Taking back the country--all the way back to segregation, slavery, the crusades, and The Inquisition

This billboard appears at an automobile leasing and consignment business in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, owned by Phil Wolf.  The dealership, Interstate Sales and Leasing, is part of the Wolf Automotive Group.  Phil Wolf also owns Chrysler product dealerships in Jackson and Pinedale, Wyoming, and a Suzuki dealership in Bozeman, Montana.  He put up the sign.  He has been interviewed a number of  times as to why he put the sign up.

The sign makes a number of claims that have been proven false, except in the minds of those who make up phony reasons for their hatred of President Obama.  The sign implies Obama is  Muslim.  In interviews, Wolf has stated that Obama is anti-Christian and anti-American.  The sign raises the phony claim about Obama's citizenship and birth certificate.  It connects Obama to the shootings at Ft. Hood. 

A former colleague of mine who is a social psychologist specializing in advertising, propaganda, and human resources, points out that this sign, along with those that have shown up at tea parties, and the tea party protests in  general, have made false claims.  He examines the fact that so many of the claims against Obama are apparently and provably without any foundation snd are total fabrications.    Why do people create them and believe in them?

 Pure, simple, good old-fashioned racial hatred, is the answer.  And it is an answer that presumes a divide in the U.S. population that runs deeper and is more pernicious than most Americans would like to admit.

My psychologist friend says that people who supported and elected Obama assumed his election to the presidency marked a final surmounting of the history of racial prejudice, discrimination, and violence in the nation.  But, instead, it unleashed a new wave of racial hatred and resentment that expresses itself in the falsehoods circulated about Obama and his administration.

My colleague likens Obama's presidency to the time when women and people of color began to move into important and influential jobs in the work place.  As the consultant for large corporations, he recalls the problems that the companies experienced when they started promoting minorities and women over other people.   He says at that time, people were at least more forthright about their resentment.  He recalled when a black man was promoted to vice president of labor relations at a large, successful corporation.  Another vice president asked for a meeting with the chief executive and the advisory staff, and blurted out, "Do you realize that you've just made me equal to a fucking nigger?"

My friend recalls the problems were worse when women started moving into executive positions.  A number of people quit rather than work for a female boss.  They said they would not submit to the indignity of being bossed by a woman.  Others did not quit but did everything they could to obstruct and undercut their female bosses.  My colleague says things have not really changed.  While people would not use such overtly demeaning terms as nigger, spick, or cunt to register their resentments, they do so in code by constantly finding other faults and making up false accusations about their bosses.  This is the tactic that the tea party protesters and some in Congress have used to assail Obama.  They are possessed of a seething resentment that a black man has risen to a position over them.  Except for the hardcore KKK types, people will not openly use the deprecation "nigger."  So they challenge Obama's citizenship, claim he is not Christian,  call him socialist, communist, fascist, jihadist and all the other pejoratives, except the one they really mean.  Crude pictures and false representations avoid the words, but do not hide their intention.

The media might be faulted for publicizing signs such as the one in Wheat Ridge.  However, slanderous and libelous expressions, while not subject to court challenge by public figures, is news.  It is not good news.  It is even worse news when the press allows the people who claim that  such defamations are merely an expression of policy disagreements to  remain unchallenged in their dissembling.  At minimum the press should be asking why people persist with such outright and obvious lies.  Attorney Gneral Eric Holder identified the probem when he said that people were cowards about the matters of race that remain a big factor in American life and politics.  Most Americans of the more tolerant sort want to be proud of their country, and , therefore, ignore its history of slavery, racial oppression, and genocide against the American Indians.  And they do not want to confront the racial and the political hatred that is finding expression in the tea parties, the town halls, and on the streets.  They think that as long as the protesters are not using the words "nigger,"  "spick," and "cunt," we are living in a more enlightened age.   A great, dark rage enveloped the country when Obama was elected.  And in trying to maintain postures of conciliation, the progressives are allowing that dark rage to  over the country with an insidious cloud.

 As with that sign in Wheat Ridge, much of the political discussion on  talk radio, cable television, and the internet is sub-literate and incoherent.  Words are symbols of natural facts, but in the current forms of discussions, there is no attempt to connect words with actual facts.   A quick look at any aggregator of South Dakota blogs reveals a devastating record of sub-literacy and incoherence   The new media has the intellectual resemblance of the chatter of the dayroom in a home for the mentally disabled.

The quality of  thought and expression defines the quality of a country.  Popular culture is obsessed with the degradations and intellectual atrocities of the past.  And that is where the author of the sign in Wheat Ridge and his kind are taking us.

Fire the lying profressors

There is one way to settle the question raised about the quality of science in climate change: 

     1.  Fire any professor who is proven to have fabricated, distorted, or otherwise manipulated data.  

     2.  Insure that any such firing be attended by the most meticulous academic due process.  

Such due process would require that anyone making accusations of academic misconduct to come forth with the evidence  and to explain their reading and analysis of the evidence.  And such presentations and examination and rebuttal of the evidence would done before and decided upon by a jury of peers.  In this case, peers would be defined as disinterested professors of equal professional stature and qualifications to examine the data at issue.

I do not know exactly what are the rules are for the European and Asian scientists involved  in the charges against professors,  but I know well what rules apply to American professors--although most institutions of higher learning try to avoid the expense, embarrassment, and turmoil of such proceedings as rigorous applications of the rules involve.  I have sat on panels that consider evidence brought against professors and make assessments and recommendations, and I am familiar with many cases.  Many cases of misconduct involve matters of felonies, sexual involvements and sexual harassment, or gross negligence of duty.  Such cases are generally resolved by the professor resigning and quietly withdrawing.  

Cases involving professors charged with academic misconduct in scholarship and teaching are less frequent.  The established reasons for firing or taking other disciplinary action against them include instances of:

• Plagiarism;
• Fabrication of data or manipulation of data to lead to a foregone conclusion;
• Gross incompetence;
• Gross negligence of defined duties;
•  Scholarly slovenliness;
• General mendacity in the role of professor, whether on campus or in extra-mural settings.  

The first two rules listed above are the most serious in their effect on scholarly integrity, and a professor proven to violate them will not be a professor any longer or ever again. 

The  general public does not often hear of cases of professors being fired or disciplined for such misconduct because colleges and universities go to great lengths to suppress any hint that something is academically amiss on their campuses.  The cases with which I am familiar often involved a professor who was at odds with an administration, was dismissed, but claimed there was no reason of academic performance in the firing.  Some cases are upheld, but in those where no basis in academic performance is found, a quiet cash settlement is generally made.  The South Dakota Board of Regents made such a settlement with a professor whose dismissal from Northern State was found to be in violation of academic freedom.  In cases where the firings are upheld, the matters centered on plagiarism or the misrepresentation and misuse of data.


The most recent and familiar case of such dismissal was that of Professor Ward Churchill who was dismissed from the University of Colorado for falsifying and misrepresenting materials he cited from other scholars.  The matter probably would not have come up had Churchill not enraged a portion of the  public by publishing an essay in which he called the victims of 9/11 'little Eichmanns."  Although complaints about his use of source materials had been registered, the Colorado regents and administration did not pursue them until the political furor over his "little Eichmann" comment called them into attention.  Churchill claimed that his dismissal was for making that comment and was a violation of his right to free speech and academic freedom.  The professors who reviewed the charges found that his misuse of scholarly materials was sufficient cause for his dismissal.  


However, the case of the e-mails between scientists who developed the global warming theory rests upon a different basis.  Ironically, the invention used to expedite research and scholarly work is being used against them.  The World Wide Web was invented by scientists to permit them to have convenient access to information and to have a means for exchanging ideas and information about theories they are pursuing.  Part of its purpose was to allow them to exchange comments and criticisms over long distances as if they were working next to each other in their labs or offices.  They were looking for a way to exchange the casual comments and concerns that occur to them in the  early, pre-formative stages of analyzing data. In other words, they used e-mails and listserves to exchange what they call "lab chatter," which is the scientists' equivalent of the chatter and banter exchanged between all workmen as they go about the performance of their jobs.  Much of what is said is just venting, which may or may not be relevant to the tasks at hand.



However, when scientists  formalize their theories and prepare them for publication, their work is taken out of the context of lab chatter and the petty politics that is the bane of academic organizations.  Their work is presented in formal papers which review all the literature pertinent to the subject they present, and they build a case for the theory being advanced through a careful and critical analysis of the data.  And because it is a theory, their conclusions will be open to the inclusion of new data and to criticisms and evluation by other scientists.


When the e-mails of the scientists were hacked into, which is in itself illegal, the hackers found statements that they construed to be evidence that the scientists were manipulating and falsifying data that conflicted with the theory of global warming.  The scientists claim that the e-mails were taken out of context and do not represent any substantive information about the global warming theory, and are largely matters of incidental lab chatter that does not bear on the theory itself.

An example is that one of the e-mails cautions scientists to be careful about any information that they copy to the science reporter for The New York Times.  Scholars are always careful about what information they give to reporters because reporters are not necessarily interested in the integrity or the precision of the science when they report on it.  Most scholars prefer to withhold information until they publish their own papers on their work.  Much of the press is interested in finding conflict and sensation and gossip than in reporting the actual science.   The New York Times has an informing overview of the e-mail hacking incident.



The biggest problem is that politics has become a part of this theory.  And so, the tactics of political propaganda have entered into its discussion.  At the outset, a favorite technique of the conservative movement is apparent in the propagandic use made of the e-mails.  The critics find an e-mail that they can construe as an admission that the scientists are not telling the truth to the public.  Then they launch an attack on the character of the scientist, rather than explain and substantiate their reading of the e-mails and the process by which they justify their condemnation on the character of the scientist.  They divert the discussion away from the scientific evidence and the facts at hand to a slandering and libeling of the scientists.  The scientists claim that the comments are deliberately misconstrued and have no bearing on the scientific evidence or the way they have arrived at their theory.



Some websites have called the scientists frauds and are calling for their exposure and dismissal.  


If the academic world operates as it should, these critics should be allowed to make their case where it counts--in a proceeding where they can make their accusations and in which the professors accused have an opportunity to face them and require an accounting.


There is a huge difference in science and the rest of the academic work between having a different viewpoint based on the evidence or of being wrong and deliberately falsifying or manipulating the data.  


Unfortunately,  the internet is a culprit in allowing the intrusion of politics into science.  In a medium where plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification has become a characteristic, some professors have abandoned the precepts of their disciplines in order to satisfy their political perversities.  On the local blogs, one professor blithely plagiarized a newspaper editorial, which also had misrepresented some data it cited. Plagiarism and falsification of data are considered fair and clever practices by some professors when they venture onto the internet.


The universities and agencies involved in the study of the global warming theory have a responsibility to insist that the charges of misconduct of the professors be prosecuted with substantive evidence and the e-mail hacking incident be given full examination.  


The academic world needs to restore itself by getting rid of dishonest and incapable professors.  But first, it has to decide who they are.

Woman from South Dakota pleads guilty to spying for Cuba

Gwendolyn Myers, a woman from Aberdeen, and her husband, Walter Kendall Myers, pled guilty to spying Friday in a federal court, according to an Associated Press story.    Mrs. Myers had worked as a political campaign staff member in Aberdeen and then worked in  state government in Pierre, where she and her husband were contacted by Cuban agents.

Walter Kendall Myers, 72,  will serve a life term in prison and Gwendolyn Myers will serve about seven years. 

The longing for competence: the death of Morgan Lewis

Daniel Zwerdling is a professional journalist for National Public Radio.  He came up with a document that shows that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the killer of 13 soldiers at Ft. Hood,  had raised questions about his competence among his superiors.  An evaluative memorandum lists problems with Major Hasan's performance and his personality.   The memo does not say anything about any tendency in Hasan toward becoming a violent jihadist against his fellows, although it notes that he did some inappropriate religious proselytizing.  Here is a transcript of the relevant evaluations and conclusions in the document:

3. The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan’s professionalism and work ethic. Clinically he is competent to deliver safe patient care. But he demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism. In his PGY-2 year, he was counseled for inappropriately discussing religious topics with his assigned patients. He also required a period of in-program remediation when he was discovered to have not documented appropriately an ER encounter with a homicidal patient who subsequently eloped from the ER. He did successfully remediate this problem. At the end of his PGY-2 year, he was placed on administrative probation by the NCC GMEC for failure to take and pass USMLE Step 3 and to obtain an unrestricted state medical license by the end of his PGY-2 year; as a result he was not promoted to PGY-3 on time. He did eventually complete step 3 and get a license and was promoted to PGY-3. He was counseled for having a poor record of attendance at didactics and lower than expected PRITE scores. One year he failed to show for his PRITE examination at all.  During his PGY-3 year, he was counseled for being consistently late to NNMC morning report. During his PGY-4 year, he was discovered to have only seen 30 outpatients in 38 week of outpatient continuity clinic. He was required to make this missed clinic time up using his elective. He failed his HGT/WGT screening and was found to be out of standards with body fat % and was counseled on that.  Lastly, he missed a night of call for MGMC ER and then did not respond to numerous pages by my office the next day.

4. Taken together; these issues demonstrate a lack of professionalism and work ethics.  He is able to self-correct with supervision. However, at this point he should not need so much supervision. In spite of all of this, I am not able to say he is not competent to graduate nor do I think a period of academic probation now at the end of his training will be beneficial. He would be able to contain his behavior enough to complete any period of probation successfully. My purpose in writing this letter is to give the credentials committee the benefit of full disclosure and the opportunity to modify CPT Hasan’s plan of supervision following initial privileging.

Some people are reported in the press and are using blogs to use this document as the basis for tirades about the incompetence of big government.  In so doing, they misrepresent the facts.  The facts are that a superior of Major Hasan's did note the problems with his performance, but also noted that further disciplinary action at that point would seem counterproductive.  The memo was made part of a record to be used in consideration of Major Hasan's future assignments and evaluations.  There may be further documents that bear on whether Major Hasan's alleged eruption into a murdering jihadist could have been predicted.

There are those who are misportraying this document as evidence of  bumbling when, in fact, it is a careful assessment that shows attempts are being made to correct Major Hasan's deficiencies of performance.  Unfortunately, some of those making the false portrayals are in the teaching profession.  One can only hope that their superiors are  putting on record their incompetent and slovenly performances in representing what very competent reporters publish and that appropriate remediation or disciplinary action is taken in those cases.

I am not defending the Army or government in this matter.  I am pointing out the absurdity of the incompetent and devious calling someone else incompetent.  I decry the incompetence of all huge bureaucracies, including the higher education bureaucracy for which I once worked.  My own take on the Army is supplied by my father, who carried U.S. mail for 34 years.  When I was inducted into military service, my father drove me to the train station, and used the F word the only time I ever heard him do so.  He commented that I tended to attempt to rectify what I pereceived as wrongs, and he said, "Just remember that the government and the Army are so f**ked up so far back and so high up that there is nothing you can do to  change it."   I listened and remembered, although that did not keep me from joining in some efforts to change some wrongs, which resulted in the courts martial of some people who were mistreating recruits.   But for the most part, my father was right and there is little one can do to fix incompetence.  Or perfidy and mendacity and malice in those who hold those qualities as  basic tenets of their value system. 

And that is not to say that I did not also come across instances of brilliance and unparalleled competence in the service.  Or in higher education.  But they are subverted by those who dwell in the lower regions of human sensibility.

In yesterday's news was also the announcement that the last chance to examine the death of Dr. Morgan Lewis, an assistant professor of German at Northern State University who was found dead at the doorway of Seymour Hall Nov. 1, 2004, of a gunshot wound in the back of his head.  The Aberdeen Police Department eventually labeled the case a suicide and closed it.  The Police Department or other authorities never released the evidence or investigative record on which they based their conclusion.

Some litigation ensued.  It was over insurance,  which the agencies involved would not have to pay if suicide were proven.  The latest suit against Prudential Life Insurance was settled to the satisfaction of  the parties, according to the news report, but it closed off what is probably the last opportunity to examine the evidence and the investigative record for veracity and competence in the handling of the case.

In the case of Major Hasan, his personnel records, at least in part, are being made available.  In the case of Dr. Lewis' death, the records are not released because some bureaucrats have the authority under South Dakota law to keep them from public knowledge.

Dr. Lewis' death came during a time of chaos and controversy in the Aberdeen Police Department.  A chief of police had recently been forced to resign.  The reasons are kept confidential because they are "personnel" matters.  Two detectives were fired and protested their firings, on which some kind of settlement was reached.  The reasons for the firings and the settlement were never explained to the public because they are personnel matters.  The policeman who patrolled the NSU campus at the time of Dr. Lewis' death was forced to resign  The reasons, which had something to do with the handling of the Lewis case, were never revdaled because they were "personnel matters."

Still, at the federal level of government, when a time of great tragedy and concern occurs as in the Ft. Hood shootings, the personnel records of Major Hasan are released as a mater of pubic information so that the record can be examined and appropriate action taken.

The Hasan case will go on for years.  But at least we can take assurance that some people involved have performed competently and professionally.  However, in South Dakota in the handling of the Hasan personnel documents and in the withholding of information on the Morgan Lewis case, we are left to long for integrity and competence. 

We can only long for disclosure and freedom of information laws that the federal government and other states have.  But that would  be relying upon big government to enforce the rights of tax-paying citizens to know what their tax-paid employees are doing.  And if they are competent enough to hold their positions. 

John Thune: one big macaca moment

Now comes Chris Cilizza of the Washington Post to speculate about John Thune rising to the role of savior of the Republican Party,  following on the heels of David Brooks' paean to Thune's cowboyiness.

 Thune's current claim to prominence is his efforts to put an end to TARP, which is in contradiction to his performance in support of those things that made TARP necessary.  And then there is his legislation to prohibit any taxing of cow farts and burps, despite the fact that no one has actually proposed such taxes.

He could really promote his presidential ambitions if he were to sponsor legislation prohibiting the Obama gun fairy, which sneaks around at night trying to wrestle guns from the hot little hands of those who live in constant fear that someone will come and take their favorite toys away in the night.

Thune has no opposition in his run for re-election in 2010 so far.    That is no opposition except that held in the minds of those who really know his record in the House, where he had to be dragged screaming and hollering to join the agriculture caucus, look at water development, and stop his opposition to all expenditures on the South Dakota infrastructure.

Then there is the tea-party campaign he ran in 2004.

Thune is making a lot of noise with his quiet poses.  He reads scripts well.  It is thinking and doing constructive things that he has trouble with.

The descent into pettiness

Having covered agriculture and business for many years, I have developed a huge disrespect for corporate bureaucracies.   There are dangers to big government.  But bureaucracies are bureaucracies, no matter their setting, and they operate on the lowest common denominator--the stupid, the mean, the incompetent, the crooked, the retarded.

All people are created equal in the sense that no  one is to be regarded as more or less valuable than anybody else.  But they are not created the same.  They are equal but different.  And many people just are not very smart or very decent or very noble.  But we give them equal status, and that is why we find ourselves dealing with incompetent idiots much of the time.

Nothing is more idiotic than yammering about the dangers of big government.  If they want to talk about the incompetence, inefficiencies, and crookedness of big, let us talk about General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Citicorp, Enron, Worldcom, and the list is almost endless,  because it would include almost every large enterprise.  People have a huge capacity for stupidity, and bureaucracies cater to it.  That is a basic premise of bureaucratic culture.

My own position on the matter of bailouts is that we should just let the greedy and fatuous fools who got the economy to where it has sunk  go under.  I realize that the government took the actions because it realized that the rest of us would go under with the huge, incompetent bureaucracies and not all of us should have to reap what the big corporations have sown.  About 17 percent of our people who are unemployed and can't find jobs are reaping the raping of the economy by being asked to bend over and smile while they take the reaping up their individual wazoos.  There is a huge denial of equality when some people can't get enough to eat and others can garner million-dollar bonuses from bailout money from American taxpayers.  Some people defend corporate executive pay scales and bonuses as a capitalistic right.  I think it is their right to reap the consequences of their mental and moral failures and go to the end of the soup lines.  But Bernie Madoff is the capitalistic Jesus and the only people we permit to pay for the bureaucratic shystering are the poor.

Obama ran on the promise to change all that kind of nonsense.  He is a smart man.  He is a decent man.  His flaw, which may prove to be fatal, is that he is a polite and considerate man.  In making nice to an opposition which is on the side of economic and actual rape, he has squandered the opportunity to drive the rats out of the ship of state and has allowed them to derail real reform.  His opposition will oppose anything he proposes or stands for.

One of their latest complaints is that Obama bowed to the emperor of Japan.  He also bowed to the Saudi King and the Queen of  England.   Obama is a bower.  Some people think that a bow is a sign of respect and good intentions.  Like in dancing the Virginia reel which begins with the men bowing to the women and the women curtsying to the men as a demonstration of respect and good will.  But the opposition sees the Obama bow as the damned field slave being so enthralled at being received by his massas in the big house that he falls to his knees in a gesture of supplication that pledges slavehood to the royalty.   On the other hand, any attempts to give the ordinary, working people some equity in their country is decried as socialism and communism. The fact that such mean and petty nonsense is circulated around the country shows what a mean and petty and utterly stupid country we have  become.

Just as the corporations deserve to reap what they have sown, it may be time to let the country itself reap what is sown.  We have serious issues that could be talked about on the basis of sound information and intelligence, but the GOP has decided to put on displays of stupid obstinacy and false accusations.  Health care is one of those areas  which a would-be ruling class uses to put the American serfs in their place.  The reform efforts have been compromised by making nice to the "rulers."  The GOP has launched a barrage of insanity.  The Democrats have allowed themselves to be drawn into the noise of idiots venting their sound and fury as if idiots can be reasoned with.  And so, we are left living at the level of the mean and petty and greedy and nefarious, who would rather slur the President than solve the country's problems.

Critics of American democracy have said from its inception that it was doomed to failure because it would be dominated by the lowest motives in the human spirit.  Perhaps, it is time to see the government as being operated on the same moral and intellectual basis as the big corporate bureaucracies.  It might be time to let it fail and let people confront the reality of what we have become.  There will be turmoil and atrocity and obscenity of the kind that takes place daily in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere.  It may be time to put the theories of those persistent critics to the test.

The voices of indecency, the sound and the fury, are loud and clear.  It may well be time to let America fail and see if what endures is the better angels of human nature or the malevolent demons that thrive on the mean, the petty, and the stupid. 













 a

Lou Dobbs and the struggle for journalism

Lou Dobbs suddenly announced on his CNN show Wednesday that it would be his last appearance on the network.  The moment could hardly be regarded as the product of clear objectives and careful planning.  Only a few follow-up stories delved into the reasons why Dobbs left so abruptly, after being one of CNN's originating anchors and having a news show during the prime hour for news. 

The Sunday morning talk shows have rehashed the points to which Dobbs drew the most attention.  They are his crusade against illegal aliens, about whom he made provably false statements, and his joining of the nonsense about President Obama's birth certificate, even after CNN executives told him it was not a story.  


There were disagreements between Dobbs and CNN management, but  Dobbs' sudden departure is indicative of the general problems facing news organizations.

CNN changed the news business.  Initially, for the better. By 1980, television news had become the major source for most Americans, but was delivered by the three major networks in 20 highly-edited minutes per day during their half-hour evening newscasts.  For people who wanted more detailed and expanded information,  print journalism filled the void.  Then Ted Turner, amid a storm of skepticism, stepprd in with his 24-hour cable news network, CNN.  


Initially CNN intensified the reporting aspect of news.  It emphasized reporting and the generation of facts and information based upon on-the-spot coverage and carefully sourced and verified facts.  CNN was a success, and it inspired rival cable networks devoted to news.  But the task of filling 24 hours a day with news proved a strain.  At first the format was hourly segments which, while emphasizing breaking news, were repetitive.  To provide a change of focus and pace, CNN,and its competitors, programmed "news magazine" segments, modeled roughly (and I mean "roughly") after public television's News Hour, with in-depth interviews and panel discussions.  They found that the interview-and-discussion format was a cheaper and easier way to fill the time than having a bunch of reporters out digging for facts and another bunch of editors checking those facts. 

Ted Turner started CNN as an alternative to news programming that was merely an adjunct to entertainment programming, which draws the larger audience.  A staple of entertainment programming was the talk show.  While the late night talk shows emphasized show business and variety, the day time talk shows centered ostensibly on issues.  But their real attraction was that issues spark controversy and conflict.  While conflict is one of the dozen or so criteria by which news value is evaluated, it has taken over cable news and internet reporting almost to the exclusion of other criteria and to the oblivion of the journalistic processes by which they are applied.  Some people find conflict entertaining, as they did when Jerry Springer prodded people on his show into such degrading rage that they physically attacked each other.  Conflict and its devious and nefarious expressions are a staple of the "reality" shows which feature people being vicious and hateful to each other.  For a very significant portion of Americans, watching other people being abused and humiliated is a favorite entertainment.  Social psychologists point out that the popularity of such debasing spectacles is partly because it gives the audience the chance to feel superior to the subjects of humiliation, a chance for those who feel inconsequential in their work-a-day lives to feel  part of an "elite."  Television has serviced the less-than-admirable motives of its audience, and this servicing has shaped the way news is presented in the media in general.


For cable news, the appeal to the baser instincts of its audience is in the constant bickering and prattle by "experts" over every topic that comes up in the news.  Cable news also finds that appealing to people's prejudices, notions, ignorance, and distorted world views  builds audiences.  People like to feel that their perceptions, notions, and attitudes are legitimized as part of something larger.  That is what Fox News and MSNBC are using in their attempts to win audiences and ratings.


In the ratings wars, CNN has dropped behind its two competing cable networks, Fox News and MSNBC, who have openly decided to base their editorial decisions on different sides of the partisan divide.  Fox, a part of the Murdoch empire, which includes the Wall Street Journal, is devoted to propagandizing far right wing propaganda.  MSNBC takes the left wing perspective.  Although both of those networks have news gathering operations, their partisan manipulations of information take away the credibility of anything they offer as hard news reports.  As MSNBC uses reports from NBC News, its partisan stance compromises the work it uses from the professional journalists.


This kind of compromising of the integrity of professionally developed reports is where Lou Dobbs got into trouble.  His news hour showed that he had a partisan agenda in both his selection of news and the slant with which he delivered the stories.  He used work and had interchanges with reporters on which he imposed his slant.  This caused complaints from CNN's hard news workers and they felt uncomfortable appearing on his program and being associated with the distortions he imposed.  His distortions became particularly noticeable in the antagonisms he consistently expressed against Barack Obama.  Journalists both within CNN and outside the network remarked that Dobbs had abandoned reporting altogether for propagandizing and he violated the basic premises of factual accuracy and credible sources in the process.


While Latino groups and other civil rights organizations launched a campaign to have Dobbs removed from the network more than a year ago,  professional journalists began writing to CNN that, aside from the major network newscasts and the PBS News Hour, there was no cable show devoted to hard reporting during the prime news time across the nation.  The emphasis on what people with conflicting viewpoints said about a few issues displaced the news itself.


Ted Turner whose interests in CNN were bought out and who was eventually displaced on the CNN board of directors has commented on what CNN has become.  He lost a good portion of his money in market  collapses and says he does not have enough to buy his way back into the cable television business, but he is disappointed in the abandonment of hard news reporting as the primary function of CNN.  He would to see the network give up the fluff and return to news reporting as its central commodity.


The departure of Lou Dobbs reflects that CNN management is sensitive to the criticism of the network news role.  It has previously let Glenn Beck go and appears concerned about its reputation as a news source rather than a partisan chatter source. 

CNN has competition coming on strong.  Bloomberg has openly announced that it intends to become the most influential news organization in the nation.  CNN has reason to scramble to regain and maintain its credibility as a reliable reporter of the news.  


News organizations in general are looking at downsizing but finding a niche in the real news market in which they can survive.  CNN may have to forget the ratings races and serve the audience attracted to it.  At a time when it is becoming apparent that "citizen journalism" on the internet is just more chatter and a total failure by journalistic standards, responding to the challenges on the Internet is not the way real journalism can survive.  More organizations may have to take the measures CNN seems to be taking.