Commonwealth Commonsense

Scarborough Country: Where Truth Takes a Holiday

Joe Scarborough was comical last night. He misstated facts and whined so unabashedly hypocritically. His target was Jon Stewart. Envious at the popularity of “The Daily Show,” he blamed Stewart for turning off young voters.

Is Jon Stewart corrupting American youth and driving voters to become cynical? That‘s what the “USA Today” asked in a feature [Ed. Note: It was an op-ed column] dubbed, “The Daily Show Generation.” You know, I didn‘t even feel it, but yes, friends, we‘re all part of “The Daily Show generation” now, which questions whether Jon Stewart actually encourages young people to get involved in politics or keeps them away from the polls. Now, a recent East Carolina University study that we talked about a few months back says “The Daily Show” isn‘t so funny, after all, finding that young people who watch the show develop cynical views about government that could keep them from voting.

First of all, Scarborough misrepresents the thesis of the article. You’ve got to wonder if he even read it.

One was part of the [Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania] 2004 Election Survey under the direction of Kathleen Hall Jamieson… disclosed that late-night comedy viewers were more likely than the early-to-bed general public to be knowledgeable about the issue positions and backgrounds of the presidential candidates — and viewers of The Daily Show were, as a group, better informed than those of David Letterman or Jay Leno.

…A second Annenberg report, released in May, studied media use among people ages 14-22 and found that for the majority of them (almost 60%), the Web is the primary source of news. Newspapers ranked a distant second, and the national evening news on TV (including cable networks) came in last. I'd say that over the years, the current-event reports in my classes have mirrored this pattern, bearing in mind that many people read newspapers online now.

A second set of facts emerged from this study: Reading newspapers (presumably, on- or off-line) increases political awareness, but searching the Internet increases both political awareness and civic engagement. The Daily Show generation, in other words, is not only apt to be more concerned about politics but also more likely to be spurred to do something with that concern.

The apparent sharp upsurge in the past several years of political activism — both liberal and conservative — on college campuses nationwide would seem to bear this out.

So what does Joe say later on?

[W]hy is this guy having universities conduct studies on whether he‘s damaging American democracy?

… [I]f Jon Stewart is actually getting younger people watching a show about politics, my point is, it couldn‘t get any worse with young voter turnout, so maybe this is a good thing, isn‘t it?

…I mean, the voting age got moved down to 18. And you know, I remember last—in 2004, had a huge debate… with other people on my panel, election night, 2004. They kept saying, Oh, the young people are going to come out and vote for John Kerry. They‘re going to put him over the top. I said, No, young people do not vote, they never have. Unfortunately, they never will.

Problem is Scarborough is dead wrong.

Voter turnout increased sharply in 2004, reaching its highest level since the 1968 presidential election. Young adults contributed to the surge. Although news reports initially claimed that young adults had failed once again to show up at the polls, the reports proved wrong. Nearly five million more young adults voted in 2004 than had done so in 2000.

… Initial assessments of voter turnout in 2004 were badly off the mark, missing both the surge in turnout overall and among young adults. Reporters erred in part because they overlooked the large number of absentee ballots, many of which (more than 7 million) were not included in the early unofficial vote totals. The reporting also erred because journalists got trapped in their story line, having predicted that Kerry would win if young adults showed up in huge numbers. When he lost and when exit polls indicated that young adults were roughly the same percentage of the voting electorate as they had been in 2000, reporters concluded that young adults had not responded.

In fact, turnout among eligible adults under 30 years old rose by 9 percentage points, pushing their voting rate to over 50 percent (see Figure 1). Their turnout rate in battleground states—such as Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—exceeded 60 percent.

Best line of the night? Actually, there were two.

SCARBOROUGH: But there is a spin, though, is there not, in Jon Stewart‘s message? And the spin is that George Bush specifically, and Republicans generally, are idiots.
[Media editor for Huffingtonpost.com Rachel] SKLAR: Do you need to spin that?

The other was Scarborough’s telling of his own son’s reaction to Scarborough being a guest on “The Daily Show.”

I thought this guy was supposed to have a sense of humor. He certainly didn‘t. In fact, he called me a dirty name. But that‘s OK. My 18-year-old son said, Hey, Dad, that was cool. I said, What—he called me a blank-bag. My son said, yes, that was cool, wasn‘t it.

Then, after he mocked Stewart and lamented that young folks weren’t getting exposed to the right kind of political news, Scarborough plugged the next segments of his show.

Anyway, coming up: Anna Nicole Smith‘s young son dies right in front of her. Find out why investigators still aren‘t ruling out foul play. Plus: To catch a predator is back. “Dateline” takes its investigation to small-town America with some disturbing results. Are sex offenders hiding in your back yard? And later: The Dixie Chicks‘s stunning new attack on George W. Bush, stunning only because it is such bad PR! Shut up and sing, baby! Shut up and sing!

Hey Joe, I’d settle if you’d just shut up.

Can We Talk?

Syria defended the U.S. embassy in Damascus yesterday against an attack by suspected Al-Qaeda operatives but was quick to blame the U.S. for it.

"It is regrettable that U.S. policies in the Middle East have fueled extremism, terrorism and anti-U.S. sentiment," the Syrian Embassy in Washington said in a statement. "The U.S. should ... start looking at the root causes of terrorism and broker a comprehensive peace in the Middle East."

“Root causes of terrorism”? Why, they hate us, of course. They hate democracy and freedom loving people.

Maybe Condoleezza Rice can talk this administration into talking with Syria and Iran.

Sunni Muslim extremists such as al-Qaida fiercely despise Assad's regime because of its secular ideology and because his father, the late President Hafez Assad, led a crackdown on Muslim fundamentalists that killed thousands in the city of Hama in 1982. They also reject Assad's rule because he belongs to the Shiite Alawite sect of Islam.

Assad has warned of an increasing Islamic threat against his country, saying al-Qaida militants are taking refuge in neighboring Lebanon.

But some opponents of his regime have claimed he is hyping the threat to score support with the United States, defuse international pressure and provide a pretext for Syrian meddling in Lebanon.

And George Bush seems to do everything he can to hype the threat of “Islamic fascists” whenever he can, as he did in his pathetic 9/11 Oval Office address. It’s no surprise why the GOP wants to foster this notion that our “War Against Terror” will go on a long time. They see it as a ticket to be punched every two years in November. They see it not as a long-term struggle for freedom but as the long-term ticket to their political dominance. So they encourage terrorists.

[Former CIA case analyst in Pakistan Marc] Sageman argues in his book, "Understanding Terror Networks," that we are facing something closer to a cult network than an organized global adversary. Like many cults through history, the Muslim terrorists thrive by channeling and perverting the idealism of young people. As a forensic psychiatrist, he analyzed data on about 400 jihadists. He found that they weren't poor, desperate sociopaths but restless young men who found identity by joining the terrorist underground. Ninety percent came from intact families; 63 percent had gone to college; 75 percent were professionals or semi-professionals; 73 percent were married.

What transformed these young Sunni Muslim men was the fellowship of the jihad and the militant role models they found in people such as Osama bin Laden. The terrorist training camps in Afghanistan were a kind of elite finishing school --

Sageman likened it to getting into Harvard. The Sept. 11 hijackers weren't psychotic killers; none of the 19 had criminal records. In terms of their psychological profiles, says Sageman, they were as healthy as the general population.

The implication of Sageman's analysis is that the Sunni jihadism of al-Qaeda and its spinoff groups is a generational phenomenon. Unless new grievances spawn new recruits, it will gradually ebb over time. In other words, this is a fire that will gradually burn itself out unless we keep pumping in more oxygen. Nothing in Sageman's analysis implies that America should be any less aggressive in defending itself against terrorism. But he does argue that we should choose our offensive battles wisely and avoid glamorizing the jihadist network further through our rhetoric or actions.

Yet, Bush and his minions continue to demonize terrorists and those who would question his policy.

"I wonder if they are more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "They certainly do not want to take the terrorists on and defeat them."

Fortunately, Democrats seem more willing to fight back this election cycle. And while the Dems and the GOP yell at each other, no one is talking to Syria and Iran that might help defuse the terrorist fervor.

Iran's confidential response three weeks ago to an international proposal over its nuclear program offered extensive negotiations to resolve the standoff, but only if proceedings against Iran in the U.N. Security Council were stopped.

In a detailed and sometimes rambling document given to foreign governments, Iran stopped short of rejecting demands to halt its nuclear enrichment program, saying the issue could be resolved in talks. The response, closely held for weeks, was made public on a Web site Monday.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran does not intend to reject the whole issue unilaterally, and is ready to provide an opportunity for both sides to share their viewpoints on this issue and try to convince each other and reach a mutual understanding," the document says.

I’m sure Bush will find a way to blow this opportunity as well.

On 9/11

As we watched Ted Koppel’s “The Price of Security” last night I had a thought just as my wife reached for the dictionary. “What are you looking up?” I asked. “The definition of war,” she said. Almost simultaneously, she had the same thought: We have mischaracterized the struggle with which we find ourselves consumed.

Certainly war can be both a military conflict and an intense battle without killings. But by buying into the characterization that we are in a “War on Terror” we have allowed the neo-conservatives to frame this debate. And indeed it is a frame that those who would blow up babies want. War allows them to paint us as the other side who would, through shock and awe, destroy their culture and their religion.

But it is how we Americans view this struggle that concerns me. The “War on Terror” or the “War Against Terrorism,” while not only reducing the struggle to one consumed with tactics instead of ideas, frames it as something we’re against. We can claim it is radical fundamentalism or “Islamic fascism” we oppose, but by being against something, Osama bin Laden and his disciples can easily contort it, abetted by our inelegant leaders, to being a crusade against Islam, Muslim values and their way of life. Imagine if Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Okalahoma City FBI building had prompted Bill Clinton to declare a "War on Christian Fundamentalism."

This war, as Koppel’s program suggests, also allows George W. Bush to assume powers that have no limit and, indeed, no end because we will never have a clear completion to the battle with those who, in the name of religion, will kill themselves. A war has always suggested that there will be a surrender and a treaty that will end the conflict. We will never see those already steeped in terror surrender or affix their signature to peace. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone describe how this War on Terror would end. How will we know we’ve won? If there is one suicide bombing a month? a year? a decade? By framing it as a war, this administration and its ideological successors will always demand we endow them with the sole discretion to wage their war on our enemies, our liberties and our privacy.

In the name of security, we will see our liberties curtailed as long as the administration deems necessary. As Zoe Baird, president of the Markle Foundation, put it last night, “It is impossible to harden all the targets.”

We prevent the terrorists from killing us to be sure. But it's the hearts and minds of the children whose picture I saw at the end of the Lebanese War that we must win. They were waving the picture of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. We can’t lose these children or they will be the ones attacking ours.

Most important is the concern voiced by Alberto Mora, the former general counsel for the Navy in the Bush administration, who worries that in waging this battle, “We will cease to be Americans.”

Democrats need to reframe this struggle, not as a war against anything but as an effort for something. It may not fit on a bumper sticker or have the calamitous imperative of the “War on Terror,” but this is essentially the struggle for American ideals and our desire to spread them, not by force and not because we think everything American is morally superior, but because we are transparent and believe in the rule of law and the respect for the individual and the differences among us.

If our children will enjoy lives free from fear that any moment the shopping mall they are walking in, the restaurant they are eating in, or the school their children are leaning in will be bombed, then we need to see what we are engaged in as a struggle of ideas and for our ideals, neither of which are effectively delivered through the barrel of a gun.

That certainly doesn’t mean we don’t fight to defend American lives when attacked and even attack to prevent the loss of lives of others. We do. But we need to remember what makes us Americans. It is not how we wage war, but how we nurture the pursuit of happiness.