The Media Frenzy
I their anguish over the slaughter of innocents at Virginia Tech, students and teachers and school officials and parents seemed to agree on one thing: the press coverage was not only horrible, it made things worse. And the problem was not just momentary mistakes, such as identifying the killer as a recently arrived Chinese student when he turned out to be a longtime immigrant from South Korea.
Somehow the media have adopted as their first duty in covering a catastrophe that of judging, finding fault, and parceling out blame. Actual reporting comes in a distant second. Almost from the outset, reporters harshly condemned school officials for not having canceled classes and shut down the campus after two murders in a dorm and before the massacre in classrooms two hours later.
Would this have protected students and teachers in the classrooms and saved lives? Maybe, but the media had done no reporting on which to base such a judgment. Was the decision not to impose a lockdown unreasonable under the circumstances? Days later, the answer to that question still wasn't clear. It was clear, though, that students didn't think so. They gave Virginia Tech president Charles Steger a standing ovation at a convocation the day after the killings.
Then there's the crazed videotape of Cho Seung Hui, the killer. Was it necessary for NBC to broadcast it? According to the prevailing media policy of anything goes, yes-this, despite the fact that it might spur other psychopaths to emulate Cho, just as tapes left behind by Palestinian suicide bombers are used to recruit more killers. And there was an alternative: Show stills of Cho from the tape and provide a synopsis of his message.
NBC News president Steve Capus insisted the videotape offered a rare insight into a mass killer's mind. Really? Forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner, interviewed on ABC, didn't think so. "This is not him," Welner said. "These videos do not help us understand him. They distort him. He was meek. He was quiet. This is a PR tape of him trying to turn himself into a Quentin Tarantino character."
The media did give viewers a break on one issue. The rush to demand more gun control was muted. But don't give the media too much credit. This time their Democratic allies didn't deliver. They've discovered gun control is an issue that doesn't help them politically.
The Bard's Bad Birthday
April 23 marks William Shakespeare's 443rd birthday. He's getting old, in other words, which may explain why the ever-youthful, forever hip Baby Boomers who now control our nation's colleges and universities have decided he's not worth bothering about.
The indispensable American Council of Trustees and Alumni has just released a report about the status of Shakespeare in higher education, and the results, you won't be surprised to learn, are deeply depressing. ACTA surveyed English departments at Big Ten schools, the top 25 liberal arts colleges, and U.S. News & World Report's 25 highest ranking universities. Only 15 of them require English majors to take a course on Shakespeare. In 1996, the last time such a survey was taken, 23 of the 70 schools had a Shakespeare requirement.
So what are the faculty teaching instead? Well, if you're lucky enough to be an English major at Northwestern, you can ogle a course on TV's Baywatch, starring Pamela Anderson, who's a Globe Theater all to herself. At the University of Pennsylvania you can take a class in "radical vegetarian manifestos"; at Yale, you can study Lemony Snicket and Dr. Seuss; at Duke you can get credit for "Creepy Kids in Fiction and Film." Then you can pocket your English B.A. and escape Shakespeare altogether.
The effects of this outrageous negligence will trickle down, as graduates ignorant of Shakespeare go off to teach English to high school students, who will themselves remain ignorant of Western civilization's crowning glory. "It's easy to imagine a day," the ACTA report concludes, "when schoolteachers will not have read Shakespeare and will not teach him."
And then there will be no one left to quote Duke Senior from As You Like It: "True is it that we have seen better days."
Neopopulism vs. the CBO
On April 17, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) director Peter Orszag, a respected liberal economist formerly with the Brookings Institution-he's been in his new job since January-sent a letter to Democratic senators Charles Schumer of New York and James Webb of Virginia. The two senators had requested that the CBO look into wage and income variability. Neopopulists like Webb argue that income volatility-or "earnings volatility," as the CBO puts it-has risen in recent years as American society drifts "toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century." Numbers from the Congressional Budget Office could help buttress this claim.
Problem is, economic reality doesn't quite reflect the Democrats' talking points. "Since 1980, there has been little change in earnings variability for both men and women," Orszag wrote in his letter. "There is some evidence that, between 1960 and 1980, earnings variability increased for men but was offset by a decrease for women." The CBO, whose research focused on pretax earnings, concluded that "some variability in earnings stems from workers' voluntary actions, such as deciding to stay home and rear children" while other variability can also be attributed to job loss.
In other words, when it comes to earnings variability or "volatility," things are pretty much the way they were when Webb served in the Reagan administration.
Harry Reid Is Confused
See if you can parse the Senate Majority Leader's position on partial-birth abortion. He voted for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which last week was upheld 5-4 by the Supreme Court. His reaction? "A lot of us wish that Alito [supporting the bill Reid backed] weren't there and O'Connor were there"-in which event the measure likely would have been struck down. According to a clarification issued through Reid's press secretary:
Senator Reid opposes abortion except in the cases of rape, incest, and when the life of a mother is at risk. Consistent with this position, Senator Reid supported the Partial Birth Abortion Ban and supports the Supreme Court's decision yesterday. However, Senator Reid continues to disagree with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito on many issues and that is why he opposed their confirmation.
Glad the senator got that straightened out.
Remembering Michael Kelly
Cruel April brings the anniversary of the death of our friend and journalistic colleague Michael Kelly four years ago this April 3 on the road to Baghdad. This time, it also brings a deeply affecting examination of grief by Michael's mother, Marguerite Kelly. She calls her essay "On the Fairness of Life," and you can read here on the website of the Atlantic Monthly, where Michael was editor. Here's a paragraph, to whet your appetite:
Whatever Mike's take on the Mideast would be today, this much is clear: he knew that holocausts start small; that evil is real; that somebody has to stand up and stop it, and that others must watch and tell the world that evil had really been stopped. And sometimes, he said, good people would die in the doing. That our son was one of them still breaks our hearts, but we can't say that his death was unfair. If we did, we would have to say that it was unfair that he had enjoyed life so thoroughly; that he had such a fine career, such an excellent wife and such jolly, healthy sons and that he had parents and three sisters who loved him so much. Mike knew you can't always have it both ways. And so did we.