Congress v. The United States: The Journalism Is Dead Edition

As we all know, James Holmes shocked the nation a few weeks ago when he shot up a packed movie theater about to show The Dark Knight Rises.  He stated "I am the Joker," even though it's obvious from his mugshot that he's doing it wrong:

As you would expect, such a horrific incident generates massive amounts of discussion, something I believe to be one of the best parts of living in a democracy.  But since the discussion exists, there has to be some point that marks the highest levels of that discussion and some point that marks the lowest... and I think we've found the lowest:

Dark Knight Rises Shooting Suspect: Why He's Not The Joker

Luckily the article wastes no time getting to the heart of its response.  I'll go ahead and quote the first part here.

Because he's just not.

So it starts with that opening salvo, but any journalist worth his or her salt knows the importance of backing up a claim.  The article goes on:

When James Holmes, the 24-year-old suspect in the Dark Knight Rises theater shooting is arraigned this morning in Colorado, his hair may still be wildly dyed, and allusions to the Joker, the Batman villain with which Holmes reportedly aligned himself, may continue to be made. 

But comic-book movie fans like Jim Littler will know better 

"Insane or not, obviously he's not the Joker," says Littler, founder of the fandom-news site ComicBookMovie.com, "and it's silly to even entertain this lunatic's perverse fantasy."  

It is silly, Mr. Littler.  I agree with you completely, and while we could stop and ask if the article quoting you is doing the very thing you rightly stated as silly, I'd rather keep going, which means citing the part where the late Heath Ledger's father adds to the slam dunk of the "Because he's just not" opening salvo.

We can't blame Heath or the character…It's [the Joker] fictious."

Indeed.  Okay, so far we have a guy who owns a comic book related URL and Heath Ledger's Dad on record, but if I were editing this E! Online article, I'd want one more random URL owner just to bulletproof the piece.

From the Batman comic to the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, the overriding message, says Heidi MacDonald, editor-in-chief of the comic-news blog The Beat, is that personal tragedy can spur a fight for nothing less than "the greater good."

"I'm sure it is really dismaying for fans and readers that this message has been coopted, for a bit, by a real-life wacko," MacDonald says.

Since there really isn't much more to add, I'm just going to slow clap this shit:

Obviously I don't have anything personal against the author or the people quoted in the article, but let's be honest, there's no reason for this article to exist.  It perfectly illustrates the difference between continuing a discussion and simply prolonging it.

Twenty-four hour news networks were the worst things to happen to news in a long time, but they didn't hold the title for very long.  I think the blessing and curse of online news sources do more damage to the discourse when the final count is tallied.  E! News Online already covers fluffy nonsense like this headline -

Justin Bieber Tweets Support For Canadian Olympic Gymnast Dominique Pegg

- so I imagine it must be tough to fight for our limited time-wasting headline clicks when there's real news about.  So a hastily assembled article goes up just to keep the content fresh.  That's fine when the content covers Bieber's Twitter account, but when the content addresses Real News like the shooting in Aurora, it feels a touch more insulting.

I don't think there's a person out there who would give James Holmes' "I'm Joker" comment any degree of weight.  But The E! Online article has to, if even just for a moment, in order for the article to exist.  The article includes quotes from bloggers as primary sources to help peel back the layers of this non-existant topic.  And, of course, the article starts off with that total turd of an opening, "Because he's just not."

In the end, it's a reminder that news on the web is just one way to fill in the spaces on a web page not covered in ads.  Porn is another, and honestly, it's probably a better use of the space than empty, half-assed articles like the one that kicked off this whole thing.

It begs the question, if the original article is an empty waste of time, what does that make my post exploring said article?

Ah blogs... who knew that passing gas could take the shape of words?

Senseless Tragedy, Senseless Aftermath

As everyone not living off the grid already knows, a horrific tragedy took place last week in Aurora, a town outside of Denver in Colorado.  James Holmes reportedly entered the theater as a patron, then left through an emergency exit and propped the door open.  He went to his car, put on a full complement of body armor, and grabbed two Glock pistols, a 12 gauge shotgun, and an AR-15 rifle.  For the AR-15, Holmes had bought a drum magazine which not only allowed him to fire many more rounds without reloading, but also caused the weapon to jam, potentially saving countless lives.  An infant was shot and thankfully survived.  A six-year old girl was not so lucky as her pregnant mother had to learn later at the hospital while receiving treatment for her own bullet wounds (both the mother and unborn baby survived).

The President had some touching thoughts in his weekly address:

One thing that I appreciated about President Obama's address was the use of the work terrorize.  As the reports filtered in after the shooting, one snippet I heard confirmed that the mass murder wasn't a terrorist act.  What I think they were trying to indelicately convey was that the shooter wasn't a Muslim extremist, but make no mistake that James Holmes is most certainly a terrorist. But one article I stumbled across thanks to Ezra Klein guest hosting the Rachel Maddow Show comes from Max Read on Gawker.

There Is No Such Thing As Politicizing A Tragedy

We've all heard politicians say that the aftermath of something so horrific as the Aurora shootings is not the time to discuss politics.  We've seen people who call out for more gun control after incidents like this get accused of pouncing on a tragedy for political gain.  But as Max Read states in his article:

This is stupid. There is no such thing as "politicizing" tragedy. James Holmes did not materialize in a movie theater in Aurora this morning, free of any relationship to law and authority and the structures of power in this country; nor did he exit those relationships and structures by murdering 12 people and injuring several dozen more. Before he entered the theater, he purchased guns, whether legally or illegally, under a framework of laws and regulations governed and negotiated by politics; in the parking lot outside, he was arrested by a police force whose salaries, equipment, tactics and rights were shaped and determined by politics. Holmes' ability to seek, or to not seek, mental health care; the government's ability, or inability, to lock up persons deemed unstable — these are things decided and directed by politics. You cannot "politicize" a tragedy because the tragedy is already political. When you talk about the tragedy you're already talking about politics.

Point being, Holmes doesn't exist in a vacuum.  His plans and premeditations leading up to his disgusting act occurred within our system.  The aftermath will play out in that same system.  Max Read continues to say:

No one wants to be accused of using a tragedy for "political ends." But you don't really get to escape. The insistence that no one talk about politics is itself a political act. Politics is how we effect change in the systems and structures that govern our lives. To take the stance that tragedies are or should remain "apolitical" or "depoliticized" is to say, essentially, that everything is fine and nothing needs to be fixed; that such an act was random and unpreventable.

I honestly couldn't agree more.  I'm not saying that the only conclusion we can reach is a repeal of the second amendment, I'm only saying that we have to have a sincere debate.  As Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia said on the Ezra-Klein-hosted Maddow show:

 

Essentially, horrors such as 9/11 and the Aurora shooting wake us up to the fact that something needs to be done.  With 9/11, we attempted to accomplish that.  With mass shootings, we don't.

There are many ways to look at our current system regarding guns.  One way involves red necks stating that referring to the AR-15 as an assault rifle is a lefty agenda and they'll be damned if someone thinks they should be separated from their gun collections.  The other is a results-guided perspective.  I don't think anyone looks at the events in Aurora, or at a political rally in Arizona, or at an immigrant center in Binghamton, or Virginia Tech, or Columbine, or Fort Hood, or a California McDonalds, or an Oklahoma post office, or a Luby's restaurant in Texas, or a Long Island Railroad train and think "yeah, this well-oiled machine hums along just fine, thank you."  Conceding that you don't want mass killings to occur doesn't mean you are conceding your second amendment rights.  It's okay if someone questions your right to own an AR-15.

We say that the victims of these tragedies don't want the stink of politics surrounding them in the aftermath.  Truth be told, I'd bet most of the survivors of a mass shooting would welcome an honest debate about the issues directly involved in their loss.  They might even wonder why we didn't have the discussion earlier, and could that debate have prevented the loss of their loved ones.

Mitt Romney vs. Facts Written Down On Paper

Just the other day, the Boston Globe dropped this bombshell (as covered by Boston.com):

Mitt Romney Stayed At Bain 3 Years Longer Than He Stated

For years, political opponents of Mitt Romney have successfully dipped into the Bain Capital well for attack ads, going all the way back to Ted Kennedy in the 1994 Massachusetts Senate race.

The strategy worked very well for Kennedy as he soundly trounced Romney.  When Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts, his opponent, Shannon O'Brian, did the same thing.  She had less success thanks to Romney attack ads that linked O'Brian's husband to the Enron scandal and let's be honest, the Enron thing was bigger than whatever Bain dirt might exist, but the Bain attack remained a viable strategy.  Even President Obama has continued the Bain strategy:

The fact remains that Romney never quite figured out how to defend against attacks on his Bain record, so he eventually went with a defense perfectly captured by Shaggy with a little help from RikRok:

Romney has claimed for years that when he got called to work on the Salt Lake City Olympics, he left Bain Capital and therefore couldn't be attacked for whatever happened at the firm after 1999.  Sure, it didn't really address past attacks, but at least it stemmed new ones from popping up during his 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial efforts.  It's something Romney's continued to fall back on during his current run as well. Turns out it wasn't true.  As the Boston Globe reports, while Romney claimed his tenure at Bain ended in 1999 -

(P)ublic Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.” 

Also from the article linked at the top:

Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

It's not hard to make some inductive leaps from this point.  Did Romney just collect substantial paychecks from the economic hardships Bain might have created despite having no say in the matter?  I guess technically he can't be blamed for what happened in that case, but he still got paid.  Or is it just too much to believe that as the sole owner of Bain Capital he wouldn't offer up some input at some point as to what his company should do?  Furthermore:

The Globe found nine SEC filings submitted by four different business entities after February 1999 that describe Romney as Bain Capital’s boss; some show him with managerial control over five Bain Capital entities that were formed in January 2002, according to records in Delaware, where they were incorporated.

Managerial control doesn't feel the same to me as retired three years ago.  I loved this response from an anonymous source inside the Romney campaign:

A Romney campaign official, who requested anonymity to discuss the SEC filings, acknowledged that they “do not square with common sense.” But SEC regulations are complicated and quirky, the official argued, and Romney’s signature on some documents after his exit does not indicate active involvement in the firm.

I know it doesn't make any sense whatsoever but sometimes paperwork can be crazy... that's the response.  I know the Texas GOP platform accidentally included a line about wanting to end the teaching of critical thinking skills in school, but that needed to be implemented decades ago for the Romney response to fly.  I know the Romney campaign would really like me to dismiss the SEC paperwork, but, as pointed out in the article:

A former SEC commissioner told the Globe that the SEC documents listing Romney as Bain’s chief executive between 1999 and 2002 cannot be dismissed so easily.  

“You can’t say statements filed with the SEC are meaningless. This is a fact in an SEC filing,” said Roberta S. Karmel, now a professor at Brooklyn Law School... 

...“If someone invested with Bain Capital because they believed Mitt Romney was a great fund manager, and it turns out he wasn’t really doing anything, that could be considered a misrepresentation to the investor,’’ she said. “It’s a theory that could be used in a lawsuit against him.” 

Romney's always has trouble when he says things in the presence of devices intended to make sure people in the future can perfectly recall his exact words:

The written word is also proving not to be Romney's best friend either.  Between the Globe's investigative reporting, government documents, and Vanity Fair's recent and fascinating piece (seriously, read this one):

Where The Money Lives

It seems like Mitt Romney can't catch a break from the actual facts of his life.  The way he does things works very well in the world of business.  Maximize every opportunity... hold an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules so that you can find the spaces between them... make sure you get yours and once you do, make sure you hold on to it.  This is how someone becomes insanely rich and stays that way.  I don't begrudge Romney his success. But if you ask a lot of people if that's the kind of person you want serving as President, I bet most would answer no.  Liberals might talk about wanting someone who can empathize with those worst off so that the president remembers who he or she is fighting for.  Conservatives might talk about the "sit down and have a beer with" factor of a candidate to the same effect. Those descriptions don't fit Romney. If you've ever hosted some kind of board game night with friends over a few glasses of wine, you may have encountered someone known as a Rule Lawyer.  Rule Lawyers make it a point to forget the idea that everyone is just there to have a good time and instead get into the minutiae of the game in order to milk the system and maximize their chances.  Rule Lawyers technically follow the rules as written, but everyone ends up hating their guts. Mitt Romney is that kind of Rule Lawyer, and he keeps tripping up trying to avoid the consequences of that personality streak.  He's not fit for political life, his personality just doesn't suit it.  I don't mean that as an insult, my personality might not suit a political life either, so why put people through the agony of watching me fail to morph into someone I'm not? Maybe it's time Mitt took a few hours to listen to Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" on repeat and realize he's not what's best for the Republican Party. ONE LAST THING (edit): Looks like Time Magazine has a great follow-up article:

Obama Campaign Says Mitt Romney Is Either A Crook Or A Liar

 Here's one particular quote that I loved...

Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony. Or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments.

The Don Henley Lyric-Quoting Edition (with a dash of Hitler!)

I guess the Supreme Court threw down some rulin' a few weeks ago about the Affordable Health Care Act and surprised many people by upholding the law.  More surprising was that the deciding vote came from Chief Justice Roberts, often viewed as a staunch conservative.  Not-shocking-at-all-in-the-least was the rush to right-wing hyperbole as a response to the SCOTUS decision.

 

Dammit, we may have let a bonafide Agent of Rome infiltrate our court system!  And of course, no hyperbole-greatest-hits would be complete without going full Hitler.:

Maine Gov Compares IRS Under Obamacare To Gestapo

When I first heard about Chief Justice Roberts, I thought maybe he experienced something North Carolina State Representative Becky Carney experienced a week after the Supreme Court decision.

What The Frack?  North Carolina Lawmaker Accidentally Votes To Legalize Fracking.

It's 11:30pm, the legislature is trying feverishly to get through all their business, that a vote comes up to attempt to overturn the NC Governor's veto blocking fracking.  Red keeps the veto in place, green votes to overturn it.  Rep. Carney accidentally hits green and immediately panics, realizing what she's done.  When she tries to correct her error, she's told that NC House rules prevent her from doing so.  Why?  Because her vote was literally the deciding vote, and that prevents her from changing it.  So if the vote doesn't really matter, go ahead and get it right.  But when policy is on the line?  Tough shit, you exhausted loser.

Apparently Chief Justice Roberts did mean to vote the way he did, however, and the social media toilets exploded with activity, such as the following people who will now move to Canada because of Obamacare.  Which brings us to the Don Henley portion of the program.

I've been trying to get down... 
to the heart of the matter...


I have to admit, I guess the political hyperbole still shocks me.  Will the world end when the Mitt Romney's signature political achievement as governor of Massachusetts blows up nationwide?  No, of course not, but that's not the vibe I got from the right.  While thinking these things over, I came across this article on Google+.

Texas GOP's 2012 Platform Opposes Teaching Of 'Critical Thinking Skills' 

According to the article, here's the Critical Thinking bit was part of the Knowledge-Based Education plank:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Ha ha ha, stupid Texas!!!  This reinforces all of my northeast, liberally-informed stereotypes of you.

Wait, what's that?  Turns out the inclusion of the phrase "critical thinking skills" was a mistake, and like North Carolina's voting rules, there's no recourse to correct the error (until the next state GOP convention in 2014). All the platform wanted to hammer home was the desire to revert back to old-school teaching methods and it shouldn't be shocking that the Texas GOP wants things old-school.

It's the "challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority" phrase that reminded me of more Don Henley lyrics from The Heart of the Matter:

The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again

The thing about Outcome-Based Education is that the outcome is king.  Teachers use varying tactics to help an individual child find the path toward knowledge.  The Texas GOP sees it as behavior modification that could directly oppose parental authority, and a child's fixed beliefs which are most likely going to be an extension of parental authority.

So maybe I'm missing something, but is the Texas GOP's platform stating that the rights of parents to keep their kids stupid are more important than the rights of kids to not be as stupid as their parents?  Is it well-known that allowing students different paths to achieving knowledge equals behavior modification, and isn't any form of discipline behavior modification?  What makes the GOP old-school approach less of a behaviorally-modified approach?

I honestly don't know.  It all feels like a continuation of the small government logic somehow, preventing schools from overriding parental efforts.

Of course, that small government logic evaporates just a few planks later in the platform:

We affirm that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle, in public policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.” We believe there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin. Additionally, we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction or belief in traditional values.

Regardless, I feel that the Texas GOP reminded me of something, even if they didn't mean to.  Critical thinking seems pretty far down the list when considering politics, from the local Facebook thought-puking to the higher levels of Congressional debate.  I'm not sure where the breakdown in critical thinking began, but I feel it needs to make a strong comeback as soon as possible.

So I'm begging you, Critical Thinking... if you have a sex tape buried somewhere, now's the time to drop it big time, swing that into a reality TV series, sell People magazine the photography rights to your nuptials, and be a real presence in American life again.

Please.