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This article appears in Feb 14-20, 2008.

16 replies on “Hot Off the Presses”

  1. Okay, so here we go again. Why does the Tucson Weekly’s tag-team of columnists insist on promoting ignorance? Also, are they so internet-challenged that they can’t look up simple words, facts and concepts?
     
    First example: Catherine O’Sullivan’s column.
     
    • O’Sullivan writes, “I don’t really understand what [super delegates] are, and having lived through millions of presidential elections, I can honestly say I’ve never heard the words “super” and “delegates” used together.” – Yet a simple internet search will explain what super delegates are and why they’re part of the Democratic primary process. O’Sullivan could then say something semi-informative to thousands and thousands of readers rather than merely flaunting her blithe ignorance on a subject that might determine the future of the United States for the next 4 to 8 years.
     
    • O’Sullivan comments on John McCain: “He’s an anti-choice, ultra-hawkish conservative who has said publicly that he doesn’t have any problem with the United States spending the next 100 years in Iraq.” – Far be it from me to defend McCain, but I am of the belief that if it’s wrong to take Democrats’ words out of context, it’s also wrong to do it to Republicans. The whole “50 to 100 years” flap was part of a statement McCain made to the effect that he’d be okay with the U.S. maintaining military bases in Iraq in the same way that we currently maintain military bases in Germany over 60 years after WWII. McCain did not say he’d be okay with the U.S. still being at war in Iraq in 100 years. Though he did open himself up for political attack, McCain’s comment is not nearly as horrible as people would like to make it out to be. Plus, I think if anybody knew the extent of the construction of U.S. bases in Iraq, they’d be reluctant to argue for dismantling them all. The Iraq bases replaced the bases we dismantled in Saudi Arabia. There are well over 15 large bases in Iraq, some of which are like small towns. If the U.S. is to maintain any military presence in the Middle East, it will either have to be in Iraq or we’ll have to spend billions more dollars to move them somewhere else, such as the heavily air-polluted Kuwait.
     
    • O’Sullivan writes about Hillary Clinton, “Everybody calls [her] “Hillary,” perhaps so we don’t confuse her with her husband, although that doesn’t make sense. … I suspect it’s an attempt to trivialize her because she’s a woman, or maybe it’s simply to demean her because she put up with her husband’s philandering.” – All this speculation is rendered moot by the fact that Hillary Clinton’s own campaign has worked overtime to promote her as “Hillary,” plastering the name on signs, bumper stickers and other materials. A visit to the first page of HillaryClinton-dot-com would made that blatantly obvious.
     
    • O’Sullivan writes, “Many of us turn a blind eye to a spouse’s occasional indiscretions. What really bugs us about Hillary Clinton is the reason she tolerated it–for the sake of her political future.” – Though O’Sullivan could be right, Hillary Clinton’s stated reason for tolerating Bill’s adultery is that she loves and forgives him. Using the Royal We (or “us”) to state as fact something that is only speculation is questionable.
     
    • O’Sullivan on Clinton’s experience: “She keeps telling us she has “experience,” which is true. She’s been in the U.S. Senate since 2001. But it seems that implicitly, she believes having been married to a president gives her some extra experiential oomph.” – Far be it from me to defend Clinton, but when she touts her “experience” she’s referring to everything she did from the early 1970s on. This includes being involved in the Watergate hearings, working for children’s advocacy groups, and 16 years on the Rose Law Firm (sitting on such corporate boards as TCBY and Wal-Mart, for whatever that’s worth), among other activities. I also cringe a little at the suggestion that Clinton’s First Lady experience can be reduced to “knowing where the bathrooms are.” Clinton did a lot of public works during those 8 years and was undoubtedly intimately involved in many of Bill’s behind-the-scenes decisions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an Obama supporter. But I would prefer to see people argue against Hillary Clinton using legitimate arguments rather than trite ones that make her critics look foolish.
     
    • O’Sullivan on Barack Obama: “Lastly, but not leastly, comes Barack Obama. The big problem with him is that he’s persistently black. … I heard an interviewer on NPR ask a Southern Democrat whether the reason he would not vote for Obama was that Obama is an African American. The man said simply, “Yes”… – I realize O’Sullivan’s tongue is in her cheek, but why bring this up? Polls and primary votes have demonstrated that Obama’s race is a trivial factor in elections, at least against Hillary Clinton. Whether it will become a more significant factor against McCain is uncertain, but the anecodotal evidence of a single racist phone-caller on NPR does not tell us much.
     
    O’Sullivan concludes: “To hijack a Colbert-ism, there was an eerie truthiness about the whole exchange.” – O’Sullivan apparently does not understand the ironic definition of the word “truthiness.” Is she just trying to sound hip? From the Wikipedia definition: “truthiness describes things that a person claims to know intuitively or ‘from the gut’ without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.” This definition does not apply to O’Sullivan’s NPR anecdote.
     
    I would be less likely to criticize O’Sullivan if her column only had a random mistake or chunk of flawed logic. But these problems run rampant from paragraph to paragraph. Why does this stuff get foisted on readers week after week?

  3. As for Tom Danehy’s column, this week it is one of Danehy’s specialties — a list of bullet points, riffing on various things that are going on this week.
     
    Danehy is often an entertaining writer who can turn a good phrase and fart out some pungent wisecracks. Politically he’s all over the map with his regular-guy shtick, sort of a combination of Andy Rooney, Bill Maher and Glenn Beck….if it would be possible to combine them without the result being a giant melting blob of radioactive flesh. I appreciated Danehy’s take on the teachers-with-guns question. Of course, Danehy also had to wrap up his column by mocking Keira Knightley for the sin of being thin. (Be sure to build entire jokes around fat people while you’re at it.)
     
    What sends Danehy’s column into The Annoyance Zone is his insistence on turning a few PETA protesters into an excuse for yet another Tom Danehy rant against vegetarian-type people. This marks about the SIXTH time in the past few months that Danehy has used his column as a platform to mock non meat-eaters. Sorry, Danehy, but unhinging your jaw like an Anaconda so you can shove an entire Hickory Farms sausage down your gullot in one push does not make you a better American.
     
    Danehy writes: “Did you happen to see that [PETA is] protesting a monument to Kentucky Fried Chicken, in Kentucky?! Why not just spit on the American flag?” – Huh? So if PETA protested a fast-food restaurant in another city it would be okay? Methinks Danehy is trying to make a joke, but it doesn’t make sense.
     
    Danehy writes: “Why don’t you PETA people do something constructive? Instead of protesting the fact that bulls get the opportunity to stop the livin’ piss out of crazy-ass cowboys, why not go to a school, and help a kid learn how to read?” – The trouble with this argument is that animal-rights advocacy is not mutually exclusive with other activities, such as fighting for human rights or helping the homeless. Why does Danehy assume that PETA members don’t fight for any other causes? A lot of the progressives I know are involved in multiple activist groups, not just one.
     
    Danehy writes, “Nobody I know supports cruelty to animals, but then again, I don’t know anybody whose definition of cruelty is so broad as to include looking sideways at an armadillo or telling jokes about manatees.” – This would be a funny joke if it were not so ignorant, and if it were not based on false premises. The false premise here is the idea that PETA is protesting rodeos merely because they’re some sort of insult to animals’ dignity. But that’s not the main reason PETA opposes rodeos. The reason PETA opposes rodeos is because there is actual physical damage inflicted on the animals, all for the purpose of entertainment. Spurs really are dug into flesh, a bucking animal’s testicles are painfully yanked around, electric prods are used, and the animals are scared shitless. The point is that the practice is cruel. Whether or not you find this objectionable, you have to agree that it is in a different category than “telling jokes about manatees.”
     
    Would you similarly mock people who objected to dogfights?
     
    Danehy continues, “Do y’all understand that if we left all of the animals alone, they would just eat each other? That’s what animals (including humans) do.” This is a non-sequitur and non-argument. Many things happen in nature, but as human beings we have developed our own system of morality that sets us apart from natural law. So just because animals kill each other in nature is not an argument for why we should feel free to kill or abuse animals. I am just pointing out the error in Danehy’s logic here – he’s using a trivial statement as if it means something larger.
     
    Animals DO kill each other in nature, but nature balances itself out so there are a lot less predators than prey. In the human industrialized system, cows spend their entire lives in confined pens, shot full of hormones, often getting sick. The chickens you eat from KFC? They are put through machines that systematically de-beak them while they’re still alive. Many of them grow up being so closely grouped together that their beaks are half-way melted off to keep them from plucking each others’ eyes out. I could go on and on. Again, though….this stuff is a far cry from making jokes about manatees.
     
    Like O’Sullivan, this is a case where a simple internet search could have cleared up some of Danehy’s ignorance. Rather than proclaiming an ignorant position and then using your Tucson Weekly bullhorn to communicate that ignorance to thousands and thousands of readers, why not inform yourself so that you have something half-way thoughtful to say?
     
    We are all part of a collective unconscious. If your contribution to that collective unconscious is a willful and self-congratulatory ignorance, then you might as well be taking a shit in everybody’s mind. I mean, you’ve written six fucking columns about vegetarians and you haven’t even read one fucking thing to inform yourself. What kind of goddamn journalist does that without having any shame?
     
    And it isn’t about me merely disagreeing with you   not at all. If you did a modicum of research and then still held the same position, I could respect that. It’s not like you have to trudge down to the library these days. A cornucopia of detailed, misconception-clearing information is available to you with a few mouse clicks.
     
    Here are some links for Danehy:
     
    • PETA: http://www.peta.org/
    You can read all of their reasoning.
     
    • “I Saw Earthlings”: http://isawearthlings.com/
    This is a documentary film about the way animals are treated in our society. It’s narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. I challenge you to watch it before you write your next anti-anybody-who-doesn’t-fellate-Slim-Jims column.
     
    • “USDA Recalls 143 Million Pounds of Beef”” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23212514/
    Danehy, plese read this article and tell me that people who are against cruelty to animals are somehow being unrealistic, etc.
     
    Seriously, I wish Danehy would attempt some basic soul-searching before writing his next bullshit column.

  7. Sin Twister:
    In this case it seems to be just an issue of Danehy coming from one side of an argument, and yourself coming from another side of the argument. True, he’s got the big column and you don’t – but if you try at it, you can get a big column too. Contact Boegle for details and you can become the next Serraglio or Williams.
    .
    Re: bad journalism — Danehy is a columnist, meaning opinion is naturally going to be inflected in his writing. Vegetarianism-based animal rights, like abortion, often seems to be a basic black and white issue: you are either for eating meat or against it, with little (but existing) shades of grey in between.
    .
    Unlike O’Sullivan (whom I’ve never quite gotten into), Danehy is arguing not from ignorance but from an opposing viewpoint (YMMV). The viewpoint, in summation, appears to be:
    1) I (“Danehy’s voice”) have firmly come to the conclusion that I ethically and morally am okay with eating meat, and I don’t care what people who argue otherwise have to say.
    2) Time spent on animal rights issues could otherwise be spent furthering human issues.
    3) I (“Danehy’s voice”) do not like the wide statements made by PETA — regardless if right or wrong — and am tired of them being a part of the voices heard at the rodeo. PETA, like the HSA, make wide-casting arguments in their reasoning for proper animal rights, including disavowing any use of on-screen domestic animals for human entertainment purposes, including film. That family dog on “Full House”? Naughty, naughty.
    .
    I’m not trying to make a stink, but I’ll put forth this challenge to you:
    What does he need to inform himself with so he can conform to your point of view?
    .
    If he does need to conform to your views on this topic, could someone else say the same to you for your views on their big topics, lest be regarded as ignorant by them?

  8. I support cruelty to animals every time I eat meat. I understand that. I still do it. Just like I support the killing of human beings by being passive about war and capital punishment and ab…
    Oh shit, I almost let that one out. Maybe Danehy will finish that one off. Human beings are animals, aren’t they? Savages!

  9. Hey, IPH!

    Thanks for the response. I am not trying to make an extreme argument in favor of animal rights. I also do not think that Danehy has no right to his opinion.

    The problem I have, which I have tried to make clear, is the extent to which Danehy clobbers this one issue (several columns in just a couple months), and the logical weakness and indications of ignorance in the arguments he puts forward.

    You say that animal rights tends to be a black-and-white issue. I don’t think it is for a lot of people. Clearly PETA is at the extreme, and I disagree with some of their practices (their advertising campaigns have often been contemptible).

    Full disclosure: I eat meat sometimes. I minimize my consumption though, and I patronize vegetarian restaurants or restaurants that offer good vegetarian alternatives whenever I can. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people who like eating meat. But there is something wrong with eating meat and getting so defensive about it that you reflexively mock anybody who has read about the practices at slaughterhouses, the way the animals are treated, etc. and then decided to take on other eating practices.

    Regarding your summation of Danehy’s viewpoint, you may know more about his thoughts than I do — I am only going on what he has expressed in his columns. If he is ethically and morally OK with eating meat, he has spent far less time discussing why than he has taking cheap shots at others. The “opportunity cost” argument is also rather weak, since it assumes that PETA supporters don’t participate in any other activities. (Would Danehy also mock model-train hobbyists because they could be volunteering at soup kitchens instead?)

    Really, though, when you think about PETA at the rodeo, doesn’t that just make the rodeo more interesting? How boring would the rodeo be if everybody there shuffled in like zombies without given any reason to think about the meta aspects of the entire affair?

    I don’t think that most PETA-involved people make a huge stink about animals being used in movies like “Beethoven” or whatever. I imagine that’s more the fringe. But it is exactly the kind of people who formed PETA who were instrumental in making sure that animals were not abused in movies. Ever watch an old Western where the horses fall down during an action scene? That’s because they used to run trip wires and then run the horses over them. Lots of horses broke their legs for such stunts, and immediately ended up with a bolt in their head (ala the tool used by Chighur in “No Country for Old Men”) and sent off to the glue factory. I don’t know about you but I am glad they don’t do that anymore.

    You also ask, “What does he need to inform himself with so he can conform to your point of view?” to which I must reply DID YOU MISS THE PART OF MY COMMENT WHERE I EXPLICITLY STATED HE DID NOT NEED TO AGREE WITH ME? I have said that repeatedly. I am only asking that these columnists at least attempt to inform themselves and not keep putting forth faulty arguments or misrepresentations of opposing viewpoints’ positions.

  10. Okay, so here is my disclaimer: I am done for the week giving crap to O’Sullivan and Danehy. I mean nothing personal, and I often find many things to like in their columns. That is an important disclaimer I wanted you all to know.
     
    Also, I found this part of O’Sullivan’s post interesting: “I don’t know what these people who say [McCain]’s not conservative enough are talking about. According to The Washington Post, Sen. McCain has voted with fellow Republicans 88.5 percent of the time. Maybe they’re just mad because he’s not screaming about Jesus all the time and doesn’t hate Mexicans enough. I suspect, however, that it’s something else. I suspect that beneath all of the political posturing and the selling off of hunks of his soul cheaper than the twice-marked-down stock at the local Big Lots, McCain might still possess a microscopic thread of integrity.”
     
    It is funny that O’Sullivan would mention this at this time, because in case you live in a cave, the big story this week is The New York Times’ article about McCain’s inappropriate relationships with lobbyists.
     
    It’s a pretty good story, but nothing explosive. There are indications McCain might have had an inappropriate relationship with a female lobbyist during his 2000 campaign, but there’s no evidence of actual sexual contact. There is no blue dress with stuff on it. Just evidence that people were concerned and disillusioned by what appeared to be an affair.
     
    The story also gives good background details about McCain’s long history of inappropriate favors for lobbyists, going back to the Keating Five scandal. If only the Arizona Republic were so bold! (Actually I don’t read the AZ Rep regularly, but I do know their newsroom is extremely pro-McCain, nevermind their editorial board.) The picture painted of McCain is of a guy with an almost childish mindset of wanting to do the right thing, but consistently giving in to temptation and then feeling bad/ashamed when people catch him. O’Sullivan’s “sliver of integrity” is an apt description — it’s one sliver more than Bush has, but several slivers short of striking gold.
     
    The other interesting aspect to this story is the timing. The New York Times has been sitting on this story for months! The New Republic is either about to, or today has released a story it has been preparing about the infighting in the NYT newsroom. There is little question that the NYT has released its story in anticipation of the New Republic story.
     
    Even though the story is damaging to McCain’s reputation, the timing of the story couldn’t be better for him. Had the story come out two months ago, there is no way McCain would have made his comeback, statistically out of nowhere, to become the GOP nominee. Mitt Romney would have been the candidate. If the Times waited a couple more months, the story would have become fodder for his opponent and created a buzzkill for the Republican convention.
     
    The story also allows conservatives who had previously opposed McCain a nice little excuse to come to his aid. Rush Limbaugh is now playing his “Drive-By Media” card to defend McCain, whom Limbaugh has spent the last 8+ years opposing. Nevermind that the New York Times is in fact not really the liberal media, having helped make the Iraq war possible, employing conservative shills like Bill Kristol, and just recently endorsing McCain for president.
     
    Anyway, since when do Congressmen NOT have sex with lobbyists?

  12. Being a super delegate is cool — you get to have dinner with Chelsea Clinton, and you get to talk on the phone with Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama. The downside: You also get to talk on the phone with John Kerry.

  13. “You say that animal rights tends to be a black-and-white issue. I don’t think it is for a lot of people. Clearly PETA is at the extreme, and I disagree with some of their practices (their advertising campaigns have often been contemptible).”
    Perhaps I just see animal rights–with regard to vegetarianism–as quite black and white — either one is omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan, with some grey areas in between, such as choosing not to eat farm-raised poultry but being okay with eating fish. I see it as a very “yes I eat animals/no I do not eat animals” issue, with veganism jumping one shimmy further as being “no I do not eat any animal-created products like cheese.”
    .
    “Regarding your summation of Danehy’s viewpoint, you may know more about his thoughts than I do (…)” – not the case by any matter. I’ve only met the guy for ten minutes tops.
    .
    Re: animals in films. If one reads the statements of the Humane Society of America, with ranking members I have discussed personally, that includes no animals in films. It’s for human entertainment. (“Use animatronics instead”). True, a friendly movie differs from a circus or rodeo, but any use of an animal for what they consider exploitation is a no-no. PETA’s view may vary, but I see HSA + PETA as being from the same animal rights/defense quadrant range.
    .
    As for Danehy not having to agree with you, get off. Nowhere is that explicitly stated in your comment when read at face value, or even literally. While I think it is noble that you are pushing for columnists to get the facts right, I believe you would not raise concern about the topic in itself if you did not hold some feelings for the side of the argument Danehy is slapping around. Otherwise I would expect a response akin to, “It’s nice Danehy disagrees with what I disagree in, but dammit Tom can’t you just drop the topic for once?”
    .
    Incidentally,
    .
    “Really, though, when you think about PETA at the rodeo, doesn’t that just make the rodeo more interesting? How boring would the rodeo be if everybody there shuffled in like zombies without given any reason to think about the meta aspects of the entire affair?”
    .
    You are a rare breed seeking a wide array of various viewpoints to express themselves en masse at the rodeo so a varied perspective of meta aspects are presented. To me, my personal feelings would be, “having PETA at the rodeo depends how annoying they get, because most of us came to the rodeo to see the rodeo stuff, without wanting to feel guilty about the experience.” (Whether this is selfish or corrupt Americanism may come to show its ugly head quickly.)
    .
    However from my moral ethics, I must commit to the view that they have a right to protest nonviolently in a public space as what is offered them via freedom of speech.
    .

  15. http://www.petakillsanimals.com/

    The link given for PETA is merely what they want you to know and see and hear. This link shows hard factual evidence on the truth about this organization.

    They, (Peta)like the HSUS prey on the weakminded, solicit you for donations from some doctored up made up story and then use your money against you in the Legislative arena.

    After you read about the PETA Trial, you will hold no more faith in that organization. They are the very thing they claim they are fighting against. Wolfe in Sheeps clothing……….

    John Goodwin, head of Animal Fighting Division was just in Tucson raiding the homes of weight pull dog owners, bully breeds, Genocide Goodwin is well known in the Bully Breeds for being given power and authority over and over in calling larger operations organized fighting, but weight pull people and breeders alike, good ethical resposnible people utilize these tools all the time. In Arizona we cant keep our dogs in shape during the summer months, bully breeds have a tuff time with the heat and keeping cool due to shorter snouts.

    You have the right to take your boat to the lake anytime you wish to hook it up and drive, why cant I have the same enthusiasm about showing my dogs, competeing in events they were bred for, utilizing the working abilities of my chosen breeds! Waste not, want not.

  16. Did I forget to mention that Genocide Goodwin is also a known Domestic Terrorist listed on their site by the President of the USA??? i didnt realize we allowed Domestic Terrorists to be given authoritarian powers by our law enforcement officials, yet they get it all the time.

    They target and terrorize innocent families just because they are passionate about their breed and utilize and breed for those working abilities inherent from the hand of God.

    They are targeting our hunting and sporting world, starting with the dogs and working their way up to no more hunting. Like the Horse Slaughter bill they got rammed thru last year. The consequences now for those horses are much more dyer and cruel than one ever wants to wrap around their brain. Not even me, and Ive seen alot of things in my lifetime as ive devoted it to animals.

    If we stop manageing our wildlife and end hunting, what do you think life will be like then for animal and human alike?

    All I know is if I got deer standing butt cheek to butt cheek in my yard???????
    Im havin me a BBQ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Tink
    Save a Veggie, Eat A Vegan!!!!!!!

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