The Point: Contrary to Public Interest

Last year, Sinclair refused to honor servicemen and women who died in Iraq.

In “Sinclair-gate,” the executives at Sinclair refused to allow their ABC affiliates to run “The Fallen,” a special episode of Nightline that showed photos of each American soldier who had died in Iraq. Sinclair executive Barry Faber said at the time that, “We find it to be contrary to public interest.”

Right. Mark Hyman was a bit more honest about the reasons for not airing the tribute. He claimed that the broadcast was designed to embarrass President Bush because it occurred within a couple of days of Bush’s premature “mission accomplished” speech. Hyman insisted that the timing of the broadcast showed that Ted Koppel and ABC were biased against the president.

But Hyman’s protestations revealed far more about him and his fellow Sinclair executives. Whatever ABC’s motivations were (or weren’t), Sinclair had the choice between honoring fallen American soldiers and protecting the president from embarrassment. They chose the latter.

This says it all about Sinclair’s attitudes toward the troops. As we’ve pointed out many times before, Hyman and those at Sinclair pose as champions of American servicemen and women, but they only follow through to the extent this posturing is consistent with supporting George Bush (to whom so many Sinclair executives have given so much money). But it’s become more and more difficult to reconcile support of the troops with support of the administration that sent them into harm’s way under false pretenses, in too few a number, with too little protection, and with no planning for getting out. When these conflicts arise, Mark Hyman and Sinclair consistently choose the administration over the men and women on the ground.

The response to Sinclair-gate was overwhelming. In huge numbers, people across America voiced outrage that Sinclair would choose partisan politics over honoring the fallen. Even Republican Senator John McCain offered scorching criticism of Sinclair’s decisions.

This year, Sinclair has been shamed into decency and is running this year’s installment of the Nightline tribute. In a disingenuous statement, Sinclair claims that their decision is based on the fact that the tribute is being run on Memorial Day weekend rather than during the “sweeps” rating period.

But Hyman has already let all of us see the man behind the curtain when it comes to Sinclair decision-making. This Memorial Day, Hyman offered an empty tribute to those who are fighting in the “Global War on Terror.” But when given a clear cut choice between supporting Bush or supporting the troops, Sinclair executives put their mouth where their money is.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman & the Sources

Often, countering “The Point” is simply a matter of revealing how Hyman’s commentaries refute themselves. Find the right string to pull on, and not only does Hyman’s argument dissolve into nothing, but an opposing argument takes its place.

An example is the most recent "Point." Still failing to get any intellectual traction, Hyman continues to spin his wheels in the spring of 1971 (apparently there’s nothing of importance going on in the world on which to base our choice for president). This time, he revisits the story of Kerry throwing his Vietnam medals away on the steps of the U.S. Capitol during an anti-war protest. The problem, according to Hyman, is not that Kerry threw the medals back, but that he has lied about exactly what happened. Hyman’s logic runs like this: Kerry has at various times said he threw his medals back, threw ribbons but not the medals themselves, and threw someone else’s medals. Thus, no matter which story is true, two must be false.

To his credit, Hyman cites an irrefutable source that confirms that Kerry threw his medals back at that demonstration. Hyman quotes from a 1971 Boston Globe article that says Kerry “threw his medals over the fence,” thus refuting Kerry’s statements about throwing ribbons or other people’s medals. Although he doesn’t name the author of the article, it was written by a young reporter named Thomas Oliphant who was already a well-respected journalist and has since been named one of the top 10 political writers in the country. We often chastise Hyman for his loose use of shady sources, but there’s no doubt he’s found a bona fide expert on this issue. Oliphant is acknowledged to be the journalist most well-versed in Kerry’s career, having covered him for more than 30 years.

But there’s more to the story. Another article appeared in the Boston Globe more recently that questions Hyman’s analysis. The article points out that, despite Hyman’s claims to the contrary, the use of the term “medals” to refer to any award or decoration was commonplace, and that Kerry did indeed throw decorations for others back as well (the article notes in particular that Kerry took ribbons from wheelchair-bound vets who wouldn’t be able to heave their decorations over the wall that was erected to keep them out of the Capitol). The article backs up Kerry’s story completely, and shows that the supposedly conflicting stories are not conflicting at all: Kerry threw his ribbons as well as those of others, and he referred to these ribbons on various occasions as “medals” because that term was used to cover any and all decorations. The author points out that this broader sense of the word “medals” was undoubtedly why Oliphant used that word in the article Hyman quotes.

It’s also worth noting that this source is at least as unimpeachable as Hyman’s is. The author was actually at the demonstration in 1971 and stood within a few feet of Kerry when he threw his ribbons back.

Additionally, the article debunks the notion, insinuated by Hyman, that Kerry was the acknowledged leader who masterminded this demonstration.

If you’d like to read this first-hand account of what actually happened that day on the Capitol steps, you can read it here.

Oh, and the name of the writer who penned this account that backs up Kerry’s version of events and demolishes Hyman’s interpretation of that 1971 Boston Globe article?

Thomas Oliphant of the Boston Globe.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Imagine That!

Mark Hyman recently added his voice (well, sort of . . . more on that later) to those right wing bloggers working themselves into a tizzy about a recent story that appeared in a major newspaper about an internal controversy at the ACLU regarding document shredding. As is typical, Hyman's purpose isn’t to actually make a valid argument, but to simply sling mud at an organization that's one of the uber-bogeymen lurking in the radical right’s collective imagination.

Hyman (and his brethren) claim the ACLU is hypocritical for shredding documents when it fights for government transparency and openness, and darkly suggest that that some something unethical is going on. A quick read of the actual article shows that what’s going on is an attempt to negotiate the conflicts between two valid and important goals of non-profit organizations: the need to maintain complete and open records of its actions and the need to protect the personal information of its members and donors. Such a conflict, common though it is in many organizations, is obviously one that must be approached with particular care by a group whose raison d’etre is to lobby for both institutional openness and privacy rights. The article suggests that some at the ACLU haven’t established enough oversight over the casual use of shredders to dispose of documents, but nowhere is there any allegation that the organization has actually done anything wrong. Rather, it’s a matter of maintaining the ACLU’s organizational ethos.

But again, to simply show that the charges made against the ACLU are hype is to suggest that Hyman’s argument is made in good faith. It’s not. Neither Hyman, nor his fellow ultra-cons, care much about the validity of their accusations (or lack thereof). What matters is that they can make them. The news article, when stripped of context and detail, allows a superficial justification for their bleating. And when this bleating is taken up by multiple voices feeding off of one another, the result is cacophony that, although based on nothing of substance, makes very real noise.

This use of discourse as a mere cudgel or stone to be flung at an enemy rather than a form of social interaction rests on two assumptions: one philosophical, the other practical. Philosophically, it means that one must accept the idea that basic tenets of interpersonal ethics and decency don’t apply to communication. When it comes to the use of language, ultra-conservatives are thoroughgoing moral relativists.

More pragmatically, it means that you want to get as many people throwing stones as possible. If one doesn’t bother with the subtleties of making a valid, coherent, ethically and logically sound argument (or denies that there is any meaningful or coherent way to distinguish sound and unsound arguments to begin with), that means that the only true way to make an argument persuasive is to have it repeated by as many people as possible. When skill is taken out of the equation, argumentation becomes simply a numbers game.

Thus we have Hyman’s participation in the larger noise machine of the far right. This is not a right wing conspiracy, per se, but a loose confederation of people who share both a right wing political ideology and a belief that language is merely a means to an end, not a social interaction that requires acknowledging some shared assumptions about decency.

The result is what we see so frequently in many quarters of the “blogosphere” as well as the larger public forum: the parroting of ideas by multiple sources in an effort not to add to the quality of our ongoing collective conversation, but to its quantity. In the case of the ACLU story, all you have to do is Google the phrase “ACLU and shredding” to see this at work. What starts out at Drudge gets picked up by Newsmax, the Freepers, and other right wing folks (including white supremacist websites, which is interesting if only because the ACLU has been attacked for its willingness to fight for the rights of KKK members and neo-Nazis).

The goal is to give the impression that there is a huge story (where there’s smoke, there’s fire) not by using facts, but by simply turning up the volume. One of the downsides of this tactic is that sometimes the results of this intellectual inbreeding are so obvious that they reveal the mindlessness of the process.

We’ve got an amusing case in point in Hyman’s editorial. Here’s an excerpt from Hyman’s commentary:

What is ironic is that this self-righteous group of litigants has a different
view of preserving documents when it comes to preserving its own records. The
ACLU has been shredding documents over the repeated objections of its records
manager and in conflict with the organization's longstanding policies on the
preservation and disposal of records. In this case, the ACLU's own practices are
inconsistent with its public positions. Imagine that!

Now, here’s an excerpt from a post that appeared on the rightwing website Redstate.org:

Imagine that. This holier than thou (oops, I forgot about the
separation of God and ACLU), self-righteous group of litigants may actually be
trying to coverup its own lawlessness.

Imagine that! This self-righteous group of right wingers just boilerplates from each other’s arguments!

Despite the fact that the Redstate.org post is dated June 4, and Hyman’s editorial is dated June 15, I’m sure the Redstater is cribbing from Hyman. After all, we know our Mark is nothing if not an avowed enemy of plagiarism.

But this is just a more egregious example than most of what you can discover from a quick perusal of “Point” commentaries: they are culled from whatever the current screed-du-jour is on the radical right. Want to know what Hyman will be talking about next week? Read Drudge or Newsmax this week.

Which raises the larger issue: if Hyman’s “commentaries” are not local, not well done, often incoherent, and not even original, why must local viewers have them foisted upon them by Sinclair? Hyman uses his two minutes of airtime (between 5 and 10 percent of the average local newscast) to vent his spleen (or spleen he has borrowed from someone else) on those who occupy the pantheon of perceived enemies of the right wing. What could be less in the public interest than that?

Oh, and one last bit of trivia on this matter you might find amusing: about the only entity that comes in for as much regular abuse as the ACLU in Hyman’s commentaries is the New York Times (always charaterized as a liberal elitist rag by Hyman). But guess what publication broke the ACLU shredding story (to the extent there’s a “story” at all) and has served as the basis for not only Hyman’s commentary but of all those other ultra-con treatments of the issue?

Yep, the Gray Lady herself.

Imagine that!

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman AWOL from Both the Truth and Decency

In his most recent “Point,” Mark Hyman continues his harangue about John Kerry’s war record, but stoops to a new low: accusing Kerry of committing the moral equivalent of a cold blooded murder.

You’d think the U.S. Navy would know better than to award a Silver Star for an atrocity, but according to Hyman, they don’t. Hyman recounts the events that led to Kerry’s award, but does so with carefully added, and unsupported, details that completely alter the nature of Kerry’s actions.

The basic story is that Kerry’s boat was under heavy fire when Kerry ordered the boat to attack the portion of the shoreline from where the fire was coming. A VC with a grenade launcher was running back behind cover to get a shot at the boat. Kerry followed on foot and killed the individual before he could destroy the boat.

In Hyman’s hands, however, the story is much darker. The VC was wounded and “leaving the field of battle” when Kerry shot him in the back. Hyman says there are witnesses to back up this version of events, but he doesn’t name any. That’s because there aren’t any. Hyman simply assumes that no one will bother looking into the facts, and believe that if he says there are witnesses who question Kerry’s version of events, there must actually be such people. Hyman also produces an “exclusive” Navy report that he claims proves his version of events. It doesn’t. It says that Kerry chased the VC and shot him “while he fled,” but it makes no mention of where the individual was fleeing to. In fact, those at the scene say that the man, who was so lightly wounded that he was still running, was finding cover a reasonable distance away so that he could fire a grenade at the beached Swiftboat. The consensus is that Kerry saved both the boat and his crew from destruction.

But don’t take “The Counterpoint’s” word on any of this. We actually have backup, unlike Hyman. First, you might want to take a look at what the folks at Snopes.com the urban legend site, say about the fictions that have been created about this incident and others Kerry was involved in. Their conclusion: folks like Hyman are in the same category as those who think we didn’t actually land on the Moon. The stories are false.

Hyman says there are “witnesses,” but doesn’t say who they are. Maybe that’s because the one person who was in a position to actually see the entire event backs up Kerry’s account exactly. Take a look at Kerry's shipmate's account of the action written for the Chicago Tribune and decide for yourself whether or not he seems more credible than Hyman and his phantom witnesses.

Maybe you feel that Mr. Rood is too personally connected to Kerry to be objective. Fine. Take a look at independent investigations that compare Kerry’s actual military service with the revisionist fables concocted by folks like Hyman and others who are motivated by political animus rather than by any concern for the truth. The independent Factcheck.org refutes the Kerry bashers, as well as does an investigation by the Washington Post.

Let’s pause for a minute and really think about what Hyman is saying. This isn’t simply a charge that Kerry exaggerated his exploits to win medals. Hyman claims that Kerry is a sadist who killed someone simply because he could. To listen to Hyman and his ilk, Kerry was at the same time a privileged snob who exaggerated his exploits because he didn’t have what it took to be an actual combat leader, but also a bloodthirsty monster who would jump off his boat during an ambush and run unaccompanied after a wounded man who posed no threat just for the joy of slaughtering him. Even as a work of fiction, these tales don’t pass muster because of their utter inconsistency.

For good measure, Hyman throws in the epithet “Massachusetts liberal” to describe Kerry, although it has nothing to do with the content of the commentary, and says that one might expect someone to brag about killing a wounded man if he was also the sort of person who would “attack the very country” he was supposed to be defending, referring to Kerry’s testimony in Congress on the conditions in Vietnam. Of course, if you actually read Kerry’s testimony, you see immediately that he was defending his fellow soldiers as victims of a dehumanizing system. You also see someone who, in his 20s, thought more deeply and spoke more eloquently about matters of consequence than our current commander in chief can today.

Speaking of Mr. Bush, we know all too well what he was doing while Kerry was serving his country: avoiding even the modest commitments he had made to the Air National Guard, getting preferential treatment, ducking mandatory physicals, abusing various substances, and having his abysmal service records sugarcoated through political influence.

As we’ve said many times before, all this nattering on about what medals Kerry deserved, how much he bled, or exactly how far short Bush was in meeting his Guard duties is beside the point. Kerry served; Bush didn’t. Period.

So why do Hyman and other Bush lovers continue to harp on a losing battle? First, although Bush’s record will never equal Kerry’s, they figure if they simply throw mud at Kerry, maybe Bush’s self-given “war president” moniker will carry the day.

Second, as long as the media and the electorate talk about Vietnam, Purple Hearts, and what type fonts were and weren’t available in 1972, no one will ask questions about Bush’s record as president, which is even more embarrassing than his pathetic service record. No jobs. Poisoned environment. Squandered opportunities for international cooperation. Lack of attention to real terrorist threats. No WMDs. Assault weapons back on the street. Uninsured Americans on the rise. And more than 1000 Americans dead and 7000 Americans wounded in a preemptive war with no exit strategy in sight.

It’s important to drive a stake through the heart of liars like Hyman, but let’s not forget to keep asking the real questions that matter. Because, no matter how many whoppers these folks tell, they do it because they can’t defend the reality of the last three and a half years.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

With Two You Get Eggroll, Chairman Mark

Is Mark Hyman an ill-informed windbag, or does he just play one on TV?Hyman’s recent commentary comparing the American Civil Liberties Union with Communist China is so rife with mistakes that it’s difficult to judge whether Hyman knows the truth and is simply being dishonest, or whether he’s actually as ignorant as he appears to be.

Hyman’s problem this time with the ACLU is their claim that they have voiced criticism of the United States’ record on human rights:

The ACLU states it wants to "…hold the United States government accountable under universally recognized human rights principles…"

Those Geneva-Convention-loving bastards! How dare they have the chutzpah to want their country to act in accord with basic human dignity?!In a rather flaccid attempt at guilt by association, Hyman notes the ACLU recently partnered with the Open Society Institute:

The Society's mission statement claims, in part, that "…in theUnited States, the dominant values have become those of market fundamentalism, which rejects a role for government and poses a threat to political quality, public services, racial justice and the social safety net."

And? It’s not clear whether Hyman is questioning the claim that market fundamentalism is the driving force in American society or the idea that this might not be a good thing. Apparently in his mind, however, this statement is so obviously beyond the pale that it not only invalidates anything the Open Society Institute might say, but the ACLU as well on the basis of their willingness to fraternize with such a group.

Hyman could offer a counterargument challenging either or both premises of the Open Society’s claim (admittedly this would be difficult, and would still leave the question open of why this invalidates the ACLU’s stance on human rights in the United States, but let’s not get greedy). But instead he digs into the right-wing reactionary collection of greatest hits and offers a tired bit of red-baiting, comparing the ACLU to Communist China :

Not unlike the Communist Chinese, the ACLU abhors individualreligious freedom and it supports only those civil liberties that fit its narrow political agenda.

This still fails to suggest what is so scandalous about suggesting the United States should comport itself along accepted norms of basic decency, but it’s also just wrong.

The ACLU’s position on religion is not only quite clear, but should be one that any true conservative would embrace. The ACLU believes that individuals should be allowed to practice religion without the interference of any large institution, particularly the government. Last time I checked, the cornerstone of conservative thought was that individuals should be unfettered from government regulations. That’s the ACLU position on religion in a nutshell.

“But wait,” the Hymans of the world will say, “that’s just a nice way of saying that there should be no public display of religious belief at all. The ACLU wants to keep people from expressing their religious beliefs!”

Nothing could be further from the truth, and the facts bear this out beyond any doubt. Like or loathe the ACLU, you can’t accuse them of not supporting religious expression when it’s done by individuals. The problem comes when expressions are made on behalf of the government. Yes, the ACLU has challenged placing the Ten Commandments in courtrooms, but consider the following:In 1986, the ACLU defended the right of a Jewish man to wear a yarmulke while on duty with the Air Force. The ACLU believed that the man shouldn’t be told not to express his religious beliefs as long as it didn’t interfere with his duties. By the way, the conservative Rutherford Institute supported the Air Force position.But surely that was just because the guy involved was Jewish? The ACLU hates Christianity, right?Nope. Within the last year, the ACLU defended the right of Christians to perform baptisms in a public park in Virginia. The ACLU defended two jurors who were removed from a jury because of their religious activities (one of them had done missionary work; the other was a Muslim woman who wore religious clothing). When the city government of Lincoln, Nebraska was using zoning laws to try to shut down a Presbyterian church, the ACLU came to the defense of the church. The ACLU also defended a Catholic man who was punished by a court for not completing a drug rehabilitation program that included overt efforts to convert him to the Pentecostal faith. For additional information on the many ways the ACLU has defended individual religious liberty, see the Media Matters story on this issue.

Hyman ends his commentary with the following:

Come to think of it, it's next to impossible to separate the
rhetoric of the ACLU, the Open Society Institute and the
Communist Chinese.

Let’s see: when individuals voice their personal opinions against the government in China, they get run over by tanks. Meanwhile, the ACLU comes to the defense of individuals whose rights to personal religious belief and expression are infringed on by the government.

On the other hand, Hyman attacks groups that champion individual liberty, human rights, the ability to criticize government, and the right of people to not have their religious beliefs infringed on by the state.

Mark, is that egg fu yong on your face?

And that’s The Counterpoint.

The Counter Counter-Counterpoint

As many of you know, it’s often as much as (and often more than) I can do to keep the blog completely current. I often don’t have much time to spend on it, and that often results in me getting behind a few days and not responding to the kind comments made by readers (especially those of you who give me regular and enthusiastic encouragement). For that I apologize.

I sort of make up for things this time around, although it means taking a slight detour from my Hyman-centered writing. I’ve finally gotten some posted comments from someone who’s a big Hyman fan! I have been a bit surprised not to hear more from “Point” apologists, but a recent reader has made up for some of this by posting a lengthy commentary on my most recent posting. He even apparently has his own blog, “Sick of Spin,” which has a playful, Orwellian irony that emerges from a comparison of the blog’s title and its contents.

Unfortunately, it’s enough to keep up with Hyman that I doubt I will have time to get into long debates with Mr./Ms. Sick-of-Spin (assuming he/she chooses to become a regular reader and comment maker). But I appreciate the readership, and acknowledge the gumption it takes to wade into the fray when you’re outgunned and on hostile territory (even if you do it anonymously). I’d love to have Sick-of-Spin and other Hymanites out there contribute to the discussion, and I apologize in advance for not giving you the personal responses your time and effort deserves.

Having said that, I can’t resist the temptation of what we in the education biz call a “teachable moment.” “Sick of Spin” offers a cavalcade of fairly common conservative points, and does so in a way that more or less typical of conservative rhetoric. Given this, I thought I would devote just one commentary to responding to Spin’s lengthy posting. By going through the posting point by point, I hope to help Spin tighten up his/her persuasive skills a bit, and offer some responses to what are probably commonly held ideas among those in the Hyman camp.

So thanks again for taking the time to comment, Spin, and my apologies if this is the only time I have to really give you your due in terms of feedback. I hope that doesn't dissuade you from coming back regularly to read and post. Please let me know if any of my comments or suggestions are unclear.

[I have excerpted some of Spin’s text below and responded point by point beneath each excerpt. If you haven’t yet, you might want to read the previous Counterpoint for the sake of context.]

Ted fabricates: Both the Vietnam conflict and the war in Iraq were based on
faulty information, if not outright lies, that policy makers refused to
acknowledge (Gulf of Tonkin, WMDs).

While I would agree on the
faulty intelligence, the claim of 'if not outright lies' is outrageous,
unproven, unsubstantiated, without a basis in fact when it comes to the war on
terrorism. You folks like to pretend Bush lied, but you have no evidence, all
you have is black helicopter theories. The 9/11 commission didn't uncover any of
these so-called lies and neither did the Senate Intelligence Committee
investigation. Quit spinning!

Please make note of the language I used--I chose the words I did for a reason. I said "if not outright lies" precisely because we don't have any memo that shows us the president saying, "Yes, we know they don't have any WMDs or links to terrorism, but we will say they do so we can go to war." What we do have, however, is a memo (courtesy of the British) that tells us that intelligence was being "fixed" around the desire to invade Iraq. We also know from former Bush administration official Paul O'Neil that literally before the smoke had cleared at Ground Zero, members of the Bush administration (notably Donald Rumsfeld) were actively pushing to find connections between 9/11 and Iraq to fit into their longstanding goal of ousting Saddam Hussein. Whether administration officials knew what they were saying was factually false, or whether they simply refused to acknowledge or consider any evidence that contradicted what they wanted to believe, they acted unethically and immorally.

Ted fabricates: In both conflicts, American politicos equated imposing
American-style democracy on a people with allowing them the freedom to govern
themselves.
Iraq now has its own Constitution, structured as THEY see fit,
they've debated, protested and held elections. Their culture, their rules, their
ballots, their creation of laws - how is that NOT an example of freedom and
self-governance?

It's not an example of freedom when the entire political apparatus used to create the constitution was put in place by Americans, not Iraqis. The current constitution (to give just a couple of examples) is open-ended when it comes to U.S. occupation and pointedly makes Iraqi oil fair game for foreign companies. The constitution itself mandates a sort of federalism which is in many ways antithetical to Iraqi culture.

But you don't need to take my word for it. Ken Pollack, an expert in Mideast affairs at the Saban Center recently gave a talk at the Brookings Institution outlining the pitfalls a hastily-constructed constitution based on a time table that serves American, rather than Iraqi, interests could cause. The Asia Times recently ran a piece detailing how the Iraqi constitution was systematically mutated in its construction from a truly Iraqi document to a neo-conish work of nation-building. Joe Conason has written a brief but insightful commentary on the problems the current American-styled constitution may bring. Too liberal? How about conservative stalwart Charles Krauthammer? He's also recently noted the problems of mandating a slap-dash constitution on Iraq. Too American? How about Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi novelist and a woman who was imprisoned by Saddam Hussein? In a recent article in the Guardian, she noted that the constitutional process has largely disregarded women's rights and that the process has always been based on U.S. interests, not those of the Iraqi people. Perhaps all of these people are wrong, but to suggest that questioning the wonders of the Iraqi constitution is simply a matter of empty political spin is not a tenable position.

Ted fabricates: In both conflicts, those who opposed or even questioned the war
were labeled as "un-American" by supporters.

Those who fly
flags upside-down, slander our military, stereotype our forces as 'inherently
evil', call the administration stupid while ignoring the obvious fact of success
that we haven't had another 9/11 like attack - ARE un-American.

Even if we grant your point, the problem is that it doesn't address what I said. Many supporters of the Iraq war (Mark Hyman among them) suggest that those who oppose or question the war "hate the troops" and are un-American. The problem is that, according to every poll on the subject, most Americans now question the wisdom of the war. Perhaps those who fly flags upside down or call our forces "inherently evil" are un-American, but to suggest that everyone who objects to or questions the war is un-American is not a valid claim. Remember that many of those who are most vocal in their objection to the war are families of servicemen, veterans, and those who have served in Iraq themselves.

Perhaps most disquieting is your statement that those who call the administration "stupid while ignoring the obvious facts that we haven't had another 9/11 like [sic] attack ARE un-American."

Do you really believe this? Since when did thinking the current administration were right, smart, or even competent become a litmus test for being a good American? You might say that people who believe this are wrong or deluded (and, for the sake of argument, let's say you're right about that), but to say that criticizing the president and his administration is by definition un-American is the sort of over-the-top rhetoric that's not going to help your credibility. Keep in mind, for example, that had the same test applied in the 1990s, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and most conservatives would have been considered un-American. As much as I disagreed with these folks and thought their words and actions were damaging to the nation, I would never say that simply criticizing the administration makes them un-American. Criticism of those in power is about as American as it gets. You need to be careful of making your argument in a way that is inconsistent with your own beliefs or that could easily be turned around on you. It communicates weakness and/or sloppiness of thought to your audience. (As does, by the way, making regular use of all caps to emphasize points. This seems to be a common problem--all my freshman composition students love doing it for some reason.)

Ted fabricates: In both conflicts, opposition to the war started out small, but
grew as casualties mounted and the truth about the motivations and
rationalizations for the war emerged.

Where is your TRUTH in the
motivations for the war against terrorism? Hmmmm? I haven't seen any coming from
you. And regarding casualties, this war (remember, it IS a war after all) is
being managed quite well and casualty rates are WAY below the rates for Vietnam.
You want to play the numbers game with the truth right? Why won't you do a
number by number comparison if you care to be intellectually honest?

I'm not sure what you mean by asking, "Where is your TRUTH [sic] in the motivations for the war against terrorism?" That's a grammatically unclear statement. On a logical level, it also is presuming facts not in evidence. You seem to assume that the war in Iraq (the topic under discussion) is part of the war or terrorism. For many of us, one of the big problems with the war in Iraq is precisely that it is taking away from the war on terrorism. There are no links between Iraq and 9/11, and as we all know now, there were no WMDs that Hussein was somehow going to smuggle to al-Qaeda. While Osama bin Laden is still free, we continue to be bogged down in a war we chose to start. Unless you provide evidence that the war in Iraq should be seen as being part of the war on terror (rather than providing the perfect recruitment and training tools for terrorists, which is what it seems to be doing), the question doesn't seem germane to the topic under discussion.

On the casualty issue, notice that all I said was that in both Vietnam and Iraq, opposition to the war grew along with the numbers of casualties. I did not state that as many soldiers had died in Iraq as died in Vietnam. I didn't even suggest that as many soldiers *will* die in Iraq as in Vietnam. Complaining that I didn't acknowledge the lower casualty numbers between Iraq and Vietnam is not a compelling point, given that I made no comparison between the raw numbers.

But if you want to do a number by number analysis (as you suggest), we can. But if we do such a thing, we have to be technically accurate and compare apples to apples (again, this is something you seem in favor of, and rightly so). Given that, it would be distorting and inaccurate to compare casualty rates for the first few years of American occupation in Iraq to the casualty rates of the Vietnam conflict at its height. To be fair, we have to compare numbers starting at the beginning with each conflict. The first American military casualty in the Vietnam conflict was in 1957. It wasn't until late 1965 that the number reached the current number of U.S. military fatalities we now have in Iraq. That's 8 years vs. 2.5 years. Even if you decide not to start counting until a significant number of U.S. personnel were sent to Vietnam (1961), we are still ahead of the Vietnam schedule in terms of raw numbers of casualties. I stress that this is unrelated to the point I made in my post, but since you want to make this comparison, I thought it would be helpful to really do an honest, side-by-side analysis rather than just talking about it.

The larger point is that any number of young people who are killed in a war waged for misguided and less-than-honest purposes is too many. I certainly hope we don't need to get to 58,000 dead before we are willing to consider the possibility that the invasion was a mistake, and I hope you would agree.

Ted fabricates: In both conflicts, when the majority of the American people
disagreed with government policy, apologists for the policy still attempted to
portray those who were against the war as an out-of-touch
minority.

You don't debate honestly, so it's a fair statement to
say you and your ilk are out-of-touch.

In response to my statement that supporters of the war still attempt to portray those who oppose it as an "out of touch" minority, you say, "You don't debate honestly, so it's a fair statement to say you and your ilk are out-of-touch." Two problems here: first you haven't given a valid example of me not debating honestly. In fact, as I've shown, most of your criticisms are straw-man appeals that misinterpret or misrepresent my argument and then attack the misrepresentation that you've constructed.

But let's say for the sake of argument that you're right and that I haven't debated honestly. How does that make all of those who question the war "out of touch"? Have all people who disagree with the war not debated honestly, including those who have fought in it themselves? Or are you saying that it might not be fair to say that all people who disagree with the war are "out of touch," but that since I don't debate honestly, you don't have to either? This isn't made clear. In either case, you're running the risk of being unintentionally humorous given the fact that your statement itself is an unfair generalization.

Ted fabricates: In both conflicts, those who advocated sending young people do
die in large numbers also claimed that they were "supporting the troops" and
that those who advocated bringing troops home were "giving comfort to the
enemy."

Perpetuating and exaggerating Abu Grahib WAS giving comfort
to the enemy. Putting all military members into an 'inherently evil' pot IS
giving aid to the enemy. Liberal Dick Durbin putting the U.S. military in the
same class as Nazis and Russian death camps WAS aid and comfort to the enemy.
Never mind his statement was posted on Al Jazeera huh?

You're committing the same logical fallacy here that you did earlier with the comments about people being "un-American." Hyman and other right wing commentators suggest that to question the war is by itself helping the enemy. In your statement, however, you choose very specific examples: people who were "perpetuating and exaggerating Abu Grahib," an unnamed source whom you quote as saying that the U.S. military is "inherently evil," and Dick Durbin. Even if one were to grant that all of these people are giving aid and comfort to the enemy, it doesn't justify the vastly larger suggestion that anyone who voices opposition to the war is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Picking a specific example or two doesn't prove the larger point.

Moreover, even the specific cases you identify are problematic. I would humbly suggest that what gave aid and comfort to the enemy with regard to Abu Grahib was not those who reported on it, but those who committed it ( a group that goes far beyond the men and women who have been scapegoated by the administration, but includes those who have tacitly and/or explicitly condoned such practices, including our current Attorney General and current Secretary of Defense). Through actions of this group of individuals, Islamic extremists were given the best PR they've gotten since, well, the U.S. unilaterally invaded an Islamic country. Shooting the messenger doesn't help. It's the actions themselves that are despicable, damaging, and that dishonor America, not the reporting of them. It's called accountability.

In the case of Dick Durbin, you seem to be referring to a statement where he read a description of the treatment of inmates under U.S. control and said that the description would seem more at home in an account of Nazi or Soviet prison camps. Simply as a matter of grammar, Durbin was not, "putting the U.S. military in the same class as Nazis and Russian death camps [sic]." Durbin compared the specific events in the account with what we might assume were commonplace events in Nazi or Soviet camps. His point (as clumsily as it might have been worded) was that we could and should expect more from our military than we would expect under such regimes, and that when such aberrations occur, they need to be roundly criticized and dealt with. How is protecting individuals who dishonor the military and their country by participating in immoral acts a good thing? How is criticizing such people slandering the entire military?

As far as those unnamed voices who you claim say the U.S. military is "inherently evil," I agree that saying such a thing is both immoral and factually wrong. I certainly have never said it, nor would I. I know people (including several former students) who are currently serving in the military, some of them in Iraq as we speak. Not only do I not believe the U.S. military is inherently evil, but I know that the overwhelming majority of those who serve are decent, patriotic people to whom we owe a great deal. It is exactly because of my respect, admiration, and love for those who wear the uniform and serve our country that I find the decision to send them into harm's way for no just reason a horribly immoral and personally infuriating act. No, the U.S. military is anything but inherently evil, but war (even when it is justified) is inherently evil, as is the act of starting one preemptively.

Ted fabricates: In both conflicts, the media paid relatively little attention to
the horrible toll civilians were paying in the course of their
"liberation."

That's blatantly false. The left leaning media has
done everything it can to paint a negative picture of the war despite the many
successes such as new and/or rebuilt houses, schools, hospitals, roads,
community centers, etc. Don't get me wrong, civilian tragedy has occurred, but
we are talking about war after all. Why do you totally ignore how the U.S.
military goes out of its way to avoid the very thing you're crying foul on?

As you might say, "examples please?" In fact, a study by the Project on Excellence in Journalism (a creation of the Columbia School of Journalism) has done a detailed content analysis of the media coverage of the war and determined that it was overwhelmingly neutral, and that positive and negative stories were roughly equal.

Of course, the study said nothing about the fact that the supposedly liberal media (and the supposedly ultra liberal New York Times) actually played a key role in supporting the war by unquestioningly mouthing administration talking points about the issue of WMDs. This was done to such an extent, that the Times actually had to issue an apology for its limply acquiescent coverage of the build up to war.

In any case, you are again making an apples/oranges comparison. My statement specifically dealt with the issue of civilian casualties. Perhaps I've been missing the regular tributes to the Iraqi civilians killed in the war airing on TV, but I honestly have not seen a single mention of the overall death toll on network or cable news. The only place I can find such numbers are at the websites of human rights groups and other organizations devoted to cataloging this information. If you can cite examples of mainstream news outlets paying significant attention to the number of Iraqis killed (beyond the occasional body count figure for specific attacks), I'd be happy to stand corrected, but I honestly don't think the average American has even a vague sense of the human cost to innocent Iraqis of the war.

I also never suggested the U.S. military doesn't do everything it can to minimize civilian casualties. Again, you're creating a straw man to knock down. I feel confident that as a rule, the military does what it can to minimize civilian deaths. But when you start a war, you know that it will be messy (or, at least, you should). No amount of precautions is going to keep innocent men, women, and children from dying horribly. If we are going to honestly discuss and decide what to do about Iraq, we can't pretend that this isn't a reality. As far as blame goes, I don't blame the U.S. military--I blame the Bush administration for starting the war and the rest of us citizens for letting them do it.

Ted opines: In both conflicts, policy makers and their supporters argued that,
once all other rationales for the conflicts had disappeared, we needed to stay
the course in order to "honor" those who had already
died.

'Rationales'for the war against terrorism have disappeared?
Folks are saying we should stay the course simply to 'honor' the dead? Examples
please.

You say you want an example of war supporters using "honoring the troops" as a rationale for continuing the war? How about the number one war supporter himself?

"[N]ow we will honor their sacrifice by completing their mission"

-- President George W. Bush, August 24, 2005.

Of course, he couldn't be bothered to honor the sacrifice of Cindy Sheehan's son by explaining to his mother why he died, or even attending a single funeral of a fallen soldier, but that's a whole other matter.

As far as disappearing rationales go, a recent study cataloged no less than 27 different rationalizations for going to war in Iraq that were offered up by various administration officials and their supporters at various times, all of which have been revealed to be suspect to some degree or other.

Ted fabricates: In both conflicts, members of the Bush family vocally supported
the war, but no one in their family actually served.

George H.W.
Bush served his country and did so with honor as a fighter pilot in WWII. He
left the service nearly two decades before heavy U.S. involvement in Vietnam. To
say 'members of the Bush family did not serve' is a bogus charge. George W. Bush
was in the National Guard during the Vietnam era and it is simply intellectually
dishonest to say he didn't serve. Oh, and never mind that he is currently the
Commander In Chief huh? That to, is serving. Your distortions are
disgusting.

I understand the point you're trying to make, and I apologize for disgusting you, but I have to point out yet again that you're constructing a straw man here. I never questioned George H.W. Bush's service in World War II. What I said was that no member of the Bush family served in the Vietnam War or the war in Iraq.

George W. Bush, as you point out, was in the Air National Guard (well, sort of). Even if we ignore the mountain of evidence that shows he got in to the guard via family connections and didn't fulfill his minimal obligations while there, it's still the case that he didn't serve in the conflict in Vietnam (unless there were MiG sightings over Texarkana that I'm unaware of).

To say that being president is "serving" in the same way as a uniformed soldier in a combat zone is stretching awfully far. I don't remember Clinton getting much acknowledgment for serving as commander in chief by the folks who liked to call him a draft dodger. But I'll concede your point: President Bush should be honored for his valiant service, risking life and limb clearing brush in Crawford for five weeks at a time.

By the way, I can't help adding in a tangential point here. Yes, Bush Sr. served in WWII. But do you remember that when he was running for president in 1988, a gentleman who served in the same unit as Bush and who was on the same mission as Bush when the former president was shot down (and for which he was given a medal) came forward to say that he had seen Bush abandon his stricken plane and bail out while his two crewmen were still trapped inside, allowing them to plummet to their death? Someone rightly pointed out that Bush should be honored for his service and that it was ridiculous and wrong to try to discredit his record to score political points. That someone was Michael Dukakis. Given what we saw last year, I can't help but wonder why the Bush family seems to think honoring those who served for their service only applies when they are on your side politically.

Ted boasts (false sense of bravdo [sic] ): And that's The Counterpoint.
Not
really, you don't seem to have a valid point and with such weak rhetoric I can
see why Hyman exposed you for the fake you are.

Mark Hyman has exposed me? Where? When? Did I miss something? As far as I'm aware, the only time has Hyman uttered my name was when he attacked me for being soft on plagiarism by taking something that I didn't write out of context (and not saying a thing about the true motivations behind his words).

Oops, my mistake--he did mention my name one other time: when he was forced to retract what he said about me on the air because it was a lie.

And that's the Counter-Counter-Counterpoint.

Spin Index: Enough strawmen to populate a Ray Bolger fan convention.

Context Matters

Someone yelling “fire!” means one thing when it’s coming from the person in the office next to yours and there’s a faint whiff of smoke in the air. It means something quite different if you’re standing in front of a row of ten guys with rifles pointed at you (although in both cases, the news isn’t good).

Context matters. As this silly example demonstrates, even the simplest of exclamations has drastically different meanings depending on who’s saying it, to whom they're saying it, and why.

At least that’s the way it works in the real world. In Hyman-World, however, context is simply the crap you have to scrape off your boot before you kick someone in the crotch.

An example is the most recent episode of “The Point” in which Hyman (doing his part in the right wing preemptive nuking of Howard Dean) attempts to portray Dean as a bigot, and to chastise the media for not saying so.

Hyman quotes Dean’s remark during the campaign about wanting to be the candidate of guys “with Confederate flags in their pickups” and his more recent comment that Republicans couldn’t fill a conference room with African American supporters unless they brought in the hotel staff. Then, Hyman makes the following bizarre statement:

“Do you notice just a hint of Dean's core beliefs seeping out? Southerners are Confederate flag-waving good ol' boy racists. Blacks are only capable of service industry jobs.”

Mark Hyman, who has mocked the NAACP and compared undocumented immigrants to members of al-Qaeda, feigns righteous indignation at these comments, but only after willfully misreading them with malice aforethought.
Is there anything in Dean’s statement that says (or even suggests) guys with Confederate flags in their pickups are by definition racists? It’s Hyman himself who makes this connection.

The second quotation is remade even more imaginatively. Dean was pointing out (and rightly so) that Republicans would have a hard time drawing an African American crowd in a hotel beyond those who would have to be there because of their job. I guess the 150 members of the audience, nearly all of whom were Black, must not be as sensitive about racial slights as Hyman is, since they gave Dean a standing ovation after his speech.

Of course, Hyman knows exactly what he’s doing. He doesn’t care about racially insensitive rhetoric—he just wants to A) smear the new standard bearer of the Democratic Party, and B) continue to characterize the media as “liberal.”

It’s the second goal that causes Hyman to launch into another series of equally dopey statements. Claiming that the media had swarmed all over Trent Lott when he made his comment about how wonderful the nation would be if only Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond had been elected, Hyman wonders aloud why similar outrage wasn’t voiced when Senator Robert Byrd “used the racially charged N-word on national television” and when Senator Christopher Dodd praised Byrd as a policymaker who would have been a great leader at any time in the nation’s history, including the Civil War.

“There's no mistaking what Dodd implied. Yet the press gave him a pass” Hyman claims.

There no mistaking Dodd’s meaning? Perhaps you should simply state what you claim Dodd is saying, Mark. Are you actually claiming Senator Dodd thinks the nation would be better off had the Confederacy prevailed? If that’s your honest belief, go ahead and say it rather than hiding behind the pseudo-certainty of the phrase “no mistaking.”

Dodd made a comment that was more than a bit dumb, given Byrd’s past association with the Ku Klux Klan in his youth. It’s also a comment that I don’t agree with in the slightest. But attempting to paint Dodd as a racist on the basis of this comment is disingenuous.

Admittedly, Senator Byrd himself is a better target, but again Hyman intentionally misleads viewers. He refers to an interview in which Byrd, commenting on the state of racial relations in the nation, said that there were plenty of “white n------s,” meaning that the ignorance implied by that particular word knew no racial boundaries. In fact, the remark was made in a way that implied that Byrd was referring to none other than President Bill Clinton.

I have no particular affection for Senator Byrd, and it was certainly a stupid comment to make coming from him. Comedian Chris Rock has made the same point using the same language, but again, context matters, and Byrd is not in a position to use such language without impunity. But the entire point of the exchange was that uncouth and ignorant behavior is colorblind.

Let’s compare this to what Senator Lott said. Lott, in prepared remarks, said we’d be better off had Thurmond won the presidency in 1948. The raison d’etre of Thurmond’s campaign was segregation. Hyman terms this an “oblique reference.” Right. What’s oblique is Hyman’s description of Lott’s comments.

And maybe there would have been more attention to Dodd’s comment had it been made in the context of a political career decorated with quotations like the following:

"The spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican
platform."

"Look at the cost involved in the Martin Luther King holiday and the fact
that we have not done it for a lot of other people that were more deserving. I just think it was basically wrong."

"The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy. Let's take it in the right direction, and our children will be the
beneficiaries." [Spoken to a meeting of the Council of Conservative
Citizens, a group the Anti-Defamation League identifies as having an
ideology of White supremacism and White separatism. Visit their website today, and you’ll see that they believe that all hate crimes are hoaxes.]

"Yes, you could say that I favored segregation then [1962]. I don't now.
The main thing was, I felt the Federal Government had no business sending in troops to tell the state what to do."

Yep, our friend Trent has said all of this and more. Context matters.

And the media frenzy over Lott’s comments? That’s another fiction from Hyman’s fevered imagination. As the Journalism Review Online noted in a fascinating story, the entire Lott episode was virtually ignored by the mainstream press. It wasn’t until several bloggers commented on it that the story gradually demanded attention. Had it been up to the so-called liberal media, Lott’s remarks would have disappeared into the C-SPAN ether.

With any other commentator out there, I’d say that the level of disingenuousness and malice without any regard to the truth in this commentary was beyond belief.

But in this case, I can’t say that. Context matters.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Houston, We Have a Tipping Point!

Now I know how Al Franken felt when Fox sued him.

Your humble blogger actually gets singled out by Mark Hyman in his most recent “Point” commentary. You’d assume that with everything I’ve written, Hyman would be complaining about something I’ve said about him on this blog. And in a way he is, but he doesn't have the courage to do it directly.

Rather than contradict anything that’s been said on this blog, Hyman does what has become all too familiar to those of us who know him well: misappropriate and misstate information about a political rival rather than actually talking substantively about the issues.

In what I’m sure is simply a coincidence [editor’s note: please drizzle several ladlefuls of sarcasm over previous comment], less than a week after being interviewed by "Ring of Fire" on Air America, Hyman includes yours truly in a list of “out of touch” academics. That’s right—I’m lumped right in there with the guy who compared 9/11 victims to Nazis. What did I do to deserve such scorn? According to Hyman, I think plagiarism is just fine and dandy. Here’s the exerpt:

The University of Iowa's Ted Remington cautions that
while plagiarizing work shortchanges the student's own learning it doesn't
really hurt anybody.

"While plagiarism is often defined as 'stealing' someone else's
words or ideas, it is rarely the case that published writers or public speakers
are harmed by having their words or their thoughts 'stolen' by a college
student."

If you need to plagiarize would you at least turn
your in assignments on time. I've got a latte waiting for me at the campus
coffee house.

You know what’s coming, don’t you? Altogether now: I never said that.

Here’s what happened. Apparently deciding that my little blog and 15 minutes (literally) of Air America fame was a fly worth swatting, Hyman & Co. went on a search for something he might be able to embarrass me with. What he found was the course packet for the online rhetoric course offered through the University of Iowa. I currently teach this course, but I had nothing to do with the writing of the course materials. Not a single word. I’m simply listed as an instructor.

Not fazed by that, Hyman excerpted a portion of the standard statement on plagiarism, the point of which is that plagiarism is bad not because it does any major damage to an established author to have her or his words cited without credit by a college freshman, but because it is stealing. Here’s the excerpt in its full form:

Plagiarism is a serious academic offense that entails presenting the words and/or ideas of others as though they were original to you. While plagiarism is often defined as "stealing" someone else's words or ideas, it is rarely the case that published writers or public speakers are harmed by having their words or their thoughts "stolen" by a college student. On the contrary, the real harm of plagiarism is the harm that students do to themselves. Encountering new ideas and information, thinking about them critically, and finding effective language to express independent thinking is the central activity of a college education. When students "steal" the words or thoughts of another and present them as their own original words and ideas, they shortchange themselves educationally. To simply reproduce the form of something another has said or written is to skip the mental processing (reflection, comparison, critical evaluation, etc.) that is the essence of learning.

Such is the “fringe” thinking here at the University of Iowa’s Department of Rhetoric.

So Hyman, in order to make his point, has not only misappropriated a quoted source (plagiarism), but taken it completely out of context as well. You know, Mark, we do a pretty good job here at Iowa of teaching our freshman to cite sources correctly and how to use quoted material in its proper context. There’ll always be a desk available for you in my classroom if you’d like to stop by and learn something.

But it gets even better!

As I am wont to do, I sent a copy of yesterday’s Counterpoint to the head honchos at Sinclair. I received an email from Mr. Barry Faber, vice president and chief legal representative of Sinclair. As you’ll remember, yesterday’s Counterpoint responded to Hyman’s approval of Maryland Governor Ehrlich’s edict banning reporters from the Baltimore Sun from speaking with any member of the state’s executive branch or attending press conferences. Mr. Faber wanted to know if I was aware that one of the reasons for Mr. Ehrlich’s consternation was the fact that an opinion columnist for the Sun had said made a remark about one of the governor’s spokesmen “having trouble keeping a straight face” when announcing a particular policy of the governor’s. The columnist in question wasn’t even at the press conference, so (according to Mr. Faber) he could not possibly know the actual facial expression on the man’s face. Mr. Faber assured me that if anyone at Sinclair misrepresented the facts in a similar way, he would personally recommend that they be fired.

I pointed out to Mr. Faber that “keeping a straight face” was obviously used in a metaphorical sense (as it usually is) as a means of suggesting that the stated policy was at odds with reality. It was clearly not intended to state the physical reality of the situation.

But then I saw the transcript of the most recent “Point,” and I can’t help but compare the two incidents. The Sun reporter, for using a metaphor, deserves to be fired. Hyman, on the other hand, willfully misquoted a source and misrepresented its content to score political points against a foe.

I’m just wondering, Mr. Faber: when will Mark Hyman be asked to clean out his desk?

And that’s The Counterpoint.