi officials could confiscate their belongings.”

To my knowledge, even seasoned Soros haters haven’t alleged this. To support his claims, Hyman excerpts part of an interview Soros did with “Sixty Minutes,” in which he describes how his Jewish father hid him from the Nazis, and saved his life, by getting a Hungarian bureaucrat in the occupational government to pass off Soros as his own son. This bureaucrat’s job included serving eviction notices to Jews. When asked if he felt guilty about participating in this, Soros says no, because he was only a child and was not actually participating in the actions. He was simply playing the part of this bureaucrat’s adopted son.

Hyman says Soros “admits” he didn’t participate directly in the confiscations (an odd word choice in this context), but that (and I realize I’m repeating this) “he did identify wealthy Jews in hiding so that Nazi officials could confiscate their belongings.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

There is nothing in Soros’s statements that even comes close to stating this. And notice what Hyman is accusing him of: he paints a picture of the 14-year-old Soros skipping around town happily pointing out Anne Frank (or her Hungarian equivalent) to the Gestapo so they could be shipped off to Auschwitz and gassed. He’s accusing Soros of actively participating in the genocide of his own people.

Perhaps Hyman will say that he simply claimed Soros "identified Jews in hiding" meaning that Soros helped the man protecting him identify homes which could safely be confiscated, since their owners were in hiding. The problem is that this isn't at all what Hyman's words suggest, and even if they did, he would still be accusing the adolescent Soros of actively participating in revealing identities of Jews in hiding (as he himself was), something that is tantamount to physically turning them in.

There are no words to describe how despicable this is. This is a new low, even for Hyman. It is, in the legal and dictionary definition of the term, slander.

One can only hope that Soros will take notice and sue the pants off of Sinclair and Hyman for this. True, Hyman is in insignificant gnat in Soros’s universe, but perhaps Soros will nail him to the wall on behalf of the rest of us who’ve been attacked maliciously and falsely by Hyman.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman's Bunk

2006-10-11T23:41:00.000-04:00

In setting up an attack on George Soros, Hyman defends the source of his upcoming attack, a book by David Horowitz and Richard Poe titled The Shadow Party, by attacking one organization that has criticized the book: Media Matters for America.

In interest of full disclosure, while I have never been paid anything by Media Matters, I have written for their Sinclair Watch site, received a spirited defense from them when Hyman attacked me on air, and Media Matters president David Brock was kind enough to send me an autographed copy of his latest book, The Republican Noise Machine, as a gift.

Such are my ties to Media Matters. Now, on to the debunking.

Hyman makes three charges about Media Matters. First, he says they are “seemingly incapable of writing anything that doesn't contain the words lie, smear or slander. Quite ironic considering that its president confessed in his political memoirs that he intentionally lied in multiple articles he wrote for publication.”

There are multiple brief points to make here. First, why does using the words lie, smear, or slander suggest Media Matters is somehow suspect themselves? Given that their mission is to debunk right wing spin and attacks, it’s not surprising they would use these words. After all, they certainly apply to a fair number of what comes from right wing inhabitants of the Prattle-sphere.

Second, a quick search of the Media Matters site found that in fact, they rarely use these words anyway. The words do pop up frequently in their articles, but my overview revealed that most instances came from right wing pundits who were quoted on the site. Unlike most conservative groups, Media Matters routinely publishes the transcripts of the interviews, articles, and media appearances of the people it criticizes. In short, you’re far more likely to read a transcript of O’Reilly claiming he’s been “smeared” by Media Matters than to see that word used in the actual text of a MMFA article. As I know from having written for them, the editors at MMFA are quite studious when it comes to maintaining an even and level tone in their text, even when critiquing the shrillest of right wingers.

Lastly, David Brock has admitted to being less than honest in some of his work early in his career. What Hyman doesn’t tell you is that this occurred when he had been hired to do hit pieces on Hillary Clinton, Anita Hill, and other prominent liberals. What his memoirs (and his most recent book) expose is the utter lack of concern for truth that exists in many right wing media circles. That Brock has admitted and forsaken his past roles in creating right wing propaganda shouldn’t be held against him. And as any reader of MMFA knows, their stories are meticulously sourced and almost always include transcripts of the original remarks made by those they criticize.

The second charge Hyman makes is that MMFA receives George Soros money. But even Hyman admits that MMFA is not directly funded by Soros. MMFA does have ties to other prominent liberal and progressive groups, such as Moveon.org and the Center for American Progress, from whom it received some early support. But while these groups have received money from Soros, the claim that MMFA’s defense of Soros is some sort of quid pro quo is tortured, to say the least, and in terms of logic, says nothing about the validity of MMFA’s criticisms of The Shadow Party.

Thirdly, Hyman claims that in early 2005, Media Matters falsely said that the Staples office supply chain removed advertising from local Sinclair station broadcasts in part as a result of requests by viewers and customers angered by Sinclair’s overt political propagandizing. According to Hyman, MMFA was “humiliated” and was sent “running for cover” when Staples issued a press release saying it wasn’t pulling advertising.

The problem with Hyman’s claim is that he’s simply wrong. Staples did pull advertising from local Sinclair stations. And as MMFA pointed out, Staples itself vetted the very press release Hyman claims was “false.” Staples executives also spoke on the record to various media outlets confirming not only the decision to pull advertising, but that it was motivated in part by concerns of viewers.

Hyman hangs his hat on a subsequent press release that claimed that while it *had* pulled advertising from local Sinclair broadcasts, it hadn’t pulled ads from Sinclair stations altogether (e.g., ads running during network programming) and that it hadn’t pulled ads because of politics.

But in the context of the documented facts of the case, it's clear this statement is simply a way for Staples to cover its flanks, defending itself from the charge of making a purely political decision in response to a particular interest group. But no one claimed it was. MMFA simply noted that when its customers expressed their concerns, Staples made a business decision that running ads on overtly political newscasts was not a good move.

And once again, what does this have to do with MMFA’s critique of “The Shadow Party?” Not a whole lot.

Tomorrow: Hyman joins Lyndon LaRouche in “U-Boating” George Soros.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.45

This Evening's Special: Red Herring a la Hyman

2006-10-11T22:56:00.000-04:00

There’s not much that needs be said about Mark Hyman’s recent editorial advocating greater transparency in Senate campaign financing. Commenting on the antiquated (i.e., un-computerized) system of processing reports of contributions, Hyman advocates for electronic filing of such reports.

Here, here. Not only is it a good idea, but it’s a good idea that most Senators favor as well. Reportedly, there are a few die-hard old timers who are anonymously blocking measures to create an electronic filing system, but most Senators are on record as supporting it, including both Senators McCain and Feingold.

Why is that relevant? It’s not particularly, except for the fact that Hyman throws in a red herring by linking the absence of an electronic filing system to the (altogether, now) “infamous” McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation.

There’s no link between the two, save for the fact that, as Hyman lamely offers, “the Senate, which championed McCain-Feingold, exempted itself from electronic reporting.”

There are other mistaken assertions in Hyman’s argument, such as the claim that McCain-Feingold “placed free speech restrictions on third party interests” (it neither restricted speech nor hampered third party spending, as the number of 527 groups shows). He also wrongly claims that such third party groups “often hold incumbents accountable for their votes.” As we’ve noted in the past, incumbents make out like bandits when it comes to raking in third party dough; after all, with the re-election rate as high as it is in Congress, it only makes sense to bet on incumbents in the form of giving money to their campaigns.

Why does Hyman bend over backwards to advocate for the rights of third parties to donate to political campaigns without restriction? Perhaps it’s because Sinclair Broadcasting has its very own PAC which gives money almost solely to Republican candidates. It might also have something to do with the fact that Hyman was in bed with the most infamous 527 of them all, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth [sic], a group that collaborated with the organization producing the propaganda hit piece on John Kerry that Sinclair planned to run, and did run large parts of, despite an outcry from the public.

In any case, Hyman manages to mangle the truth, even when defending a common-sense idea that just about everybody agrees with.

But that’s our Mark: snatching dishonesty from the jaws of reality.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.27

Cherry Picking Bigotry

2006-10-10T14:41:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman makes a spirited attack on bigotry in a recent commentary. Too bad he gets the facts wrong and shoots himself in the foot in the process.

Specifically, Hyman takes to task Adam Howard, a columnist for The Nation, who recently wrote a short piece hypothesizing that some recent African American candidates put up for election by the GOP were chosen primarily to help siphon off Democratic votes, not because of any newfound concern over minority issues.

Hyman claims Howard is a bigot who thinks that “all blacks should think, believe, live, act and vote the exact same way” and that “Howard's bigoted position is that blacks who have any opinion contrary to the very narrow views he believes all blacks should adhere to he calls ‘stooges.’” (Don’t spend a lot of time trying to scan that last sentence of Hyman’s; it’s not grammatical).

But Hyman makes an elementary mistake in reading comprehension. Howard’s reference to “stooges” is aimed specifically at three prominent black candidates running for office (as in “The Three Stooges”).

And why does he call these particular candidates “stooges”? Not because they have different points of views on issues than most African Americans, but because they’ve taken specific stands that objectively hurt the African American community.

Lynn Swann, a political novice, advocates cuts in food stamps and welfare. The infamous Ken Blackwell helped disenfranchise thousands of African American voters.

The most interesting case for us, however, is Maryland Senate candidate and current Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, who recently said he had no problem with Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich going to an all-white country club.

This is particularly interesting because Mark Hyman used to work with Ehrlich when the governor was a representative in Congress. And, as we know, Sinclair Broadcasting has had a quid pro quo relationship with Ehrlich that’s violated ethical lines a number of times.

Of course, Hyman fails to disclose his relationship with Ehrlich, or that between Sinclair and the governor. But should we be surprised that he comes to the rabid defense of Ehrlich’s underling when he’s criticized?

Hyman’s right about one thing: bigots can be of any color. But perhaps Hyman should look at the overt bigotry of his former boss’s appearance at an all-white country club and the lieutenant governor’s vocal support of this appearance before he decides to do some creative misreading of an a column in The Nation to come up with an example of liberal bigotry. Of course, if he’s *really* interested in stopping bigotry, he should begin by looking in the mirror.

Oh, and one more thing: in a delicious bit of unintentional humor, Hyman manages to commit the very sin he accuses others of when he offers up this gem:

Most black Americans are probably fed-up with the tired old liberal
stereotype that all blacks should think, believe, live, act and vote the exact
same way. [emphasis added]

Classic.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.55

Hyman's Sexual and Poltical Double Standards

2006-10-06T11:05:00.000-04:00

Hyman’s recent editorials have been fairly bland and pointless commentaries on the dangers of sexual predators. His takes on the specific cases he mentions are unremarkable, save a swipe at a teacher’s union for defending a science teacher who was fired for having used his school computer to view pornographic websites twice.

So I was simply going to respond by remarking on the interesting juxtaposition of Hyman’s sudden interest in sexual predators with the suddenly infamous case or Republican Representative Mark Foley.

But yesterday Hyman addressed the Foley issue directly (well, sort of), and his take on it is worth a brief examination.

On the good side, Hyman says, “Anyone who knew of the sexually explicit messages that surfaced this week and did nothing should step down.”

Absolutely right. But Hyman hedges a bit by limiting his call for resignations to those who knew of the specific IM messages that were released this week. It’s becoming increasingly clear, however, that House Speaker Dennis Hastert knew of Foley’s “problem” with Congressional pages long ago. So did the Republican House member who helped oversee the page program, although he studiously avoided letting his Democratic counterpart know this.

It will be interesting to see if Hyman publicly calls for Dennis Hastert’s resignation (as many conservatives already have), or hides behind the fig leaf of Hastert’s possible ignorance of the specific emails in question as a way of defending him.

More interesting yet is the rest of Hyman’s editorial. Although the Foley affair is the inspiration for the editorial, Hyman spends twice as many words discussing previous sex scandals involving Democrat Barney Frank and Democrat Gerry Studds. Hyman titles his editorial “Congressional Sexcapades,” lumping the Foley matter in with previous sexual embarrassments involving Democrats.

A few things to keep in mind: The Barney Frank and Gerry Studds matters both involved partners of legal age. (Although Studds had an affair with a Congressional page in 1973, the young man was above the legal age of consent at the time.) Foley’s explicit emails were to a minor.

Moreover, there’s no evidence that Democrats tried to cover up either episode for fear of political embarrassment, and in so doing, put children at risk. This is exactly what appears to have happened with the current Republican leadership and Foley, an act all the more heinous given Foley’s position as chairman of the committee for missing and exploited children.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about Hyman’s editorial, however, is his statement that, “For their part, Democrats must walk a fine line to avoid engaging in gay bashing.”

Why?

How is condemning Foley’s actions and aggressively investigating a cover-up of his tendency to sexually harass minors running the risk of gay bashing?

It’s not, at least if one recognizes that pedophilia and homosexuality are not linked any more closely than pedophilia and heterosexuality.

No one is saying that Foley’s actions are particularly reprehensible because he was engaging in explicit sexual talk with a boy rather than a girl. The issue is the age of the person involved, as well as the power relationship.

But by suggesting that condemning Foley’s actions could be construed as “gay bashing,” Hyman reveals the extent to which homosexuality and pedophilia are connected in his own fetid imagination.

To underscore this point, it’s no accident that while Hyman makes much of the Congressional rebuke Gerry Studds received in 1983 for his affair with a male page ten years earlier, he ignores the matter of Republican Dan Crane who was rebuked at the same time for an affair with a 17-year-old female Congressional page in 1980.

There are two double standards here: the one in which Democratic sexual scandals are somehow sleazier than Republican ones, and the one in which homosexual sexual affairs are more scandalous than heterosexual ones.

Sexual misconduct is an equal-opportunity sin. I don’t think Foley being a Republican has anything to do with his actions. There shouldn’t be anything partisan about it.

However, how political parties react to this conduct by their members does, by definition, involve partisan issues. Hyman make much of the fact that Frank and Studds were reelected to Congress several times after their affairs were made public (insinuating that somehow Democrats don’t really care about tawdry sexual behavior, while Republicans do).

But what are we to make of the revelations that Republican leaders knew about Foley’s predatory behavior toward children for a long time, yet did nothing about it and didn’t warn their Democratic colleagues about it, thereby putting more children at risk?

Abramoff, DeLay, Duke Cunningham, the Foley coverup . . . how can anyone who claims to care about morals and values support a party whose leaders whose corruption stinks to Heaven?

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 3.70

Compare/Contrast

2006-10-03T14:55:00.000-04:00

You don’t need to be a particularly big fan of Bill Clinton to acknowledge the obvious: he was far more deeply concerned about international terrorism than George W. Bush.

Yet, Mark Hyman is unable to do this. Commenting on the Clinton interview on FOX News in which the former president embarrassed an unprepared Chris Wallace, Hyman claims Clinton “ignored” or “labeled as criminal acts” numerous acts of terrorism.

The “ignored” part is balderdash. As for criminal acts, yes, he labeled terrorist attacks criminal acts because that’s what they were. He also made unprecedented steps to creating a comprehensive national policy to stop terrorism and actually tried to kill bin Laden (over the protests of the Republicans).

A book could be written (and in fact has been, by Richard Clark) detailing the ways Clinton dealt with the issue of terrorism generally and al Qaeda specifically, and comparing it to the sorry Bush record, but here are just a handful of relevant comparisons and contrasts:

When the Clinton received a PDB saying al Qaeda was planning on hijacking American airplanes in 1998, meetings were held, security levels were raised, and arrests were made.
When the Bush got a PDB saying that al Qaeda was planning on hijacking American airplanes in the summer of 2001, he did exactly nothing.

The Clinton administration created the first ever to create an anti-terrorism task force.
The Bush administration never held a meeting on terrorism until after 9/11.

According to Richard Clark, when Clinton was told about possible al Qaeda plots, he ramped up efforts to take out bin Laden.
When Bush was told in the summer of 2001 that there were ominous signs of an imminent al Qaeda attack, he told the CIA agent briefing him, “Okay, you’ve covered your ass, now.”

After the “Black Hawk Down” incident in 1993, Republicans immediately wanted to cut and run from Somalia, a country to which bin Laden had actual ties.
In 2006, Republicans accuse even combat veterans of wanting to cut and run when they have the temerity to suggest we might want to disengage from Iraq, a country that bin Laden never set foot in and which had no ties to al Qaeda.

In the 1990s, conservatives attacked Clinton for being “obsessed” with bin Laden and for “wagging the dog” when he tried to kill him.
In 2006, these same conservatives claim Clinton didn’t care about terrorism and did nothing to go after bin Laden.

Clinton worked closely with Richard Clark, the leading expert on terrorism, on plans to take out bin Laden and to stop al Qaeda.
Bush demoted Clark.

When Bush took office, Richard Clark wrote a memo to Condi Rice telling her about the danger posed by al Qaeda and presented her with a plan for dealing with the threat.
Rice ignored the memo, claimed not to have received a plan, blew off CIA warnings in July of 2001 of a possible al Qaeda attack, and called the PDB warning of an imminent al Qaeda attack “a historic document.”

Clinton actively planned to kill bin Laden to the point of being charged with obsession.
Bush cut and run from Tora Bora, letting bin Laden get away *after* the 9/11 attacks and saying bin Laden was wanted “dead or alive.” He subsequently said that he “doesn’t think about him that much.”

But the most damning words, both for the Bush administration and for Hyman, come from Richard Clark (whom Hyman cites in his own editorial), a man who served both Clinton and Bush. I apologize for the lengthy quotations, but they’re worth it.

From Clark’s sworn testimony for the 9/11 Commission:

At the senior policy levels in the Clinton Administration, there was an acute
understanding of the terrorist threat, particularly al Qida. That understanding
resulted in a vigorous program to counter al Qida including lethal covert
action, but it did not include a willingness to resume bombing of Afghanistan.
Events in the Balkans, Iraq, the Peace Process, and domestic politics occurring
at the same time as the anti-terrorism effort played a role.
The Bush
Administration saw terrorism policy as important but not urgent, prior to 9-11.
The difficulty in obtaining the first Cabinet level (Principals) policy meeting
on terrorism and the limited Principals' involvement sent unfortunate signals to
the bureaucracy about the Administration's attitude toward the al Qida
threat.

And from an interview with The Guardian:

JB: Condoleezza Rice wrote today in response to your book - that the Bush
administration did have a strategy for eliminating al-Qaida and that the
administration worked on it in the spring and summer of 2001? Is that true?
RC: We developed that strategy in the last several
months of the Clinton administration and it was basically an update on that
strategy. We briefed Condi on that strategy. The point is that it was done
before they came to office and she never held a meeting on it. It was done
before she asked for it.
JB: What about the claim
that the administration did work hard on the issue?
RC: Its not true. I asked - on January 24 in writing
to Condi - urgently for a meeting on cabinet level - the principal's committee -
to review the plan and I was told I can't have that. It had to go to the
deputies. They had a principals meeting on September 4. Contrast that with the
principal's meeting on Iraq, on February 1. So what was urgent for them was
Iraq. Al-Qaida was not important to them.
Contrast December '99 with June
and July and August 2001. In December '99 we get similar kinds of evidence that
al-Qaida was planning a similar kind of attack. President Clinton asks the
national security advisor to hold daily meetings with attorney-general, the CIA,
FBI. They go back to their departments from the White House and shake the
departments out to the field offices to find out everything they can find. It
becomes the number one priority of those agencies. When the head of the FBI and
CIA have to go to the White House every day, things happen and by the way, we
prevented the attack. Contrast that with June, July, August 2001 when the
president is being briefed virtually every day in his morning intelligence
briefing that something is about to happen, and he never chairs a meeting and he
never asks Condi rice to chair a meeting about what we're doing about stopping
the attacks. She didn't hold one meeting during all those three months. Now, it
turns out that buried in the FBI and CIA, there was information about two of
these al-Qaida terrorists who turned out to be hijackers [Khalid Almidhar and
Nawaf Alhazmi]. We didn't know that. The leadership of the FBI didn't know that,
but if the leadership had to report on a daily basis to the White House, he
would have shaken the trees and he would have found out those two guys were
there. We would have put their pictures on the front page of every newspaper and
we probably would have caught them. Now would that have stopped 9/11? I don't
know. It would have stopped those two guys, and knowing the FBI the way they can
take a thread and pull on it, they would probably have found others.

Oh, and one more contrast:

Clinton was honest enough to say that he failed to get bin Laden.
Bush can’t think of anything he’d do differently.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.76

Hyman Kills More Brain Cells

2006-10-02T16:51:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman does his part to enrich the public discourse by offering us an editorial about the social benefits of bar hopping.

Thanks a bunch, Mark.

Trumpeting findings by researchers in a study funded by the libertarian think tank Reason, Hyman announces that people who drink in public create greater social networks and end up making more money at their jobs as a result. (The study runs counter to a Harvard study that suggests “social capital” is linked with less drinking, not more.)

As a number of people have pointed out, there’s an inherent post hoc ergo prompter hoc fallacy going on here, in which it’s assumed that a correlation between public drinking and higher income is somehow causal. It could easily be that a third variable is causing both the increased drinking and the higher income (e.g., extrovert personality traits). Or, the causal relationship might be the other way around: people who make more money are more likely to hit bars and clubs.

Who knows?

More importantly, who cares?

I sympathize with the idea that tee-totaling is a somewhat overrated quality, but some of the suggestions of the study are dopey, such as that college campuses should rethink attitudes about curtailing drinking because it actually might help their students’ earning potential in the long run if they learn the wonders of “social networking” over a pint.

Yes, I’m sure Chad, Kyle, and the rest of the brethren of Tau Beta Alpha fraternity will be socially crippled if they aren’t encouraged to do body shots of Jagermeister off of tawny co-ed midriffs at Chugz ‘n’ Brewz.

Be that as it may, it’s more than a little ironic that a public figure so snugly in bed with cultural conservatives is talking up the benefits of tipping back a few. And given the very real problem of binge drinking (we just had a student die of alcohol poisoning at the university where I teach), I’d think that issues of statistical validity aside, there might be better ways to spend two minutes of public airtime.

What’s next? An editorial about how infamous whoremongers run a disproportionate number of media conglomerates?

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 3.26

Hyman Causes an Intellectual Flabbalanche

2006-10-02T10:55:00.000-04:00

In a recent editorial, Mark Hyman bemoans the efforts of “activists” to hold food companies responsible for the ill effects of their products on the national waistline.

Hyman sets up the issue in terms of a conflict between those who blame companies for America’s obesity and those who champion “personal responsibility.”

But that’s a classic example of a false dilemma. One can be all for personal accountability when it comes to food choices and still be for sensible regulations on the food industry, particularly those corporations (such as the fast food industry) that, like Big Tobacco, create products that harm their customers when that product is used as directed. (Morgan Spurlock, in his film Supersize Me, dramatically shows that if one ate at McDonald’s at each meal—exactly what the company would love for its customers to do—you can end up seriously ill in less than a month.)

In fact, it’s sometimes necessary to have regulations in order for customers to practice personal responsibility.

Hyman mocks the push for “requirements that all restaurant menus include nutritional information.” But how else are customers to make an informed decision unless they have the facts about the food in front of them? When we buy food at the store, the packaging has nutritional information on it. Why not at restaurants?

Again, Spurlock’s movie is a good example of the problem. Even at McDonald’s, which claims to have nutritional information available, it’s often difficult or impossible for customers to actually find it. Often, the employees themselves don’t even know where it is.

Demanding personal accountability but opposing giving individuals the tools they need to make informed decisions is hypocritical. Accountability is a two-way street.

Advocates of “personal responsibility” often bridle at the suggestion that we should hold corporations responsible as well. In Hyman’s case, I guess that’s not surprising. Sinclair has been serving up the journalistic version of fast food for several years now, increasing the intellectual flab of its audience.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.27

Hyman Celebrates Hatred

2006-09-29T11:06:00.000-04:00

In November of 2001, I was visiting a friend in England. After a day of sightseeing, I was walking from my hotel down to the street corner to call my then-girlfriend back in the States. I happened to end up falling into a conversation with a couple of women who were on their way out for the evening. After chatting a bit about the pleasures of tourism and the discomfort of high heels (theirs, not mine), they said, “We just want to tell you that we’re so sorry for what happened in America. We’re on your side.”

Tthis was a typical reaction most people in Europe, and around the world for that matter, had in the days, weeks, and months following the 9/11 attacks. Moments of silence were held around the world’s capitals. The French newspaper Le Monde said “We are all Americans now.” At Buckingham Palace, the Queen’s Guard played the "Star Spangled Banner. "

There were huge public displays of sympathy, including places where you might not expect it such as Tehran . . .

. . .and Palestine

What does this have to do with Mark Hyman? In a recent editorial titled “Hatred for America,” he quotes journalist Anne Applebaum’s recent column describing some Europeans as secretly pleased by the attacks because of their simmering contempt for what America has come to represent.

In fact, she doesn’t say what Hyman claims she does, that Europeans were pleased by the attacks. She says “some Britons” and “many Europeans.” That qualification becomes even more important when you understand that she is talking about politicians and journalists, not the people of Europe generally.

Citing newspaper articles and speeches by politicians that criticized America’s foreign policy goals as contributing to the attacks, Applebaum notes that there were some public voices who, even only days after 9/11, pointed out uncomfortable things about the U.S., and even showed some resentment that the U.S. acted as if terrorism had been invented on September 11, 2001, neglecting the fact that Europeans had lived with it for decades.

But Hyman takes this thesis (which, even in Applebaum’s more tentative wording, still overstates the case) and uses it to support the idea that Europeans in general hate America.

The idea of American exceptionalism is nothing new, but the deformed version of it that has emerged from the neo-con crowd in recent years *is*. Unlike any time in the past, foreign hatred of America is now lauded as some sort of sign of American strength and fortitude, to the point where folks like Hyman wildly exaggerate animosity felt towards the U.S. by claiming it’s always been at the levels we see today.

The reasoning behind this is easy enough to suss out. The growth of critical views of America coincides with the continuing militaristic foreign policy of the Bush administration and the disdain for our allies and the whole concept of an international community. By claiming we were always hated to the extent we are now, even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the neo-cons turn anti-Americanism into a sort of social pathology suffered by others for which we bear no responsibility.

More broadly, it supports the underlying philosophy that America’s status as the lone superpower gives it the right to do what it wants, when it wants—to shape the world to its will. If we’re already despised, what reason do we have to take anyone else’s opinions into consideration?

Once upon a time, American exceptionalism was based on the idea that America embodied freedom, democracy, and opportunity in a way no other nation on the globe did, that we served as an example that others wanted to emulate. We were the country that people around the world wanted to come to. While people risked their lives to leave their native countries, people were risking their lives to come to America.

Today, things have gotten so bad that we now have turned distrust and hostility toward us into proof of our rightness.

Hyman wants to let Bush off the hook for squandering the unique opportunity that existed after September 11 to unite the world in fighting terrorism, and to unite Americans in pushing for energy independence—something that would put an end to a foreign policy held hostage by a need for Mideast oil. But we shouldn’t. By cutting and running from the fight against al Qaeda and hijacking 9/11 to support an unrelated foreign policy goal in Iraq that had been lusted after by neo-cons long before that September morning, Bush not only squandered his presidency, but much more importantly, sacrificed a historic opportunity on the altar of arrogant self-assuredness.

If I could speak to those two women I talked to in Britain that night five years ago, I’d say, “I’m so sorry for what has happened in America in these last few years. I'm on your side.”

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 3.47

Taking Hyman to School

2006-09-25T17:20:00.000-04:00

It’s always fun when Mark Hyman is so transparently hypocritical in the way he argues.

His latest editorial on school vouchers is a marvelous case in point of Hyman's penchant for duplicity. Singing the praises of a study that claims school voucher programs decrease segregation in schools, Hyman says that the study “repudiates earlier studies from the anti-voucher group, the Public Policy Forum.”

But the Public Policy Forum is not “an anti-voucher group.” They’re a civic think tank in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that deals with a wide range of issues facing the metro area.

What’s more, they aren’t even necessarily anti-voucher. The organization has criticized aspects of the ongoing voucher program in Milwaukee as it is currently practiced, but it’s advocated changes in the system, not getting rid of it. In fact, it’s taken issue with both sides of the voucher debate.

That doesn’t mean their studies couldn’t be flawed, but to imply that their study is suspect because of an alleged zealotry on the issue of school vouchers is invalid.

But the more amazing part of the editorial is the fact Hyman attacks the PPF as an “anti-voucher” group, yet does so citing a study by the Friedman Foundation.

Hyman doesn’t say anything about the Friedman Foundation’s position on the issues, leaving the viewer to assume that unlike those extremists at the PPF, it’s a neutral party.

The reality is that the Friedman Foundation is as biased as a source could possibly be when it comes to the issue of school vouchers. It’s founder, conservative economist Milton Friedman, literally invented the concept of school vouchers fifty years ago. In fact, the foundation’s raison-d’etre is championing vouchers.

Again, this doesn’t mean that the Friedman Foundation’s study is wrong, but for Hyman to cast aspersions on the relatively neutral PPF because of their fictitious wild-eyed hatred of vouchers yet fail to mention that the Friedman Foundation does nothing but actively lobby for voucher programs is bald-faced dishonesty.

Of course, there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of voucher systems, among them:

· Vouchers won’t cover the expenses of sending a child to most private schools.

· Because of this, the claim that low-income families will suddenly be able to send their children to private schools is fictitious.

· Most people who could use vouchers to send kids to private schools can already afford to.

· Vouchers are simply a monetary incentive for relatively well-off parents to pull their children out of public schools and into private schools.

· Vouchers “enable” very few people to send their kids to private schools; they operate more as bribes.

· Ergo, voucher systems as currently practiced don’t “revolutionize” education or offer much in the way of increased choice; they simply encourage more people to opt out of the public school system.

· Vouchers amount to a tax giveaway for well-to-do people.

· The money for vouchers must come from somewhere. Proponents claim it won’t be taken from public education, but if not, it must come through higher taxes or cuts in other services.

· School choice doesn’t equal vouchers. Increased choice in public schools is a good idea, but vouchers to send kids to private schools amounts to abandoning the principle of public education. It declares victory over the educational challenges we face by ignoring them.

· Since the vast majority of the private schools that would receive voucher money are affiliated with churches, voucher systems as currently practiced amount to an unconstitutional government support of religion.

Look, if Milton Friedman or any other proponent of the voucher system for private schools wants to put forward a program in which the government ponies up enough money so that a kid from South Central or the Bronx can go to Hawthorne Hills Preparatory Academy and Institute of Polo Studies and share stock tips with Little Lord Fauntleroy whilst punting on the campus’s waterway, we’ll talk.

Until then, let’s not strip mine the few resources we have in public education and use them as door prizes at the Let’s Abolish the Department of Education mixer.

And even if you *are* in favor of that, let’s at least be honest about the pedigree of our statistics, shall we? (I’m talking to you, Mark.)

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 6.97

Ignorance Levels Continue to Rise In Hyman's Head

2006-09-22T10:53:00.000-04:00

It would be nice if Mark Hyman bothered to learn even the most basic facts about the topics he discusses in his editorials.

But until he actually bothers to do a minute’s worth of research on a subject, you can’t even debate the guy.

Take a look at Hyman’s latest “Point” for an example. He’s trying hard to come up with an argument that mocks Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” and the scientific conclusions it shares with its audience.

In an editorial segment that apparently doubles as his audition tape for a slot at the Chuckle Hut Comedy Club, Hyman points out that astronomers have discovered that Mars is going through a planet-wide rise in temperature, part of a periodic fluctuation in the Martian global climate.

Mark “Slappy” Hyman jokes that Al Gore would probably blame this on “his source of all that is evil—Americans":

He will blame the Martian global warming on Ohio housewives using
hairspray, North Carolinians mowing their lawns too often and that one Illinois
house builder driving a pick-up truck instead of loading his tools into the back
of a 2-seater Honda hybrid.

He also makes the assertion that “Gore won't be able to accept the inconvenient truth that Earth's ozone layer is getting better.”

Here’s the thing, Mark: not only are you mocking scientific findings about the sudden rise in the Earth’s temperature that no single peer reviewed study has contradicted (925 studies have confirmed global warming, 0 have contradicted it) , but you display a complete lack of familiarity with the position you attack.

How do I know this? In his film, Al Gore *does* talk about the ozone layer getting better. Far from not accepting it, he holds it up as proof of what we can do to reverse global environmental issues. Thanks to regulations on emissions of the chemicals that weakened the ozone layer, the ozone layer *is* getting better.

To quote the film itself, Gore says, "We can turn [global warming] around just as we reversed the hole in the ozone layer. But it takes action right now, and politicians in every nation must have the courage to do what is necessary. It is not a political issue. It is a moral issue."

The depletion of the ozone layer and global warming are separate phenomena, Mark. That’s something you would know if you had bothered to see the film that you are attacking.

Which raises the question: why should anyone take a word out of your mouth seriously when you haven’t even bothered to educate yourself on the most elementary aspects of the issue, let alone actually watch the film you are critiquing?

Roger Ebert said of “An Inconvenient Truth”:

In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they
are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have
grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.

You, Mark, have a much heavier weight on your shoulders. You’ll have to explain to your grandchildren not only why you didn’t see the film, but why you decided to attack the established facts it presents without even bothering to learn anything about the topic. (Maybe you could at least do them the favor of telling them not to move to Florida, a large chunk of which will be flooded if global warming isn’t reversed soon.)

And as for your attempt at humor, don’t quit your day job.

Well . . . on second thought, perhaps you should.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.48

Hyman Defends Treason

2006-09-21T21:22:00.000-04:00

In his recent commentary on Valerie Plame, Mark Hyman claims that using the internet, it took him “literally . . . less than three minutes to learn Plame was [Joseph] Wilson’s wife.”

It took me literally less than three minutes on the internet to learn that Hyman’s full of it.

The upshot of Hyman’s editorial is that it doesn’t really matter if Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA agent, since:

Plame's inept and clumsy actions most certainly spotlighted her as a CIA
employee. Consequently, any foreign agents she met with were likely
double-agents feeding her bogus intelligence.

Well, at least Hyman admits that Plame *was* an undercover agent, which some on the right still deny. But that’s about the only thing he gets right.

Hyman says he easily found out that Plame was Wilson’s wife. But that’s not the point. That Wilson had a wife named Valerie Plame was public knowledge. That she was an undercover CIA agent wasn’t.

Hyman says that Plame listed her mailing address as the U.S. Embassy in Greece in 1991, "a red flag that would immediately identify her as a CIA employee instead of a commercial contractor.”

But Plame wasn’t undercover as a commercial contractor at that time. She was an embassy employee. The private firm that served as her cover didn’t even exist on paper until several years later. Hyman simply doesn’t bother to do his homework here.

Hyman says that Plame’s cover with the firm of Brewster-Jennings was implausible since the company only claimed revenues of $60,000. Any foreign government surely knew instantly that she was CIA.

First of all, Plame didn’t conjure up the company; the CIA had been using it for years. So suggesting that Plame somehow made a professional blunder in creating a faulty cover is nonsense. The CIA created it, and it knew what it was doing. The firm was a consulting company that only had a couple of people on its “payroll” and had limited office space. It was designed to appear as a very small (i.e., unobtrusive and hard to track) company.

But let’s say Plame was the “Inspector Clouseau” that Hyman mocks her as. Obviously, such a nincompoop wouldn’t be tapped to head up intelligence efforts on something as important as Saddam Hussein’s alleged WMD’s, right? Not by our steadfast wartime president and his stalwart band of evildoer-fighters!

Well, actually yes, as it turns out. In a new book by David Corn and Michael Isikoff, we learn that Plame was in charge of operations for the Joint Task Force on Iraq, the intelligence group tasked with coming up with the goods on Hussein’s alleged WMD program. Unfortunately, their work was interrupted by the invasion of Iraq.

So Hyman spends his commentary running down the reputation of a CIA operative who had been picked to help the administration make its case for war (and as we’ve seen, he does so using bogus charges).

If Plame was so obviously inept, what does that say about those that chose her?

It’s a moot question, because Plame was obviously a well-qualified and well-practiced agent, which makes it all the more atrocious that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby would leak her identity to the press (which they unarguably did; that Richard Armitage did so as well is immaterial) and lie about doing so afterward.

As a result of the Plame leak, not only did the U.S. lose an important asset in fighting terrorism, but it undercut and endangered many others. Once her cover was exposed, any other agent who had used Brewster-Jennings as a cover were compromised. Foreign governments could go back and track the activities of agents for the past ten years, now knowing that anyone they had records for that named that company as an employer were in fact agents. Agents, their covers, and the tactics of American intelligence were all compromised.

And for what? So that the administration could punish a man who dared state facts that contradicted the administration’s carefully orchestrated storyline. So that Bush and the neo-cons could have their war.

People are put in jail for life for compromising U.S. security in pursuit of their personal political agendas (Aldrich Ames, anybody?).

Yet Hyman, a man who has no hesitation accusing anyone who disagrees with the policy that has ended up killing 2600 servicemen and women of “hating the troops” not only defends those who endangered the U.S. in pursuit of their own agendas, but mocks the very idea that the issue is worth discussing by saying that it doesn’t really matter whether it happened or not.

But most Americans don’t find any triviality in treason.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.67

Hyman's Dark Obsession (It Ain't With the Truth)

2006-09-20T11:20:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman’s preoccupation with Joseph Wilson is fascinating, if for no other reason than it simply brings up the broader bottom line issue of the lack of WMDs in Iraq. Yet, he’s so personally fascinated by Wilson that he can’t leave the topic alone.

In his recent editorial on the topic, Hyman elides a number of facts and says some demonstrably false things (no surprise there). Here is a brief rundown of the lies and distortions in his latest attack on Joe Wilson, with the relevant facts included afterward.

Valerie Plame sent her husband to Niger.

Baloney. Even die-hard administration apologists don’t claim this. They simply say that Plame recommended him for the job. She lacked any authority to send him. Nor is it ever stated why it would be relevant if she *had* been the one to send him. It’s a bit of rhetorical misdirection intended to suggest skullduggery without actually showing any.

Wilson wasn’t qualified to look into the Niger allegations.

False. In fact, there was almost no one who could have been more qualified. Wilson had served extensively (and heroically) in Iraq, receiving lavish praise from President George H.W. Bush. He later went on to serve extensively in Africa. How many high ranking government officials could claim such extensive knowledge with both Iraq and Africa? Not many. Hyman tries to be cute by saying Wilson hadn’t physically been to Niger in 30 years; this ignores his longstanding familiarity with African affairs and his extensive contacts in the region.

Wilson “drank sweet tea” while in Niger.

This is a line quoted from Wilson’s own original op-ed piece about his trip that folks like Hyman like to take out of context to suggest that he didn’t do anything. Let’s look at the quotation in context:

“I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of
people: current government officials, former government officials, people
associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude
that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.”

In other words, Wilson’s extensive contacts allowed him to meet with key people in a variety of capacities, and these meetings suggested Iraq hadn’t tried to purchase uranium.

Plame wasn’t targeted by the administration because of what her husband said.

Hyman repeats, in a vaguely worded way, the new neo-con talking point that because Richard Armitage was one of the sources Robert Novak’s column revealing Plame’s identity as a CIA operative, that must mean Cheney, Rove, and Libby were not involved.

That, of course, is nonsense. Libby is under indictment for his role in the matter. We have Cheney’s handwritten notes on his copy of Wilson’s original op-ed asking to find out about Wilson’s background. We know that Rove *did* serve as a source corroborating Plame’s identity.

Outing Plame was not big deal.

Only if you think treason is no big deal. Without saying so specifically, Hyman’s comments imply that the revelation of Plame’s identity wasn’t that important. But Plame was an under cover operative who happened to be working on the issue of Iran’s attempts to obtain WMDs. What could be more important?

Wilson’s claims have been debunked.

On the contrary, it’s acknowledged that the documents alleged to have shows Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger were forgeries. Not only that, but most in the American intelligence community suspected them long before Bush cited them in his State of the Union address.

Hyman lamely suggests “[Wilson’s] argument that the uranium purchase was untrue was debunked by the British government -- the source of the original intelligence.”

No it hasn’t. Notice that Hyman’s statement suggests that we now have proof that Iraq *did* make a uranium purchase. Again, he is going even further than the staunchest Bush apologists go.

Hyman is apparently referring to the Butler Report, the result of a British investigation that said that despite the fact that the documents suggesting the uranium sale were suspect, there was “good reason” to believe that Iraq had pursued such a purchase.

So even if we accept the Butler Report, all it says is that there were reasons to think Iraq might have tried to make such a purchase, not that it did make it. But more importantly, the Butler Report offers no evidence to back up this claim. In fact, American intelligence has largely discounted that any such purchase was attempted by Iraq at all.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to what then-White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer said:

Now, we've long acknowledged -- and this is old news, we've said this
repeatedly -- that the information on yellow cake did, indeed, turn out to be
incorrect.

Or Condi Rice, for that matter:

What we've said subsequently is, knowing what we now know, that some
of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the
President's speech -- but that's knowing what we know now.

Bottom line: There were no WMDs or active WMD programs in Iraq.

All of the Wilson bashing ignores the obvious and embarrassing truth that even the president himself has acknowledged: Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction, nor did it have any active programs to create them. In particular, there was no reconstitution of any nuclear weapon program after the first Gulf War.

This is the gorilla in the room that the neo-con crowd like to ignore. Wilson was right. There was no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, let alone evidence of them actively pursuing nuclear materials from Africa. American intelligence knew this, yet the Bush administration pieced together shreds of shaky, if not utterly false, evidence and sent poor Colin Powell to the U.N., where he performed an act of career self-immolation by pitching the case to the world.

Since then, more than 2,600 Americans have died in Iraq, and ten times that number have been maimed in both body and mind. And for what? We were told we had to send them to Iraq to quash the threat of a possible nuclear attack on us by Saddam Hussein, an attack we had no reason to think would ever come, as it turns out.

Yet rather than be incensed at the colossal mistakes made by a president who promised to be humble in his foreign policy and had criticized the idea of “nation building,” neo-cons and die hard Bush supporters have abandoned all classically conservative principles, including supporting our military, in favor of showing fealty to a president who abandoned any sense of personal responsibility to the truth or to the troops long, long ago.

And for that matter, so has Hyman.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.94

A Change Is Coming (If We Vote)

2006-09-19T13:56:00.000-04:00

We agree with Mark Hyman in his latest commentary that Senate bill 2590, which would make the budgeting process more transparent. This is a move that’s received widespread bipartisan support both within Congress and among political activists.

It’s too bad that Hyman can’t be bipartisan himself. He notes that the bill is sponsored by Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn. True, but it’s co-sponsored by Barak Obama, Democrat from Illinois. Of course, it’s against Hyman’s religion to mention a Democrat in a positive context.

More problematic is the idea lurking beneath the surface. Hyman attacks Alaska Republican Ted Stevens for putting a secret hold on this legislation. He’s got a good point. Actually, Democrat Robert Byrd also held up the legislation as well, and both he and Stevens should be criticized for it.

But by isolating one member of one of the houses of Congress and pointing to his passive resistance to one bill ignores the larger, more systematic issue facing us: the corruption running through Congress as a whole, primarily (but not solely) among Republicans.

Rhetorically, it serves Hyman’s purposes to scapegoat one Republican as a poster boy for the decade of quid pro quo arrangements and cozy lobbyist/politician relationships that have typified the GOP reign in Congress. It lets the Republicans as a group off the hook.

You’ll notice that when Hyman complains about Congress, he either derides the body as a whole, or isolates one or two figures (as he does in this commentary). But this ignores a whole set of problems that stem from the stranglehold of the GOP on Congress.

As we’ve noted here a number of times, the amount of pork barrel earmarks has exploded during the GOP control of Congress. Unless you think this is mere coincidence, it’s time for voters to realize that you can’t solve the problem by saying “a pox on both your houses” or tarring and feathering one or two particularly atrocious players.

You have to make a real change, which is precisely what Hyman will not call for.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 3.45

Racism by Proxy

2006-09-18T11:30:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman’s latest mailbag segment is notable simply because it provides an ugly example of how he uses the words of viewers to say things that are so objectionable that he lacks the guts to say them himself.

He reads from two letters concerning his commentary on Katrina (in which he blamed state and local governments for the disastrous response, ignoring the fact that the Bush administration had gutted FEMA and put an incompetent buddy of Bush’s in charge of it).

One letter simply reiterates Hyman’s attack on the state government of Louisiana.

The other is far worse.

Jeff in San Antonio emailed, "I wish you could have commented on the spike in
crime in [the] cities that took in the 'refugees' from New Orleans. Some,
although a small percentage [sic] of the 'animals' from New Orleans resumed
their ritual of robbery, drug dealing, even murders in our Texas cities once
they arrived here. Even upstanding New Orleans residents have commented, 'we
don't want them back.' Well, Texas took them in, and has paid dearly for it. San
Antonio witnessed the animals burglarizing the vehicles of the very people
([the] volunteers) who were trying to help them at the shelters."

So not only do we have refugees being accused of bringing crime waves to the places they went to, but they get called “animals” not once, but twice. Given that a large percentage of the refugees were African American, this cannot help but carry racist connotations.

Hyman might defend “Jeff” (and himself) by saying that they’re only referring to the “animals” that actually committed crimes. It’s the behavior, not the people, who are being labeled.

But it turns out that our pal Jeff is trading in an urban myth that has no facts to back it up. As urban legends debunking site Snopes.com explains, there have been a variety of rumors circulating about how Katrina refugees have brought crime waves to towns where they sought shelter. But there’s little or no evidence that any of these charges are true. Snopes notes that this myth is a way of packaging xenophobia and racism in more acceptable sentiments, such as concern for one’s own community.

Yet Hyman, even with the journalistic juggernaut that is Sinclair Broadcasting at his disposal, couldn’t be bothered to see if the racist rantings of his fans were actually true. Instead, he simply repeated them without comment, tacitly condoning rhetoric that is not only hateful, but factually wrong.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Flip Flops

2006-09-15T12:37:00.000-04:00

I often wonder whether Mark Hyman is a man of bad principles, or a man of no principles.

This question emerges again in his most recent editorial in which we get yet another book recommendation from the H-man.

This time around, Hyman is endorsing The Politics of Abortion by Anne Hendershott, a professor at the University of San Diego. Claiming that it’s valuable reading for anyone, “no matter where you come down on the subject of abortion.”

He then goes on to sum up some of Hendershott’s main contentions, including her claim that the Democrats have become the party of “abortion on demand,” that prominent Democratic politicians have conveniently switched to pro-choice positions for political reasons, that Planned Parenthood “targets” minority women for abortion, and that the organization's founder, Margaret Sanger, was a racist.

If it seems to you that this is a less than the evenhanded historical treatment of the issue Hyman claims it is, you’re probably right. It turns out Hendershott is a darling of the far right, despite being an academic (apparently she must have slipped through the cracks of the liberal stranglehold on academia that Hyman claims exists).

She wrote a scurrilous anti-Kerry harangue for the National Review, clumsily juxtaposing Kerry with “Hanoi Jane” Fonda (one would have hoped an academic would be a bit more subtle in using the guilt by association fallacy). She wrote an op-ed piece for her hometown paper championing the now-discredited notion that “values” issues turned the 2004 election (as if Iraq, stem cell research, health care, etc. didn’t involve values).

Her previous book, The Politics of Deviance, tried to make the case that, among other things, we’ve just become far too accepting of gay people (which she seems to equate with pedophilia) and don’t shun mentally ill people enough.

A review in Washington Monthly said this about the book:

Calling for a "willingness to discuss behavior such as homosexuality, teenage
promiscuity, adultery and addiction," Hendershott writes that we should "adopt
standards of conduct that derive from reason and common sense." Alas, this is
pretty much the last evidence of either. The rest of The Politics of Deviance
merely apes the blundering, shoddy polemics that dominate the bestseller lists
today, from the paranoid rants of Ann Coulter and Bernard Goldberg on the right,
to the lame hyperbole of Michael Moore on the left. Between them, these
straw-man-battering tomes prove that the culture war has been fought to an odd
stalemate

The whole scathing review can be found here.

So although I haven’t read the book (and couldn’t find an actual review of it from a neutral source), I feel comfortable saying caveat emptor.

Even the claims Hyman summarizes from her current book are studiously ignorant of some important context. Have Democratic politicians changed their position on abortion? Sure. But so have Republicans including Jim Nussle, Mitt Romney, and the President of the United States, all of whom have changed their position on abortion when seeking higher office.

Are Planned Parenthood clinics predominantly in inner-city, poor, minority neighborhoods? Yes. That’s because the people who live there are the people who most need the free clinics for comprehensive women’s and reproductive health that the organization provides. Suburbanites go to their insurance-covered gynecologists.

Did Margaret Sanger have racist views? Definitely, but what does that have to do with the abortion issue today? Most of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, but I doubt Hyman (or Hendershott, for that matter) would say this means the country and government they created are systematically evil. In fact, they would almost certainly be appalled at anyone who suggested such a thing.

All of this is to simply point out the obvious: Hyman is trying to sell his audience yet another far-right screed by peddling it as disinterested research.

The more interesting issue is why he might be doing this.

Is Hyman himself, as one would suspect, avidly pro-life himself? Is he simply fighting the good fight by helping sales of a book that shares his deeply held convictions?

Gosh, I wish we could ask him.

Oh wait! Somebody already has!

Thanks to this interview Hyman did a couple of years ago, we know that Hyman, although Roman Catholic, is pro-choice:

“I really do believe in this issue, I believe in a woman’s right to choose.”

Not only that, but he claims not to see much point in discussing the issue of abortion on his commentaries, since “I don’t think there’s people whose minds are un-made-up or anything, or whose views are going to be changed.”

He also seems to disagree with the view held by some on the pro-life side that our society has created an atmosphere where abortion is seen as no big deal:

“I think that the caricature of that we’re very cavalier about getting abortion
today, I think that’s probably a pretty small percentage of the people.”

So why would Hyman sell out his views to peddle a book that takes a hard pro-life position and that attacks those on the other side of the issue as opportunists at best and practitioners of genocide at worst?

Might it be that Hyman’s comments are politically motivated? Might he be trying to fire up the conservative base by throwing them some red meat in the run-up to a midterm election that could be disastrous if the GOP base doesn’t get active?

Might it be that Hyman is a flip-flopper?

You can answer that one for yourself. As for me, I did find one statement Hyman made in the interview that I concur with wholeheartedly:

[Abortion has] been dissected and discussed so many times, I don’t think I have
any value added to it [sic].

Amen.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.76

Throw 'Em Out

2006-09-14T22:55:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman’s latest “Point” amounts to a two-minute unpaid for commercial for the Republican National Committee. Okay, I suppose that could be said for most of Hyman’s editorials, but this particular example is especially bold.

Saying that “some pundits” are predicting the Democrats will win the House of Representatives and “come close” in the Senate.

Hyman proceeds to use scare tactics to suggest what wold happen if Democrats took over the chairs of some important House committees.

It doesn’t matter that his prognostications are based on zero evidence. Simply making the assertion is damaging enough.

For example, we’re told to “Imagine Charlie Rangel as Ways and Means chair, raising taxes on the middle class.” Yes, let’s imagine that, since there’s no evidence that this would happen.

California Henry Waxman, who could become chair of the Government Reform committee, “wants one big government-run Hillarycare-type HMO in charge of all medical programs.” Yikes—that would be scary! Every citizen of the wealthiest country in the history of the world actually having access to healthcare; decisions on treatment being made by doctors rather than accountants! Oh, the humanity!

The “extreme” John Conyers would, as chair of the Judiciary Committee, make our courts “even worse.”

Barney Frank would likely chair the Financial Services Committee. Oddly enough, Hyman doesn’t say why that would be bad. You don’t suppose he’s insinuating that simply having an openly gay man running a committee would be a horror, do you?

But all this raises the question: what’s so great about the current heads of these committees?

Let’s look at the rogue’s gallery of GOP chairs and see what we’d be in danger of losing if the Democrats prevail in November.

On the Ways and Means Committee, we currently enjoying the chairmanship of Rep. Bill Thomas, a man who called in Capitol Police to oust Democrats from a meeting after they had the gall to object to Thomas trying to ram a bill through without giving them a chance to read it fully. Thomas later was forced to apologize, not because he or the GOP thought he was wrong, but because it was a public relations nightmare.

As for raising taxes, Thomas voted to extend the Bush tax cuts that have shifted the tax burden to the middle class. He also voted in favor of creating special ethics rules (actually, unethical rules is a better name) to help protect disgraced House leader Tom DeLay.
On the Government Reform Committee, we’ve got Rep. Tom Davis, a man who apparently abused his chairmanship in order to get his wife a sweetheart consulting gig with a firm run by one of Davis’s best friends. Nice work, if you can get it.

He’s also has ties to disgraced GOP lobbyist and convict Jack Abramoff.

What about the Judiciary Committee? There, we’ve got Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the man who infamously voted against aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina (he was only one of 11 in the House to vote that way). He later rubbed salt in the wounds by tabling a measure that would have helped protect those who were devastated financially by the hurricane from recently passed bankruptcy laws.

He also famously threw a hissyfit when he didn’t like what Democrats were saying at a public hearing and turned off their microphones and stomped out of the room.

Yes, we certainly wouldn’t want to get rid of this bunch of ethically-challenged, self-interested, misanthropic ne’er-do-wells, would we?

And, as you likely know, this is just scratching the surface. Republican control of the House over the last ten years has seen mounting corruption, in addition to bad policy. In an ongoing effort to assert one-party control over the lives of all Americans, the GOP House membership abandoned their empty claims of “cleaning up Congress” they cynically spouted in 1994.

Things have come to a head in the last couple of years, most notably with the revelation of widespread taking of money from the corrupt Abramoff.

Oh, and don’t forget that this current do-nothing Congress has abandoned its Constitutionally mandated duties to provide a check on the executive branch. While intelligence has been spun, war profiteering has gone on, and intelligence agencies have spied on Americans, the Congress has sat idly by.

That’s a bad thing. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to this current member of Congress:

Republican Congresses tend to overinvestigate Democratic administrations and
underinvestigate their own . . . I get concerned we lose our separation of
powers when one party controls both branches.

Who said that? Ted Kennedy? Nancy Pelosi?

Nope. It was Tom Davis, current chair of the Government Reform Committee (desperately trying to distance himself and his GOP mates on the Hill from the Incredibly Shrinking President).

Let’s give the man some help and do some voter-based government reform in November.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.21

Updates

2006-09-13T20:55:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to let you know that we've got a brand new "Worst of Hyman" poll featuring four particularly noxious "Points" from the last month. Vote Chicago style: early and often.

In a couple of weeks, I'll send a note with the results out to Hyman and Sinclair Broadcasting. Regular readers will have already noticed a few changes in the blog roll. In particular, you'll want to take a look at "Le Blog Berube" and "Bitch Ph.D" (the latter is worth a click just for the priceless photo on the page's banner). Both are intelligent, witty, and insightful blogs with an academic twist (in a good way!).

I've also been adding some links to Sinclair-related articles. If you haven't seen them yet, the Rolling Stone and the GQ pieces are must-reads. If you know of particularly good Sinclair/Hyman related pieces that should be included, please let me know.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

ciao,

tjr

New Frontiers in Moral Bankruptcy

2006-09-13T16:55:00.000-04:00

The list of things that separates the United States from countries we traditionally consider to be human-rights challenged has dwindled in recent years.

We don’t start wars unilaterally: gone.

We don’t invade countries and force them to change governments: gone.

We don’t torture people: gone.

We don’t hold people in secret prisons: gone.

We allow people accused of crimes access to lawyers and due process: gone

We don’t spy on our own citizens: gone.

Yes, to be honest, some of these hard and fast rules were bent or even broken in the B.W. era (Before Dubya), but usually there was at least an attempt to do so secretly or portray these violations as not true attacks on principles of decency we all recognize.

In short, there was a sense of shame.

No longer. Not only are these parts of our national code of honor routinely broken, but they are done out in the open with utter disdain for the principles themselves. Far from feeling the need to defend or cover up their actions, the Bush administration does not hesitate in attacking those who dare support these long-accepted ideas about the proper conduct of our nation.

I was reminded of this by Hyman’s recent editorial about prisoner’s donating organs.

Hyman poses the question: should prisoners be allowed to donate organs if they want to?

He cites Dr. Mark Fox, ethics chairman for the United Network for Organ Sharing, as saying that being incarcerated means any decision to donate an organ cannot be said to be truly “free,” an ethical requirement for donation.

Hyman doesn’t argue the point. Instead, he throws it open to the audience, asking for viewer response to the question. It’s not clear why; Hyman himself notes that he conducted a similar viewer poll last year and got an overwhelming response in favor of penal transplants (oh, get your mind out of the gutter!).

I don’t have a particularly strong point of view on the topic, although I’m inclined to believe Dr. Fox, who is motivated both by a desire to foster organ donation and to abide by medical ethics, is someone whose opinion should be honored.

What bothers me, however, is the way Hyman closes his editorial:

Once again, I would like to hear from you. Is it wrong for an
inmate to donate an organ? What about death row inmates? Are they capable of
making an informed decision? If they aren't, does it matter?

Does it matter? The fact that Hyman could ask such a question is chilling enough. My sense is that if Hyman had his way, we’d cross yet another ethical boundary as a nation and openly harvest human organs from condemned prisoners.

Of course, given the fact that we systematically poison or cook the entire body of an executed criminal (as opposed to the far simpler bullet to the brainpan used by the Chinese, who then can harvest organs from the still-warm corpse), donation would have to occur *before* execution.

But before we get too horrified at the ghoulishness of extracting kidneys, bone marrow, corneas, etc. from prisoners who might or might not be willing and able to consent, we should ask ourselves this question:

Haven’t the systematic violations of our national honor that have already taken place under the current administration made the idea of harvesting organs seem like a petty, inconsequential issue by comparison?

I’m just wondering.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 1.42

A True Counter "Point"

2006-09-12T14:08:00.000-04:00

After yesterday’s lengthy close reading of Hyman’s editorial, we turn today to something a bit more concise: a parallel “Point.”

To enjoy it, you should stop by the Newscentral.tv website and read the original. Once again, Hyman gives us a commentary based on the unquestioned but faulty premise that somehow the current war in Iraq has anything to do with the “war on Islamic facism” and 9/11.

There are more straw man arguments (“They seem to believe that if we ignore the evil in the world that it will somehow pass us by”). There are more equations of supporting the president with supporting the troops (“Unfortunately, the widespread support our troops once enjoyed has evaporated”). And there are more ad hominem attacks that equate disagreement with the current war with moral degeneracy (“Those people have dishonored the victims of terror by urging our retreat from the front line on the war against Islamic fascism”).

But you can see for yourself. Below, you’ll see a parallel/parody of Hyman’s comments that I think is far more accurate than the original.

It was five years ago that America received a wake-up call. We were reminded that despite our differences, we can be a truly United States of America. We forgot about impeachment hearings, questionable elections, and tax brackets.

On that September morning, men and women became performed acts of heroism. Those acts of heroism continue as our servicemen and women fight overseas, as the wounded and maimed bravely try to put their shattered lives back together again, and those who have lost loved ones find ways to cope with heartbreak.

Unfortunately, the president squandered the widespread support he had, destroying that sense of unity we shared on 9/12. The president forgot about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He lost his resolve. Others in his administration urged us to abandon our allies and start a war that only they wanted to fight. They seemed to believe that it was okay to ignore the evil that was committed on 9/11 and simply use it as a way of selling an unrelated and counterproductive war. The president and his administration have dishonored the victims of terror by urging us to ignore the criminals responsible for these deaths and focus instead on fighting a war that they had wanted long before 9/11.

Fortunately, there are still those who can withstand the charges of “not supporting the toops,” “helping the terrorists,” or being “appeasers” that are used as smears by the pro-war crowd against people they don’t like, even when they are mothers of veterans, or veterans themselves. They understand, just as many military leaders in the Pentagon did in the lead up to the invasion that the civilians in the White House have abandoned the war against the terrorists in order to launch a war of choice against a country that didn’t threaten our security.

It is too late for the president to renew his commitment to be a uniter rather than a divider, as he promised he would during the 2000 campaign. He will leave behind a legacy of a fractured country, broken alliances, global hatred of America, more terrorists, false promises, political vindictiveness, tattered national honor, lost values, and thousands upon thousands upon thousands of pointless deaths.

Thank you for reading.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 6.06

Pushing the Envelope of the Hyman Index

2006-09-11T19:18:00.000-04:00

My apologies for what might seem like a tedious post, but Hyman’s recent rant on the moral necessity of staying the course in Iraq was so full of fallacies/propagandistic appeals that I couldn’t resist taking it apart, weasel by weasel.

Below, find the full text of Hyman’s editorial, complete with footnotes to explanations of what particular fallacy Hyman is committing and how he’s using it.

When it comes to the cut, run and hide crowd, [1] these are
some of their arguments on why America should surrender in Iraq. [2]

What does it accomplish for us? Let them deal with it. It's happening
over there. The financial cost is more than we want to spend. The cost in
American lives isn't worth it. It's not our problem. [3]

Now replace Iraq with World War I. World War II. [4] Or how
about cancer, heart disease, AIDS?[ 5] What about child
neglect, sexual abuse, homelessness or poverty? [6] What does that
say about us, as a nation, if every time we faced challenges and sacrifices that
we just give up? [7l]

As a Superpower we have certain responsibilities. [8] We
cannot solve all of the world's problems, but maybe we can make a difference
with some. [9]

The isolationist viewpoint [10] that we should ignore the global
war on terror until it's right on our doorstep [11] is naïve [12] . It didn't work in the first two world wars. [13] And this
is simply the latest world war [14] -- one against Islamic
fascism. [15]

It's sad that a nation that was known for assisting the rest of the world
in the last century would abandon 27 million peace-loving Iraqis [16] because
we've lost our nerve [17] in the war on terror and we don't care about the
plight of others [18].

1. Classic name calling, here. In addition to using meaningless and inaccurate labels (“cut and run”), Hyman’s use of the word “crowd” in this context is meant to suggest a group that’s on the margins or somehow distinctive from the mainstream. Of course, polls now show that most Americans disapprove of the war and favor some positive action to reducing our presence in Iraq.

2. This is essentially the “straw man” fallacy, with overtones of emotional appeal and false dilemma. No one advocates “surrender” in Iraq. Even if one did, exactly who would we “surrender” to? Hyman avoids the need to formulate a reasonable argument by suggesting anyone who thinks drawing down troop numbers, redeploying, setting a target date for withdrawal, etc., are for “surrender.”

3. Multiple straw men in this paragraph. Hyman both simplifies the arguments on the other side, and words them in a way that suggests narrow self-interest and a lack of empathy for Iraqis. In fact, the U.S. invasion has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, lower oil production than before the war, possibly permanent damage to Iraq’s oil fields, and a devastated infrastructure that the U.S. has failed to rebuild, resulting in misery (and hostility) among Iraqis.

4. False analogies. By comparing Iraq to the two world wars, Hyman attempts to suggest anyone who disagrees with the Bush position on the war is the equivalent of those who were against efforts that are now seen as noble and worthy. This fallacy attempts to erase important differences in the things being compared (in this case, for example, the fact that these were actual *wars* involving nation states, that the U.S. was begged to join those wars by their allies, that the U.S. didn’t enter the wars until its interests were directly attacked, etc.).

5. More false analogies. We chose to invade Iraq. We don’t have a choice about facing diseases.

6. Yet more false analogies. Like the rest, these analogies obscure the fact that the decision to invade Iraq was in fact a decision. Iraq was not a problem immediately affecting the well being of U.S. citizens. It’s also an unintentionally humorous moment, since the Bush administration has done virtually nothing to fight the “war on homelessness” or “war on poverty.” These are both far more relevant problems to Americans than Iraq, yet they’ve received scant attention.

7. Emotional appeal. The idea is to suggest that Iraq, like the war against Hitler, the fight against cancer, or efforts to combat poverty is a noble struggle that will pay important and lasting dividends if we’re just willing to stay the course. By invoking a sense of national pride being at stake, Hyman obscures the fact that some struggles are started for bad reasons, carried out poorly, and might be counterproductive. Continuing a difficult struggle is not in and of itself noble. Depending on the struggle, it might be far nobler to give it up.

8. Emotional appeal, specifically an appeal to national pride. It’s mixed with a generality, “certain responsibilities,” that is undefined.

9. Here’s an example of an appeal to moderation. Hyman sets up the point to make it seem as if continuing to fight a war in Iraq is a reasonable position, between the extremes of trying to “solve all the world’s problems” and “isolation.” This is a fallacy for two reasons. First, a “middle of the road” solution is not always a good one, and second, it assumes that Iraq was a world problem that could and should be solved through unilateral military action.

10. More name calling, again harkening back to World War II. In fact, very few opponents of the Iraq war (with the exception of some old-fashioned conservatives like Pat Buchanan) are isolationist. Most are actually very much in favor of involving the U.S. in world affairs (even to the point where they favor cooperation with allies and negotiation with foes).

11. Another straw man. No one has said we should ignore terrorism. In fact, the position that Hyman describes is a far more accurate description of the Bush administration’s attitude on September 10, 2001.

12. Name calling again. The word “naïve” suggests that the opposing side’s arguments aren’t even worthy of being rebutted, since they are so simplistic that they show no understanding of the issue. It’s a term used to dismiss an argument rather than face it. It’s also irrelevant in this case since, as we have seen, it’s being applied to a largely non-existent group (those who think we can ignore terrorism).

13. A repeat of the previous false analogy comparing Iraq to the world wars.

14. An extension of the same false analogy, with a hint of an appeal to emotion (in this case, fear) by suggesting that the war we are engaged in is on the same scale and presents the same risks as the global wars of the 20th century, while providing no evidence that this comparison is valid.

15. Emotional appeal to fear. “Islamic fascism” is, as many have noted, a meaningless and inaccurate term. It is used again to compare a current enemy to enemies of the past that are acknowledged to have been threats to our existence.

16. An appeal to pity, suggesting that to be against continued war in Iraq is to be against helping the suffering Iraqi people. This fallacy obscures the fact that much of the suffering of Iraqis is the result of the invasion and non-existent reconstruction. It also ignores the fact that a great many Iraqis want us out of their country.

17. Emotional appeal, again to national pride. It suggests that to be for any course of action other than the one Hyman champions is to show a loss of “nerve.”

18. A repeat of the appeal to pity.

In addition to all of these specific moves, you’ve got overarching fallacies that the piece as a whole commits. Notice, for example, that Hyman’s entire commentary is a case of “begging the question.” It is the morally correct choice to continue the war in Iraq, Hyman argues, because it’s the morally correct choice to continue the war in Iraq.

There’s also the fallacy of shifting the burden of truth. Rather than make a positive argument for why Americans should continue to fight and die in a conflict in which both “the enemy” and “victory” are terms that are hazy at best and undefinable at worst, Hyman topspins the argument back into his opponents’ court, suggesting they must prove why we *shouldn’t* continue to fight and die in Iraq.

Lastly, and most damningly, is what is technically called ignoratio elenchi, which basically means trying to prove one thing, but proving something else entirely. In this case, even if one grants everything Hyman says about the “global war on terror” and that we are in the midst of a third world war against the forces of “Islamic facism,” this has nothing whatsoever to do with keeping the status quo in Iraq. If there’s one thing Iraq never was, it’s an “Islamic facist” state. Say what you will about Saddam Hussein, but he was no religious zealot. It’s not at all clear that the majority of those participating in the insurgency in one way or another are aiming for an Islamic facist state, no matter how one might define that.

Which brings us to the “Big Lie” behind all of this, which is that war in Iraq was necessary, was an appropriate response to attacks by al-Qaeda, and has made us safer.

Which reminds us: “Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.” – George Orwell

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: Done broke my ‘puter trying to cipher it out! (Actually, it’s about 7.96)

ACTION ITEM: 9/10/06

2006-09-10T15:04:00.000-04:00

In a case of "physician, heal thyself," I'm going to begin posting periodic (weekly, or thereabouts) ideas for things we can do in response to Sinclair and/or Mark Hyman. Sometimes, these might simply be suggestions to respond to a particularly atrocious "Point" by sending in responses directly to the Newscentral.tv website. Other times, I might post the address of a sponsor who buys ad time on Sinclair stations asking them to stop, a company or firm that owns Sinclair stock, a policy maker who has some influence on broadcast issues, etc. It could also involve contact information of individuals or groups attacked by Hyman, with the idea that we could drop them a quick note of support. I'll try to make these suggestions timely and relevant to whatever Hyman has said recently, so the specifics will largely depend on circumstance.

After all, rhetoric should be purposeful, and while it's fine and dandy to agree that Hyman's bad news (in many senses of the phrase), I think it's also important to offer suggestions of specific actions, as small as they might be, that might work toward a solution to the affliction of Hymanitis.

This week, I'm suggesting that we respond specifically to Hyman's recent "Point" in which he creatively played with statistics to support the ridiculous assertion that serving in Iraq isn't really all that dangerous after all. This is a particularly good one to respond to, since it involves not simply an offensive idea and propagandistic appeals, but a clear, objective misstatement of factual information.

I doubt we'll get a true mea culpa from Hyman on the next Mailbag segment, but perhaps by calling him on his lie, we can get inside his head a bit.

You can read and respond to Hyman's editorial here.

You can just scroll down to read our response to the editorial, or else just click here.

Allons-nous!

More Mailbag Malaise

2006-09-09T17:41:00.000-04:00

Just for the record, Mark Hyman again uses his mailbag segment to offer a mix of self-congratulation and false characterization. Quoting from responses to his misguided tirade against his straw man version of “multiculturalism,” Hyman reads from cheerleading emails, saying such baffling things as,”I am still surprised you can get away with what you say -- which is the truth -- in our liberal led society.”

Hyman also offers the usual parade of negative emails, chosen for their ability to be selectively quoted in a way that mocks those who disagree with him.

For example, Hyman quotes one viewer as saying, "Your forefathers exterminated one race and enslaved another to 'make this country great.'" Hyman replies, “Tom, your stereotyping is noted.”

Stereotyping? I don’t think that’s quite the right word, Mark. I think you mean “generalizing,” but that wouldn’t quite have the same “gotcha” ring as claiming a defender of multiculturalism is “stereotyping,” would it? Why let verbal accuracy be an issue when factual accuracy isn’t, right?

Context Matters II

2006-09-08T11:06:00.000-04:00

In his latest editorial, Mark Hyman condemns linguist John McWhorter for being “inconsistent on race” because he authored two articles (in the Washington Post and New York Sun) that defended Andrew Young from charges of racism, while condemning Mel Gibson.

Hyman offers a specious argument, one that makes exactly the mistake McWhorter warns us about in his articles: ignoring context.

Young was criticized for making remarks about how store owners in black neighborhoods are usually not black themselves, and have a history of ripping off their African American clientele, saying, “First it was the Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs.”

According to Hyman, McWhorter thinks Young “should get a free pass when it comes to race matters. Well, that’s bogus.”

Wrong, Mark. You’re argument is the one that’s bogus.

McWhorter’s argument is that it’s ridiculous to treat every utterance about race that might be controversial or clumsy as de facto proof of racism. He doesn’t say that Young should get a pass for saying racist things; his argument is that one can be reasonably sure that someone who has a lifelong history of involvement in the Civil Rights movement didn’t mean his comments as racist., particularly when they reflected an objective economic truth: many store owners in predominantly black neighborhoods are not black themselves, and these stores have a history of charging high prices for sub-par merchandise.

And before one assumes that McWhorter is simply bending the rules to defend a black civil rights hero, it would help to actually read his articles in their entirety. Hyman doesn’t mention that McWhorter also comes to the defense of Virginia Senator George Allen for calling a campaign worker for his opponent “Macaca” (McWhorter says there’s no evidence Allen meant this as a racial epithet). He also defends White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and Republican Mitt Romney from charges of racism stemming from their use of the phrase “tar baby” (McWhorter notes that very few people are aware of any racial connotations of the phrase).

McWhorter’s argument is that context matters when it comes to charges of racism. Simply using language that *could* be interpreted as racist shouldn’t automatically deserve the same condemnation as truly hateful remarks. That’s where Mel Gibson comes in. McWhorter notes that there’s no getting around the fact that saying “Jews are responsible for all the wars in history” is hateful. Nor is there any doubt that when a young white man in New York called a black man a “nigger” and then beat him nearly to death with a baseball bat, that he wasn’t using the word as a term of affection (as the man’s lawyer actually tried to argue). Being blunt or even insensitive is not the same thing as being hateful.

It’s possible to disagree with McWhorter’s characterization of specific cases (in the context of his past actions, I'm not sure Allen's statement is as innocent as McWhorter thinks it is) , but it’s not reasonable to characterize his argument as a case of being inconsistent or having a double standard. McWhorter argues that context must be taken into account before we cry “wolf” by saying that any comment that *could* be considered racist *is* racist.

This is precisely the mistake Hyman makes. By not taking into account the entire context of McWhorter’s comments, he offers a lame argument that utterly misses the point. It’s more than a little ironic that Hyman is attacking someone who is making an argument that he, being a stalwart opponent of political correctness, should agree with: calling anyone a racist who says something that might be seen as insensitive is unfair.

I tend to agree with McWhorter’s general argument. We should save charges of racism for public statements that can’t be interpreted in any other way than as evidence of the speaker’s prejudice and hatred against the groups mentioned.

Such as if someone equates Mexicans crossing the border in search of work with al-Qaeda terrorists.

Or someone who openly talks about the growing percentage of the Hispanic population of the United States as a bad thing.

Or someone who, contrary to all evidence proving otherwise, suggests that undocumented immigrants are lazy, shiftless bums who are looking for handouts.

Now that’s what I call racism.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 2.29

Lying by Numbers

2006-09-07T16:58:00.000-04:00

Why does Hyman hate our troops so much that he trivializes the risk to them in Iraq and the numbers of them that have been killed?

Okay, that question is a bit facetious. I don’t honestly think Hyman “hates the troops.” He just doesn’t care enough about them to tell the truth.

What other conclusion can one reach from Hyman’s recent editorial in which he makes the absurd claim that being a commercial fisherman is more dangerous than serving in Iraq?

The key to unraveling Hyman’s deception is in following the way he changes the terms of his argument. Here’s how he starts his editorial:

Most people would agree that serving in the military and being assigned to Iraq
is perhaps the most dangerous job in America. That would seem logical. But it's
incorrect.

A few lines later, he explains how he comes up with the fatality numbers for Iraq:

There were 1,625,952 active duty military and mobilized reservists and National
Guardsmen on duty in 2005. The fatality rate with respect to deaths in Iraq was
52 per 100,000 last year.

See what he did? He starts off by claiming that he’s talking about the danger of “serving in the military *and* being assigned to Iraq.” But when he actually computes the numbers, he measures the number of casualties in Iraq not against the number of people “assigned to Iraq,” but to the total amount of active duty U.S. military and reservists on the planet.

What a putz.

The number Hyman ends up with (52 per 100,000) is lower than the fatality rate for four other professions: iron worker, pilot/aircrew, logger, and commercial fisherman.

But if one actually does the numbers accurately (comparing the rate of fatalities in Iraq to the number of soldiers serving in Iraq), the result for 2005 is approximately 554 per 100,000, more than 450% higher than the second most dangerous profession of commercial fisherman (118.4 per 100,000)

If I were serving in Iraq, a veteran of Iraq, or a family member of anyone serving there, I would be unbelievably pissed at Hyman for trivializing the risk involved in serving there. Heck, just as an American and someone who knows a few people who have served in Iraq, I’m pissed.

For that matter, so should anyone who cares about the truth.

But Hyman’s contempt for the truth goes even further. He ends his commentary with the following cutesy lines:

A frequent comment among service members is to retire from the military, buy a
boat and fish for the remaining days. Who would have thought that fishing as a
profession would be more than twice as dangerous than fighting the Global War on
Terror? Every single workplace fatality is sad and unfortunate whether it comes
from defeating terrorists or hauling in yellow fin tuna.

Ha, ha, ha! Get it? What a gifted sense of the ironic our Mark has! A retired soldier is actually *more* likely to be killed fishing (at least, commercial fishing, which isn’t what most retired soldiers dream of doing, but never mind) than serving in Iraq!

Beyond the fact that the assertion is absolute rubbish, notice the other way in which Hyman plays fast and loose with the truth: saying that serving in Iraq is “fighting the Global War on Terror.”

As we now know all too well, Iraq had nothing to do with al-Qaeda before we invaded it, and to the extent it’s part of the war on terror now, it’s only because we’ve made it a haven for terrorists, a place where they can mix business (learning how to better kill Americans) with pleasure (actually killing Americans).

Yes Mark, every workplace fatality is sad and unfortunate, but some are more sad and unfortunate than others. In fact, some are not “unfortunate” at all, but the direct result of bad decisions. And some of these are more tragic yet because they are deaths that have occurred for no purpose whatsoever.

Sure, it’s unfortunate when a tuna fisherman is swept overboard and dies, but at least he was involved in a job that provided food for the world and which had a reasonable expectation of success.

But the soldier who dies in the name of “fighting terror” in Iraq isn’t like a tuna fisherman swept out to sea. He’s more like someone who is told to row out into the Dead Sea in the middle of a raging storm in an inflatable dinghy and fish for Killer Whales: he’s being sent to the wrong place with the wrong equipment on the wrong mission in impossible conditions by people who clearly don’t know what they’re doing.

When that fisherman drowns, carrying out the absurd orders of imbeciles he’s obliged to follow, it’s not “unfortunate.” It’s a tragic and criminal waste, one that is far too horrific to be trivialized by a nimrod with 120 seconds to fill on his commentary segment.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 3.23

Right But Wrong

2006-09-06T13:13:00.000-04:00

In his recent editorial, Mark Hyman bemoans the spendthrift ways of Congress and asks us to “remember how your members of Congress treated your tax dollars” when election time rolls around.

Sounds like a plan! In particular, let’s keep in mind the enormous debt that’s been accumulated in the last six years. Let’s also remember the huge increase in earmark spending since Republicans took over Congress. And let’s also remember the huge amount of corrupt money that’s flowed back and forth between G.O.P. members of Congress and lobbyists (two groups who are often hard to distinguish from one another).

Heck, even conservative stalwarts like the Cato Institute and George Will point out how pathetic the current incarnation of G.O.P. lawmakers are when it comes to spending money wisely.

Of course, these conservatives, along with Hyman, tend to characterize investment of public money by the government as something inherently negative. That’s where Hyman’s editorial, despite the fact that it tacitly rebukes current Republican lawmakers, toes the conservative party line.

Hyman and other conservatives are right to attack the spending habits of the current congress, but wrong in their overall philosophy. Spending can be either good or bad, helpful or wasteful. Investing in things that will pay dividends both in terms of economic prosperity and quality of life (such as universal health care, investing in education, etc.) have lasting returns, while frittering away money on counterproductive boondoggles (hmmm…anything coming to mind?) can lead to results that are worse than if we just took our cash and through it down a rat hole.

To say government spending is inherently bad is like saying household spending is bad—that investing money in a new house is not qualitatively different than blowing your wad on to by a top-of-the-line Ferrari for your 16-year-old kid, or that spending money on college tuition is the same as letting the family nest egg ride on a single hand of blackjack at Harrah’s.

Public money can and should be spent wisely and for the greater good of the nation. It shouldn’t be wasted on vanity projects for Congressmen, contracts for companies with cozy relationships with politicians, weapons systems that don’t work, or wars that get thousands of people killed and maimed for no good reason.

Yes, let’s remember the spending habits of Congress in November, and respond by electing people who will invest our money in worthwhile causes rather than throw it away.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 2.09

Holiday Weekend Short Takes

2006-09-05T16:23:00.000-04:00

Back from a weekend break, and time to play a Labor Day Weekend bit of catchup!

Hyman Likes His Issues Simple

Hyman goes after British Member of Parliament George Galloway as a means of mocking the views of “the Angry Left,” of which he suggests Galloway is representative.

Calling him an “apologist for Saddam Hussein” among other things, Hyman suggests that Galloway’s recent comments about the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict show that he’s a “nutcase.”

Some problems with Hyman’s characterization of Galloway: first, Galloway was speaking out against Saddam Hussein back when our current Secretary of Defense was literally shaking hands with him. Galloway did question the sanctions against Iraq, not because he supported Hussein, but because he felt they were causing pointless misery for innocent Iraqis (a conclusion that is backed up with plenty of evidence).

As for Israel, Galloway said that America’s supplying of long range weaponry to Israel complicates our call for other countries in the region to give up such weapons themselves. He also said that in many people’s eyes, Israel itself is a terrorist state. Finally, he stated that Hezbollah was not a terrorist organization.

While no one can argue that Hezbollah contains within it terrorists, Galloway is right that it can’t simply be written off as a terrorist organization. After all, it has many seats in Lebanon’s parliament, thanks to the very elections that the Bush administration has championed as a sign of freedom in the Mideast. It also provides a network of social services in the country.

And it’s simply a fact that supplying Israel with weapons (and tacitly condoning its construction of nuclear weapons) complicates any argument we make for disarming other countries in the region. It doesn’t mean we’re wrong; but Galloway is right in pointing out the difficulty.

And one cannot argue seriously that Israel is *not* seen as a terrorist state by most people in the Mideast. Again, one doesn’t need to think that it is to recognize the validity of Galloway’s point. Given Israel’s history of not abiding by U.N. orders, of using assassination as a political tool, the kidnapping and holding without trial of thousands of Palestinians, it’s not hard to see why many in the region find the U.S.’s distinction between Israel and terrorist states as sophistry.

The problem with Galloway from Hyman’s perspective isn’t his over-the-top rhetoric (which he certainly uses) or sometimes extreme positions (which he certainly takes), but the fact that he points out the complicated nature of the Mideast issue and asks us to look at it from points of view other than our own. For most of us, that’s considered basic critical thinking. For Hyman, it makes someone a “nutcase.”

More Mailbag Cowardice.

This past Saturday, Hyman again participated in a round of self-congratulation by reading several letters complimenting him for his take on the “Angry Left.” Once again, Hyman studiously avoided any reasonable email to the contrary. One would think that if the Left was so doggone angry and out of touch, he could deftly take even a rational argument apart with no problems, thus exposing them even further.

Gosh, I wonder why he doesn’t do that?

Yet Another Straw Man.

Hyman repeats the straw man argument that’s become the default tactic of the right in defending Bush’s N.S.A. wiretapping plot, framing it in terms of whether or not one favors “listening in on terrorists” or not. Of course, that’s not the issue. Everyone favors eavesdropping on terrorists; what they don’t agree with is the unchecked monitoring of any and all phone calls in a search for possible terrorist calls.

Hyman cites a recent Harris Poll, claiming that the N.S.A. plot is a non-issue, given that 60% approve of it. What Hyman doesn’t tell you is that the same poll also noted that less than half of the respondents felt they were well informed about the issue. The poll also showed overwhelming desire for the president to seek Congressional support for any move that might involve jeopardizing people’s rights (e.g., intercepting phone calls, monitoring bank records, etc.).

More to the point, while conservatives have touted polls that suggested support for the N.S.A. eavesdropping, when the question specifically mentioned the issue of warrants, most respondents in several polls said they opposed eavesdropping on phone calls without getting a warrant.

The most egregious rhetorical move Hyman makes in this commentary, though, is when he says:

Terrorism continues to worry Americans. The question is: Do most Americans
support fighting terrorist fanatics to end terrorism or do they favor the cut,
run and hide tactics favored by the Angry Left? Harris never asked that specific
question.

Oh, but many polls *have* asked, Mark. True, they actually asked the question in a neutral and accurate way rather than using empty G.O.P. talking points like “cut and run,” but in fact most Americans want to reduce U.S. troop levels or remove all troops within a year. Most Americans favor putting in a timetable to guide the withdrawal of troops. And by the way, overwhelming majorities of Americans disapprove of the way George Bush is handling Iraq, think the war was a mistake, and believe the war has made us less safe, not more safe, from terrorist attacks.

Of course, I’m sure from your point of view, 2/3 of the citizenry “hates America,” right, Mark?

Hyman Lies and Blames the Victims

Hyman defends the indefensible by lying and attacking. Rather than admitting what’s now been well documented, Hyman defends the Bush response to Hurricane Katrina by attacking Louisiana Governor Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Nagin. Oh, and the people of New Orleans themselves, saying that “New Orleans citizens and cops stole new cars from dealerships and they looted wide screen TVs and $200 sneakers.”

Classy, Mark. Real classy. Trying to blame Blanco and Nagin for the disastrous response to Katrina has become a parlor game for those on the radical right, and while there are certainly things both could have and should have done differently, most of the claims made by partisan conservatives have been debunked. Hyman repeats the canard that Blanco didn’t actually request aid from the federal government, just money. Too bad Blanco’s letter to Bush is in the public domain and shows her requesting plenty of help, including debris removal.

Thanks to the lies of Hyman, not to mention officials in the Bush administration, another casualty of Hurricane Katrina was the truth.

And those are the Catch-Up Counterpoints.

Hyman Fails to Hold Republicans Accountable

2006-09-01T10:01:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman likes to complain about Congressional waste, as he does in his most recent editorial about “secret earmarks.” The problem is, despite talk about “responsibility” and “accountability,” he doesn’t put the blame where it needs to go.

Often, when noting Congress’s spendthrift habits, Hyman will say something along the lines of “and Republicans haven’t been any better than Democrats when it comes to controlling spending,” subtly reinforcing the right wing talking point that liberals are ideologically more likely to be for wasteful government spending than conservatives, and that it’s surprising the G.O.P. is “just as bad” as the Democrats.

The problem is that the facts run counter to this. Republicans aren’t “just as bad” as Democrats. They’re far worse.

At the risk of being a bit too cutesy and glib for the taste of most readers, this is the short, simple riposte to Hyman:

Here’s your Congress: 1994--$23.2 billion in earmarks for 4,126 projects.

Here’s your Congress on Republicans: 2005—$47.4 billion in earmarks for 15,877 projects.

Any questions?

The one cautionary note I would add is that it’s often easy to slam such spending on general principle, ignoring what the money actually goes for. We can agree that secret earmarks are a shady way of pushing funding through Congress, but often the projects the money goes for are actually worthwhile causes (as opposed to, say, bridges to nowhere).

For example (and in the interest of full disclosure), the college where I currently teach has a fantastic nursing program, one of the best in the state. It’s receiving $200,000 in earmarked federal grants to help fund a multi-state study of ways of retaining nurses in the workforce by measuring what factors lead to nurses leaving their place of employment or dropping out of the profession altogether.

Is that shamefully wasteful spending? As someone who has seen the work that experienced nurses do firsthand, I don’t think so myself, but I’ll leave it for you to decide.

In fact, you can go to an interactive map to see what organizations in your area are receiving federal earmarked money and what it’s going for. You’ll probably find some examples that seem a bit suspicious, but you’ll also see that a lot of the recipients of the money are organizations that are doing good work that actually helps people. To suggest that this money is wasted but that tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of Americans is sound fiscal policy is a tough position to defend.

Not that the process of earmarking itself is a desirable way to run a government. But often, these attacks on the process are actually attacks on the very idea that government funds should be invested in services at all. When we object to the freewheeling spending of the Republicans in Congress (and we should), we shouldn’t get sucked into the position of saying investing in worthwhile projects is something do be done away with.

What we want is smarter investment of the public’s money in ways that will benefit Americans, not simply the donors who fill Congressional coffers.

There’s a simple first step to accomplish this: vote for a Democratic Congress in November.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.98

Watching "The Point" Is Risky Behavior for Your Mental Health

2006-08-30T23:56:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman makes yet another claim that is both factually wrong and inherently immoral when he says “too many AIDS activists are more interested in condoning risky behavior than in treating or ending the disease.”

Does he really mean this? Does he actually think that people who devote themselves to fighting AIDS are actually in the business of promoting unsafe sex and drug use than stopping the disease?

I’m not sure. In reality, this claim, like the rest of Hyman’s recent commentary on the recent International AIDS Conference, has little to do with having a discussion about how to best stop the disease, and a lot to do with the domestic “culture war” that many on the radical right have been fighting for the better part of two decades.

In this respect, Hyman’s editorial bears a striking similarity to the Bush policy on AIDS that he champions. Hyman says the Bush administration’s promise of billions of dollars to fight AIDS in Africa and elsewhere has been unfairly attacked because the administration favors tactics that he claims “stop the main causes of AIDS . . . unprotected sex, often with multiple partners, and from using infected needles.

Because many of those involved on the ground level in the fight against AIDS have questioned this approach, he says they are condoning “risky” behavior at the expense of stopping the disease.

Here’s the problem: although the Bush administration has promised $15 billion to fight AIDS, only a small trickle of that has actually materialized so far, often coming at the expense of domestic health programs that help women and children. Additionally, a significant percentage of the funding for AIDS prevention is earmarked for abstinence education, not sexual education, information on condom use, etc.

Hyman says that people should simply stop having unsafe sex. But in Africa, the sad truth is that women are often under cultural, social, and economic pressures that prevent them from making this decision. In many cases, men are allowed to have any number of sexual partners before marriage, and even continue having multiple partners once married. Their wives, living in societies that don’t allow them to say no to their husbands, end up paying the price. Hyman’s pie-in-the-sky solution, one that flies in the face of reality even when applied to a much more egalitarian society, is horribly naïve when applied to Africa and other developing regions in which women have little or no economic or political power.

But again, this is assuming that preventing the disease is actually a concern of Hyman and the Bush administration. The reality is that the argument for focus on abstinence in preventing AIDS is simply a nod to part of the right wing base—the same part that objects to comprehensive sexual education in this country.

As a result of putting domestic politics ahead of science and human decency, people are dying. The Government Accounting Office did a study showing that the strings attached to the Bush administration’s AIDS funding is causing problems in effectively treating the disease in developing countries.

Rather than treat the problem that exists, the Bush administration is allowing cultural warriors to hold millions of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people hostage to its particular moral agenda.

Could anything be less moral? Could anything be less Christian?

It’s a minor miracle that the Bush administration was even willing to promise billions of dollars to fight AIDS around the globe, despite the fact that the actual funds have been slow in arriving and have been used inefficiently. The administration deserves some praise for at least acknowledging the problem and making a pledge to help stop it.

But that pledge becomes nearly meaningless when it is used as a means of placating the president’s domestic political base rather than actually solving the problem.

Hyman goes one step further by not only championing a “solution” that puts politics ahead of progress, but in his hideous display of blaming the victim (complete with a healthy dose of implicit homophobia) in his charge that those in the trenches of the war on AIDS are more interested in promiscuous sex and drug using than they are in stopping the disease.

A couple of small points worth noting. Hyman cites Bill Clinton’s criticism of the U.S. policy of not providing funds to countries that have legalized prostitution (Clinton was the keynote speaker at the conference). Yet, Hyman doesn’t mention that Clinton actually came to the defense of the Bush administration when it was criticized for its abstinence policies, saying that the administration had done much good with its funding.

More intriguingly, it’s interesting that Hyman jumps on the suggestion made by some at the conference that making prostitution legal would help stem the tide of AIDS. Hyman says, “[p]rostitution exploits more women and children worldwide than anything else.” (Let’s table for the moment the fact that much of this exploitation is the result of prostitutions illegal status).

If Hyman feels so strongly about the evils of prostitution, I wonder why he chooses to work for a man who has gone down in infamy as an incredible whoremonger. As you might remember, David Smith, CEO of Sinclair Broadcasting, was caught with his pants down in a company car with a lady of easy virtue in Baltimore a few years back, and according to Sinclair insiders, it was hardly his first time.

So I ask you Mark: why do you work for a man who helps contribute to the exploitation of women and children?

I’m just wondering.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 6.45

Hyman Puts the Screws to Common Sense

2006-08-29T15:10:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman’s recent commentary on the “angriest cities” in America (as ranked by Men’s Health magazine) is unworthy of much comment, other than to note that Hyman’s own Baltimore came in at number four. Personally, I think that’s entirely unfair, given that on his lonesome, Hyman must skew the anger-o-meter (“angrometer”?) mightily.

What’s more worthy of inspection is Hyman’s take on terrorism. Hyman mentions that there are reports that some of the intelligence that might have thwarted a terror attack on airliners flying from Britain to the U.S. was gotten through torture of a suspect in Pakistan.

In response to these reports, The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. (which Hyman says is “Britain’s version of the New York Times”) editorialized about the dangers and moral bankruptcy of using torture in the “war on terror.” In particular, the paper states that “This battle must be won within the law. Anything else is not just a form of defeat but will in the end fuel the flames of the terror it aims to overcome.”

Hyman goes ballistic at this, asking, “Does any reasonable person believe these kinds of terrorists will moderate their actions based on whether Pakistan follows western norms of prisoner interrogation?” While torture might make some people “squeamish,” according to Hyman, it’s well worth the thousands of lives that might be saved as a result.

Hyman’s main argumentative tactics here are the straw man and the false dilemma. Hyman creates a cartoonish version of the Guardian’s argument by saying the paper’s claim that terrorists will be mollified if we use gentler tactics is unreasonable. That’s not the argument the paper is making. The point is not that active terrorists will alter their behavior, but that by using torture, we encourage people who aren’t terrorists to become terrorists.

As Tom Ricks details in Fiasco, this is exactly what happened in Iraq. The mental, physical, and emotional abuse (often targeting people who ended up being completely innocent) drove people who could have been allies to become active enemies. For every terrorist “broken” by such means, we risk creating 10, 20, 100, or more to take their place. Hyman is either creating a straw man version of the Guardian’s argument, or he’s simply too insipid to understand it in the first place.

The false dilemma comes in the framing of the issue in terms of a choice between condoning terror OR allowing terrorist attacks to happen. There’s no reason to think this is the choice facing us. In fact, there is good reason to think the opposite.

As noted above, torture has the effect of creating more animosity. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay . . . people across the world pay attention to these things and frame their attitudes toward us accordingly.

Moreover, there’s no evidence that torture provides helpful information. This realization goes back as far as Aristotle, who notes that the testimony of slaves coerced by torture cannot be taken to be reliable, since many will simply say whatever they think their captors want to hear. We would be much better off cultivating connections and good relations with people who might be willing to provide information on suspected terrorists than using torture.

And we can’t simply say, “We’ll try to cultivate good relationships, but if we need to, we will use torture of suspects as well.” The use of torture will undermine those attempts to cultivate good relationships. The sort of people who are likely to A) know something about the actions of terrorists, and B) be ambivalent enough about them that they would willingly inform on them, are exactly the sorts of individuals who are most likely to turn their backs on us if they knew we used torture.

The usual scenario invoked by people who favor the use of torture is the “ticking bomb” situation, in which a suspected terrorist knows exactly when and where an attack will take place, and the only way to stop the plot is to get the terrorist to talk.

But this is a hypothetical situation that has little to do with the realities we face. It certainly wasn’t the case in the arrests made recently in London, in which the group involved had been under surveillance for some time. And even if such a situation actually happened, is there any reason to think the suspected terrorists would say anything of value? Even if authorities knew for certain that the suspect had the information (an assumption made in the hypothetical situation, but almost never the case in real life), what reason do we have to think the suspect wouldn’t give false information, partial information, or nothing at all?

And these points are simply the pragmatic objections to torture. We haven’t touched on the moral implications (which, I assume, don’t concern Hyman). That use of torture makes us like the very people we rightly despise for their brutality, that it runs counter to international convention and our national history, and that it is, from any spiritual perspective, a sin—these are all apparently non issues for Hyman and his ilk.

At least that’s what seems to be the case. It’s worth noting that Hyman is praising the use of torture of a suspect in Pakistan. But is Hyman willing to endorse torture by the U.S. itself? And if he has a moment’s hesitation about that, what does that suggest about the morality of allowing others to do what we ourselves shrink from?

I’m just wondering.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 3.13

Hyman Spins and Misses

2006-08-27T21:32:00.000-04:00

Let’s tally up the falsehoods in Mark Hyman’s commentary that cites the recently foiled terrorist plot in Britain as evidence of how well Bush administration policies are working and how out of touch everyone is who objects, or even comments, about them.

Hyman says the National Security Agency tapped phone calls that helped “uncover” the plot. In fact, the plot was discovered when an informant came to British authorities with a tip. The U.S. wasn’t brought into the investigation until relatively late.

Hyman says the New York Times and “like-minded liberals . . . were against listening into terrorist phone calls.” Balderdash. What many people objected to (not just the Times and liberals) was allowing the federal government to eavesdrop on anyone they wanted without any just cause or warrant. That has nothing to do with listening in on suspected terrorists. Given that this investigation went on for months, there was ample time to collect warrants. The warrantless wiretapping that raised the hackles of Americans had nothing whatsoever to do with foiling this plot.

Hyman also says the same people (the Times and liberals) were against following the money trail to terrorists. Again, this is a nonsensical statement that depends on the presumed ignorance of the audience to make a point. Presumably, Hyman is referring to the piece in the Times that discussed the government’s use of financial tracking to thwart terrorists. Hyman ignores the fact that the same government program was described on the same day by several other papers, including the conservative Wall Street Journal. He also fails to mention that the story was a report, not an editorial condemning the practice.

According to Hyman,”[i]f the New York Times had its way, the world would be glued to their TV sets, right now, mourning the loss of thousands of lives in a terrorist attack bigger than 9/11.”
This statement is both factually bankrupt and despicable.

But Hyman might be onto something when he suggests we look to this most recent foiled attack as an example of what works and what doesn’t work in fighting terrorism. It’s unwise to extrapolate too much from a single case, but with that caveat, let’s think about what this incident shows us about how to combat terrorism:

1) terrorism is most successfully thwarted when treated as a criminal act, not a military one

2) human intelligence, not military hardware, is the preeminent weapon when combating terrorism

3) surveillance works best when targeted at specific individuals or groups under suspicion, not as a means of trolling for new leads

4) since the best sources of tips will be members of the Muslim community, creating good will toward Muslims both at home and abroad is critical

5) the weapons of choice for terrorist groups are low-tech items, not WMDs

6) the most dangerous terrorist cells operate on their own, without direct state sponsorship

7) assuming the suspected ties between the British plotters and al-Qaeda prove to exist, it is further proof that al-Qaeda, not Saddam Hussein, has always been the more serious threat

8) it was a huge mistake to abandon Afghanistan and let Osama bin Laden get away in order to invade Iraq

9) the continuing war in Iraq is doing nothing to make us safer from terror

All of these conclusions run counter to the party line of the Bush administration and the nattering neocon nabobs who give them full-throated support.

I would say that if Bush and Hyman have their way, we are more likely to end up mourning the needless deaths of thousands of people, but that ignores a couple of facts that are obvious as we continue to see the news coming in from Iraq.

They already have, and we already are.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.45

Hyman Lip Synchs

2006-08-24T23:17:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman continues the march of the straw men with his latest editorial in which he lays the lash to a caricatured version of “multiculturalism” that has nothing to do with the real thing.

The difference in the latest version of his attack is that Hyman can’t even be bothered to use his own words. All but a handful of sentences that serve to frame the editorial are lifted from Michael Barone’s book The New Americans.

Of course, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Not that Barone is much of a relief from Hyman’s overheated rhetoric. Despite his journalistic bonafides, his take on multiculturalism is little more than Hymanese with a few extra polysyllabic words thrown in.

As Hyman does, Barone conjures phantasms of various “elites” (a word he repeats several times) who prevent foreign born children from learning English (through bilingual education), require the government to provide ballots in foreign languages (which has the unfortunate side affect for Barone of enfranchising people not likely to vote Republican), and who “regard our civilization as a virus and hostile immigrants and multiculturalism as the cure” (note the logical equivalence implied by that second "and").

There are legitimate debates to be had over issues of bilingual education and related issues, but reasonable debate isn’t what Barone has in mind. For him, those on the other side are not simply mistaken, but immoral. Their motivations are dark and dastardly. Thus we have those who support multi-lingual voting materials put into the same category as “government elites . . . [who] allow preachers of terrorism to teach in Middle Eastern Studies programs,” and the “highly educated moral-relativist elites” who supposedly loathe the very idea of Americanism.

Tabling for now the fact that these “elites” are fictional (tellingly, neither Hyman nor the quotation from Barone provide any real-life examples of them), it’s significant that those who have different ideas than Barone about how to best integrate society are not distinguished from the cartoon-villain, America-hating elites with whom he lumps them.

Hyman ends the extended quotation by saying “multiculturalism is the disease.” For the second day in row, Hyman has not supported his definition of multiculturalism with any examples, or provided a single concrete case of how it has supposedly led to “home grown terrorists.”

While I disagree strongly with both Hyman and Barone, I wouldn’t stoop to saying their specific views are a “disease.” What I would say, however, is that their unwillingness or inability to enter into a substantive dialog with people who disagree with them, and the simplistic rhetoric that results from this, are examples of the cancer that infects much of today’s political discourse and does far more damage to the sense of a shared American community than any multilingual ballot or Spanish-speaking kindergarten class ever could.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman/Barone Index: 9.50 (All those name-calling invocations of “elites” take a toll!)

A Madrasah vs. "The Point": Any Difference?

2006-08-23T20:58:00.000-04:00

It’s always nice when Mark Hyman wears his xenophobia on his sleeve. It at least lends his editorializing the benefit of being sincere.

Hyman comes right out and says that the recent terrorist plot uncovered in Britain “demonstrated that multi-generation Europeans of foreign descent have shown more allegiance to radical Islam values from abroad than to their own country or to Western values.” The main culprit? Multiculturalism, of course.

And what is multiculturalism? According to Hyman, it’s “the push to have immigrants, their children, and their children's children adhere to the values, customs and ideals they left behind rather than assimilate into Western society.”

Odd. That’s not what any of the several dictionaries I’ve looked at say. Not even close. Most say something similar to this: “the preservation of different cultures or cultural identities within a unified society, as a state or nation.”

What we’ve got here is another example of Hyman setting up a straw man and wasting his time knocking it down.

The evidence of his detachment from reality is evident from his own words. He says, “multiculturalism supporters view Americanization as offensive. They see the adoption of U.S. and Western values to be repugnant.”

If I came across such a statement in an essay by a student, I’d scribble in the margin, “Where’s your evidence? Give an example or cite a source.”

Hyman doesn’t because he can’t. The multiculturalists he conjures up exist only in his fevered imagination.

He then makes a similar jump when he says, “Because of multiculturalism, home-grown terrorists have terrorized Spain, France and Britain.”

Really? Again, I have to ask: what’s the evidence? Lacking that, what’s at least a hypothetical explanation for how multiculturalism might conceivably lead to terrorism, even in theory? We don’t get either.

It would be bad enough if Hyman wasted our time with argumentative tactics that would embarrass a first semester composition student, but there’s real ugliness in his comments as well, specifically, the blanket judgment that “multi-generational” Europeans of foreign descent have more allegiance to radical Islam than to Western values.

Note the lack of any qualification of this statement. Not “some.” Not “many.” According to Hyman, this is true of all such people, apparently including the many descendents of foreign-born immigrants who aren’t even Islamic.

That’s where his commentary goes from simply being naïve and manipulative and veers into the ugly realms of xenophobia and racism.

In fact, Hyman has more in common with the radical Islamists than he would ever suspect. Like the militant mullahs who preach hatred of those who don’t conform to their narrow view of religious righteousness, Hyman’s voice calls out his own form of radicalism, egging on his listeners to despise those who don’t think, believe, talk, and behave the exact way they do.

In place of the minarets of the Imam’s, Hyman has broadcast antennae. But both the radical Imam and Hyman work on the same principle: gain influence by convincing those who are scared, gullible, and unsure of themselves to hate the “Other.” The “Other” is responsible for your problems. The “Other” is responsible for the world’s problems. It is not only acceptable to hold them in contempt, but a duty. Those who suggest problems are complex and solutions subtle just don’t get it. The answer is unswerving belief in what is obviously right (which is whatever the Imam or the Hyman says it is) and elimination of the “Other.”

Multiculturalism (the real thing, not Hyman’s cartoon version) is a danger to both the radical Islamists and the Hymans of the world. The basic tenet of it is that people who are different can recognize and accept differences, yet still get along and forge a unity that transcends differences without erasing them. Such a vision is anathema to those whose power and/or sense of self is built on the delusion that they have direct access to Truth and that their status among the “elect” can only be proved to themselves and each other through labeling those outside their circle as inferior nonbelievers out to harm the righteous.

As much as their practitioners might deny it, the rhetoric of radical Islam and the radical right are wonderful gifts to one another. More than that—they are two sides of the same coin (and not very different sides, for that matter).

Which would still be fine if the rest of us didn’t have to live with the results. While the Islamists call America the “Great Satan” and label the West as degenerate, and the radical right mouth stupidities such as “they hate us because they hate our freedom,” the work on actual solutions to the problems that lead to radicalism (helping the poor, greater access to education, compromises on political and international issues, and yes, a healthy sense of multiculturalism in an increasingly multicultural world) is put off.

We find ourselves in a Catch-22: to work on the solutions that will end radicalism, we must first end radicalism.

Perhaps the first step out of this conundrum might simply be for those of us with the power to oust radicals in positions of leadership (i.e., those of us living in societies where we can vote out our leaders) to do just that.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 7.69

For another recent riposte to Hyman's views on multiculturalism, see this earlier edition of The Counterpoint.

Including vs. Excluding

2006-08-22T17:11:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman takes on a topic near and dear to my heart, school textbooks and the many guidelines and regulations that are placed on them before they can be deemed “acceptable” by state and districts across the country.

In a previous life, I worked for a couple of educational publishers that created ancillary and test preparation materials that were often subject to the same sorts of constraints.

And Hyman is right: there are a huge number of guidelines about what can and can’t be said, shown, or described in today’s educational materials. The problem with his argument is that he only applies his argument to one particular subset of these guidelines.

Predictably, Hyman bemoans what he terms the “politically correct” strictures placed on textbooks that end up with authors bending over backwards to avoid anything that could remotely be thought of as sexist, racist, etc., along with efforts to include representative characters from nearly every imaginable demographic group, even if the result is unrealistic.

Fair enough. As someone who had to rewrite sentences to say things like “Franklin Roosevelt lived with polio” rather than “Franklin Roosevelt suffered from polio,” be sure to make names in sample test questions reflect every possible ethnic derivation under the sun, and change historical dates from “B.C.” to “B.C.E.” (Before the Common Era), I’m far more familiar with the intricacies of non-offensive educational writing than Hyman is. And while the changes are often important and nearly always well-intentioned, they can seem pretty dopey.

But political correctness is actually a much more recent and narrower issue than its corollary: religious correctness. Hyman cites Diane Ravitch’s book “The Language Police” approvingly to support his case, but he ignores much of what she says.

Ravitch points out what any of us in the educational publishing world know all too well: the Religious Right (a.k.a. “Christianists”) have been a major force when it comes to editing textbook content for far longer than politically correct liberals.

Just as an example, textbooks in Texas have had to go through a state board of review that was virtually run by an infamous family that insisted that any textbook not violate any of their personally held conservative religious beliefs.

The results in Texas and elsewhere are every bit as silly as the politically correct examples Hyman gives. One company I worked for had a product for kindergarten age children that involved a cute dolphin character who helped children understand, voice, and deal productively with their emotions.

Sounds like a charming and helpful product, yes? And it was. But not according to some adoption committees run by fundamentalist Christians, who lambasted it for featuring talking animals (witchcraft!) and for using such benign techniques as visualization to help kids deal with their feelings (New Age-ism!).

And this is hardly an isolated incident. Educational publishers around the country have had to be careful about including talking animals in certain books (bye-bye, Aesop). Others have had to purge any reference to witches, spells, or magic (bye-bye Grimm Brothers).

Relaxation techniques? Positive visualization? For most of us, these are proven tools for helping students (and others) control their temper and concentrate on their work. But for many Christianists, these are evidence of Eastern spirituality infiltrating our educational system.

And do we even need to mention textbooks dealing with issues such as sex education and evolution? Hyman claims political correctness distorts history. But the changes often demanded of educational texts in the areas of human reproduction and evolution often promote out-and-out falsehoods.

Hyman bemoans the fact that the phrase “Founding Fathers” might have to be cut from textbooks because of its supposed implicit sexism. But even if it were, no textbook would simply say that the Constitution simply materialized fully formed, or even suggest that this was a reasonable theory for how the document came to be. Yet that’s exactly the sort of change demanded by some fundamentalist groups when it comes to scientific texts describing how humans came to be.

Even stories that have tangential references to dinosaurs or fossils must be massaged carefully or left out altogether because of a vocal minority who think these topics tacitly endorse evolution.

And this leads to a broader observation about this topic. At first blush, one can simply say that both ends of the political spectrum have tried (and often succeeded) to influence the ways in which our children are taught, often at the expense of common sense.

But there is a qualitative difference in the types of distortions and omissions championed by either side. For the most part, the politically correct strictures that Hyman complains about are distortions on the side of inclusiveness. They ask us to include some often strange and euphemistic wording to talk about issues like physical disabilities, but the motive is to avoid stigmatizing kids who suff . . . oops . . . “live with” these limitations. Yes, gender and racial demographics in textbooks are often idealized, but again the idea is to counteract decades (and even centuries) of stereotypes and omissions. And yes, sometimes sensitivity to what might conceivably offend or stigmatize a student gets taken to ridiculous extremes (not wanting to use stories focusing on bucolic mountain settings for fear of alienating city kids).

In all of these cases, however, the silliness is at least committed in the service of inclusiveness. On the other hand, the sorts of changes demanded by right-wing fundamentalists often involve not simply benign distortions, but the omission of important facts. From prohibiting entire genres of stories to omitting basic health information about issues like contraception to distorting the facts to deny the scientific consensus on topics such as evolution and global warming, right-wing textbook editing is largely about excluding, not including.

Hyman hints that a solution would be to have teachers, not statewide textbook committees, choose what books they want to use. Amen to that! I just hope Hyman realizes that much of his political fellow travelers won’t be happy with such a solution, given that it might allow teachers to educate their children about the true age of the Earth, the benefits of relaxation, and other such dastardly topics.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.36

A Day Late, A Dollar Short, and Then Some

2006-08-21T15:09:00.000-04:00

Mix equal parts Clinton-hating with IRS-a-phobia, and you have the makings of a perfect storm of conservative bloviating.

And that’s exactly what Mark Hyman gives us in his latest editorial in which he is upset about the recent conclusion of independent counsel David Barrett’s investigation into Clinton HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros. He’s not bothered by the fact that Barrett’s odyssey took 11 years and cost $23 million (the most expensive independent counsel investigation ever), but that portions of the report dealing with the IRS were redacted.

Hyman breathlessly tells us that “[t]he redacted sections reportedly detail widespread corruption by senior IRS officials.”

There are some problems with Hyman’s conspiracy narrative, however. First, the portions in question were redacted from the version of the report made public. Members of Congress, however, would have access to the full report. If any explosive charges are in the report, it wouldn’t take long before a politician privy to the information would cause a ruckus.

Secondly, the report apparently contains no clear evidence of obstruction of justice or whether any criminal laws were broken.

Lastly, a three-judge panel recently put the smack down on Barrett, concluding that the allegations of obstruction stemmed from nothing more than bureaucratic conflicts, and that no ordinary prosecutor would have filed charges based on the nearly non-existent evidence Barrett produced.

Of course, right wing voices and Barrett himself claim that the lack of evidence of obstruction just goes to prove how successful the cover-up was. Not that this is surprising; even though Cisneros resigned seven years ago, the chance to engage in some nostalgic Clinton-bashing is too much for any red-blooded Republican to pass up.

But while the right wingers are chasing after black helicopters, it might be worth looking at the larger issue of what we choose to spend time, money, and energy investigating. Back in the Clinton days (you remember . . . budget surpluses, rising stock market, peace in the Middle East), no chance was lost to launch a major Congressional investigation of the president. No matter how trivial, witnesses were sworn, prosecutors appointed, and reports issued.

Just as an example, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives heard 140 hours of sworn testimony about whether President Clinton was using the official White House Christmas card list as a tool to find possible Democratic donors.

Flash forward ten years. How many hours of sworn testimony were given in regard to the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison—actions that perhaps permanently crippled not only America’s efforts in Iraq, but in the entire Middle East? Twelve.

And what about raw dollars? Barrett’s 11-year investigation cost us $23 million. Meanwhile, we’ve recently learned that House Republicans decided to cut the already-paltry $14 million budget researching treatment of brain injuries to soldiers in the field in half, to a measly $7 million. This at a time when concussive injuries are the most pervasive combat injury our troops in the field face in Iraq.

If “supporting the troops” is anything more than an empty phrase for him, perhaps Hyman could actually do some good and use his soapbox to call for *more* funding, not less, for treating the brain injuries of our men and women in uniform, rather than wasting another two minutes opining about a report that’s already 11 years late and $23 million short.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.12

One Giant Leap for Hyman-kind

2006-08-18T15:12:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman starts his latest editorial with the observation that the Washington Post editorialized in support of a federal court ruling that keeps Tom DeLay on the ballot in Texas, but that the paper also supported a ruling that allowed Frank Lautenberg to replace Robert Torricelli on the New Jersey gubernatorial ballot in 2002.

He ends with the statement: Liberal newspapers are incapable of ever taking a principled stand.
In the rhetoric biz, we call that an “Inferential leap” – in this case, one that would make Evel Knievel proud.

It would be one thing if there was a series of claims and supporting statements that led the viewer logically from the first observation to the universal claim he makes at the end, but there’s not.

In other words, even if one granted Hyman’s premise that the Washington Post based its apparently contradictory positions on nothing more than the party affiliation of the players involved in each case, it would take a well-supplied mule train several days to traverse the chasm between that fact and the conclusion that “liberal” newspapers are “incapable” of “ever” taking a principled stand. (By the way, the Washington Post’s editorial page was infamously pro-war in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq; was that also an unprincipled stand by a supposedly liberal newspaper, Mark?)

But the difference in editorials might go beyond simple political fickleness and instead have something to do with the law. In each case, state laws were the issue, and they are quite different in Texas than they are in New Jersey. New Jersey’s law is written with the intention of allowing maximum flexibility in candidate selection/replacement, while Texas’s laws are much stricter.

Beyond that, although Torricelli and DeLay both left their respective races due to charges of corruption (something Hyman explicitly states about Torricelli, but doesn’t mention in connection with DeLay), Torricelli wasn’t attempting to “game the system” the way DeLay clearly was.

DeLay chose to stay in the race and allow his fellow GOP’ers to nominate him so that he could collect campaign contributions that he could use for his legal defense fund. To allow his name to then be stricken from the ballot would in essence give Texas politicians a green light to rake in money through “campaign contributions” to take care of personal legal trouble, despite having no intention of running. The ruling in Texas (upheld on appeal by none other than Antonin Scalia) makes politicians accountable: their constituents now know that a politician is obliged to actually run once they’ve profited from campaigning.

And the political party machines must now ensure that their primaries are now contests among viable candidates rather than allowing a favorite son to take advantage of the system for his personal gain, then swap him for someone else after the fact.

So the Republicans are stuck with DeLay, who is using his political contributions to save his own hide and has little chance of winning.

It *is* poetic justice that the GOP in Texas has finally experienced what the rest of the country has: being swindled by “The Hammer .“

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 2.71

Hyman Photoshops the Truth

2006-08-17T11:13:00.000-04:00

Sometimes the universe is generous.

I was already loaded for bear as I sat down to draft a response to Mark Hyman’s recent editorial charging the “liberal media” with doctoring pictures to “mislead the public” when I came across the news that the Republican National Committee has been busted for Photoshopping a Hitler-esque moustache onto the face of Howard Dean on the RNC’s official website.

Subtle, guys. Real subtle.

Not that creative manipulation of photos is anything new for the right. Several conservative news outlets (including Fox News) posted a doctored photo that juxtaposed John Kerry and Jane Fonda speaking at an anti-war rally. During the 2004 election, the Bush campaign digitally altered a photo of a crowd shot in a political ad. In 2005, the RNC manipulated a photo of troops watching television in Iraq to make it appear they were watching Democratic politicians criticizing the Bush administration. They were actually watching a cartoon. And as recently as last month, Republican senatorial candidate Mike DeWine was caught using faked images of the World Trade Center on 9/11 in an ad that attacked his opponent’s commitment to national security.

So conservatives and conservative media have a track record of creating and using doctored photos to serve their political purposes. So that means “a pox on both your houses,” right?

Not quite. Hyman’s idea of the “liberal media” is bit broad (USA Today is liberal?!). Moreover, two of the cases of “doctored” photos Hyman describes can hardly be said to be overtly political. Perhaps one can say that the Reuters photo of Beirut after a bombing that included some extra smoke added could be construed to be anti-Israel, and therefore vaguely anti-Bush, but what of the photo Hyman cites of soldiers and Iraqi civilians? Apparently the photo was altered to improve its visual composition. That’s a no-no, but hardly a partisan political act. Hyman makes no attempt to explain how this aesthetic change is evidence of an anti-Bush conspiracy perpetrated by a cabal of left-wing photographers. (By the way, the L.A. Times fired the photographer in question; I wonder if the RNC will do the same to the staff members responsible for turning Howard Dean into Der Fuhrer.)

The USA Today photo of Condi Rice also apparently has a benign explanation: in trying to sharpen the photo for reproduction in the newspaper, Rice’s eyes ended up looking a bit spooky. Again, it’s something that shouldn’t have happened, but hardly an overtly political act.

The only example that could conceivably support Hyman’s thesis is the Boston Globe publication of photos allegedly showing U.S. soldiers sexually assaulting Iraqi civilians. But in this case, the photos weren’t altered, but accepted as possibly genuine when they had in fact been taken off the web. The photos certainly should have been vetted more carefully (and even if they had been genuine, such pictures probably shouldn’t be posted in a daily newspaper), but there’s no evidence that the Globe consciously chose these fake photographs and attempted to pass them off as real (which is what Hyman carefully implies in his editorial).

So, while Hyman collects some examples of journalistic blunders, he doesn’t make a persuasive case that such photos were conscious manipulations done for political motivations.

But there’s a still larger issue here. Hyman’s complaint is ultimately that these journalistic enterprises presented a distorted view of reality in order to make a political point. But isn’t this what Hyman does on a regular basis, only with words rather than pixels?

Let’s take this very editorial as an example:

In Hyman’s discussion of the Reuters photograph, he creatively “crops” the fact that the photo was taken by a freelance journalist and that it was the photographer, not Reuters, who altered the Beirut photo.

He “enhances” his narrative by saying Reuters, not the freelance photographer, “has been caught doctoring” the photo.

He “Photoshops out” the fact that Reuters terminated its relationship with the photographer and purged its files of every single photo taken by him, including those that are certainly genuine.

He creatively “frames” the piece by saying Reuters is “the latest liberal news organization” to use doctored photos, not offering a single bit of evidence the Reuters is “liberal” in its news coverage.

He adds his own “shading” to suggest the photo somehow had the intention of promoting a liberal agenda without offering any evidence (or even a plausible hypothesis) of how the photo was doing that. The facts on the ground, not a slightly altered photograph, attest to the damage on the ground in Beirut; digitally enhanced smoke is hardly necessary.

He “blurs” the facts by quoting an abusive email sent by a Reuters employee to a blog that publicized the use of the photo, but not mentioning that Reuters immediately suspended the employee. By intentionally creating this artificial haze, Hyman tries to get his viewers to see Reuters as an organization that condones the sentiments expressed by this one employee.

You get the idea. And you obviously can see how the same photographic metaphor applies to virtually all of Hyman’s editorials. As we’ve pointed out here time and again, Hyman doesn’t simply offer arguments from a conservative perspective, but actively engages in willful distortions of facts to score political points (say, for example, misattributing quotations and taking them out of context in order to smear someone who publicly disagrees with him).

Perhaps it’s a symptom of our culture’s fetishization of the visual over the verbal that Hyman gets apoplectic about rather benign examples of photo manipulation, but sees nothing wrong with manipulating the facts verbally in order to make his argument.

Or perhaps Hyman is simply a hypocrite.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 7.83

With Friends Like CAGW . . .

2006-08-15T11:48:00.000-04:00

According to Mark Hyman, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is on your side.

That’s only true if you’re an executive at Microsoft or Philip Morris, have parents worth tens of millions of dollars, own your own chain of health clubs, or are a Mexican avocado magnate.

The organization that Hyman cites as a “non-partisan” watchdog on government waste is actually a conservative think tank funded by right-wing foundations and large corporate donors. Hyman’s own editorial is a tip off; note that his list of CAGW’s “worst offenders” are all Democrats, while the list of “friends of taxpayers” are all Republican.

Given the exponential growth of ear-marked projects under Republican control of Congress, you’d think that a truly non-partisan group looking out for government waste would be a bit more bipartisan than that.

But this would be assuming that CAGW is actually looking out for the ordinary American taxpayer. They aren’t. They’re first loyalty is to huge corporations. A steadfast supporter of corporo-socialism, CAGW actively works against anti-trust regulations, such as those that led to the lawsuit against Microsoft.
Understandably, America’s corporate giants love CAGW. Big business can pay CAGW to lobby for their interests, but because CAGW doesn’t disclose their donors and because of its alleged “non-partisan” status, corporations can push their agenda through a group that doesn’t appear to be attached to them. It’s influence-laundering.

Thus, you get CAGW actively campaigning against things that help individual citizens and their children, such as open-source software, regulations against tobacco companies, and restrictions on hard liquor advertising and sales, all because corporations that oppose them have hired CAGW to do their dirty work. CAGW has even been charged with manufacturing phony letters to create faux “grass roots” campaigns.

You don’t even have to be an American company to profit from CAGW’s services. Mexican avocado growers gave CAGW $100,000 to lobby on their behalf. True, avocados aren’t exactly a major issue facing American taxpayers, but for a hundred grand, CAGW is more than willing to treat avocados like an issue of life and death.

And as far as fighting against wasting taxpayer money, CAGW proves that “pork” is a subjective term. They are proponents of repealing the estate tax, which only affects a few thousand of the country’s richest families, and the repeal of which will add greatly to budget deficits that will affect the lives of average Americans, either by eliminating services or requiring them to make up the difference through increases in their own taxes.

Then there’s the YMCA. According to CAGW, the “Y” is pork. That might surprise you, given the organization’s long history of civic involvement. But once you find out that the health club industry has hired CAGW to lobby on their behalf, the mystery clears up quite suddenly.

So when listening to Hyman tick off who your friends and enemies are, according to CAGW, take it with a large pinch of salt to add to your guacamole.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.72

Short Counter-Takes

2006-08-14T11:08:00.000-04:00

A few brief comments on Hyman’s editorials over the weekend:

Why does Mark Hyman hate our veterans? In a recent “Short Take” segment, Hyman claims PBS president Paula Kerger is attempting to “avoid the law” by hoping the FCC won’t fine PBS stations for airing a Ken Burns documentary this fall that contains, in Hyman’s words, “foul language.” What Hyman doesn’t tell you is that the documentary is about World War II, and the “foul language” at issue comes from a handful of profanities that are used by WWII veterans in recounting their experiences. Apparently Hyman doesn’t think the Greatest Generation should be allowed to tell their own stories in their own words without oversight by big government.

Parenthetically, what does it say about us as a culture that we get our knickers all twisted up over the “obscenity” of an occasional utterance of “shit” or “fuck” in a documentary about an event that resulted in over 60 million deaths? I’m just wondering.

I***

If you want a great example of Hyman’s lip service about using the “Mailbag” segment as a source of “viewer feedback” that encourages “critical thinking,” look no further than the most recent installment. Hyman devotes it to pasting together a series of mail from viewers complaining about his recent commentary on the “Angry Left” that include plenty of deleted expletives and other attacks in order to prove his point. Too bad Hyman lacks the courage to actually read and respond to cogent replies. In an attempt to bolster his argument through this sort of “proof,” Hyman’s deck-stacking letter selection reveals his inability to make thoughtful arguments or respond coherently to rational critique.

***

Hyman’s commentary on a recent Harris poll on the most admired professions is unremarkable except for the fact that, while noting that the biggest growth in respect over the last couple of decades has been for teachers, Hyman himself has made bashing educators one of the cornerstones of his “Point” commentaries. If nothing else, the Harris poll is welcome evidence of Hyman’s impotence to alter public attitudes dramatically.

And those are The Counterpoints.

Hyman Chews His Cud

2006-08-11T14:08:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman recycles so many of his commentaries and rides so many of his favorite hobby-horses into the ground that it we shouldn’t be surprised by it. But I was still startled to see that Hyman has decided to return to the thoroughly discredited conservative talking point that the New York Times “tipped off the terrorists” in an article a couple of months ago discussing the efforts of the government to freeze financial assets of suspected terrorist organizations.

In a long and labored analogy, Hyman compares the Times unfavorably with employees at Pepsi who, when approached by a former Coca-Cola employee with trade secrets of its rival, turned him in rather than take advantage of the situation.

Hyman claims the situation is “exactly like” the New York Times having information about tracking terrorists’ finances, except that the good folks at Pepsi were ”more ethical than the cultural elitists at the New York Times.” (Parenthetically, I can’t help but notice the utterly gratuitous use of “cultural elitists” in this context. It’s an epithet that has no bearing on the substance of the charges Hyman’s making; it’s simply thrown in as part of his ongoing name-calling campaign).

I can think of at least one way in which the situations aren’t exactly alike: the President of the United States hasn’t openly talked about Coke’s secret recipe:

I made it clear that part of winning the war against terror would be to cut off
these evil people's money; it would be to trace their assets and freeze them,
cut off their cash flows, hold people accountable who fund them, who allow the
funds to go through their institutions; and not only do that at home, but to
convince others around the world to join us in doing so.

--
President George W. Bush, October 1, 2001

In fact, as Media Matters for America has pointed out, the administration has made a great many public statements about the tactic of tacking and freezing finances of terrorists.

And, as we also know, the information that ran in the Times was also published by the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. Aren’t they traitorous cultural elitists as well?

As the Columbia Journalism Review notes, the hubbub about this supposed breach in security is not only nonsense, but represents a real danger to a free press, particularly when folks ostensibly engaged in journalism themselves repeat these bogus charges and, riled into a cannibalistic frenzy, call for limitations on the press as a result (e.g. the National Review, the Wall Street Journal, and of course our own Mark Hyman).

Yet, despite the detailed debunking of all of the conservative talking points on this issue, Hyman regurgitates them, hoping and assuming yet again that his audience is too dumb to be aware of the facts.

It’s odd that Hyman is so vicious when it comes to the Times; after all, it was the Times’ lazy reporting of the administration’s claims of Iraqi weapons programs that provided such valuable cover for champions of preemptive war. Perhaps if the Times had actually been a bit more skeptical of the Bush administration’s spin, the president wouldn’t have had such an easy time selling a war that has led to the deaths of more than 2,500 U.S. soldiers, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and the destabilization of an entire region.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: One giant example of false analogy.

Since When Did Common Sense Become "Extremist"?

2006-08-11T13:24:00.000-04:00

Poor Mark Hyman. As the country increasingly turns against the policies of the Bush administration he champions, he grows increasingly reliant on hyperbole and propagandistic techniques in a desperate attempt to portray his own views as mainstream.

A great recent example is his commentary on the Lamont/Lieberman primary. Speaking a couple of days before the vote, Hyman engages in a bit of preemptive eulogizing of the senator from Connecticut, praising him as his party’s “last gentleman” who is perhaps the only current Democratic senator “who stand[s] on principle over politics.”

How does Hyman define “principles”? Being a vocal supporter of continuing the Iraq war.

In an example of blanket ad hominem attack, Hyman suggests that anyone who raises an objection to the war is doing so for political reasons, not principles. Then, in a moment of unintended hilarity, Hyman turns around and chastises the Democratic party for becoming “intolerant toward a diversity of viewpoints.”

I can’t make this stuff up.

He also calls those who oppose the war “pro-surrender” and says that if they had been around during World War II, we’d all be speaking German and Japanese now.

Perhaps someone should remind Hyman that some of the very first and most vocal critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq folly were members of the military. If you read the recent book Fiasco by Tom Ricks, you get a detailed picture of how opposed much of the military was to the invasion, complaining to Rumsfeld and others in the administration that such a move would hamper our efforts to combat terrorism, get us bogged down in a hostile region for years and years, and get a lot of people needlessly killed. Of course, the administration ignored the input of the guys who would actually have to carry out the invasion, and as a result, every dire prediction made by the folks in the military has come horribly true.

And now, over sixty percent of Americans also oppose the war. But Hyman would style this overwhelming majority as advocates of “surrender” who “don’t support our troops.”

Even if you are a proponent of the war, you can’t claim objection to it is an “extremist” position. It’s supporters of the war who are on the political fringes. As for supporting the troops, not only *can* one be against the war but support the troops, but I would argue one *has* to be against the war to support the troops at this point. In what way is championing an invasion based on flimsy “evidence” against a country that posed no immediate threat and doing so without the troops, equipment, or exit strategy that military planners insisted would be necessary for success “supporting the troops”?

Perhaps we should have “supported the troops” by listening to them before putting them in harm’s way. And perhaps we should get them out of harm’s way now that military force has done all it can, rather than letting them become sacrificial lambs to the neo-con idol of gunbarrel diplomacy.

Hyman, and others in the conservative prattle-sphere (including members of the Bush administration itself) are now engaged in therapeutic self-talk, trying to convince themselves that it’s the Democrats who are the extremists. The reality is, though, that Lamont’s position on the Iraq war is now not only the dominant view in the country, but is even being embraced by a number of high profile Republicans (e.g., Chuck Hagel).

These talking heads define “principled” and “mainstream” as agreeing with the agenda of the Bush administration and “bipartisanship” as supporting the right wing of the Republican party, even when prominent conservatives vilify Democrats and equate bipartisanship with date rape. Only by granting these illogical premises can one spin the victory of Ned Lamont as a win for extremist, partisan politics.

Rather, it’s simply a sign of an electorate coming to its senses.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.78

Hyman Running on Empty

2006-08-10T16:53:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman studiously avoids the real issue about America’s energy consumption in his recent editorial defending America’s use of a disproportionate amount of the world’s energy.

At least I’m assuming he’s consciously avoiding the issue. Either that, or he just doesn’t get it.

The crux of Hyman’s editorial is that Americans shouldn’t think twice about using the amount of energy we do, since it’s simply a sign of our success as a nation. If we used a percentage of energy equal to our population (as compared to the rest of the world), we would end up living like they do in third world countries.

But Hyman’s framing of the issue is all wrong. The significance of America’s use of a quarter of the world’s energy is that when it comes to environmental issues, it’s crucial that America actively participate in moving to clean and renewable energy. As long as the U.S. keeps using as much energy as it does, and using primarily fossil fuels in the process, much of the eco-friendly developments that other countries make will go for naught.

Contrary to Hyman’s framing of the argument, no one is saying we shouldn’t air condition our hospitals or that we should cut factory production (two things Hyman claims would be necessary if we were to curtail our energy use). Rather, the argument is that, given our huge use of energy, it’s incumbent upon us to find ways of creating and using energy that doesn’t poison the rest of the globe.

Sure, air condition hospitals, but do it using energy from wind farms. Keep our factories productive, but put sensible and attainable regulations on how much pollution they put into the air. Keep the family car, but mandate that Detroit put out cars that meet common sense fuel efficiency standards. And along the way, invest in better public transit systems.

One of the first things the Bush administration did when they assumed power was to back out of the Kyoto protocols. This captured in microcosm the Bush attitude toward the rest of the world: shut up and don’t bother us. The problem is that we are always connected to the rest of the world, whether we want to be or not. Actively participating in the development of alternative energy is the ethical thing to do. On top of that, it would end up stimulating the economy, make us healthier, and help our country run more efficiently in a variety of ways. There’s no downside.

No, there’s no reason America should abandon modern conveniences and turn ourselves into a third world country. But third world countries shouldn’t have to pay the price for our lack of imagination and willpower by suffering the ecological (and economic, health, humanitarian, etc.) ill effects of the disproportionate amount of strain America is putting on the Earth.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.12

War: What Is It Good For?

2006-08-09T23:04:00.000-04:00

War is good.

That’s the upshot of Hyman’s editorial on the conflict in Lebanon and Israel. Mocking those who critique Israel’s “disproportionate response,” Hyman says that what needs to happen to bring peace to the Middle East is for one country to assert its strength and become dominant (presumably Israel, although he doesn’t actually name the country).

War is necessary for peace. Sound familiar?

Hyman’s argument is based on a false definition of “proportionate.” Hyman says that an Isreali response that wasn’t “disproportionate” would necessarily be one that led to stalemate. That, of course, is nonsense. One can respond proportionately, but still decisively (e.g. going after the captors/killer of Israeli soldiers). One could even respond disproportionately, but do so within in ethical limits (e.g. wiping out Hizbollah, while not killing hundreds of Lebanese civilians in the process). Admittedly, from a practical standpoint, it’s difficult to pursue a disproportionate response and stay in the realm of ethical conduct. Even with the best of intentions, disproportionate responses have a tendency to punish those who have done nothing to deserve it.

But Hyman seems to think that all-out war is an acceptable, and even necessary, step to take toward solving the crisis in the Middle East.

I can understand his point of view. I mean, wars have raged in that part of the world for three thousand years, and look how far things have progressed! I’m sure just a little more conflict and killing will tidy things up nicely.

And this is the larger fallacy in Hyman’s argument. One can debate all day long about what constitutes a proportionate military response vs. a disproportionate one, but you’re still left with the idea that military aggression is a reasonable way to deal with diplomatic issues.

It’s not surprising that Hyman would take such a position. After all, it’s the centerpiece of Bush foreign policy. If a nation or group is not with us, they’re against us, and if they’re against us, we sure as hell won’t talk to them.

Invade or ignore. Those are the two options the Bush Doctrine allows when dealing with adversaries. And both end up making matters worse (e.g., Iraq, North Korea).

Some have suggested that the Bush administration’s antipathy to actual diplomacy is because of a perception that it’s somehow “unmanly” to talk with one’s adversaries.

I suppose, but only if one equates masculinity with knuckle-dragging, chest-beating, monkey-man behavior (which is particularly ironic coming from an administration that’s firmly in the corner of Intelligent-Designers).

Talking is always better than killing. I don’t think you need to be a rhetorician to believe that. I think you just need to be a human being.

The Hymans (and Cheneys, and Rumsfelds) of the world will say, “I suppose you think everything would’ve been just fine if we had sat down and had a nice afternoon tea with Adolph Hitler, huh?”

No. When your adversary refuses to enter into a meaningful dialog, and when they choose to use force, sometimes the plowshare must be turned back into a sword.

But the kidnapping, even killing, of a handful of Israeli soldiers is not the invasion of Poland. It’s a criminal act perpetrated by thugs who should be tracked down and brought to justice. It’s not a reason to start a war that kills hundreds and hundreds of innocent people. Hyman has it right, but doesn’t know it, when he cites Sean Connery in “The Untouchables” as an example of how to win a fight. Connery’s character advocated going after the criminals themselves with gusto, not mowing down a street full of innocent Chicagoans with Tommy guns in an attempt to pick off a particular crook. Yet that’s exactly what Hyman is defending.

The real division in the Middle East is not between Jew and Arab, Israeli and Palestinian. It’s between those who think that violence is the proper way to solve problems, and those who believe such problems must be worked out through peaceful compromise. This division slices through all existing national, ethnic, and religious groups.

The Bush administration has made it clear that they stand with the warmakers. By refusing to engage with all parties, they’ve managed to exacerbate the problem to the point where violence has broken out, a violence that they seem to think could have a positive effect. Hyman goes a step further, almost gleefully welcoming war as some sort of mammoth trial by combat in which things can only be finally settled after a great spilling of blood.

But, as the history of this very region demonstrates beyond doubt, war begets war. There is always an atrocity that must be punished, an attack that must be answered, a death that must be avenged.

And as long as those who are willing to kill to solve problems are given the power to set the agenda, that’s a cycle that will never be broken.

No, war isn’t the answer, Mark. It’s time to give peace a chance.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 3.02

Maryland Again

2006-08-09T22:57:00.000-04:00

Mark Hyman returns to the topic of Maryland’s energy issues, adding to his previous editorial by simply adding that the bond rating on the company responsible for providing many Marylanders with power has been downgraded by Wall Street because of the crisis.

Everything that was said in response to Hyman’s previous editorial remains true: he’s dealing with a local issue in a national forum, he’s editorializing on behalf of big business when it’s clear that huge energy companies that have monopolies are very much part of the problem (see Enron), and most importantly, he’s echoing the position of Maryland governor Bob Ehrlich without acknowledging that he worked for Ehrlich and that Sinclair has had ongoing ties with the governor.

Hyman also draws a false parallel between the Maryland situation and California, describing the energy crisis in that state in 2001 as simply the result of thoughtless deregulation, ignoring the huge role that corrupt business practices by Enron played in the energy shortages in that state.

The implication of Hyman’s argument is also false: that the only way to protect customers from violent jumps in energy prices is to allow a single company to have a virtual monopoly on supplying energy.

Two other options would be to have publicly-owned utilities (thus taking the profit motive out of the equation) or deregulating in a way that actually brings in competition (the problem in Maryland was that alternative suppliers didn’t move in to compete with the existing behemoth conglomerates producing the state’s energy).

No solution is without its risks and drawbacks, but without being truthful about the full story behind previous energy crises and ignoring all the viable alternatives, Hyman willfully distorts the issue to serve the interests of a political friend and patron.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 5.22

The Counterpoint

New "Behind 'Behind the Headlines'" Podcast out

He's Back

Hyman Rides the Swiftboat Again (Hi-Ho Sinclair, Away!)

My Scar Tingles Slightly

The Counterpoint 2.0

And That's The Counterpoint

A P.S. to An Open Letter to Mark Hyman

An Open Letter to Mark Hyman

Counting the Days to VH-Day

Who Knew Idaho Was a Blue State?

Careening Toward Irrelevancy

What Is This "Irony" That You Speak Of?

Hyman's Master Class in Fallacy

Hyman Repeats Terrorists' Nonsense

Hyman Defends Criminals

Hyman's British Blunders

More on Hyman-Gate

Is Hyman on Drugs?

Hyman Already Spinning for 2008

How Sweet It Is!

I'm Osama bin Laden and I Approved this Message

More Fun Reading

K.O. KO's Hman

Hyman Running Out of Gas

Hyman Slanders Kerry--Again

Pardon Me?

Playing the NAMBLA Card

Hyman's "Voter Fraud" Fraud

Getting caught up

Two Words

Is Hyman Pro-Stupid or Anti-Smart?

No Comparison

Hyman Suffers from Thinkaphobia

Victoire?

The People v. Mark Hyman

The Cockeysville Lyin' Hymans

The Bad Citizen in Chief

The Truth Is DOA at "The Point"

Hyman Serves Up Another Lemon

Hyman "U-Boats" George Soros

Hyman's Bunk

This Evening's Special: Red Herring a la Hyman

Cherry Picking Bigotry

Hyman's Sexual and Poltical Double Standards

Compare/Contrast

Hyman Kills More Brain Cells

Hyman Causes an Intellectual Flabbalanche

Hyman Celebrates Hatred

Taking Hyman to School

Ignorance Levels Continue to Rise In Hyman's Head

Hyman Defends Treason

Hyman's Dark Obsession (It Ain't With the Truth)

A Change Is Coming (If We Vote)

Racism by Proxy

Hyman Flip Flops

Throw 'Em Out

Updates

New Frontiers in Moral Bankruptcy

A True Counter "Point"

Pushing the Envelope of the Hyman Index

ACTION ITEM: 9/10/06

More Mailbag Malaise

Context Matters II

Lying by Numbers

Right But Wrong

Holiday Weekend Short Takes

Hyman Fails to Hold Republicans Accountable

Watching "The Point" Is Risky Behavior for Your Mental Health

Hyman Puts the Screws to Common Sense

Hyman Spins and Misses

Hyman Lip Synchs

A Madrasah vs. "The Point": Any Difference?

Including vs. Excluding

A Day Late, A Dollar Short, and Then Some

One Giant Leap for Hyman-kind

Hyman Photoshops the Truth

With Friends Like CAGW . . .

Short Counter-Takes

Hyman Chews His Cud