December 18, 2009 | 6:28 pm

Enough of the Pundits!

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

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This past weekend I had it. I’ve given up watching the time-killing Sunday morning talk shows and their endless supply of “all-knowing” pundits.

Last weekend I suffered through the bloviating of Arianna Huffington on George Stephanopolous’ This Week where every one of her opinions was delivered with the certainty usually reserved for the sciences where facts are indisputable (2+2=4, no ifs, and, or buts) not for choices involving countless variables, human beings and the vagaries of real life. Although this decade finds her on the left side of the political spectrum along with one of my least favorite windbags, Katrina vanden Heuvel, she has equals on the right—- from Ann Coulter to Laura Ingraham. (Lest I be accused of sexism, there is no shortage among the male of the species—Dick Morris, et al.)

They and countless others share an immodesty that is truly breathtaking.

Last Sunday, in discussing President Obama’s speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and his decision to increase troops in Afghanistan, Arianna offered her conclusions on the impact of Obama’s decision as if she had the powers of a prophet—-

no military solution in Afghanistan is possible

. No qualifications, no ambiguity, no “I think” or “I believe”—-simply bald assertions that are meant to make it sound as if she possesses information and divining skills denied to the rest of us.

Well, I’ve had it with her and most of the other Sunday morning mavens; no more of being a patsy for their self righteous baloney. We should all know better.

At his blog, The Frontal Cortex, my son Jonah Lehrer has written of a seminal study done on pundits and their accuracy by Phillip Tetlock of Berkeley.

Or look at political experts. In the early 1980s, Philip Tetlock at UC Berkeley picked two hundred and eighty-four people who made their living “commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends” and began asking them to make predictions about future events. He had a long list of pertinent questions. Would George Bush be re-elected? Would there be a peaceful end to apartheid in South Africa? Would Quebec secede from Canada? Would the dot-com bubble burst? In each case, the pundits were asked to rate the probability of several possible outcomes. Tetlock then interrogated the pundits about their thought process, so that he could better understand how they made up their minds. By the end of the study, Tetlock had quantified 82,361 different predictions.

.

But it’s not just that these BS artists are frequently wrong; what’s worse is that in their bravado they negatively impact us and our being thoughtful consumers of news:  But here’s the worst part: even terrible expert advice can reliably tamp down activity in brain regions (like the anterior cingulate cortex) that are supposed to monitor mistakes and errors. It’s as if the brain is intimidated by credentials, bullied by bravado.

I’m not sure how to protect my “anterior cingulate cortex” so I am just not going to watch these windbags anymore—-as my son noted, watching four chimps throwing darts at various policy options would be as informative and predictive.

PS There are a few pundits on the right (e.g. David Brooks) and left (e.g. Tom Friedman) who qualify their analysis by acknowledging the complexity of the issues, the lack of simple, clear choices and the legitimacy of the views that may differ from theirs. I can watch and read them on Sunday, or any other day.

December 16, 2009 | 10:10 pm

A Vile Character Performs at the Taper

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

From now until January 24th LA audiences will the opportunity to see Palestine New Mexico, the world premiere of a play by Richard Montoya at the Mark Taper Forum in Downtown. The play stars actors from Culture Clash and includes Russell Means as an Indian chief named Birdsong.

On reading the review, I had a flashback to Russell Means, the Native American activist and American Indian Movement (“AIM”) leader who took over Wounded Knee, Alcatraz and Mt. Rushmore in his more notorious days. I also recalled reading some time ago about Means, Israel and the Middle East situation and thought that that was a relic of his youthful days as the director of AIM in the early 70’s.

Thank goodness for Google. In short order, I discovered that Means never left the looniness of his youth but remains, to this day—-a far out radical with hateful views on Obama, the United States, Israel and God knows what else if I cared to sift through over his 8 million citations on Google.

In a video blog that he recorded after President Obama was announced as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, he denounced the president as a “Manchurian candidate and flim flam man….nothing more than Bush’s third term.” He described “Demopublicans as all brain dead” and then punctuated his commentary by announcing that

!”

His description of President Obama as a “Manchurian candidate” wasn’t just casual jabber, he has a notion as to who is pulling the president’s strings. In an interview earlier this year he described the president as being “a Zionist controlled by Israel.” He observed that “the Zionists who control Israel now control the United States….

.”

He blithely renders his view of history—- the United States began “as an outlaw and renegade nation” and that “today its imperial policies mean that Israel is a surrogate of the US… the 51st state of the United States.”

His nuttiness and vile rhetoric go on and on, it’s actually difficult to listen to.

I, for one, have no interest in buying tickets that might in any way pay the salary for a hatemonger and political nut like Russell Means. He may look like the quintessential American Indian and his website may describe him as “the most famous American Indian since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse” but his fame will not be added to by my subscriber dollars, his politics are beyond the pale.

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December 11, 2009 | 8:02 pm

Tiger Woods and the Race Obsessed

Posted by  Joe R. Hicks

A few years back, Tiger Woods appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s popular day-time television show and told the host that he considered himself “

Cablinasian

,” something he’d awkwardly concocted to make a point.  Tiger insisted that his Caucasian, black, American Indian, and Asian heritage defied the simplistic color-coded racial logic that the government as well as the arbiters of racial authenticity demand we all fit into.

This hasn’t prevented many from hijacking the tawdry Tigergate scandal for their own racial reasoning.  Despite Tiger defining his ethnic identity otherwise, many insist there’s no escape from the racial reservation and that he’s black – no matter what he has to say. 

Tom Joyner, the country’s most-listened-to black radio personality, made Tiger the butt of his jokes – as have many of the nation’s late-night comics.  But Joyner and other black voices put a racial spin on the evolving scandal.  He said, “The question everyone in America wants to ask you (Tiger) is, how many white women does one brother waaant?”

While fascinated with celebrities and titillated by the tawdry nature of Tiger’s private life, most American’s appear to have little interest in the skin-color aspect of this story.  This isn’t the question that being asked by most people, but it is the question that race-obsessed people are asking.

Many Americans are rejecting skin-color as legitimate criteria for dating and matrimonial decisions.  In fact, while some may be focused on

same-race

relations, Americans have been doing a lot of “mixing” over the last several decades. And other than the diminishing numbers of white supremacists and other racialists of various sorts, kinds and skin colors, few care one way or the other about the increasing number of “mixed” couples in our midst.

Most simply see Tiger Woods as an amazingly talented athlete, one who fell prey to fame, power and the arrogance of celebrity.  He joins the ranks of other shamed public figures like David Letterman, the late-night television host, John Edwards, the former presidential candidate, and Mark Sanford, the Governor of South Carolina (whose wife just announced she’s kicking his sorry butt to the curb).

Nonetheless, some appear compelled to insert themselves into the private lives of others.  Denene Millner, a black female author, said, “Why is it when they get to this level … they tend to go directly for the nearest blond.”  “They” are of course black celebrities and athletes.  A better question is why does she think it’s her business to question the highly-personal choices people make in selecting their bed-mates – in or out of marriage? 

And what would this woman suggest as a corrective mechanism for what she appears to think is inappropriate racial behavior – the re-insertion of Jim Crow era anti-miscegenation laws?

To put a finer point on this - why is it that we give someone like her a pass when she asserts essentially that the only correct choice for a black man is a woman who shares his skin color?  The “stick with your own kind” racial reasoning is precisely what America’s white supremacists and racial alarmists have argued since pre-civil rights days.

The Associated Press wrote a story on the Tiger Woods scandal which quoted one black women who said that “had Barack Obama had a white wife, I would have thought twice about voting for him.”

There you have it … the old bugaboo of racial authenticity raises its ugly head. Despite Obama’s biracial heritage, she and others seem prepared to argue that real black men only sleep with “sisters.” Truth be told, Tiger Woods was always viewed with suspicion by the black race police because he’d refused an orthodox racial identity and married a Swedish swimsuit model.

There’s no doubt Woods is a scoundrel, a fallen hero with a flawed character who deserves most of the scorn that’s been heaped upon him.  However, other than a raised-eyebrow over the “hoochi-mama” aspect of it all, the skin or hair color of his women of choice have no rightful role in this sorry episode.

Forty-five years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, there is a great deal of irony in the fact that there are some who continue to uphold some of the worst aspects of pre-civil rights America – and laughably believe it to be some sort of “progressive black politics.”

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December 11, 2009 | 5:52 pm

Hanukkah Revisited

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

In his usual thoughtful and illuminating way, David Brooks offers fresh insight in his New York Times column today.

The version of the Hanukkah story that will be recounted in millions of home tonight and has been taught in Sunday schools for eons—-doesn’t quite get it right.

The Maccabees weren’t the heroic, virtuous freedom fighters seeking to further religious freedom for all as so many of us were taught. The Hellenistic culture that had spread to the Holy Land wasn’t the incarnation of intolerance that is the stock and trade of every Hanukkah play that our kids were in. And the miracle of the oil lamp that burned for eight days—which has spawned a cottage industry of menorah makers—- was added years after the fact to include a divine dimension.

Brooks’ piece is delightful but has a more serious subtext. He concludes with what may be the most important message to be learned from Hanukah itself,
            …. there is no erasing the complex ironies of the events, the way progress, heroism and brutality weave through all sides. The Maccabees heroically preserved the Jewish faith. But there is no honest way to tell their story as a self-congratulatory morality tale. The lesson of Hanukkah is that even the struggles that saved a people are dappled with tragic irony, complexity and unattractive choices.  

It may be two thousand years later, but not much has changed. Virtually every issue and story we face is laced with “irony, complexity and unattractive choices.”

We should all beware of those who offer simple answers to complex problems—-clear cut unambiguous answers are few and far between.

George Gershwin had it right when he wrote about what you read in the Bible, “it ain’t necessarily so.”

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December 4, 2009 | 8:37 pm

Obama Takes on Maxine Waters—-Bravo!

Posted by  Joe R. Hicks

This past week, Congresswoman Maxine Waters and nine other members of the Congressional Black Caucus (“CBC”) attacked the Obama administration, claiming the president and those around him have not been sensitive to the plight of blacks, who they claim have suffered disproportionately due to the nation’s struggling economy.

The ten CBC members threatened that unless the administration moved to offer some programmatic solutions, they would mobilize all forty three members of the Caucus to sandbag the president’s economic agenda in the House. Waters argued that Caucus members had to “educate” those around Obama to the particular economic woes that blacks faced.  This claim seems most directed at White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel – someone that Waters has previously clashed with directly.

The most pressing claim by Waters and the others is that Obama and his administration is ignoring urban unemployment.  Always the vocal, and often strident, racial advocate, Waters said “”We can no longer be in denial that certain sectors of our population, including the African-American community, are feeling the recession to a greater extent.”

This may well be the case.  And it is true that black unemployment has historically lagged behind that of the general population.  However, despite heated rhetoric and ongoing claims from predictable voices like Congresswoman Waters, over the past few generations it has become increasingly difficult to directly correlate black unemployment with racism, discrimination or governmental neglect. 

Further, claims by the ten CBC members that Obama should design racially-specific solutions to black suffering, is an insult.  The nation is in the midst of a nationally-felt economic recession – something that has caused pain and suffering in virtually every sector and region of our society. 

The arguments from Waters, and the other CBC members, indicate they may believe Obama’s charge is to carry their ideological water and fulfill an old-style black racial agenda.  However, the president’s job is not to be “the black president.” His task, among all the other domestic and international issues on his plate, is to steer this nation back to economic prosperity, something all Americans, no matter their skin color, would benefit from.

Stung by Waters criticism, Obama fired back, telling his CBC critics that “

.”

Even more directly to the Waters’ claims, the President warned, “

”

For this Obama deserves to be roundly applauded.  He cannot allow the Black Caucus to push him toward piece-meal solutions to our problems. The idea that our nation is some sort of loose confederation of competing racial groups may have served as the vision for old-style multiculturalism, but is nothing less than a formula for ethnic and racial Balkanization.

I’m encouraged by Obama’s stance on this.  It follows his key decision to give General McChrystal most of the troops he’d requested for the fight against Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan.  And make no mistake; this was a courageous move – albeit a delayed one. 

His decision has alienated and angered many in Obama’s base on the political left.  Everyone from MoveOn.org and the Daily Kos, the foul-mouthed Jon Stewart, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, along with Keith Olberman (outside of Glenn Beck, two of the craziest men working in cable television) to the consistently left-oriented Congresswomen Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters have evidenced their “displeasure” over the impending troop deployments.

The right has contended that the Obama presidency has accomplished nothing of substance since the inauguration.  Now some liberals have joined that chorus.  Obama was recently skewered for his lack of accomplishments on a “Saturday Night Live” skit.  What’s notable is that this show’s never been known for its even-handed treatment of conservative political views. 

But now, the popular comedy show’s writers may have to go back to the drawing board.  Obama has made what may be the most critical decision a president can ever be faced with – sending young Americans into harm’s way.  Less critical, but not unimportant, is that he’s now taken on the racial complainers within the Congressional Black Caucus.  Things are looking up at the White House.

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December 1, 2009 | 9:13 pm

A Natural Urge to Help

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

Working in the civil rights field for nearly 35 years gives one a perspective on human behavior, both the good and the bad. People are exceptionally gracious when facing adversity, thoughtful when their problems are dealt with and generous in acknowledging assistance…..or not.

Even with this blog in the Jewish Journal, my partner, Joe Hicks, and I have been the recipients of some very laudatory responses, some articulate and thoughtful adversarial postings, and some downright nasty e-mails that didn’t even get posted.

The roughest attacks we get generally relate to our “having blinders on” that prevent us from seeing the innate bigotry and hate that lies just below the surface of otherwise tolerant seeming Americans. One inveterate critic suggests that our view of an improving and more tolerant America is paving the road to another Auschwitz, “ cause it looks like the same stupid game you morons played in Germany.  We’re Germans first, Jews second, then they’ll accept us.” 

Today’s New York Times’ Science section offers some important support for those of us who believe that human nature bends in the direction of tolerance and co-operation among peoples.

In an article entitled, We May Be Born With An Urge To Help, the author, Nicholas Wade, describes some fascinating studies which suggest that “babies are innately sociable and helpful to others. Of course every animal must to some extent be selfish to survive. But the biologists also see in humans a natural willingness to help…..The helping behavior seems to be innate because it appears so early and before many parents start teaching children the rules of polite behavior.”

And it isn’t just American kids who might be subject to the good feelings on Sesame Street who exhibit this behavior. “It seems to occur across cultures that have different timetables for teaching social rules. And helping behavior can even be seen in infant chimpanzees under the right experimental conditions.”  The scientists cited conclude that “helping is a natural inclination, not something imposed by parents or culture….Empathy is an automated response over which we have limited control…..Children are altruistic by nature,” though they are also naturally selfish. The author advises that parents should tip the balance toward social behavior.

Among the implications of the studies is that we should be mindful of our better natures as we fashion public policy, “Indeed, it is in our biological nature, not our political institutions, that we should put our trust, in his view. Our empathy is innate and cannot be changed or long suppressed. “ Dr. Frans de Waal writes, “I’d argue that biology constitutes our greatest hope. One can only shudder at the thought that the humaneness of our societies would depend on the whims of politics, culture or religion.”

Next nasty blog we get telling me how naïve our optimistic view of America’s future is we’ll send a link to today’s New York Times.

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