Sunday, August 14, 2005

August 14, 2005 @ 4:45 PM More Sunday comment, "Who edits this stuff?" department. Arizona Daily Star Reader Advocate Debbie Kornmiller reports that I wasn’t the only reader whose attention stuttered over the misuse of the word ‘myself’ where the word ‘I’ was called for. There, I told you so. My criticism went a step further to suggest that a copy editor (does the star have them?) should have caught that. Aaannd…someone in editorial ought to take a look at the way the Kornmiller column is headlined: My Opinion, Debbie Kornmiller. This is very odd, because there are no opinions of hers in the column, it’s straight reporting. She tells us what reader commentary has been. To identify it as opinion is simply wrong-headed. Are we to understand that there might always be another side, opinion, interpretation of what she reports? Hardly. It is consistent, of course, with the Star’s new habit of identifying all columns as "opinion." Good thing, too, since we Star readers are too dumb to understand what it is that columnists do whose articles appear on Op-Ed pages.   August 14, 2005 @ 5:10 PM An after-thought. We often say things like, "Oh, that’s just your opinion" when we wish to suggest some other opinion is just as worthy of consideration, or that the other guy’s ideas are completely unfounded. But op-ed columns have a factual side, too. The columnist says, "Look, here are the facts, and upon these facts I base my opinon that the President’s Social Security plan is ill-advised." Part of that sentence is an opinion and the other part purports to reports facts. We don’t ‘check’ the opinion part, but intelligent people do and can check the facts. After which we might agree with the opinion. What the Star labels as opinion other papers, The Washington Post for instance, label News Analysis, which is what it seems most properly to be. 5:28:44 PM    comment []

August 14, 2005 @ 10:05 am A series of Sunday ‘odds and ends,’ beginning with a peek at my personal corrspondence. A friend sent me an article by Diane Alden that appeared at NewsMax.com. The title of the article, "The New GOP Betrays America" gives you the idea that MS Alden is sadly disappointed with the GOP. Right enough, but she’s no lefty. She’s an outraged conservative. To make complete sense of what follows, take the time to read it. (link) My friend asked for my opinion, and here is what I wrote him: Dear Friend, I found the Diane Alden article absolutely fascinating. I've always believed that in the end the extreme left and the extreme right meet. The left moves from the right end of the political spectrum to the left, the right from the other end to the right, and they eventually meet. Remember, please, that Anarchism is a philosophy of political organization. It’s not anarchy. Historically It believed that the role of central government should be limited to the maintenance of national boundaries, an army and navy, a diplomatic corps and very little else. The Anarchist would then hand off all other functions of social organization and governance to a network of local organizations. In the Anarchist view these would have been workers organizations in various factories and industries. This last, of course, would be anathema to the modern conservative, but I imagine she would be happy if the tasks of social organization were handed to local corporations…Social Security to the insurance industry and so forth. My friend, you and I have always been like The Colonel’s Lady and Rosie O’Grady in the Kipling poem: sisters under the skin. Ms Alden rails against NAFTA and CAFTA…as do her sisters on the left. More interestingly, I think, is her dislike for the Bushies’ views on trade as an inevitable modifier of social and political behavior. Now where have I heard this inevitability theory before? Oh yes, From Thomas Friedman’s book, "The World is Flat" and also here: "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with his sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country…it compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one word it creates a world after its own image."                                                                         ----The Communist Manifesto Always good to hear from you, Comrade. Art PS Ms Alden and I agree on one other thing. Like her, I will refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils ever again. If the Dems offer me "Republican Lite" I’ll vote Socialist Labor, or Green. Incidentally (and possibly sadly) she and I are alike in another way: We are so intractable in our beliefs that we are willing to risk being left with an empty glass rather than settle for one that is half full. 10:14:34 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Arthur Jacobson.