In this age of political correctness, conspiracy theories, trash journalism, and the Republican revolution, neither truth nor common sense gets much play. I don't imagine that I will be able to do much about it, but when I come across a common misconception, I will try to give the facts here. Maybe in a few hundred years, if we all work together, we can undo the coming dark age. So, the next time you find a fact that needs telling, just e-mail it here and I will post it.
This is page contains Queries, Tidbits, Quotations, and Links on political matters. If you have any additions, suggestions or corrections on any of this, please e-mail them to me and I will include them here. Most importantly, if you are interested in swapping links, e-mail your URL to me. I am eager to exchange links with anyone with related interests.
This spot is reserved to look for information I don't have. If you know the answer, e-mail me at steve_kemp@unc.edu and I will post it here under Tidbits (or Quotes, as the case might be.) That way, the next person won't have to look so hard or so long.
Quotation by Mort Sahl: I am hoping to include a
quotation by Mort Sahl, but have lost the reference. It's a comment
about Generation-X and it goes like this: "I warned you back in the
sixties, if you didn't stop taking drugs your kids were going to be
mutants." I believe that it was published in Newsweek's clever
quotes section in the late 1980s. Any help you could give me would be
greatly appreciated.
Where Cable TV was not: Speaking of conspiracy theories,
I do have one of my own and I was wondering if anyone out there had any
evidence to back up my idea. It always struck me as fascinating that
Cable TV came to the suburbs very, very quickly, but didn't reach the
big cities (with a couple of exceptions, like L.A.) for years and
years. I used to live in Washington, DC in the early 1980s and the
official stories as to why cable kept getting delayed were
obvious, monstrous fantasies.
Broadcast TV always covers a "broadcast area" fixed by the power of the transmitter and the local geography. All other things being equal, a broadcaster reaches a heck of a lot more people in a densely populated area, like a big city. Interesting isn't it, that cable TV mysteriously floundered due to slow politics in exactly those areas where broadcasters had their biggest profit-potential? Just those two facts would normally be enough to start an anti-trust investigation in almost any other industry. Not to mention the media outcry. But everyone was silent. Democrats and Republicans, the news media (who obviously work for the broadcasters), the anti-trust prosecutors, even the consumer advocates.
This spot is reserved little known facts that tend to debunk common misconceptions. I hope to be even-handed, going after liberals, conservatives, and Gen-X'ers (who have no political convictions), equally. I will slip in a piece of pure commentary once in a while as well. Your comments are welcome.
That guy who invented blood transfusions: For years,
there has been a nonsensical story around that Dr. Charles
Richard Drew, who did important research on blood transfusions and
was instrumental in developing the modern blood bank, bled to death
because the hospital nearest to his car accident would not admit him
because he was black. This story got so popular, it even became part of
an episode of
the TV series, M*A*S*H.
(Funny thing, it used to be that TV shows employed fact checkers to
check their scripts before they filmed them. I guess Larry Gelbart -- Executive
Producer and Co-author of the episode -- didn't feel the need.)
I had the opportunity to see a television interview with Charlene Drew Jarvis, Ph.D, Dr. Drew's daughter. She had a letter from her mother to the hospital, thanking them for their valiant attempts to save her husband's life and their support of her and her family throughout. The facts, apparently, are these. Yes, there was a car accident. Yes, this black man was rushed to the nearest hospital, which was a "Whites Only" hospital. But, no, they didn't turn him away. It was an emergency and they were an emergency room. The doctors tried to save him, but he died.
The story about being turned away from the hospital started early. Dr. Drew's daughter, Dr. Jarvis, stated that she always knew the truth and yet she never challenged the story when it came up. Her feeling was that the Whites-Only laws of Jim Crow were so outrageous and so unjust that they (the white folk) deserved the lie. Interestingly, the net result was that, amongst African-Americans, that little myth became a popular justification for not donating blood. African-Americans consistently donated less blood and there was less blood available for African-Americans when they needed it. In recognition of the seriousness of this problem, and much to her credit, Dr. Jarvis joined a campaign called "African-Americans United for Life" and told her father's story to local groups and health organizations all over the country, promoting donations to blood banks.
It all makes for a wonderful example of how those little white lies (you should pardon the expression) are ultimately far more dangerous than the big, ugly, noticeable lies. For a brief while, the Left made a point of sticking to the truth. Muck-raking served them well when the conservatives had been in control so long that the law and common practice had gotten completely out of touch with the popular interests. For the last thirty years, the liberals have had a small measure of power and the facts are not always on their side. Apparently, that makes lies just as attractive to the Left as to the Right.
Who gets the death penalty? I am not a proponent of the
death penalty, although, given the current structure of our penal
system, there are, I suppose, a few circumstances where we leave
ourselves little choice (such as a prisoner with a lifetime sentence
who kills a prison guard, etc.). On the other hand, if we are going to
administer the death penalty, it seems to be that we often give it to
exactly the wrong people. Consider two recent cases, both of which seem
to have gone the wrong way.
A few years ago, I believe it was in Florida, a man was convicted of murdering a physician who performed abortions. The killer was given the death penalty. Whatever one's position on abortion, this was clearly the wrong choice. If you believe abortion is murder, you must believe that, in a hundred years, this killer will be thought of the way John Brown is thought of today, a misguided maniac with a heart of gold. In that case, given how infrequently we give the death penalty, that penalty is too harsh. If you believe abortion should be legal, you must believe that, in a hundred years, the entire abortion debate will disappear, a crazy fad, that no one thinks about anymore. In that case, you must recognize that the death penalty was nowhere near harsh enough. Let the killer rot in jail. Give him the best medical attention. Pray that he lives a long life. Hope that he lives long enough to see the political fad that he spent his entire life for fade away until no one cares. Then he can die old and forgotten in prison.
Then, of course, there is the Susan Smith case in South Carolina. The public reaction to this case was the biggest piece of nonsense imaginable. Like most people, I heard about the Smith case over the media, and, like many folks (including the local sheriff, thank heavens), I was immediately cautious. A few days later, one of the many who were not so cautious passed an email along to one of the research list-servs to which I belong. These list-servs have restricted content and get very little "spam' (junk email). The notice was prefaced with the line "PLEASE DISTRIBUTE TO ALL LISTS, NO MATTER HOW INAPPROPRIATE." It detailed the Smith case and begged people to be on the lookout for persons matching the description of the man who supposedly kidnapped her children.
My first thought was that the author should go check a dictionary and look up the word, "inappropriate." But I guess it's pretty unrealistic to expect a computer-geek to use a dictionary, or understand the notion of "inappropriate" even if he does. My second thought was that there were dozens of kidnappers on the lam and this particular one might not even exist. Why should this guy get a special email alert? Of course, when Susan Smith confessed that she had killed her children and that there was no kidnapper, I decided not to flame the author of the email. I hope he was sufficiently chagrined, though I suspect he is still unaware of the meaning of the word "inappropriate" and probably doesn't realize what a racist he is.
And Susan Smith is promptly convicted of murdering her children. In order to avoid the death penalty, she claims she was abused and brings forward her uncle who claims to be the abuser. She escapes the death penalty. As much as I oppose the death penalty, I cannot imagine anyone more deserving than Susan Smith, just as I cannot imagine anyone less deserving than that fellow who killed the physician above. This woman is a born con-artist. She cried and whimpered when she begged the media to find her kidnapped children. We know that she lied when she did that. We also know that she lied very convincingly, at least to some. After all, look at that silly email. Loads of kidnappers out there and only this one gets special attention on the internet. The difference wasn't the kidnapping, it was just how good a con-artist Susan Smith is. We also know that she killed her own young children in cold blood. And yet, for some reason, we wonder whether or not she was abused, whether or not she deserved the death penalty.
All of this reminds me of my favorite quotation by Thomas De Quincey. Why on Earth should we suspect this talented con-artist and cold-blooded murderer of telling the truth when she cries and whimpers that she has been abused? And if she can con tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of racist Americans into charging around looking for imaginary kidnappers, why should we feel that she can't con her very own uncle into lying in order to save her life? The jury has little excuse, but the rest of us have none at all.
Congresional procedures: Politicians make a lot of
promises. A lot of them turn out to be promises that the politician
could not have kept even had s/he wanted to. When Newt Gingrich took
charge of the U. S. House of Representatives, he worked hard to make
promises that he had a chance of keeping. One promise over which he had
very good control was his promise not to use the technical procedural
gimmicks to prevent legislation from coming to a vote. Not for the
first time, in March/April of 1998, Gingrich broke this promise all to
pieces when he used the rules to prevent a vote on campaign reform.
Hypocricy amongst politicians is common. But it is rare when a
politician makes a center-piece of a promise he has no intention of
keeping.
PostScript: As of April 22, 1998, facing a "discharge petition" that would force a straight up-or-down vote on the issue, Gingrich reversed his position and agreed to a vote. This is good news for campaign reform and bad news for the Senate. (Gingrich knows that no campaign reform will pass the Senate. He was just trying to take some heat off the Senate.) However, this in no way changes the fact that Gingrich broke is most central promise to the American people, that he would not misuse the rules to keep the House from voting on issues of concern.
The Public Works Department of the ancient Druidic government had built all the required roads, temples, storehouses, etc. planned for the current fiscal year. Upon completion of the various projects, they found themselves 20% below budget. As any governmental department knows, if it fails to spend the allocation for the current fiscal year, it faces a budget cut in the coming year. In order to forestall the Druidic legislature's taking an axe to their budget, the Public Works Department built Stonehenge.
Druidic newspapers of the day heralded the project as a boondoggle. Scandal erupted. The government fell. Thus ended the ancient Druidic culture.
There are lots of quotations on politics and I will be adding more as time goes on, but I have a particular fondness for the words of Tom Lehrer. Those below are taken from Lehrer's (1965) music album, That Was The Year That Was. A transcript of this album is available on the Web and that saved me a lot of typing.
The online transcript did not include the cover notes, which include this lovely sentiment:
Any ideas expressed on this record should not be taken as representing Mr. Lehrer's true convictions, for indeed he has none. "If anyone objects to any statement, I make I am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever made it."
An interesting side-light to this is that I discovered that there are enough fellow fans of Tom Lehrer on the Web that the above quotation appears on a number of "quote lists." I pulled off the first three I came to and was intrigued to find that only one of them was close to having the exact wording. Perhaps those lists should be called "paraphrase lists." Even after over a quarter of a century programming computers and dealing with computer folk, it still amazes me the degree to which even the smartest and best of them lack anything that even approaches a semblence of scholarship. Scholarship is something they simply do not value.
We have some political quotations from Lehrer, and a few other authors.
The following is from the introduction to the song, "National
Brotherhood Week":
I'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another, and I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that!
from the introduction to the song, "The Folk Song Army":
One type of song that has come into increasing prominence in recent months is the folk song of protest. You have to admire people who sing these songs. It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on.
from the introduction to the song, "Alma":
It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age... he had been dead for two years.
from the epilogue to the song, "Alma":
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love: husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up!
Lehrer, T. (1965). That Was The Year That Was [LP R-6179, CD 6179-2]. Los Angeles: Warner Brothers.
I am also a big fan of A. Whitney Brown.
Out in the middle of a barren plain in central Iraq stand the ruins of the largest enclosed city the world had known until the wall went up around West Berlin. Twenty-five hundred years ago Babylon was surrounded by four separate walls totaling 107 feet in thickness. They are over 70 feet in height. And along them are 360 watchtowers, one every 160 feet, to give you an idea of how long the walls are. ...
There are hundreds of lesser cities twenty to sixty feet beneath the clay of the Middle East, made of untold billions of bricks, kiln-baked to indestructability in ovens fueled with charcoal and made from wood, which comes from trees, all in a land that is today completely devoid of anything even remotely resembling a forest.
I wonder if the archeologists sifting through the parched dust of Mesopotamia or Palestine ever wonder where the millions of people it took to build those wonders got their food or why they built giant cities in the middle of the desert.
The answer is that the Near East wasn't desert 2,500 years ago. The pillars of Greece and Rome are imitations in stone of the tree trunks that were originally plentiful building material. The plains of Iraq were once as fertile as the plains of Iowa. First they cut down the forests, then they plowed the fields and used up the soil. With the trees gone, the rains came less frequently. The fields went to pasture, were overgrazed, drought followed, and erosion removed the topsoil. Herds of camels and sheep compacted the subsoil, and finally -- voila! -- permanent desert.
The climax ecosystem of human-populated land seems to be desert. The same process is in various stages of development all around the world. ...
The wonders of the ancient world are nothing compared to desertification, without question the greatest achievement of our species.
Brown (1991, pp.19-21).
Brown, A. W. (1991). The Big Picture. New York: HarperCollins.