CBS and Objectivity

CBS has had an interesting week. First there was the interview of Ta-Nehisi Coates by “CBS This Morning” co-anchor Tony Dokoupil regarding Coates’ book “The Message.” Dokoupil treated Coates well, like a Republican, in that he asked some pointed questions about Coates’ book; his claim Israel was a white supremacist ethnostate akin to the Jim Crow South, that he treated Palestinians exclusively as victims without agency, and that he failed to state how Israel was surrounded by enemies pledged to destroy it.

Tough, but civil…. and then all heck broke loose

Apparently the morning show staff was so traumatized by the interview that CBS held a struggle session the next day. One of the criticisms that was hurled at Dokoupil was that he ignored the “one-sheet:”

”…the network went through its standard protocol of vetting questions through its legal, standards, and race and culture departments. The properly vetted questions were then included on what’s known as a ‘one-sheet,’ from which everyone within the show works.”

It’s standard protocol to vet questions through a race and culture department?

The other controversy at CBS came from the 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris where CBS not only cut out an unflattering clip of Kamala that it had previously released as a preview, but when challenged released a “transcript” that left out the verbiage from the previously released video clip. That’s some pretty awesome memory holing.

So what about objectivity?

Objectivity as a guiding value of journalism emerged in the 1890s as a reaction to yellow journalism. Objectivity was the idea that if a journalist simply dug out and ordered the facts the truth would emerge naturally, a way of freeing the writer from cultural and personal bias.

Walter Lippman, capturing the contemporary spirit of applying scientific tools to the social sphere, made an explicit appeal to reporters to develop a rigorous journalistic method based on verification of evidence. Objectivity would lie in the method and practice of journalism, not within the journalist himself.

This “objectivity” has been a hallowed symbol of American journalism for nearly a century. Cronkite might not have meant it when said “And that’s the way it is,” but even as a hypocrite he was still restrained by that tether to the symbol of objectivity.

Even the CBS chainsawing (editing is too polite a word) of the Kamala Harris interview, while repugnant, we can at least recognize as just good old partisan corruption. This is something Dan Rather can appreciate.

Well, now even the pretense of that tether is gone. If the Obama years didn’t do it, then certainly the last eight years of Trump Derangement Syndrome have allowed the liberal part of the media to let its freak flag fly and cut ties with “objectivity.” In their 2023 report, “Beyond Objectivity”, Leonard Downie and Andrew Heyward interviewed 75 news leaders, journalists, and other media experts in order to to investigate the new landscape of media values and practices.

Some choice parts…

Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor of the Associated Press:

“…said she has not used the word objectivity since the early 1970s because she believes it reflects the world view of the male white establishment. ‘It’s objective by whose standards? And that standard seems to be white, educated, fairly wealthy guys,’ she explained.”

Sally Buzbee, former executive editor of the Washington Post:

“Yet, Buzbee no longer uses the word objectivity ‘because it has become a political football. If the term objectivity means the world view of middle-aged white men, it has become attacked as a word that is used to keep the status quo.”

Saeed Ahmed, former director of digital news at NPR:

“As a journalist of color, I have been told time and again that my identity doesn’t matter, that I have to shed it all to worship at the altar of objectivity,” said Ahmed, “I bristle at that notion. My lived experiences should inform what I cover.”

There are a number of dimensions in here.

The first is the standard DEI mantra of equating a certain percentage of racial/gender/LGBT+ identities in their newsroom with a diversity of viewpoints.

The second is that since “objectivity” was a concept associated with a certain identity, being white men, that it should be discarded in favor of each person pursuing what they considered their version of the truth as it relates to their personal identity.

So far, this should not surprise anyone.

The third dimension is the most critical part, what happens (or doesn’t) when each individual pursues their own version of “truth.”

The 20th Century German mathematician Kurt Gödel stated that even though a system may be consistent, its consistency cannot be demonstrated within the system. Such a result does not imply that it is impossible to prove the consistency of a system, but only that such a proof cannot be accomplished inside the system itself, but rather it needs an external frame of reference.

Taking Gödel a further step, there are two types of consistency; that of consistency of the concept and the consistency of the match-up between observed reality and the concept’s description of reality. This is also known as the distinction between a reliable and a valid argument. To put it plainly that means an argument that is internally consistent (reliable) could also be externally inconsistent (invalid) because it fails to match with an external frame of reference (what most of us call reality). Anybody who has dealt with a smooth talker in sales or politics has experienced this intuitively.

What Downie, Hayward, and all the people they interview have done is essentially jettison objectivity as an external frame of reference, deriding it as a socially constructed reality (of white men), in favor of a “diverse” system of identity-based viewpoints. However, since the “truths” of those diverse viewpoints are rooted within the individual there is no basis, by definition, of validating them by an external frame of reference. This is the essence of nihilism and post-modernism, that there is no external truth but rather the old cliché of “my truth” through which the external world must be observed.

The Dokoupil-Coates interview, the struggle session that followed, the existence of a “Race and Culture Unit” represent this repudiation of objectivity. There is no truth at CBS beyond one’s individual feelings as represented by their chosen identity.

This is of course an unstable equilibrium. People in social endeavors from polities to workplaces, run on some form of common understanding, a frame of reference external to the individual. People as individuals also form their understanding of the larger social and physical environment through interacting with it. People, like Gödel’s arguments, need some grounding in an external frame of reference. When Chesterton said, “When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing, he believes in anything,” he might have meant it as a curse but really it is psychological reality.

So the issue becomes, if “objectivity” is no longer the dominant approach or ideology of the newsroom, by definition there needs to be an external frame of reference, another organizing principle, for that organization to function. It cannot exist on individual truths because those are by definition outside of the scope of social interaction. There has to be something else.

For the po-mos truth outside of the individual is socially constructed (Downie and Hayward are so far out of their depth at this point, they are just along for the ride). If you believe, as most post-modernists do, that social relations are racially or gender-constructed and therefore oppressive by nature, that means somebody is going to get the chop. As Lenin put it the struggle between oppressor and oppressed is eternal, it’s simply matter of who is doing what to whom at a certain point in time.

So in reality, what CBS means by vetting through its “Race and Culture Unit” is that the network doesn’t report the news any more, or even just support Democrats, but has chosen sides in a revolutionary struggle.

For CBS it is all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. CBS had won the victory over itself. It loved the world beyond Objectivity. It was free.

Redefining Hypocrisy

There is a value to hypocrisy. La Rochefoucauld is purported to have said, “Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.”

To be clear, hypocrisy is not in and of itself virtuous — just the opposite as it is a serious sin. However, hypocrisy is not nihilism, because by definition hypocrisy implies a recognition of an external moral order. That recognition provides both validation of that existing order, and a tether which ties the hypocrite’s behavior to it and therefore restricts the extent of public deviation.

There is another element to hypocrisy. If we can further define hypocrisy as the difference between public image and private behavior, then scandal is when that deviant private behavior is publicly exposed.

Then we have Doug Emhoff, a.k.a. Mr. Kamala Harris.

As a politician’s spouse, Emhoff has two roles to fulfill. The first is to be supportive of his wife’s career and the second is not to draw negative attention to himself. This is especially important given Kamala’s national profile and her progressive politics.

Sometimes these roles come into conflict. Some First Ladies (Jill Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Reagan) have taken an active and fairly public role in their respective husbands’ administrations and drawn heat. However, that is different than being a personal embarrassment. We have presidents’ brothers (Jim Biden, Billy Carter) and kids (Hunter Biden) who were personal embarrassments, but as of yet there haven’t been any spouses. (1)

Then we have Emhoff.

There has been a lot of ink spilled over the past month or two about how Emhoff has “reshaped the perception of masculinity” given his marriage with Kamala. There was the fawning interview he did last year with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart when Emhoff stated : (2)

“There’s too much of toxicity — masculine toxicity out there, and we’ve kind of confused what it means to be a man, what it means to be masculine. You’ve got this trope out there where you have to be tough, and angry, and lash out to be strong.”

Oh my.

A few months ago there was the revelation that Emhoff had, during his first marriage, impregnated the family nanny. Then a few weeks ago we had the story about how he struck a woman on a street in France. Now we have allegations from former co-workers regarding his misogynist behavior at his law firm. (3)

I don’t know about you but where I come from cheating on your wife with the family help, hitting women, and engaging in sexual harassment in the workplace pretty much define toxic masculinity.

So, back to the definition above, we now have a scandal, not just with Emhoff’s actual behavior but in the Harris campaign’s use of him as a symbol of the “New Man” — implicitly contrasting him with the mouth-breathing Christian nationalists.

Emhoff’s private behavior is between him and his wife. However, when a false image of Emhoff is created, and then weaponized to be used in politics, it becomes a public matter and hypocrisy loses its last vestiges of public value.


(1) I didn’t use Hillary as an example of someone whose conduct detracted from their spouse, because she was in full partnership with Bill.

(2) There’s a documentary to be made regarding Jen Psaki. This was someone who spent 16 months as the press secretary for the Biden puppet show. Then there was the unprecedented conflict of interest when she announced that she was leaving for a gig at MSNBC, but then delayed her departure for weeks. And now she does what amounts to a campaign commercial with Doug Emhoff?

(3) I heard some scuttlebutt a few years ago that there were some skeletons in Emhoff’s past. L.A. lawyer, entertainment industry, would seem to raise questions. It never ceases to amaze me that people who rise to a high level think they can just escape their past. You would think that at some point, at least by the time of the Psaki interview, Emhoff might had let on about his past deeds. It leads me to conclude that the Harris campaign wasn’t paying attention, or didn’t care because they were desperate enough to risk it. Never underestimate desperation.

Hillbilly Death Wish

I was dragged by the missus tonight to an event in the heart of the ruling class beast. While there, threatened by her to be on my best behavior, I engaged in a conversation with a like-minded person regarding Hurricane Helene (I have an excellent MAGAdar and just as useful a sixth sense for Deep State provocateurs).

My new-found friend asked me whether they could have built the TVA today. Of course the answer to that is no.

There are several reasons for that.

The first is technical. I doubt we have the engineering ability to pull off a project like that anymore. As a western boy whose roots were watered by dams (hello Salt River Project), I find that conclusion difficult, but inevitable. Skills not used or otherwise maintained over time atrophy and wither away. Look at military shipbuilding over the past 30 years.

The second is political. The environmental movement severed the connection between the needs of a modern economy and the will to build the technical and social infrastructure needed to support it. Policy, especially with the “Green New Deal,” is now rooted in some cartoonish “Happy-Land, in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane” where there are no perceived tradeoffs.

Hydroelectricity is the ultimate in clean renewable and reliable power, but while existing dams are tolerated (for now), no new dams will ever be built.

The third reason is something more vicious which is that for our ruling class, it’s not just that some Americans don’t matter as much as others but that they actually enjoy relegating certain groups of Americans to a permanent under-class status. The ruling class may decry the western history of imperialism and white supremacy, but in turn they adopt a colonial attitude toward red-state America that would have made Kipling blush. At least Rudyard wanted to take on the white man’s burden and civilize the savages, our ruling class betters in reality just want the people of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina to disappear.

The stuff that was in the history books up until yesterday, celebrating that TVA brought electricity to an impoverished part of America? Gun-toting, snake-handling Trump voters.

Actually when it comes to modern-day colonialism, if you remember the roots of the pro-abortion movement, the reality is that they want to more or less want to put the unborn of that region to the sword.

You can hear it on the wind, that sentiment to all of those west of Asheville, just go away and die.

On the Waterfront

The longshoreman strike is a great example of why you need a functioning president at the top of the executive branch.

There has been a lot of gobbledygook from leftist circles over the past several months that Biden’s inability to carry out the functions of the presidency is not a crisis because for the most part government runs on its own. They say, sure he’s not up to another four years but let’s not go crazy and start thinking about invoking the 25th Amendment forcing him to resign; we’ve got smart people in government and can get by.

Well the two arguments against that are the natural entropy of government and the ability to deal with crises. In both cases, someone needs to have both the legitimacy and incentive to knock heads and take the risks needed in a leader; as the sign on Truman’s desk said, “The Buck Stops Here.”

We’ve been skating on thin ice for a while regarding possible labor unrest across various critical parts of our transportation network and the longshoreman strike couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Biden Administration. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) has maximum leverage given its ability to shut down the ports in the eastern half of the country, at a time when the economy is especially vulnerable and during the final month of an election when the Democrats need union support in a tight election.

The last thing the Democrats need is the economy to go into a tailspin. The second-to-last thing they need is the labor unrest that would stem from invoking Taft-Hartley and breaking the strike.

Outside of the danger to the economy and people’s livelihoods, there is something almost entrancing about the cartoon villainy of ILA President Harold Daggett, who has threatened to cripple the economy if his demands aren’t met regarding pay and automation. You can argue that long-term he is being foolish because he’s converted a viable threat in-being into a dangerous threat in fact — the best threats you can have are the ones you never have to state let alone use.

It also doesn’t help that the productivity of US ports is among the lowest in the world. In the world of tight supply chains and container shipping, inefficiency in port operations has the same effect as a tariff on the cost of goods. To paraphrase William J. LePetomane, Daggett and the ILA need to protect their phony baloney jobs. I’m as nostalgic as the next guy, but not for that ’70s vibe of unions using extortion to protect their cushy way of life.

So basically our cartoon villain Daggett has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged the feds to come get him. The problem in the executive branch is that anyone can make a decision and get it implemented under Biden’s signature, but there has to be somebody willing to take the risks and the heat to see that decision through and that’s where the buck stops. Somebody needs to not just broker across the various interests in any administration but to make the decision stick. There’s only so much our 21st Century version of Edith Wilson, Jill Biden, can do.

Like Zelensky and the mullahs, Daggett knows that a Republican victory will undercut his leverage so he’s in a use-it-or-lose it situation. If Biden does nothing, the economy tanks. If Biden breaks the strike, he weakens a valuable base of support for the Democrats right before the election.

From the Middle East to the Atlantic-Gulf Coast ports, the consequences of the Biden puppetry are coming home to roost.

Side note. It’s a shame Jen Psaki is no longer in government so that when the inevitable shortages from the ILA strike occur she can poo-poo us about “the tragedy of the treadmill that’s delayed.”

This Is What It’s Like When Mullahs Cry

Iran has had a miserable few weeks.

First the middle- and senior-level management of its top-tier proxy was taken out because, basically, Iran bought its communications network from its most hated enemy.

Then the next week what was left of the C-level suite of said proxy was taken out in its underground bunker by the same hated enemy.

Then the other day former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad declared that the agency dedicated to targeting agents of your most hated enemy operating in Iran was actually riddled with that same enemy’s agents, including the unit head.

I mean this is the type of buffoonery that you only find from the Three Stooges or the Biden administration.

So having been utterly humiliated on the world stage, what does Iran do to try to restore credibility? It decides to launch a massive attack, estimated at 180+ missiles, on that same hated enemy. The result? The same as the last time it tried, back in April, little to nothing.

After last April’s attack washed out, the Iranians could not have had any expectation that any future missile attack would be any different. In other words, Iran just squandered a big chunk of what is left of its credibility. The strong horse they are not.

Today’s missile attack is what it is like when a government has a nervous breakdown. If the last two weeks were a chess match, Iran has been so thoroughly outclassed that today’s missile strike is the equivalent of it hysterically throwing the pieces off the board at Israel and then curling up in a ball on the floor.

However, now things really get dangerous because as I have said, desperate people do desperate things, and desperate people with power do catastrophic things. Added bonus, back home the mullahs are hated and their praetorian guard, the IRGC, has been shown to be incompetent. These guys are fighting for their lives.

So, on our timeline, we are now at the point where the Iranians will probably try a really futile and stupid gesture. And unlike Israel, we in the US do not have our security act together.