Politics: February 2004 Archive Page

U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige today [Feb. 23] issued the following apology for his remarks about the NEA.

"It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA's Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms. I also said, as I have repeatedly, that our nation's teachers, who have dedicated their lives to service in the classroom, are the real soldiers of democracy, whereas the NEA's high-priced Washington lobbyists have made no secret that they will fight against bringing real, rock-solid improvements in the way we educate all our children regardless of skin color, accent or where they live. But, as one who grew up on the receiving end of insensitive remarks, I should have chosen my words better."

--Secretary Paige Issues Apology for Comment about NEA (US Department of Education)

A few days ago, the Drudge Report's coverage of this story (about a Bush official calling the leaders of a large teachers' union "terrorists") featured an item noting that potential Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry once called Texas Republicans "legislative terrorists." It's not hard to find examples of politicians going overboard with their metaphors, but Kerry's attack on fellow politicians was just business as usual; for the Bush appointee to pick on underpaid and overworked teachers seems downright mean. Kerry would be wise to stay out of this fray, because it's already another black eye for Bush.

I'm actually blogging this mostly because of the rhetoric involved.

While Paige finally admits he "should have chosen [his] words better," he only does so after bringing our attention to the "the obstructionist scare tactics" the NEA's leaders have brought against the "historic reforms" proposed by the Bush administration. Paige also calls attention to his own racial and cultural background -- which complicates issues for those who prefer their enemies in the White House to be uniformly white, male, privileged, and conservative. Paige's statement tries to direct the attack at the NEA leadership, not the millions of (voting) members who compose the NEA -- but I'm sure the NEA's leaders aren't going to throw up their arms and say, "The jig is up -- Paige has discovered that we don't really have the interests of students or rank-and-file NEA members in mind when we visit Washington." The road leads ever on.

Hint to Paige and anybody else who has ever had to do damage control: if you want to look sincere while apologizing, a quivering lip and wavering voice is nice, but when you're through with the emoting, don't spend even more time defending yourself and re-phrasing the very attack for which you are supposedly apologizing. I'm reminded of Bill Clinton's 1998 speech in which he admitted that he "misled people, including even my wife," which I thought was an excellent speech until he brought up the investigations into his financial affairs. (Clinton should have taken the high road, and let his supporters continue attacking Ken Starr. But that's a different story.)

I just noticed Mike Arnzen has blogged a bit on the incident over at Pedablogue.

The L.A. Times ('free' registration required--thus my extensive quoting) has story about how:

the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control recently declared that American publishers cannot edit works authored in nations under trade embargoes. Although publishing the articles is legal, editing is a "service" and it is illegal to perform services for embargoed nations, the agency has ruled.

This raises all sorts of questions like does tagging and indexing a blog post count as editing, does reformating an article to fit a house or blog style count as editing? And is a 'service' really a 'service' if no money changes hands? It seems some publishers, including the American Chemical Society, have decided to risk "fines of up to a half-million dollars or jail terms as long as 10 years" by editing scholarly articles they publish. --U.S. Embargos Extended to Editing ArticlesKairosNews/LA Times)

Since the LA Times requires an obnoxious registration, I'm linking to Scott's post on KairosNews instead.

In these movies, priests are suicidal, corrupt and/or lascivious. Nuns are heartless and sadistic.

Before you run to your keyboard: yes, I'm aware of scandals, past and present, involving the church. And yes, some of the films listed above are powerful, important works based on true stories.

But a lot of this stuff is just exploitative garbage. And no other religious group gets bashed with such frequency. Can you imagine a similar number of films with Jewish leaders playing villains and moral weaklings? --Richard Roeper --Join the clubbed: Catholics know pain of being bashed  (Sun Times)

As a young boy, I found it very easy to spot when an actor was not Catholic. When a Catholic makes the sign of the cross (touching the forehead, chest, and then each shoulder), inside your head you are saying "In the name of the (touch head) Father, and of the Son (touch breast), and of the Holy Spirit." Well, in truth probably most of them shorten it to "'Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit." But there's a little pause when you hold your hand on your chest, before you make the horizontal stroke. When non-Catholics do the sign of the cross, unless they have been coached by someone who knows better, they rush that horizontal motion -- it looks like slashing. So it was always clear to me when an actor was only pretending to be Catholic.

It's not just that so many denizens of the Net are barking loonies; that's equally true of the general population. But too many Netters are still a demographically narrow slice of the electorate. They're too young to vote, too broke to contribute to campaign funds, and too busy downloading pornography to care much about upholding democracy. Worse yet, the medium itself doesn't encourage reasoned argument or the kinds of people who engage in it. --Crawford Kilian --A Forecast from 1994: Net Propaganda (Writing for the Web)

A very interesting set of predictions, now 10 years old, about how the Internet might shape politics. Particularly noteable are the comments about dirty tricks: "e-mail bombings" and viruses.

Rant or Remark? Invective or Discussion?Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Doesn't this just make your blood boil?

Writing

Instructor Loses Job for Discussing Iraq War in Class
WINSTON-SALEM, NC—Forsyth Technical

Community College (FTCC) writing instructor Elizabeth Ito has been dismissed for taking a brief part

of her class to discuss the war in Iraq. Ito criticized the Iraq war in a writing class on March 28,

2003, while the ground invasion was still underway. Her remarks, which later served as the basis for a writing assignment, lasted only ten minutes, but as a result administrators at the college decided not to renew her contract.

If it doesn't make your blood boil, then it's not doing its job. The dateline at the beginning makes it look like a news article, but it's actually a press release from the "Foundation for Individual Rights in Education." Sounds like a noble organization with a respectable mission... but I can't help feeling annoyed by the clumsy attempts to "spin" the facts in Ito's favor. How many rules of basic journalism does the headline alone violate? A journalist needs an open mind, but has to stick to facts. Consider the AP version of the story:

College teacher

believes views on Iraq cost her a job

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - A former English teacher at Forsyth Technical Community College is appealing

the school's decision not to renew her contract, which she claims is the result of her political

views about the war in Iraq. | Elizabeth Ito accepts criticism of her professional demeanor for

railing against the war during a business-writing class one day last spring. | But she says the

firing was a punishment for her political views.

While FIRE puts in the lead that Ito "has been dismissed for taking a brief part of her class to

discuss the war in Iraq," the AP story more accurately identifies that as a claim -- one that

the school contests. Whereas the press release says Ito was "dismissed," the news article gives the wordier but more neutral "the school's decision not to renew her contract."

While the press release uses the word "discuss" to describe Ito's handling of the political material, the AP story says "Ito accepts criticism of her professional demeanor for railing against the war" and describes the incident as follows:

Ito walked into her business-writing class, closed the door and said, "I guess we're going to liberate the Iraqis
even if it means killing every damned one of them."

"You could call it a rant, you could call it in an invective," Ito acknowledges. "I admitted I didn't do a good job. That's not a point of contention."

Two students walked out of class that day and complained to Susan Keener, the chairman of the humanities and communication department. At least one said that Ito had shouted down any student
with a viewpoint different from her own.

The press release refers to "remarks, which later served as the basis for a writing assignment," but
the idea for the assignment came only after Ito realized she "may not have given the subject a
balanced hearing," and in the AP story, Ito herself supplied "invective" and "rant" to describe what

the press release characterizes as "discussing".

Another passage from the press release is worth a mention:

President Green did not respond to FIRE's letter, instead choosing to explain FTCC's actions in a public statement posted on FTCC's website. Green accused Ito of, among other things, "a lack of competence." The college could provide no support for this accusation, however, and the statement was eventually removed from FTCC's website.

We can safely ignore FIRE's attempt to insert itself into the story here... but let's look at the rest of this excerpt. By placing in close proximity the statement that the school did not support its claims that Ito was incompetent and the observation that the statement was removed from the website, the press release may give the illusion of an association between those details -- the kind of potential misunderstanding a trained journalist would actively work against. Simply because the college has not offered proof does not mean that there is no proof. I am not a lawyer, but it doesn't seem to me that the college is under any obligation to divulge the contents of a private personnel file. Note that in both versions of the story, Ito accepts partial responsibility -- the press release only challenges the college's inability to come up with evidence of her incompetence.

Although the college's statement has been removed from the web, a Google search returns the URL http://www.forsythtech.edu/welcome/pressconf.html for the document. Given that the article was stuffed in the "welcome" directory (rather than a dated archive) and given the generic name "pressconf.html" one should probably not be surprised that this document has been moved. I can't find any trace of it online (which helps Ito in her effort to paint herself as an ideological victim), but Google yields a cached copy.

The "other things" with which Ito is accused include the following:

First and foremost, this is not about freedom of speech, academic freedom, politics, or the war. This is not about a single incident. Frankly, the college and I do not care whether she supports or opposes war in Iraq. This is about a lack of competence, professionalism, and ability to meet standards of professional behavior. It is about a first-year probationary teacher who did not do her job adequately.

Elizabeth Ito was at times unprepared to teach class, dismissing her class early because of failure to prepare. She spent time on issues outside of the regular class content, failing to relate the issues to the curriculum, and did not permit students to express their opinions. She failed to respect diverse ideas of students and in their own words, “shouted them down” when their views differed from hers. It’s important to note that the complaints of her own students brought much of this to our attention. When her supervisors tried to address these problems with her, she would not accept their valid constructive criticism.

If FIRE makes the appeal to silence -- arguing that, since the college hasn't provided evidence of her incompetence, it must not have any -- then perhaps we should note that FIRE does not say that the college has no evidence to support its claims that Ito lacked professionalism and professional behavior (terms mentioned in the same sentence as "lack of competence"); nor does FIRE object to the college's claims that Ito was "at times unprepared," that she did not respect diversity of opinion or relate material to the syllabus.

The administrator who defends the college's actions by saying "We're not here to spin out theories and sit around and blather about the world" is not exactly demonstrating intellectual curiosity; the quote makes me clutch at my heart and suck air in through my teeth. I don't see him winning any "educator of the year" awards, though he might have a career in politics. Ito fits pretty neatly into the stereotype of the out-of-touch campus radical consumed by an irrational passion for one ideological issue -- I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I've seen nothing so far that suggests otherwise.

Teaching is not easy work; I have made more than my share of mistakes, and I'm sure I'll keep making them.

Still, I can think of all kinds of ways to combine a technical writing

curriculum with a critical discussion of the military/corporate/political/legalistic complex -- and

one of the ways I did that was by

href="http://jerz.setonhill.edu/design/jupiter/jup-crit.htm">critiquing press releases.
I introduced the iteration and testing of psychological warfare

documents (surrender leaflets) dropped behind enemy lines. You may remember the story of a large Iraqi family gunned down in their vehicle because the driver didn't stop at a checkpoint -- because, according to an army specialist, the family misunderstood the meaning of a leaflet that was intended to instruct them to stay in their homes. I also used a document, full of passive

verbs and nominalizations, written by a Nazi engineer recommending improvements in the efficiency of

a gas chamber. I was conscious of the fact that I often had students who were freshly out of the

military and sometimes still in the reserves, and one of my former students was actually in psychological operations. Ultimately, I tried to argue language has the power to heal and the power to destroy.

Update: Oops, corrected the link to the AP story. Thanks, Mike.

Update: CommonDreams has a much more persuasive, much more effective press release... if I had read "North Carolina Teacher Fired for Antiwar Remarks" first, I probably wouldn't have been motivated to write this blog entry. The press release is marked as coming from the "Ito Defense Fund," so the bias in the headline is perfectly expected. I heard a warning bell when I noticed that the author refers to Ito as "Elizabeth," and John Slade, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, as "Dean Slade" rather than "John". That's a rhetorical strategy, designed to personalize Ito and emphasize her powerlessness in comparison to the administration -- but unlike the FIRE article's rhetorical efforts, this one works, and I suppose it's very possible that the article simply records an existing power imbalance on the campus; but as a writing teacher I am probably so sensitized to the use parallel structure and gender issues that I wouldn't take my reaction as typical. Nevertheless, the "Ito Defense Fund" release doesn't characterize Ito's classroom action as either a "rant" or a "discussion," but instead says Ito "spent ten minutes at the beginning of her business writing class voicing her concerns." I see nothing duplicitous or dishonest about that phrasing. The author of this piece describes Ito writing numbers on the board and inviting the class to respond to them. This is a good instance of showing details that lead the reader to make a conclusion -- in this case, Ito was not a ranting nutcase, but was instead using current events to spark a discussion. (I take back what I said earlier about not seeing anything that works against the image of Ito as a stereotypical ranting radical -- this was all I needed, and I was surprised that FIRE didn't do a better job of describing the controversial event.)

The article doesn't include any of Ito's statements indicating that she is willing to share the blame, but rather notes that one of the students who complained about Ito "did not think Elizabeth should have been fired for her remarks". None of this really examines the economic factors involved -- was Ito, as a new hire, simply at the bottom of the totem pole during a time of budget cutbacks, or were there newer, less experienced (and less vocal) people hired the semester after her contract wasn't renewed?

I'm going to hold onto these documents, and Mike Arnzen's thoughtful response to this blog entry, for the next time I teach journalism.

I recently posted a comment on Mike's blog in praise of "risk" as a criteria for grading student writing, and I feel I took a bit of a risk myself in writing this blog entry... but it's been an exhilarating couple of hours.

Oh, gaack... it looks like the curricular weblogs are down. Well, I hope it's just temporary. I'd better cut this off now...

Always capitalize and use trademarks in their correct form.

CORRECT: The image was enhanced with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software.

INCORRECT: The image was photoshopped.

INCORRECT: The image was Photoshopped.

INCORRECT: The image was Adobe® Photoshopped.

Trademarks must never be used as slang terms. --Hey, Adobe® ... Photoshop® THIS! (Adobe.com)

Somebody hand me an aspirin -- I'm crying in my coke here, because lawyers simply aren't real people. I recognize that the company has an obligation to protect its trademark so people don't xerox it so much its value lands in the dumpster -- but this prescriptive grammar twaddle (look that up in webster's) won't exactly make photoshoppers quivver like Jell-O. The strategy is at best a legal band-aid.

Adobe's website also uses, without the ® symbol, "whiteout," "escalator," "Frisbee", "gramophone," "linoleum," "cellophane," and "spam". I think I've made my point, but if anyone would like to keep searching for additional evidence that Adobe doesn't live in the same world it wants users of its products to live in, check out this Genercized Trademark list.

It has been said that reality is all about perspective -- a camera is a pinhole view of the world that frequently filters out much of the story. With that in mind, check out this video of the familiar "I have a scream" speech by Dean. I'm no Dean supporter, but from down in the trenches it doesn't look nearly as bad as it played on TV. Obviously the video you've seen on the news has the best part and the audience noise turned down, but from this vantage point, the speech almost seems appropriate for the crowd and the moment (but was still a lapse in judgement to forget cameras were rolling). --Mathowie --MeFi's take on 'I Have a Scream' (Metafilter)

I'm at home and haven't bothered to check the video over my slow telephone connection, but since I've blogged about Dean's speech before, I thought this alternate view was worthwhile.

--wood s lot

A few good finds from this Canadian blog:

• The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy
  E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, James Trefil
  Third Edition, 2002

• The Day of the Condour
  or How to be a Propour Canadian Spellour
  Ronald de Sousa
  repost

  I scarcely dare fourmulate this question, lest it be censoured, and--Horrour of horrours!--deter our Honourary Donours. Yet suffour me to exhourt you: four though some may harbour the thought that this minour question is not wourth the furour, or think--in errour--that I speak humourously, this issue is especially impourtant for our langourous juniours to considour -- provided, of course, they have not been savouring liquour priour to pouring over this text, endeavouring to gauge its tenour.

• The Awesome Destructive Power of the Corporate Power Media
  The Black Commentator

  If a mildly progressive, Internet-driven, young white middle class-centered, movement-like campaign such as Dean’s – flush with money derived from unconventional sources, backed by significant sections of labor, reinforced by big name endorsements and surging with upward momentum – can be derailed in a matter of weeks at the whim of corporate media, then all of us are in deep trouble.

  The Dean beat-down should signal an intense reassessment of media’s role in the American power structure.