Category Archives: Media

The Perpetual Best-Seller

Posted on by
Reply

(I’ve told people from time to time that I never fear an editor, that nobody has ever written a perfect book—-which explains why there are so many different versions of the Bible on the bookstore shelves. We offer these thoughts from Dr. Frank Crane, who wrote them in 1912, although we admit not being sure about their political correctness.  But we think his thoughts are worth consideration because they suggest the Bible comes from a culture and a time different from ours and its teachings might be perceived as being presented differently from the way we understand teachings. Perhaps, he suggests, we can understand those teachings better if we consider—-)

HOW TO READ THE BIBLE

I have no particular creed I want you to swallow, and no particular church I want you to join. I have no intention to convert you, and even aim to “do you good.”

Still a friendly hint on how to read the Bible may interest you.

You may read the Bible from moral motives, or merely as literature. In the one case, you may find it a very puzzling book, and in the other, very antique, unless you remember one thing.

The one thing is that the Bible is an oriental book.

Unless you keep that in mind you’re pretty sure to miss its meaning.

Some of the most absurd vagaries have arisen by forgetting it, and by treating the Bible as a western book.

The oriental mind differs from ours chiefly in this, that it is essentially poetic. Eastern peoples have always thought, spoken, and written poetry…

Poetry does not speak plainly. It hints, symbolizes; touches facts not with a rough, firm grasp but evasively; loves riddles, dark sayings and apparent contradictions.

It functions in parables and paradoxes.

The western mind is prosaic. It plods, builds, and reasons.

To get to the top of the mountain, the occidental cuts logical steps in the rocks, the oriental flies.

In moral subjects and religious the eastern mind is the more skillful, as such matters are better divined that argued.

Forget not, therefore, that there is hardly a line of your Bible that is not poetry.  The nearest to prose is in Paul’s writings; yet they also abound in highly poetical passages.

No one had this poetical turn than the chief figure of the Bible, Jesus.

His parables are pure poetry; his maxims are full of paradox.

It is very unfortunate that our western bent for logic and bald facts led us to use the glowing images of the Great Master’s poetry as bricks and squared stones wherewith to build up our “systems for truth.”

For it is doubtful that truth is a system at all; it is more likely a vision.

Take one illustration: Jesus would teach his disciples the value of humility. Instead of analyzing this virtue, dissecting and explaining it, as a modern professor might do, He removes his coat, girds himself with a towel and washes His pupils’ feet, saying finished:

“If I, your Master, wash your feet, so ought ye to wash one another’s feet.”

The advantage of this method of teaching is that it is striking, easily remembered, visual, and interesting.

Common sense prevented His disciples from taking his command literally. They were forced to seek the idea, the sentiment behind it.

Literalism is not Truth. It is the foe of Truth. “The letter killeth.”

You cannot literally obey a poet; you should spiritually obey him; that is, try to appreciate him, to get his point of view, his atmosphere and feeling.

Logic chopping is fatal to all poetry.

 

Fifty

Posted on by
2

Pardon us if there is a certain self-congratulatory feeling to our story today. It’s not intended. I’m just going to tell a story.

Listeners to a Jefferson City radio station at 7:35 a.m. fifty years ago today heard a young radio announcer tell them a story about the famous prohibition terrorist Carrie Nation, who started her national tour that made her a household name in the fight against demon rum on February 8, 1901.

It was Missouri’s Sesquicentennial year, just a few days after Governor Hearnes had kicked off the observance by dedicating the restored first State Capitol in St. Charles.

A few days ago, Governor Parson kicked off the state’s Bicentennial with his inaugural speech at our present Capitol.

And the radio program is still on the air.

It was called “Missouri in Retrospect” when it debuted on one station, KLIK, in 1971. It’s known as “Across Our Wide Missouri” in numerous communities throughout the state and, we suppose, in all corners of the world through the Missourinet web page.

It began with a couple of old books on the shelf in the newsroom that I turned to when I thought there needed to be a better way to celebrate the sesquicentennial than to do stories about the latest sign or the latest old building that had been rescued from the wreckers.  The longtime head of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Floyd Shoemaker, had written a series of newspaper columns decades earlier outlining something that happened on a particular day in a particular year. There were some dates not covered in the two volumes of Missouri Day-by-Day, and some topics not covered—sports and crime in particular.

We thought it would be good for people to be a little better-educated about their state’s history and, by extension, Missouri’s part of ournation’s history.

KLIK continued to run the programs for a few years after I left late in 1974 to become news director of the Missourinet, founded by my former assistant news director Clyde Lear and our former farm director, Derry Brownfield. Clyde and I had to help a lawyer make a boat payment or two before we got an out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit that the manager of the radio station filed trying to keep Across Our Wide Missouri from being on the network.

One other voice has been heard doing these programs on the Missourinet.  Missourinet reporter Ron Medin voiced the stories for several days in 1983, I think it was, while I was out of work after taking a line drive in the left eye while pitching in a softball game.

As this entry is written, a stack of envelopes is sitting within arms reach, potential new stories waiting to be written.  Ernest Hemingway is there.  The story of his time as a reporter for the Kansas City Star is waiting to be written.  So is the story of Fred Harvey, whose railroad-station restaurants before 1900 made long-distance travel a little more civilized. And Clarence Earl Gideon, a “no-account punk” from Hannibal whose lawsuit guaranteed to poor people could get a court-appointed lawyer if they couldn’t affird one. There’s a fat envelope with the story of St. Louis native Butch O’Hare—for whom O’Hair International Airport in Chicago is named. Bob Ford, the killer of Jesse James is there, as is Fred Harmon, the St. Joseph artist who created the cartoons strip of years gone by called “Red Ryder,” the character for whom a b-b gun was named.  There’s Tom Mix, the silent movie cowboy star who made his first feature film in Missouri, and Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, who lived his last several years in St. Charles after creating a trading post that became Chicago.

All waiting to be written.  Stories to be told.

And there are about eight file drawers of similar envelopes in the basement.

One day my assistant news director at KLIK, the afore mentioned Clyde Lear, looked across the table between our desks and said, “Priddy, you ought to put this stuff in a book.”

A few years later an editor at Independence Press (in Independence, Missouri of course) named Margaret Baldwin decided the stories were worth publishing.  They became three books, the proceeds of which made a big dent in our children’s college expenses.

I suppose I am better-recognized for telling those stories of Missouri’s past than I am for all my years of reporting the news in a career that has lasted long enough that what once was just another story one day is now Missouri history.

If I live forever, I’ll never write all of these stories.  It doesn’t help that Missourians keep making history.

Independence Press printed the last of the three books several years ago. I have the only remaining inventory in our storage locker or in our garage and sometimes in the trunk of my car. But when they’re gone, they’ll be out of print.

There are two things about becoming an author—

Somebody, I don’t recall how, once said that writing a book is a former of eternal life. I wasn’t real sure about that until the way I was at the Library of Congress in Washington and filled out a call slip for volume one just the grins and a few minutes later, a library employee emerged from the bowels and laid the book on the desk in front of me.

The other comment came from former Missouri Treasurer Jim Spainhower who, in addition to being a politician was an ordained minister in our denomination who had written a book called Pulpit, Pew, and Politics.  He told me when the first volume came out that I was now entitled to begin my prayers, “O Thou who also hast written a book….”

There are now five books with my name on them on a nearby shelf, soon to be joined by a sixth—about the history of the Missouri Capitol.  And there are files for two more in boxes behind me.

It all began on this date, February 8, 1971.

-0-

 

Theodore Roosevelt  and fake news

Posted on by
Reply

Please pardon us for some introductory observations that recall our very recent past, but—

Our most current former president got pretty prickly when somebody had the temerity to suggest he was wrong (which has led to one observer in our social circle suggesting the official White House pet should have been a porcupine).

No matter how much he complained about “fake news,” there’s nothing fake about his exit from the biggest pulpit he will ever have.  He came along several decades late because—

This country once had a law against using “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about our government or the flag or the armed forces or making comments that led others to hold the government in contempt during wartime. There are some today who think that’s a dandy idea, particularly as the longest war in our history appears to have seized back the headlines and complaints about “fake news” and a new war—against a virus—has ignited even more hostility toward those who tell us this war won’t just go away.

And a lot of people apparently side with the President who labels anything in the press that runs counter to his remarks or ideas to be “fake news” published by “enemies of the people.”  But the president has done a pretty good job, himself, of violating the century-old law against speaking poorly of the government. And his most recent tirade, mostly “fake facts” of the kind of which he has thrived, and its consequences are unforgiveable.

The Sedition Act of 1918 was an extension of the Espionage Act of 1917, both products of World War One.  People could go to prison for twenty years for expressing an opinion somebody found un-American.

Kansas City Star editor William Rockhill Nelson had a good friend named Teddy Roosevelt who was concerned about the nation’s readiness for war.  Nelson convinced Roosevelt he should put his ideas in print with the Star, which would then circulate the editorials throughout the country.  Roosevelt promptly called himself the newest “cub reporter” on the Star staff.  He typed his first column in the Star newsroom while he was in town for a visit in September, 1917.  His column published the next May 7 made the case for people to say bad things about a President if they thought he deserved it. His column resonates today (we have emphasized the part about free speech and the press and underlined a particularly important word):

The legislation now being enacted by Congress should deal drastically with sedition. It should also guarantee the right of the press and people to speak the truth freely of all their public servants, including the President, and to criticize them in the severest terms of truth whenever they come short in their public duty. Finally, Congress should grant the Executive the amplest powers to act as an executive and should hold him to stern accountability for failure so to act, but it should itself do the actual lawmaking and should clearly define the lines and limits of action and should retain and use the fullest powers of investigation into and supervision over such action. Sedition is a form of treason. It is an offense against the country, not against the President. At this time to oppose the draft or sending our armies to Europe, to uphold Germany, to attack our allies, to oppose raising the money necessary to carry on the war are at least forms of sedition, while to act as a German spy or to encourage German spies to use money or intrigue in the corrupt service of Germany, to tamper with our war manufactures and to encourage our soldiers to desert or to fail in their duty, and all similar actions are forms of undoubtedly illegal sedition. For some of these offenses death should be summarily inflicted. For all the punishment should be severe.

The Administration has been gravely remiss in dealing with such acts.

Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where the people are themselves free. Our Government is the servant of the people, whereas in Germany it is the master of the people. This is because the American people are free and the German are not free. The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

During the last year the Administration has shown itself anxious to punish the newspapers which uphold the war, but which told the truth about the Administration’s failure to conduct the war efficiently, whereas it has failed to proceed against various powerful newspapers which opposed the war or attacked our allies or directly or indirectly aided Germany against this country, as these papers upheld the Administration and defended the inefficiency. Therefore, no additional power should be given the Administration to deal with papers for criticizing the Administration. And, moreover, Congress should closely scrutinize the way the Postmaster-General and Attorney-General have already exercised discrimination between the papers they prosecuted and the papers they failed to prosecute.

Congress should give the President full power for efficient executive action. It should not abrogate its own power. It should define how he is to reorganize the Administration. It should say how large an army we are to have and not leave the decision to the amiable Secretary of War, who has for two years shown such inefficiency. It should declare for an army of five million men and inform the Secretary that it would give him more the minute he asks for more.

All of this is from a man who, as President, filed a libel suit against Joseph Pulitzer after Pulitzer’s New York World disclosed that a syndicate involving friends of Roosevelt and his favored successor, William Howard Taft, made a lot of money from the United States’ purchase of land from France for the Panama Canal.  The Indianapolis News also was sued.

When an Indiana judge threw out the suit against the News, Roosevelt called him “a crook and a jackass.”  Sounds pretty contemporary to us.

Roosevelt dictated his last column for the Kansas City newspaper on January 3, 1919. Three days later he died.

Journalist vs. citizen

Posted on by
Reply

The criticism of Bob Woodward for not making public sooner our president’s remarks indicating he had early knowledge of the dangers of the coronavirus but chose not to tell the public rekindles an old and probably unresolvable question.

Is a reporter a citizen first or a journalist first?  The question probably has been raised most often when a cameraman or a reporter shoots video of a bad event happening without personally intervening to limit or prohibit harm to one or the other of the participants.

The issue has a broader context in the time of cell phone videos that lately have become triggers for more events. At what point does a citizen have a responsibility to put away a cell phone and step in to keep harm from happening to a fellow citizen? It’s not just the reporter who must make a split-second decision. The potential now exists for all of us.

Woodward is being criticized for not revealing the president’s (we think) terrible decision to conceal the dangers of the virus while assuring the public for several weeks that everything was under control and would be fine.  While the president claimed he did not want to cause a panic, anyone with any knowledge of history knows this nation does not panic. It has reflected uncertainty but it relatively quickly has steadied itself and acted. It did not panic after 9-11. It got angry. It picked up pieces. It mourned. It exhibited empathy and sympathy and dedication.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the nation did not panic. It gathered itself, dedicated itself to necessary steps to fight back.

In those two instances, we went to war.

Name your historical catastrophe and you won’t find national panic. We have a tendency to absorb our tragedies, mourn our losses, and take necessary steps to come back. We might hazard the observation that a president who doesn’t understand that lacks a significant understanding of his country.

If the president wouldn’t shoot straight with the people, should Woodward have stepped forward? And when?

Let’s turn to the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank if you will that studies issues within journalism—including ethics.  Al Tompkins is a senior faculty member and someone I highly respect.  He asked whether it was ethical for Woodward to withhold that information: https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2020/was-it-unethical-bob-woodward-to-withhold-trumps-coronavirus-interviews-for-months/

The institute’s senior media writer, Tom Jones, had his take: https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2020/more-fallout-from-bob-woodwards-book-on-donald-trump/

We don’t expect you to read all the way through these pieces; we present them to show that journalists face issues such as this every day, just about, and we do not treat them cavalierly.  The stories are seldom as severe as the coronavirus. But the issue of when a reporter has enough to go to press or to put it on the air is something we face a lot.

Rushing a story into print or onto the air without waiting for the context of the story to develop might do no one any good.

We are not sure Woodward should have released that first tape with our president as the president was saying telling the public that everything was under control and the fifteen present cases soon will be down to zero.  The dilemma grows as circumstances change and additional interviews are recorded with additional actions and words—or the lack of them—that make the story more important.  When does the weight of the accumulated information reach a tipping point? And as events advance, what is the best way to handle a changing tipping point?  Reporters sometimes reach a point of asking whether releasing the information will stop the story’s evolution or whether the public is better served by letting the story keep unravelling.  Does the reporter have a responsibility to a public figure to keep that person from digging a deeper hole for himself or herself? Or is it an ethical violation to tell that person to quit shoveling?   This reporter never felt he had any business telling an office-holder he should not be doing troubling acts. But there were plenty of times when it became clear that public awareness of a situation was paramount.

At a certain point, some stories move beyond the ability of the reporter to stop observing and start writing. The evaluation of when that point is reached is purely subjective. When is the time to get off the horse although the horse keeps moving?  Why not wait to see where the horse goes?

Did Bob Woodward have to sit on those tapes as long as he did?  If not, when should he have written the story?  And would writing the story have made any difference in the president’s attitude and actions?  Would publishing the story earlier have saved any lives?  Or would the president have just dismissed the story as more fake news and continued his course?

There also are times when promises are made by a reporter to get a source to divulge information. We don’t know if there was such an arrangement in this case but the reporter-source relationship is essential to the eventual flow of information and promises of anonymity or promises of holding information that is only part of a story must be honored, uncomfortable though it might be for the reporter.

We don’t know about that relationship and speculation about the potential benefits of early release of information is not our long suit. But the issue is a complicated one and it is far easier to analyze the issue after the fact than when the reporter is caught up in the events developing around him or her.

These questions however ignore the central issue and the central issue is not what Bob Woodward learned and did not report.

President Trump knew what Bob Woodward knew before Woodward knew it.  Our president knew about this virus first. He could have reacted differently and many think he should have done so. Maybe Woodward should have reported the information sooner. But the person who could have acted differently than he did because he had the information first, did not.

Which of them bore the primary responsibility for alerting the public to the danger it was going to face?

Bottom line: Actions speak louder than words. If actions had been taken by the president then, words today from Bob Woodward might not have the impact they are having.

In fact, they might not even be a story, let alone a book.

Seeking honesty

Posted on by
Reply

Last week’s entry encouraged participants to look carefully at and listen skeptically to claims and accusations that will be blowing over us at hurricane velocity as election day nears. We’ve always felt it dangerous for citizens of a republic to restrict themselves to one news source and accept statements from candidates, surrogates, and social media without question.  The internet offers us opportunities to seek the truth but it also floods us with untruths. Responsible citizens will be unafraid to check sources of information and investigate truth or only truthiness, or outright falsehood.

The sources we list today will provide evaluations of the stuff we hear or see. Although all of us are busy, the search for truth always is time well-spent and these sources can provide important perspectives quickly.

The Berkeley Library at the University of California calls its site Real News/Fake News: Fact Checkers. It has a list of sites on its webpage and we’ve added a few more.

Pollitifact: Pulitzer Prize winning site run by editors and reporters from the Tampa Bay Times (Florida) newspaper. “PolitiFact is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics…. The PolitiFact state sites are run by news organizations that have partnered with the Times.”  Politifact offers a Pants on Fire Truth O Meter.

The organization rates statements as True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False, False, and Pants on Fire.  It has made 140 checks on Biden statements and finds 39 percent true or mostly true, 25% half true. 19 percent mostly false, 15% false and 3% Pants on Fire. It has made 840 checks on Trump and found 13 percent true or mostly true and an equal percentage half true. Twenty percent were mostly false, 35% false, and 16 percent Pants on Fire.

FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania….a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases.”  FactCheck.org recently was asked if a video shown on social media purportedly showing Joe Biden asleep during a television interview was genuine.  The answer: No, it was manipulated and fairly recently was circulated n Twitter by White House Chief of Staff Dan Scavino.

Flack Check: “Headquartered at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, FlackCheck.org is the political literacy companion site to the award-winning FactCheck.org. The site provides resources designed to help viewers recognize flaws in arguments in general and political ads in particular.”  The site reports on politics, science, and health. On the “politics” page you will find a helpful video about how to spot fake news.

OpenSecrets.org: “Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, the Center for Responsive Politics is the nation’s premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.” Among the topics on the web page is one about Dark Money and another about Political Action Committees. There also are specific stories about inside political influence and activities.

Fact Checker: “The purpose of this Web site, and an accompanying column in the Sunday print edition of The Washington Post, is to “truth squad” the statements of political figures regarding issues of great importance, be they national, international or local.” The web page bills it as “The Truth Behind the Rhetoric.”  This is the site that rates truthfulness by awarding Pinocchios, using the famous puppet whose nose grew with each lie he told.

Snopes: “The definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.” One fairly new posting asks if “The CDC readjusted the COVID-19 death toll from 60,000 to 37,000.”  Snopes’ investigation rated the statement “false.”

Duke Reporters’ Lab: Fact Checking: Includes a database of global fact-checking sites, which can be viewed as a map or as a list; also includes how they identify fact-checkers.

AP Fact Check: Associated Press Journalists throughout the world check facts and accountability.

There are other resources, too:

CNN Facts First: This one recently had entries about nine conspiracy theories our president is pushing and a review of his opponent’s speech on Social Security, fracking, and crime. It also fact checks FOX News.

FOX News: We checked numerous sources for a FOX News fact checker but found no indication it has such a service.

ABC News: The Australian Broadcasting Company has a fact-check page but it focuses on that Australia, not the United States. (See below).

Traditional Networks: We searched for independent fact-checking efforts at the big three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, and ABC. None of them seem to have their own fact-checking staff that we could determine. But they do report on the fact-checking by other entities.

C-SPAN: Does not appear to have its own fact-checking staff.

Unfortunately there are those who will look at all of these resources and decide to ignore them because they know all of them are liars, fake news, or some kind of joint anti-American conspiracy.

But for those whose minds might be open, even if only for a small sliver of light, they’re worth looking into. They might help convince a few folks that if they’re the only ones going a different direction than the rest of the traffic on a one-way street, it might not be the other drivers who have a problem.

Just the facts, ma’am*

Posted on by
1

Well, we’ve endured two more political conventions, their tiresome tirades, their excessive exaggerations, their profound puffery, their ferocious flag-waving, their multiple misstatements, and sometimes their litany of lies.

We want to think those we root for in their pursuits of public office are pure in thought, word, and deed.  But we know better.  And we would be better if we were unafraid to challenge them, even those we support, when they mislead us.

One of the greatest responsibilities we have as citizens is to demand truth from those who seek our votes and our money. But experience shows we citizens fail to meet those responsibilities time after time.

It would be nice to say our candidates owe us their integrity.  But politics doesn’t work that way. Integrity often must be forced by those who are picking the men and women who will lead them.

So our conventions are finished. Dancing With the Candidates is down to the finals. Now it’s not Dancing with the Candidates.  It’s a World Wrestling Federation match. In the mud.

No, it isn’t.  It’s more real.

It’s a street fight until November 3. A sweaty, nasty, bloody, anything-goes brawl.

It’s too bad that we who want to be led will too much expect too little of those who want to lead.

One thing is abundantly clear after the conventions.  The busiest people in the country for the next few weeks will be:

Fact-checkers.

We should pay attention to them. We should know when the people who want to be (presumably) the most powerful person in the world aren’t shooting straight with us.  We should notice those who spout conspiracy theories—-and they seem to be more outlandish every day.  Watch out for those who say, “I have heard…” and those who, when challenged to prove their statements say, “I’ll let you know later.”

More than ever, this is a time to tell our candidates, “Prove it,” or because we’re Missourians, “Show me the proof.”

Conservative organizations are going to be especially watchful of liberal candidates. Liberal organizations are going to be especially watchful of conservative candidates.  We should pay attention to both of them.  We should pay attention to those doing their analysis from the middle. And in the end we should think for ourselves despite the plentitude of loud voices on our airwaves telling us they can think for us.  No, they can’t—unless we let them. Have enough citizen responsibility to think for yourself.

There will be carloads of commercials that wave at truth from a distance. Don’t believe them.

There already have been manipulated videos on our social media. Question them.  Better yet, turn off the social media except for person-to-person communication with people you know.

We’ll get all kinds of flyers in the mail that are not worth the postage that sent them.  Recognize them for what they are. Fill up your recycling bins with them.

It will be easy to throw up our hands, abandon our responsibilities to ourselves and to our neighbors, and just mark a ballot so we can say we voted.

Congratulations.  You just trashed your country. Or your state. Or your city.  You just put it in a big blue plastic container and rolled it out to the curb.

CARE, dammit!  Find the truth.  Demand the truth.

After two weeks of political conventions, it should be clear to all of us that we have a responsibility to reach beyond ourselves and understand who is most trustworthy in a time when truth too often takes a back seat to bombast, accusation, misrepresentation and conspiracies.

We won’t find absolute truth from either candidate at the top of our tickets or from some of their supporters. But we have a responsibility to ourselves and to our neighbors from coast to coast and border to border not to elect the biggest liar.  That’s an awful thing to say, isn’t it?  But it’s also the

Truth.

And we have to be honest with ourselves, for ourselves, to determine who that is. Sometimes that means traditional party loyalties have to give way to loyalties to something bigger. Increasingly, it means we have to get our noses away from the social media screens.

Keep up with the legitimate, established fact-checkers.  These campaigns will keep them up all night in pursuit of truths we haven’t heard from our candidates during the day.

Just the facts.  That’s all we should ask for. It’s all we should demand. There are reliable sources that will provide them because our candidates and their surrogates might not.

In a later entry we’ll try to recommend some fact-checking resources.

*Los Angeles Police Detective Joe Friday, badge number 714, the main figure in hundreds of police investigations dramatized on radio and television for decades, never said, “Just the facts, ma’am.”  Snopes.com, one of the longest-running reliable fact checking websites, says that the character typically said, “All we want are the facts, ma’am,” or “All we know are the facts, ma’am.”

Medical ink

Posted on by
Reply

(The media took some not-unexpected bashing during the Republican National Convention last week. It bashed back by pointing out the numerous misleading and false claims that fell from the lips of various speakers. There also were misleading and false claims in the Democratic convention that were pointed out although one fact-checker said the challenged “truths” of the entire Democratic National Convention “didn’t have the number of misleading and false claims made on the first night of the Republican convention.” In a time when medical treatments for a terrible disease are almost desperately sought, and fact-checking has become more necessary in contemporary medical as well as political circles,  it might be time to turn to Dr. Frank Crane, a retired Presbyterian minister-turned-newspaper columnist whose writings were widely published a century ago when he referred to—-)

PRINTERS’ INK AS A MEDICINE

Printers ink is saving more lives than any other single agency employed by modern health-workers,” said Edward A. Moree, assistant secretary of the New York State Charities Aid Association, in an address at Rochester the other day.

Right for him!

Printers’ ink is the essential liquor of democracy. Kings hate it. All the manipulators of privilege dread it. It is poison to the tyrant of the Old World and the boss of the New.

It is the “sine qua non” of liberty. Liberty to human souls is what light is to human bodies.

Where there is no liberty there is darkness. Where there is darkness there is disease.

It is printers’ ink that has scared the food fakers. Only at a good round of printers’ ink will the vile, carrion flock of unclean birds that fatten on human credulity and ignorance take flight, they that sell plaster of Paris for bread, carpenter’s glue for candy, and God knows what vileness for fish, flesh, and fowl.

Printers’ ink has prevented more tuberculosis than all the doctors have cured. It has spread right ideas of sanitation, upset old mildewed superstitions, opened windows, lured people outdoors, flooded fearsome brains with truth and despairing hearts with hope.

It has built hospitals and supports them.

It has prevented epidemics, driven hush-mouth authorities to activity in remedial measures of cleansing. Cholera and smallpox were conquered by it; malaria and yellow fever flee before it.

It is all well enough to give an individual Epsom salts or calomel, but what the public needs for what ails it is plenty of printers’ ink.

There is some value in the medical profession, but also a deal of hocus-pocus, as there is in everything that becomes professionalized. The best part of the science of medicine is that part which can be told in plain language so that the common man can understand. Every newspaper ought to have its health department.

What people need to know is the truth about health, about food, and about simple living. The more truth they know the less drugs they will take, the less useless and harmful food they will eat, and the less they will run after religious cure-alls and crazy fads.

The newspaper is the health of the state.

“You may cure individuals of their ills in the privacy of the sickroom,” says Mr. Moree, “but to cure the public of its ills you must get into the newspapers.”

-0-

If you want to read a more complete version of Moree’s feelings about health and newspapers, you can go online and find an article he wrote for The American Journal of Public Health, February, 1916. The article is “Public Health Publicity: The Art of Stimulating and Focusing Public Opinion.”  https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.6.2.97 He  also wrote on “Public Health and Politics.” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000271621606400114

 

 

Swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath

Posted on by
Reply

(The Kingston Trio, the folk singing group of the 60s, had a song called “The Merry Minuet” that seemed to capture our times.  Some of the lyrics go:

The whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don’t like anybody very much!!

I refer to this condition euphemistically as “being in a state of high urinary agitation.” Everybody seems to be in that state these days and social media is a prime purveyor.  We know we’re going to become increasingly agitated as November 3 nears.  This seems like a good time to see what Dr. Frank Crane thinks about—-)

ANGER

There is no use telling you, son, not to get angry; nu use telling you any red-blooded man that.

Indignation is a natural flame that spurts up in the mind, upon certain occasions, as surely as gasoline explodes at a lighted match.

All I say is—Wait!

Don’t do anything till your heat is gone. Don’t say words, nor pass judgments, until your brain has cooled down.

For most anger is the irritation of offended vanity.

We think a lot of our opinion, and when one sneers at it, it is as if he threw mud on our white duck trousers.

We have a high notion of the respect due us, and when it is intimated that we are nobody we want to smash something to show we are somebody.

We are never angry, save when our pride is hurt.

Anger is self-esteem on fire.

So, flare up, if you must, swear and break the furniture; it may do you good. But go up to your room to indulge in this relief, lock the door, and stay there until the stork blows over.

Never write a letter while you are angry. Lay it aside. In a few days you can come back at your offender much more effectively.

Don’t transact business in heat.  When you are “mad clean through” it is your sore egotism that is operating, and acts prompted by egotism are usually ridiculous. Hang up the matter for a few days, and come to it again when your intelligence is not upset by your feelings.

One of the bet things to say is nothing. When you answer a man he gets your measure; when you keep still you have him guessing.

The cool man, who has himself under control, always has the advantage offer the hot man.

Even if you have to lick a man you can do much better if your head is clear of anger fumes. Wrath may lend a little extra punch to your blows, but self-control will plant them to better effect.

Anger dulls your efficiency. What you do goes wild. You have a lot of energy, but no accuracy.

Anger dims your eye. You see vividly, but what you see is not so.

Anger makes chaos in your thoughts. You are a crazy man. What you think in the egotism of anger you will pay for in the humiliation of saner moments.

Few good deeds have been done in anger, while all manner of crimes are due to the intemperance of wrath, such as blows, murders, and war, “the sum of all villainies.”

The first and greatest lesson for you to learn, son, is to control your temper and if your nature is touchy, to resolve to take no action until the blood is cooled.

Dr. Crane would like some quiet

Posted on by
Reply

(As we sink deeper and deeper into the muck of a major political campaign year, the noise level is going to rise with each new charge or claim or denial, with each new voice whether of a candidate a surrogate or a secretly-funded attack group. Although written almost a century ago, Doctor Frank Crane’s suggestion that we see all of this noise for what it is, is particularly contemporary.)

ALL NOISE IS A WASTE

Power is a curious and much misunderstood thing. Noise and display, which are commonly thought to indicate it, in reality are indications of its absence.

All show of force is a sign of weakness. Loud talking is a sign of a consciousness that one’s reasoning is feeble. When one shrieks it means that he knows or suspects that what he says does not amount to much, and it irritates him.

Profanity comes from a limited vocabulary.

A country is poor in proportion to its fighting spirit. A nation habitually peaceful is hardest to conquer. It was the United States that settled with the Barbary pirates.

In advertisements, a persistent over-statement will in time destroy all confidence. Even here the strongest, most impressive thing, in the long run, is modesty.

Power is an inverse ration to noise, as a rule.

The strongest being conceivable is God. And he is so modest, quiet, and hidden that many people to refuse to believe there is a God. He never blusters. Hence humbugs cannot understand how He exists.

The most powerful material thing in our range of experience is the sun, the source of all earth-forces. Yet the sun’s pull, energy, and radiation are silent. It raises billions of tons of water daily from the ocean with less noise than an April thunder-storm.

“The greatest things have need to be said most simply,” remarked a Frenchman; “they are spoiled by emphasis.”

 

Crisis Buffet

Posted on by
2

We are trying to think of a time when a Missouri governor has had as many major issues to deal with at one time as Governor Parson has on his plate now.

We can’t think of one.

In addition to the normal burden of duties governors have, there has been added to this one’s plate the state’s response to a worldwide pandemic, the related collapse of the state’s economy and its hundreds of large and small widespread ripples to which state government is either a party or to which it must respond, civil unrest that must be dealt with on a daily—or nightly—basis at a time when the responsibility of government to restore or maintain order is under intense scrutiny, and questions about the role of government in correcting the social and political ills that are behind the disorder. So far the governor has not had to deal with major natural disasters—a devastating tornado or a historic flood for examples.

Plus—it’s a campaign year. Additionally, the instability of national leadership, legislative action to overturn the will of the people on the so-called “Clean Missouri” initiate of 2016, and the August ballot issue to expand Medicaid and the state funding responsibilities that will go with it constitute a salad bar of issues to go with the buffet of crises facing a governor who has been given an average-sized plate.

Governor Henry Caulfield in late 1931 once ordered an immediate 26% cut in the state budget to deal with the depression’s major impact on state finances when retail sales were down by half and unemployment was rising toward a 1932 level of thirty-eight percent. His successor, Guy B. Park in 1933 faced a state treasury holding only $15,000 with a $300,000 payroll to meet. Central Missouri Trust Company loaned the state enough money to pay its bills and to match available federal funds for depression relief until a special legislative session could enact new revenue measures—a gross receipts tax that was later replaced with the state’s first sales tax.

A plethora of problems faced Republican Governor Forrest Donnell in 1941, the first being the refusal of the Democrat-dominated legislature to certify his election at the start of the year and, as the year wound down, putting Missouri on a war footing.

Governor Warren Hearnes faced civil unrest during the Civil Rights era and in the wake of the murder of Martin Luther King, calling out the National Guard at times to maintain order.

Other governors have dealt with killer heat waves or 500-year floods. But the Parson administration will be remembered for 2020, a year in which crisis after crisis came to Missouri.

We have watched his almost-daily briefings and have watched as he and administration members and private organizations have scrambled and worked to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and its myriad effects. The civil unrest in the streets will remain as extreme civil discomfort long after the streets are clear and a record is yet to be written on whether Missouri—and the nation—at last really will do something about that discomfort after decades of talk but insufficient progress being made to limit chances for the streets to blaze again.

The economy will come back although it might take years. Missouri and the country had finally put the 2008 recession far back in its rear view mirror when all of this hit but that experience should remind us that a quick fix to today’s economic ills can best be hoped for but not counted on.

A couple of times we have seen Governor Parson show some irritation with a reporter or a published story during his briefing, a circumstance that might best have been handled with a phone call rather than a public criticism. But we’re willing to cut him a little slack, given the pressures he feels, the burden he carries, and the daily stress of a job that has become far more than any governor we know about. The passage of time will evaluate whether his leadership in this unprecedented time is, or was, effective and long-lasting.

Missouri has seldom needed as steady a hand on the tiller as we need one now. Missourians viewing today’s challenges and responses through their personal partisan lenses might differ on how this governor is doing in the moment. But he is Theodore Roosevelt’s man in the arena.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Who among us would want to be carrying the burden of office that this governor is carrying? Who among us would want to be in the arena he is in?

Frankly, we think he is fighting the good fight. And we look forward to the day—as he undoubtedly does—when we can again live off a menu rather than deal with a crisis buffet.