ROBERT MUSIL continues his deconstruction of Guardianista Will Hutton’s critique of the United States economy in relation to Europe’s. Excerpt:
Is the “market share” of companies in compared economic systems a good measure of comparative success? For example, Mr. Hutton compares Nokia with Motorola, suggesting that Nokia is the more successful company: “Nokia’s success is legendary; it has 35% of the world market – twice that of Motorola.” But Motorola’s stock price is essentially where it was a year ago while in the same period Nokia’s stock price has lost about one-half of its value.
RAND SIMBERG says that the Oracle scandal involving Gray Davis is going to get a lot worse:
When a Democratic governor can’t get the SF Chronicle behind him, he’s in such deep kimchi that he can’t even see a way out.
This hasn’t gotten a lot of national play yet, though.
ONE DEATH in Ramallah can be a “massacre,” we’re told. But 60 or more murdered by FARC guerrillas in Colombia doesn’t count as one, Richard Jahnke reports. Apparently the Swedes are sympathetic to FARC and are pulling strings on its behalf.
WHY IT WOULD BE A DISASTROUS MISTAKE to send U.S. troops to the West Bank as peacekeepers. I agree. I’m all for peacemaking, which one accomplishes by blowing the crap out of people causing trouble. (As one Keith Laumer character remarks, “Nothing so peaceful as a dead troublemaker.”) But peacekeeping is pretty much a game for suckers in any situation where one of the parties feels it has something to gain from war.
MATTHEW ENGEL, AUTHOR OF THE Alabama Olive Garden reportage that inspired so much amusement among the weblog community, is now back doing the same thing for Mississippi. Hey, who knows: maybe someday Sweden will be as rich as Mississippi!
JOSH CHAFETZ (of Oxblog) writes to point out an error in the John Leo column on weblogs that I mentioned earlier: Leo seems to think there’s more than one of me, based on his description: “InstaPundit was started by Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee. Its bloggers chime in on anything and everything related to political happenings around the world.” Well, he was probably just reacting to all my well-informed and interesting reader emails.
JUDITH SHULEVITZ has a piece entitled At Large in the Blogosphere in today’s New York Times. It’s not bad, but it has one omission: Shulevitz talks about how the Blogosphere “convulses” in response to pieces like Alex Beam’s in The Globe — but fails to explain that a lot of people were convulsing with laughter over Beam’s inability to figure out that this page by Bjorn Staerk was an April Fool’s joke. But hey — she’s using Bill Quick‘s word “blogosphere” in the headline, which is tribute enough.
Actually, Shulevitz’s whole column is a rather typical New York Times piece: coming to the topic late, and missing the story. John Leo’s piece is a lot better. What do you think accounts for the difference?
VICTIMS OF FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS: Though they think of themselves as prosperous, Swedes as a group are actually worse off than black Americans, according to this Swedish study. Swedes are trained from birth to view their society as a compassionate one in which everyone prospers, while the harsh capitalism of the United States makes some people rich and leaves other people destitute. Er, except that what it really does is make some people really, really rich, and leave other people just, well, richer than the Swedes. Best excerpt, highlighted by reader Todd Bass who sent this link:
“Black people, who have the lowest income in the United States, now have a higher standard of living than an ordinary Swedish household,” the HUI economists said.
If Sweden were a U.S. state, it would be the poorest measured by household gross income before taxes, Bergstrom and Gidehag said. . . .
The median income of African American households was about 70 percent of the median for all U.S. households while Swedish households earned 68 percent of the overall U.S. median level.
This meant that Swedes stood “below groups which in the Swedish debate are usually regarded as poor and losers in the American economy,” Bergstrom and Gidehag said.
Between 1980 and 1999, the gross income of Sweden’s poorest households increased by just over six percent while the poorest in the United States enjoyed a three times higher increase, HUI said.
Hmm. Maybe the Mississippi Chamber of Commerce will start agitating to have Sweden admitted as a state, so that there’ll be one that ranks lower than Mississippi.
UPDATE: Reader Marten Barck writes from Stockholm to say that it’s worse than the statistics make it sound, since unemployment and layoffs are hidden behind disability figures:
Hi,
I read your post about Sweden and would like to add some statistics. Sorry for the bad English, but I’ve never used these terms in English. Prepensioned means people who are pensioned before they are supposed to because of illnesses (or because they can’t get jobs).
Sweden is the sickest nation in the world. At least according to statistics and costs for healthinsurances. In reality I would guess that Swedes are among the healthiest populations in the history of mankind. But the rise in costs for healthinsurances are staggering. Longterm notification of illnesses have tripled since 1997. One in six of Swedes of working age are listed longterm sick or prepensioned. That’s about 800 000 yearjobs in a population of 9 million. The cost is 10 billion dollars per year. The
wellfare state has turned into an illfare state.
You’d think that the Swedes would get lower crime out of this, but as this post indicates they’ve got substantially higher crime rates than the United States, too.
OKAY, so it’s been “intermittent,” not “nonexistent.” Back late tonight.
MICKEY KAUS has an interesting observation on why the FBI turns out to have dropped the ball in the pre-9/11 investigation.
BLOGGING WILL BE somewhere between intermittent and nonexistent for the rest of the weekend. Enjoy the many fine weblogs linked over there on the left. And scroll down for the NRA / Pink Pistols stuff.
CHARLES JOHNSON says that cracks are appearing in the Palestinian ranks, as they start to figure out that they’re doing a lot of dying, and not getting anything for it except photo-ops for Arafat. This has been a theme of Fred Pruitt’s for a while.
UN INVESTIGATION BEGINS: Well, sort of. Mark Steyn writes:
Anyway, as Kofi’s commission isn’t going ahead, I’m pleased to announce my own fact-finding investigation into – drumroll, please – the UN. Ex-ambassadors, European Foreign Ministers and former presidents of humanitarian organisations are welcome to apply to join my commission, but, if they’re too busy, we’ll make do with jes’ regular folks. Among the issues we’ll be examining: UN participation in the sex-slave trade in Bosnia; the UN refugee extortion racket in Kenya; UN involvement in massive embezzlement in Kosovo; the UN’s cover-up of the sex-for-food scandal in West Africa involving aid workers demanding sexual favours from children as young as four; the UN-fuelled explosion of drugs, Aids and prostitution in Cambodia; the UN’s complicity in massacres in pre-liberated Afghanistan; and, if we’ve any time left, the UN’s collusion in terrorism in the Jenin refugee camp. As the organisation’s own internal investigations usually put it, UN seen nothin’ yet!
I think there’s a lot of investigating that should go on here.
FUKUYAMA PILE-ON LATE HITS: Brink Lindsey has good comments; so do Christopher Pellerito and Perry de Havilland over at Samizdata, while Eric Olsen (despite an atrocious attraction to awful alliteration) digs up some history. And over at Oxblog Anand Giridharadas discusses the difference between patriotism and statism, which appears to have eluded Fukuyama.
Hi Glenn, this is David Rostcheck from the Pink Pistols. Someone posted your instapundit discussion on the list. Here’s some more info for you:
– The reporter, Steve Freiss, had actually contacted us before the convention to ask about whether any of us were going and what we thought about the NRA (the net net being generally that the NRA is generally quite welcoming, but, contrary to its rabid image, not nearly pro-gun-rights enough for many of us, which makes sense if you know more about the NRA). Few of us were. He was apparently looking to write some kind of article, the panel (stupidly) gave him he wrong kind.
– At that session, very late in the conf, Schlussel and some others apparently said some fairly anti-gay things that many NRA members (all of them straight so far) thought were very inappropriate. She went on Stern and spun it as a big smear campaign and downplayed her remarks. However, NRA members who were there report that she was quite out of line and that she’s lying about the extent of her remarks. Check out the online discussion at The Firing Line. [Note — interesting link; read the discussion]
Steve Freiss defended his article on the Pink Pistols list. He says he wrote what happened, and the attendees on The Firing Line back him up. I’m inclined not to shoot the messenger.
– That being said, the NRA and its members are, generally speaking, very welcoming to the Pink Pistols and to gay shooters in general. Now, there are 4.5mil NRA members and 50k+ at a convention, and there are all points of view and people from a wide generation range, so you have to have a reasonably thick skin and not expect everyone to agree w/ you or not offend you at those things, but I have no fear showing up at an NRA event w/ a Pink Pistols pin.
– I do think there is media bias on this issue, but it’s not at the reporter level, it’s at the editor level. More below from a post I made to about it.
– Schlussel doesn’t necessarily speak for the NRA, but they should have more control over their message and if they were competent at handling them media (which, with the NRA, is not certain), they would just release a statement reiterating that regardless of who said what on what panel at their convention, they do not discriminate and have plenty of gay members and they don’t see that as a core NRA issue. But we’ll see if that happens…
That’s it. More than you wanted to know!
Here’s the message excerpt he mentions:
Let me say first that I think it’s excellent to see a reporter willing to defend and discuss his story in an online forum. I love the internet for making media more of a two-way street…
Now, let me tell you what bothers me about media coverage of events like this. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Steve holding Schlussel accountable for what she says; that’s his job and he’s doing what he should do. In the larger picture, I think articles that imply that the “NRA is bad on gays” (*) are, in the long run, bad for the GLBT cause and groups like the Pink Pistols are good for it, which I’ll explain in more detail.
(*) Note, that’s not what Steve wrote, his delination about speakers at the NRA event is very careful, but it’s what a reading of headlines will imply, which is all about the editors.
I would say there is a consistent bias in the media, both gay and straight but particularly gay, in the way that gun owners and their views on GLBT people are represented. But I don’t think it’s so much a reporting bias as an editorial bias. Now Steve writes an article on the NRA convention. It says what happened, calls out a speaker who was inappropriate, and talks about the Pink Pistols, giving fair coverage to the point that most gun owners are not homophobic. Steve has done his job. But PlanetOut has never before covered the Pink Pistols in any other context. We’ve been the fastest growing gay sporting organization in the country, probably the fastest growing gay group, and we’ve had a pitched legislative battle with a lesbian senator whose most notable achievement was to amend gun-control legislation to allow arbitrary discrimination against anyone, including gay people, and particularly women and the poor (and who was subsequently endorsed by HRC). During that time, news media from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Blade covered the Pink Pistols, but PlanetOut was nowhere to be seen. Hmm.
Continuing along that line, I note that I never read an article in the gay media like “Gay gun owners say NRA members pretty friendly to them”. We got positive coverage in Gun Week and Guns & Ammo. Does PlanetOut report that? “Gay gun group praised in Guns & Ammo” is just as important a headline as “At NRA gathering, speakers ridicule gays”, isn’t it? Everyone expects Schlussel to mouth off, so is that really bigger news than a gay-friendly gun group getting great coverage in gun media and being invited to speak at lots of pro-gun events, which many gay people claim is impossible?
I’m not blaming Steve for this. He’s a freelance reporter and he writes what the editors will buy and he writes it carefully and fairly. But if Steve were to write “Pink Pistols Break Barriers”, is PlanetOut going to buy it? [Steve: hey, I dare you to find out, it’s a good story…]
Now, here are a few factual happenings in my experience over almost 2 years as a Civil Rights Activist with the Pink Pistols. We’ve dealt with all sorts of pro-gun activists and leaders, from conservative Christians to NRA leaders. Once in a while, we find someone who’s not comfortable with us or is just a hardcore hater, but I honestly can’t say that I come across them with any greater frequency than I would in overall society, and most gun owners are really happy to see us involved politically. Usually when some hater pops up, the other gun owners shut him or her down pretty quick. Overall, the pro-gun community is very accepting of the Pink Pistols.
Now prior to working with the Pink Pistols, I was the President of the Bisexual Resource Center, so I regularly worked with activists from NGLTF, GLAAD, and occasionally HRC. I attended Creating Change and was on many panel discussions. Then I started working with the Pink Pistols. All of my Creating Change workshop proposals were rejected and NGLTF then refused to refund my conference fee or answer calls anymore. Reporters from major media [Theresa Gubbins, Dallas Morning News, cough] told me that they couldn’t cover me positively any more while I was working on gun rights. Hmm. Do many gay leaders have an anti-gun bias? Yes. Does the gay media often have an anti-gun bias? Yes. Now it’s not monolithic – we did get good articles in the Washington/New York Blade, Bay Windows, In Newsweekly, etc. but we still don’t see articles like “Pro-gun leaders say gay gun group is welcome”, even though they often do say those things.
And that’s very unfortunate, because the coverage pattern often implies that gun owners are generally homophobic, which totally isn’t true and makes many gays unwilling to associate with pro-gun groups because of bias that’s often not even there.
Moreover, the Pink Pistols have done more to advance equal treatment of GLBT people among gun owners and conservatives than a thousand PlanetOut articles ever will. There’s no substitute for being able to walk up to the podium after a Schlussel and say “Hi, I’m from the Pink Pistols,a gay-friendly pro-gun-rights group, and before I get started I just want to say that I think Debbie is painting with a brush that may be too broad, if you know what I mean. I hope we all realize that for every Rosie O’Donnell, there are many more GLBT gun owners fighting to preserve our natural rights for all of us, gay and straight. Now let me tell you some of the things we’re doing…”
The Pink Pistols win respect by actually doing the work to earn it and being worthy of it. And that sort of work does actually change people’sminds. We get some amazing emails from people who considered themselves anti-gay but have rethought their positions after seeing the Pink Pistols stand up for everyone’s Second Amendment rights, including theirs. Those people would never change their mind because of a PlanetOut article or the snooty “Oh, the NRA” sneer that many GLBT leaders like to use. So who’s really serious about working for social change, then?
I say it’s us.
Indeed. Well, that’s probably more than anyone wants to know about this event, but if there’s one thing a weblog is good for, it’s relentless coverage of an issue that the blogger thinks needs to be covered. By the way, here’s a link to David Rostcheck’s webpage.
Now the only question is, why is he doing a better job of responding to this than the NRA, with its presumably big PR budget? The reason I stayed after this and didn’t just join certain other bloggers in instant condemnation based on the PlanetOut article is that everything I’ve seen of gun rights folks indicates that they’re very happy that the Pink Pistols exist, and very glad to welcome them as allies. Now I’m not a big gun-rights activist myself: the only time I go to those meetings is when somebody asks me to speak on the Second Amendment. But I thought that the story gave an impression so entirely at odds with my own experience that it was worth looking into. (Scroll down for more on this).
May 3, 2002
BILL QUICK HAS IDENTIFIED a program I can really get behind. Let’s call it “Pork for Pundits!”
SOME THOUGHTS ON PRESS FREEDOM, from John Dunshee.
HATE MAIL OF THE WEEK: I think that this one is in relation to the posts on interracial marriage earlier in the week, since it comes from a reader named Lou Zurr who has sent me several emails on that topic. But here’s the email in its entirety — you figure it out:
I’m always amazed by whigged-out guys like you who think we can fill America up with Guatemalans and Chinese and various Islamotrash and still have a republic. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that overpaid academics have a lot of exciting new restaurants to go to even in Knoxville. But the first thing that will happen when white folks become a minority in the U.S. is that we will get a de facto dictator running things; and the second thing is that they’ll start killing all the Jews…and when they run out of Jews they’ll start in on constitutional-law professors, even if they find them savoring the tasty dishes in exotic restaurants….
It is, of course, definitionally impossible for me to be overpaid. But I think that people from anywhere can make good Americans if they buy into American ideals. And I think that people born here who don’t buy into American ideals are just as much a threat as the foreign-born people who don’t.
UPDATE & CORRECTION: It’s Louis, not Lou. And he writes: “Technically, however, it wasn’t hate mail. It was vexed and snarly mail.”
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