The Bell Tower

Deficit of Trust

My letter to the Wall Street Journal in response to Thomas Frank’s recent column Deficit of Trust:

In Thomas Frank’s latest column, he sets up his entire discussion with the straw man premise that the right wing’s “single greatest idea” is “the villainy of government.” This is absurd in every sense of the word that conservatism is understood. Whether it’s the etymological sense of preservation of the state or the political sense of liberalism and freedom, there is no true conservative who seeks to vilify the state. The objection of modern conservatives today centers around the role of government.

Frank concludes that the problem with government is that it has been run by anti-government politicians. Wrong. The reason government has failed “so spectacularly in our time” is because it has overstepped the limits under which it was originally designed to function. For that matter, we are currently functioning under the most pro-government administration and Congress in the history of this country and strangely enough, they are failing perhaps more spectacularly than any government preceding them. How does Mr. Frank explain this curious circumstance? Why, blame conservatives of course!

Charles Robinson

This just fires me up. First of all, I hate it when journalists create problems that would not otherwise exist and then pretend that they were just doing their job. Second, no organization owns its employees. Certainly the Steelers and the NFL have a right to protect their legal and public integrity but that does not trump a free individual’s decision to weigh his own health risks - especially when the organization in question can put the effort into protecting his right to make those decisions for himself rather than take the easy way out and cover their own ass. If Ryan Clark wants to play, Ryan Clark should play. Period. Here’s a copy of the letter I sent to Charles Robinson at Yahoo! Sports:

“If anything were to happen, no matter how unlikely, the Steelers would be putting themselves in a precarious spot. Not only from the standpoint of public perception, but perhaps from their own players, too.”

There’s only one person who gets to make this decision: Ryan Clark. You, Yahoo!, the Steelers, the NFL, the city of Pittsburgh, his doctors and anyone else who thinks they have a say in this man’s personal decision are wrong. If he wants to play, he plays. It’s his risk to take. Period.

The Steelers and the NFL can avoid any unwanted legal or public risk by simply making clear that Ryan Clark chose to play of his own free will. In fact, they have a duty to do this.

You clearly have not considered the well being of Ryan Clark. If he can’t play in Denver, he’s less valuable to the team and - whatever fantasy world sportswriters want to live in - in the real world that could affect his job with every NFL team in the future. What if a critical end of season game or even a playoff game in Denver loom in his future? The fact that he’s forbidden to play cannot be ignored. Certainly death is an unwanted risk but that decision rests soley on the shoulders of Ryan Clark.

Journalists need to stop pretending they have no impact on the world around them. You point out the problem of public pressure but ignore the fact that you are contributing to it and even creating it. Responsible journalism includes knowing what facts to report and how to report them but it also includes the responsibility to know when to shut your mouth. This is one of those times. Respect Ryan Clark. Respect his privacy. Most importantly, respect his freedom.

Below is a letter I recently sent to the St. Petersburg Times. Leaving aside my foolish confusion of Iraq with Afghanistan, I hope they publish it:

I see that the St. Petersburg Times editorial staff had no qualms about publishing the dying photos of Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard. I wonder if they will soon publish the highly controversial images of Erin Andrews.

It’s nice for reporters and editors to pretend that they have some obligation to inform the public but there was no new information gleaned from Lance Corporal Bernard’s photos. Only ratings were to be gained. Soon, Ms. Andrews will appear on Oprah to discuss her “nightmare.” Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard will not have a similar opportunity. Damn the journalism community for not having the decency to respect this man’s honorable death or the grief of his stricken family.

Here’s a letter I sent to Jeff Passan in response to this column. The scandal machine in sports “journalism” has become worse than the steroid use it’s covering at this point:

Dude, let it go. Are we going to go through this every time a name is leaked from that stupid list? You guys are like Mr. Mackey on South Park. Drugs are bad. Yeah, we know. Do we need a 2000 word self congratulating lecture every time a name is released?

Journalists on the other hand are squeakly clean. It’s black and white. There’s no chance any of you would have done the same thing if put in a similar position. For that matter, there’s no complicity from reporters who were sitting in clubhouses watching the players walk around in their underwear every night while all this was happening. The other players in the clubhouse, they’re the enablers. But the reporters who actually get paid to tell us what’s going on? Well they’re just victims like everyone else.

As for the list, not one reporter ever mentions the illegality of releasing those names. Nope, journalists are free of responsibility there too. They have a higher duty to lecture us on the old news they failed to report when it was still unpopular to report it. And why are these names trickling out one or two at a time instead of the whole list at once? It seems ridiculous that your super secret “sources” would have some names and not others. Obviously, someone’s milking it for maximum effect. How many journalism careers are we going to artificially make out of it? How many baseball careers are we going to try and destroy?

Never mind. Keep living in your fantasy world. Keep comparing steroids to the Iraq war and the economic crisis. Keep patting eachother on the back and shoving your microphones in players’ faces every time another name is cynically leaked from the magic list. The rest of America? We’ll keep watching baseball - and you’ll continue to have a job because of it.

In a recent article [Point of no return, Feb. 7], Phi Delta Theta President Ryan Fischer made this unfortunate statement: “Placing Phi Delt on campus would be a step toward returning Greek organizations to the noble principles they were founded upon, and moving away from the unfortunate stereotypes that have come to define them as a result of alcohol abuse.”

There are two implications here that should be noted and corrected.

The first is that the majority of Greek organizations have somehow strayed from their “noble principles” and that Phi Delt is coming to the rescue. Thanks Ryan, but there are many other chapters at UCF who need not be lumped with the unfortunate events at Pi Kappa Alpha.

Fraternity presidents should be sticking together and pointing that fact out - not buying face-time for their own chapter at the political expense of the rest of the Greek community.

The second is that alcohol is somehow a reasonable scape goat for poor chapter management. Certainly alcohol-abuse is an undesirable reality of student life - and I stress student.

In case you weren’t aware, drinking also happens outside the Greek community. However, the idea that somehow an “alcohol-free” house is an answer to any problem is absurd.

Those who believe in it will notice that the events surrounding PKA’s tragedy included allegations of cocaine possession. Last time I checked, UCF was running cocaine-free housing campus-wide.

What’s the point? Blaming alcohol is an excuse and a tool for lawyers and special-interest groups to rally around for their own nefarious purposes.

Those who actually care about the students should pursue more realistic and effective policies because alcohol is not going away. There is no substitute for sound chapter risk-management policies and credible leaders to execute them.

This is where everyone in the Greek community should be focusing their efforts. After all, if mandating alcohol-free housing worked, why not just bring “incident-free” housing to campus and save the world?

This letter is regarding the article “Dying for peace,” by Alex Babcock, published April 10.

The conservatives should have kicked the anti-war demonstrators’ asses at the pro-troop rally last Tuesday. The foolishness of today’s “peace” movement in America is no different than the idiocy that plagued it in the ’60s. Some Americans can’t tell the difference between the freedom of expression and the crime of disturbance.

The First Amendment secures, among other things, Americans’ right to express themselves. This guarantees us the very serious liberty to oppose, detract and speak our minds. That’s what the conservatives were there to do. They organized peacefully to express their support for American troops.

A crowd of miscreants covered in paint and graffiti, barging in and causing a disturbance, is not freedom of speech - it is a disruption of it. Recognizing this concept is the key difference between democracy and anarchy. American government wasn’t founded on the notion of who yells the loudest.

If this band of finger painters wants to participate in the democratic process, they can organize their own rally. There, they can enjoy the freedom to play dead, draw cave paintings, pick gnats out of each others hair or do whatever else it is beatniks do to communicate their distaste with the law. Or, they could organize a serious debate where both sides discuss their differences in a civilized forum.

Either way, remember this - while juvenile delinquents in America are splashing about in fake blood from Toys R’ Us, many brave American soldiers are cleaning off the real blood they have spilt in Iraq so that Americans, and antiwar protesters, can continue to get drunk and draw pictures on the flag they’re fighting for.

Hooray for democracy.

CFF

Original Article

Your “if everyone else jumped off a bridge argument” about Barry Bonds is too simplistic. The point is not whether he was right to take steroids. The point is, if so many other players were ostensibly taking steroids, how uneven was the playing field? If the pitchers, fielders and other batters are also juiced, doesn’t that at least dilute this argument of an “unfair advantage”?

Also, this concept of the sanctity of records is absurd. There have been spitballs, emery boards, nail files, corked bats, scorekeepers with telescopes in the scoreboard, tipping pitches, uppers and even fixed games since the beginning of the sport. If you want to talk about race, what are the chances that a guy like Josh Gibson might have given the record a run for its money? He was never allowed to play in the majors at all. If he were, would his life have turned out differently? We don’t know and can’t know.

It’s impossible to go back and root out such issues and adjust history for the sake of someone’s subjective definition of “integrity.” The only way to maintain the validity of the records is to leave them be and let them stand. Baseball needs to move forward and decide what to do in the future about steroid abuse. There is nothing it can do about the past.

Jeff’s Response:

Baseball, in all likelihood, will let its records stand. If it chooses to do so, let’s hope the fans are educated enough to determine the true record-holders.

Passan

Insidious equality

Susan Taylor Martin recently wrote an excellent article balancing Michael Moore’s claims in his new movie Sicko with the reality of the health industry. Moore’s picture of a pristine Canadian industry is just as flawed as the picture some in this country would paint of our own system. The truth is that there is no easy answer.

However, I would call attention to the last quote in the article, attributed to Julie Mason: “I see people a lot wealthier than me and a lot poorer than me and I know everyone is getting the same care. And for me, that’s as important as getting my own care.”

Is this what we’ve come to then, that the quality of care is not the issue at all, that the real point is everyone gets the same level of care - be it horrendous care or otherwise? She actually says it’s just as important that everyone be equal as that she have any care at all for herself.

What a revolting thought. I hope this country never comes to a point where we share such a sentiment collectively. The government exists to ward the community from injustices, not walk around to each desk and make sure everyone has the same color pencils. A system that places equality above liberty will always fail, and bears no resemblance to the American ideals that this country was founded upon.

Link