Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Various Kinds of Yikes | Feb 10, 2006 10:56

When I heard on the news that the Labour Party may be in the cart to the tune of $400,000 for overspending on campaign limits, my first thought was: WTF did they spend it on? National's campaign advertising was not only cleverer and more effective, it also seemed much more pervasive.

It turns out that the question is whether the pledge cards and pamphlets slated to the leaders' fund, which every party gets, in fact constituted election activity that should have counted towards campaign limits. Labour didn't try to hide the spending, and submitted along with its return an auditor's reporting questioning the treatment of the spending, but given the ballyhoo about National supposedly trying to buy its way to victory, this is potentially very, very embarrassing. It seems more substantial than the National Party's avowedly accidental $112,000 overspend on TV advertising, which was referred to the police in December.

National, whose complaint sparked the investigation of the way the spending was treated, will be delighted if the flap shoves its tedious leadership intrigues out of the headlines.

Elsewhere, Garrison Keillor has a terse but lovely assessment of George W. Bush on Salon at the moment. Among other things, he notes the explosion of government under the party of small government:

Of greater interest than the president's remarks to Congress was the report of the Office of Personnel Management showing that the federal government continues to grow under Republican rule. The executive branch now employs 1.85 million at an average salary of $63,125. In our nation's capital, the average is a handsome $80,425. Of course, the hiring of screeners at airports raised the total, but screeners' average salary is around $27,000 a year, which pulls down the average, which means there must be many happy folks in the higher ranges, assistant pooh-bahs and panjandrums and dukes of earl who are adept at taking a small acorn and weaving a seven-hour day around it, for which they enjoy job security, 13 paid holidays and 21 vacation days, and retirement at up to 80 percent of salary.

Not a bad gig, considering. There are mature gifted musicians scuffling for less than screeners earn, and farm families scraping along despite prayer and hard labor, and genius comedians scrapping for spare change. So a young Republican lady or gent could be tickled pink to land a job as assistant secretary for compliance assurance and get an 18-by-24 office with a window looking out on the Washington Monument and spend the day in meetings after which you will write memos of ingenious persiflage and obfuscation, like a cat smoothing the litter box.

Republicans believe in smaller government and deregulation, but it takes more and more of their friends and loved ones to not regulate us, and who can blame them? Washington is the perfect place for the slacker child who flubbed his way through college and flopped in business and whom friends and family kept having to prop up -- find him a government job.

Who might these fortunate sons and daughters be? Let's look at one …

You may recall my recent mention of attempts to prevent NASA's senior client scientist, James Hansen from publishing or speaking about research in ways that might cast doubt on White House policy on climate change. In the thick of all this was NASA public affairs officer George Deutsch, a 24 year-old Republican activist (he worked on the 2005 presidential campaign).

Deutsch popped up again recently, on account of his bizarre attempt to turn NASA into some sort of religious organisation. The New York Times has the story of that and quite a bit more:

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

The Big Bang is of course, a scientific theory - but it happens to be widely regarded as the one best supported by all the available evidence. It is assuredly not an "opinion". "Intelligent design by a creator," is not a theory supported by evidence, it is a belief. I demand equal time for the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc, etc. But wait: it gets worse - or even better, depending on your perspective. An enterprising blogger did a little digging and discovered that Deutsch was not only a creepy little partisan, but a fraud. He had lied about his qualifications on his CV. No one checked.

Deutsch has resigned, but the controversy is certainly not going away. The Washington Post has published an unusually strongly-worded editorial that lists similar concerns at a string of other agencies and concludes:

In every administration there will be spokesmen and public affairs officers who try to spin the news to make the president look good. But this administration is trying to spin scientific data and muzzle scientists toward that end. NASA's Mr. Hansen was right when he told the Times that Mr. Deutsch was only a bit player. "The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies," he said. We agree.

Bad Astronomy Blog, meanwhile, is some way beyond angry about this. And a comment associated with another post on the same blog really boils it all down:

There are so many things wrong with this whole affair that the fact that Deutsch lied on his resume is just a minor gaffe by comparison: that a public affairs official could censor scientists; that a major appointment to a scientific agency went to a political appointee with no scientific background; that ideology was allowed to trump science; that the free flow of scientific information was being muzzled. I mean, I'm glad he's gone, but if he had bothered to finish his degree he'd still be pushing his agenda. It's analogous to prosecuting Al Capone for income tax invasion; we know he's done a lot worse, it's just that this is the only thing we can take him down for.

In a week where we've been arguing about the free speech of a bunch of bad cartoons, I can't help but think that this is a much more important issue, and a more direct threat to modernity. Jihadism won't win more than a handful hearts and minds in Western countries - but when people in one of those countries are willing to corrupt and stifle the flow of information from one of the most important scientific organisations in the world … Houston, we have a problem.

But from the bloody great ScienceBlogs site, a look at something unexpected: the list of signatories of leading evangelical Christians on a letter urging action on climate change. Wow. And, cool.

Meanwhile, Tom Delay, the most corrupt US congressman in a generation, forced to step down from his role as deputy House majority leader, has a new gig. Now where is the last place you'd put a man whose while political life has involved pork and the trading of favours? Yep: the House Appropriations Committee. Those Appropriations guys can - and really do - use their budgetary power as a political tool. And where has Delay been dispatched while he is under a cloud? The Appropriations Committee, where he did some of his finest work. Honestly, you couldn't write some of this shit.

There are still tickets for the Great Auckland Central Hero Debate on Monday evening, in which I will be arguing in the affirmative the moot that "the straight line is godless and immoral". Should be fun. You can buy tickets online and collect them at the door.

If you missed the Fairburn post in the clamour of late - and I think quite a few people did - please do go and read 'My Imaginary Journey' and especially listen to the audio. It was quite a breakthrough getting the clip, and it would be nice to be able to show some demand.

And finally, I don't know whether the Blues or the Hurricanes will triumph at a sold-out Eden Park tonight, but damn am I looking to finding out.

I've been thinking that it might be fun to make one of my Virtual Super 14 mates' lists a Public Address one. So if you're signed up and want to play, drop me a line and I'll add you to my list (if there are a lot to add, it might take a day or two, but that doesn't matter). Then you can feel free to add me to your list via the "who's tracking you?" button. I figure it's safe enough to add John Campbell without asking.

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Is it because I is white? | Feb 09, 2006 11:27

Apparently our local imams have called for amputations and executions of errant cartoonists and publishers. Well, that's what it says in the New York Times anyway: "From Gaza to Auckland, imams have demanded execution or amputations for the cartoonists and their publishers." Guess it must be true, then …

Thanks for the heads-up to Matt Nippert, who has already dispatched a polite letter to the Times pointing out that it is making stuff up. Guess there's just those riots in Auckland to deal with now: the ones mentioned here ("Riots have now spread to Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, New Zealand, and The West Bank") and here (actually, the author of the second blog made a swift correction after I pointed out his error).

The irony of these factoids is that the story has actually unfolded this week as something of a triumph for reasonableness, and for our way of doing things. And, not least, for the frequently-pilloried Human Rights Commission. After yesterday's meeting in Wellington, there is no guarantee (nor should there be) that the Dom Post will never again publish similar material, but I think we can take it as read that Tim Pankhurst won't claim to be "testing the tolerance" of a minority community. (As you will have gathered, I had rather more of a problem with that unfortunate bit of posturing than I did with the publication itself.)

I absolutely agree with Paul Thompson of The Press when he says that a newspaper "can't decide to run stories based on what might happen to trade or diplomatic ties." And I think both editors will in future more carefully weigh the actual purpose served by publication against the likely insult to a section of the community.

In the course of thinking and arguing about this stuff, I've gone back and looked at the controversy in 1998 about the Virgin In a Condom work that featured in an exhibition of new British art at Te Papa. It was quite surprising. Six people were arrested in the course of protests. One was convicted of assaulting a Te Papa employee, another of intentional damage. National MP John Banks tried to have Te Papa prosecuted under our archaic "blasphemous libel" law (he was eventually told to go away by the Solicitor General).

Across the Tasman, the 10cm-high work was wrenched off its base at a Sydney gallery and stolen; and around the same time an exhibition in Sydney featuring the 'Piss Christ' photograph (which, if the circumstances of its creation are ignored, is actually quite a beautiful image) had to be cancelled after that work was destroyed by two protestors.

If only those Catholics could be as restrained as the Muslims, eh?

This week's furore necessarily requires us to consider other claims of offence, and perhaps to take them more seriously. The Catholic church's Lindsay Freer has now gone back to Canwest to try and convince it not to screen the South Park Bloody Mary episode, as she has every right to do. But I do think there's a difference between a city's only daily newspaper, and a TV channel or an art gallery. Things that would cause outrage in a newspaper have frequently hung without incident on gallery walls. Newspapers serve a broader community than music TV channels; they enjoy a certain status and authority. Muslims who own dairies and newsagents aren't expected to sell C4 with the morning pint of milk.

Certainly, the papers covered, and illustrated, the Virgin in a Condom debate, but the equivalent to the cartoon publication would have been the Dominion running a full-page picture of the work alongside an editorial telling Catholics to get over it.

I haven't been able to directly answer much email via the site this week, but Philip Simpson pointed out that: "Most cultures have an undercurrent of self-deprecating humour and I would be very surprised if in some bazaar or corner of the Muslim world there hasn't been a joke about the possibility of running out of virgins for the martyrs."

Quite probably. And I remember my North London Jewish friend saying certain things (sometimes involving the phrase "Hassidic bastards …") and then reminding me that he could say such things but I could not. Of course. It's never been any different. Much of Billy T. James' humour wouldn't have been funny from the mouth of a Pakeha.

If the right to publish is a given, the decision to publish is necessarily more complex; taking into account the purpose served, the intrinsic worth of the material and that notoriously tricky chap, Johnny Context. I actually don't think the Dom Post needs to publish the Iranian Holocaust cartoons when they emerge. I don't need to see child pornography to know that it's evil, although I understand that some people (including a Jewish person I know, who believes that they will provide an instructive illustration of the ugly nature of the regime in Iran) will feel differently. I think there are already too many people who can't tell the difference between the fanatics who run Iran and the family who run the local dairy.

A free press is not the same thing as a press that will print anything. And even in a free society, free speech is not an absolute, as witnessed by the sentencing to seven years' jail of the radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri largely for things he said. Although you might not spot it amid the parade of wild-eyed radicals fetched to comment on the telly, the majority of British Muslims seem to feel themselves well rid of Hamza, a psychopath who had already been dumped by his own congregation.

The Guardian looked at the content of sermons from Hamza, a former boozer and nightclub bouncer who latterly got religion:

At the Finsbury Park mosque Abu Hamza rapidly acquired a reputation for vitriolic preaching, hurling his ire at many targets. Kuffurs (unbelievers), Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, homosexuals, off-licences, video shops, Muslim newsagents selling men's magazines, the British education system and television were all subjects of revulsion in his long, rambling and sometimes incoherent sermons.

The rhetoric was a way of attracting those at the extreme of Islam. In one Finsbury Park sermon, he referred to tourists in Egypt: "Many of the scholars have said when a woman, even a Muslim woman, she is nude and you cannot cover her up except by killing her then it is legitimate."

Asked about differentiating between civilian and military targets, he referred to a woman "who's wearing a miniskirt ... she's actually confiscating people's money ... and she's working as a spy, you can never call her a civilian". Homosexuals, he said, should be stoned to death.

Abu Hamza's extreme views led him to fall out with mainstream Muslims, who believe he has done Islam enormous harm in Britain. The Allah portrayed by Abu Hamza was a vengeful God. "No drop of liquid is loved by Allah more than the liquid of blood," he told a rally in Birmingham in the late 1990s.

Well, fuck him.

Anyway, thanks for all your thoughts on the matter. For my part, I hold no brief for any of the religions above; I care more about the impact on actual people. Unless something else happens, I think that'll do me on this question for now. If I get a chance to blog tomorrow, I'll look at a more disturbing example of religious creep: the bizarre story of George Deutsch at NASA.

But in the meantime, how come Tze Ming gets all the interesting racist emails? Is it because I is white?

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Makes Waitangi look innocuous, doesn't it? | Feb 06, 2006 11:39

How did a bunch of mostly crappy cartoons published five months ago in an undistinguished newspaper with a smaller circulation that the New Zealand Herald come to this? And does it get better or worse now?

Well, let's start with the most obvious point: freedom of speech encompasses not only the right to offend, but the right to express offence. If a Muslim finds the cartoons offensive and doesn't like seeing them published repeatedly, it is redundant to simply inform him or her that it's-free-speech-dammit-get-with-the-programme.

Because people express offence at newspaper cartoons and other forms of culture all the time. Last year, Sir Humphrey's regular AL reached for the word "horrific" twice in three sentences to describe a Ross Kettle cartoon that, um, depicted Rodney Hide as a barnyard animal. ("If Hide was Jewish, then of course such a horrific cartoon would never have been published. But it's okay if the politician is a white leader of a centre-right party.") You and I - and in all likelihood Rodney - might think eh? But AL has every right to take such exaggerated offence, even if it seems a bit daft.

In the US, last week, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (an arm of the state, technically) wrote an angry letter to the Washington Post to protest the publication of this cartoon. Michele Malkin might declare that: "In civilized societies, if you are offended by a cartoon, you do not burn flags, take up guns and raid buildings, chant death to your opponents, or threaten suicide bombings. You write a letter to the editor." But plenty of other pajamahadeen are actively seeking the sacking of the WaPo's cartoonist because they didn't like what he had to say. It would be a little ironic if they got their wish - or even an apology - in the present circumstances.

And then, of course, there is the matter of Malcolm Evans, who drew these cartoons, which led to him parting company with the New Zealand Herald. There are some obvious differences between Evans and the Danish case. Evans was dumped because he wouldn't accept editorial direction of his work; in the Danish case, the editors commissioned and defended the work. But, in his most controversial cartoon (the third one on this page), Evans used religious symbolism in pursuit of a political point: ie, exactly what the Danish cartoonists claimed to be doing. Evans' work would seem to have more of a point.

In his case, the Israeli ambassador sought a meeting with the Herald's editor and apparently obtained satisfaction. And Tom Paine of the nutter-friendly Silent Running blog angrily declared Brian Edwards, who commented on the Evans case, to be "anti-semitic", applauded Evans' dumping and raved that: "Malcolm Evans was given the boot because he wouldn't stop drawing racist cartoons. If he's drawn cartoons about Maori even one tenth as offensive as his anti-Jewish ones, he wouldn't just be out of a job right now, he'd be dead!"

Ironically, the Silent Running mob is presently angrily ranting in support of the Danish cartoons and Mr Paine has posted a primitive anti-Muslim cartoon so vile that I won't even link to it. "Hypocrite" hardly seems a strong enough word, but "creep" seems to fit well enough.

Anyway, Radio New Zealand has transferred the Mediawatch archives over to its own site, and in the Mediawatch Blog in successive weeks, I looked at other cartoon controversies at the time, including The Boondocks being dropped by major newspapers in response to protests (there wasn't a whole lot of free-speech crusading on display there), and noted David Cohen's crisply-argued caution against sympathy for Evans. There was also an interview with Evans that went to air.

Yes, I've seen Bloody Mary, the episode of South Park that must give great offence to many Catholics. I'm also aware that the same episode mysteriously disappeared from Comedy Central's re-run schedule; and that there is actually a difference between Comedy Central and a national newspaper. Newspapers enjoy a certain status by virtue of conducting themselves with at least a hint of gravitas.

Let us now move on to The Book of Daniel, an NBC comedy-drama about a quirky Episcopalian priest. It has been cancelled after a few episodes in the US. It may have been cancelled partly or even wholly on the grounds of not being very good, but before it even screened it was subject to a substantial campaign by the American Family Association and others, directed at advertisers and affiliate stations, motivated in part by the programme's depiction of Jesus.

By the time the programme was yanked, all but one sponsor had pulled out and 12 affiliates had dropped it. No, the AFA's protest didn't involve violence - but neither did the Danish protest at the same juncture. It might be said that the most significant difference between the two protests at that juncture was the prompt success of the Christian one.

But here's where I part company with No Right Turn. I do not think that marching the public street with signs threatening to behead or otherwise murder your fellow citizens, promising "Europe's 9/11" or a "new Holocaust" constitutes free speech, no matter what offence has been taken. The British police told reporters that they were photographing those involved. I would hope that they were also following them home and keeping them under surveillance henceforth. You lose a certain right to privacy when you incite the murder of those around you.

This actually brings us to the place where many non-Western Muslims have failed to grasp our cultural understanding of freedom of speech. It's not just the right to publish, but - in the absence of any duly enacted law (and such laws are themselves problematic) - to remain unmolested by the state for doing so. That's non-negotiable.

The Guardian's thoughtful editorial notes the call by Prince Nayef, the Saudi interior minister, for the Vatican to halt publication of the cartoons, "anachronistically assuming a role in European secular life for a supranational religious authority." If the elite can be so pathetically disconnected from modernity, is it any surprise that the man in the street doesn't get it? You cannot wish collective punishment on a whole society for the independent actions of a few. And yes, that cuts both ways.

As The Observer's backgrounder notes, flames were fanned by ultra-conservative Danish imams, who hit the road armed not only with the Jyllands-Posten drawings, but unrelated cartoons showing Muhammad with the face of a pig and as a paedophile. The consequent riots have damaged the perception of all Islam more than the cartoons did.

But let us also recognise that our own Islamic community, whilst grievously offended, seems determined to make its point as part of the citizenry. Anjum Rahman sent me a thoughtful email:

I was part of the Muslim protest march in Auckland today. it was a strange experience. I hadn't expected it to be so, well not aggressive, but loud. The emotion was like a physical thing, palpitating in the air. I felt, on the one hand, an exhiliration from being part of a group of people prepared to speak (or shout) out about what we believed in, it was a powerful statement of self-identity and pride in who we are - something that we feel so little of in these times.

Yet at the same time, it was scary to be part of something so powerful. At no time was there any danger of it turning ugly - no-one had violence on their minds. but I could somehow understand how the mob in Cronulla could turn to violence, and start beating anyone they came across. It's as if you lose your own mind, and the mob develops a collective mind of its own.

I'm still not sure whether we did the right thing by marching. I'm one of those who think there are many other issues Muslims should be marching about. But I'm glad I was there, just for the experience, and I am upset that the papers here have dropped us in this mess.

I live in Hamilton, and since Friday have already had 3 incidences of people yelling abuse or making offensive gestures at me. I wish I could somehow stop each one of them and tell them this is not my doing, please don't take it out on me.

As you will be aware, two Fairfax papers, The Dominion Post and The Press have chosen to reproduce the cartoons. To be honest, I'm quite grateful to the Dom Post for doing it the way it has: reproducing the original page so the work can be seen in context, providing translations and explaining how they were commissioned in the first place. What I do object to is any sort of pissing contest which holds that a paper that decides not to reproduce the works is somehow letting the side down. Freedom also implies choice - and newspapers choose not to offer gratuitous offence to their readers all the damn time.

No British newspapers have chosen to reproduce the cartoons, and in the Sunday Times, Simon Jenkins argues that the drawings do not defend free speech, but threaten it:

In all matters of self-regulation the danger is clear. If important institutions, in this case the press, will not practise self-discipline then governments will practise it for them. Ascribing evil consequences to religious faith is a sure way of causing offence. Banning such offence is an equally sure way for a politician to curry favour with a minority and thus advance the authoritarian tendency. The present Home Office needs no such encouragement.

The Guardian rounds up the British press editorials, including this from The Sun: "The cartoons are intended to insult Muslims, and the Sun can see no justification for causing deliberate offence to our much-valued Muslim readers. The Sun believes passionately in free speech, but that does not mean we need to jump on someone else's bandwagon to prove we will not be intimidated."

There's something quite encouraging in that. The Sun sees Muslims as readers, Britons and Europeans, not as the other; a distinction that appears to have been lost on some continental editors.

I'm not sure that the Dom Post's to pompously "test the tolerance" of Islam is a particularly bold one anyway. Bold would be, say, running a cartoon depicting Jesus as a kiddy-fiddler, and defending it with an editorial. That would test some boundaries, not to mention the fitness of our blasphemy law. But, somehow, I can't see that happening. Ever.

PS: Thanks to Mike Little for the heads-up on this Media Guardian story, which reveals that Jyllands-Posten has previously refused to run cartoons lampooning Jesus. An editor told the artist (who says they were "an innocent joke, of the type that my Christian grandfather would enjoy") that: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them." Ahem.

PPS: This is not to say that I believe the answer to lie in opposing volleys of gratuitous insult. Quite the reverse. I'm put in mind of an interview I conducted last year with Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli-US non-governmental organisation dedicated to scrutiny of the Palestinian media. What emerged from that story was how important it was that Palestinians and Israelis desist from dehumanising characterisations of each other if they were to stand a chance of peace.

PPPS: One last observation. It has been notable how much of the debate here has focused on potential trade consequences. WellI, I don't think newspaper editors are obliged to pay heed to political warnings about the perceived national interest - we wouldn't look fondly on, say, an American editor who witheld a memo because it might cast the war in Iraq in a poor light. That shouldn't be the issue.

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