I’m going to go a little off-topic for a moment. I am a sports fan, as you may gather from reading other posts. I listen to sports radio because it only occasionally (instead of usually) makes me angry, and with traffic in the DC area being what it is, anger at the radio is usually not a good idea. 

Well, I heard a couple of comments this weekend that tend to drive home the point about media bias. This isn’t the standard Leftist media bias we normally hear about, but it works the same way.

In the first commentary the host (whose name escapes me) on ESPN Radio was comparing the coverage of NFL quarterback Bret Favre with the coverage of baseball players Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. Favre, an 18-year veteran who announced his retirement from the NFL (again) earlier this month, has been a media darling. He engages the media and treats them well. As such, so stated this host, the uglier points in Favre’s career have been glossed over: His year with Atlanta where he played very poorly in 1 game as a backup, his addiction to painkillers in the late 90s, and his on-again-off-again retirement last season. Bonds and Rodriguez, on the other hand are both disliked by the media. Bonds because of his generally surly attitude toward reporters and Rodriguez for his extremely large contract and his inability to play well during big games. The host I was listening to indicated that the sports media were salivating when the steroid allegations for both players surfaced, and the sports media establishment was ready to totally invalidate both players’ careers based on the drugs, despite the fact that both players were great even before they are alleged to have started using drugs. The host made the point that anyone who believes that there is no bias in the media (he did not say “sports media”) isn’t paying attention, and that reporters frequently decide how any individual or situation gets covered. So the miserable reputation garnered by George W. Bush as compared with the current Obamania doesn’t seem so far fetched.

As if trying to be a citable example of sports media bias, another host on the same network made a statement that defies all logic and understanding of history proving the bias held by ESPN reporters. ESPN has been accused of what is known as “East Coast bias” primarily because of its location in Stamford, CT. The allegation is that the network pays more attention to New York and Boston, which are the local teams for Stamford, than it does for the rest of the country. The NFL’s Patriots, Giants, and Jets, the NBA’s Knicks and Celtics, and Baseball’s Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox are said to garner far more coverage than other teams in their respective leagues. An argument can be made that the teams they have focused on have been very good.  For example, the Yankees were a very good team in the late 90s, the Red Sox have won 2 of the last 4 World Series, the Celtics were the best team in the NBA last season, the Patriots have been the best team in the NFL for several years (before 2008) and were the third NFL team ever to win all of its regular season games playing 13 or more, and the Giants won the 2008 Super Bowl (for the ‘07 season) and were very good in the 2008 regular season.

On the other hand, continuing over-coverage of the Yankees who have been merely above average since 2000 (their last World Series championship) speaks to that bias. In particular the coverage of the pending and actual departure of Joe Torre as manager before 2008 was over-the-top. The network devoted 2 weeks of non-stop “Joe Torre is still the Yankees’ manager” coverage followed by 4 weeks of non-stop “Joe Torre quit as Yankees’ manager” and gave the impression that they thought the rest of the sports nation cared who managed the Yankees. The same year, ESPN covered the woefully inept New York Knicks basketball team more than some teams that made the playoffs.

The comment that really struck this New York bias home this weekend was about NBA star LeBron James. James plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers, a usually middle-of-the-road team in a not-so-glamorous city. James skipped college, being drafted into the NBA right out of high school in the greater Cleveland area. His high school exploits were covered extensively by ESPN, and the network even broadcast some of his games. He is currently known as one of the top players in basketball today, and was a member of the Gold Medal winning USA Olympic basketball team, all of whose players were mobbed by Chinese fans of the game.

The host on Sunday (a different one than the “sports media is biased” host I mentioned earlier, but no less anonymous to me) said that James was not a “world renowned” player and wouldn’t be until he “comes through New York,” presumably as a player on the afore-mentioned Knicks.

The idea that the rest of the country cares a wit about New York sports teams, particularly above their own local franchises, is ludicrous. The idea that general sports fans (those who don’t have a particular allegiance to their local team) care more about New York teams than the rest of their leagues is absurd. The idea that a “subway series” (that is, a World Series played between the New York Yankees and the New York Mets) will garner huge ratings nationwide is provably false (the last time it happened, in 2000, few people watched outside New York.) The idea that an athlete must play for a New York franchise to be considered “world renowned” is absolutely preposterous.

Here’s a sampling of very famous athletes that never played for New York teams:

Larry Bird                      Boston Celtics

Barry Bonds                   Pittsburgh Pirates/San Francisco Giants

Terry Bradshaw             Pittsburgh Steelers

Tom Brady                     New England Patriots

Jim Brown                      Cleveland Browns

Roberto Clemente          Pittsburgh Pirates

John Elway                    Denver Broncos

Brett Favre                     Green Bay Packers

Wayne Gretzky              Edmonton Oilers

Bo Jackson                     Kansas City Royals/Los Angeles Raiders

Michael Jordan               Chicago Bulls

Ervin “Magic” Johnson Los Angeles Lakers

Steve Largent                 Seattle Seahawks

Mario Lemieux               Pittsburgh Penguins

Ronnie Lott                    San Francisco 49ers

Peyton Manning             Indianapolis Colts

Joe Montana                   San Francisco 49ers

Shaquile O’Neal             Orlando Magic

Alexander Ovechkin      Washington Capitals

Walter Payton                Chicago Bears

Jerry Rice                       San Francisco 49ers

Cal Ripken, Jr                Baltimore Orioles

Johnny Unitas                Baltimore Colts

Athletes who don’t play for New York hardly wallow in obscurity until they are displayed in the blinding light of the City that Never Sleeps. Many world renowned athletes go to New York after they gained their notoriety, particularly in baseball. The idea that New York teams find all this obscure, unknown talent and finally put them on the world stage after years of languishing in tiny markets like Los Angeles, Chicago, or Washington, DC just doesn’t make any sense.

When are people going to realize that the more PR spin you have to put on something, the more detrimental that thing is to society as a whole. And when you think hard enough about the things that require the most spin, you find that it’s far more often than not the Left’s policies behind it.

Let’s look at some examples. We’ll start with the topic at hand, Muslim violence. They say (whoever “they” are) that Islam is a “religion of peace.” They claim that it’s only a small handful that do the horrible things like September 11, 2001. They say that the ones who commit violence are desperate people who feel oppressed by American imperialism or Israeli fascism, that absent that oppression they would make their best efforts to live in peace and harmony with the rest of the world, and that they are no different from Christians, particularly “fanatical” Christians with regards to violence. You never hear about the fact that by most estimates at least 10% of the approximately one billion Muslims out there are of the extremist, fanatical, death-to-America variety. That’s roughly equivalent to a third of our population, including illegal immigrants. And it doesn’t have to be the poor, destitute Muslims to plan or carry out violence. Osama bin Laden has hundreds of millions of dollars at his disposal. The guy who just decapitated his wife was a TV exec living in a posh Buffalo suburb. John Walker Lindh was a snobby rich brat from California before he turned traitor to fight with the Taliban. 

For the best possible illustration, let’s remember the Great Cartoon Riot of 2006. Remember that? A Danish newspaper published a few cartoons that put Mohammad and Islam into a less than stellar light, and Muslims around the world rioted in the streets. Now, consider all the movies and TV shows in the last 25 years that Hollywood has produced that have been insulting to Christians in general or Catholics in particular: The Last Temptation of Christ; Priest; Nothing Sacred; Dogma; The Pope must Die(t); The DaVinci Code; Nacho Libre; Happy Feet, just to name a few. Has Hollywood burned to the ground? Has Michael Eisner been beheaded? Is Jack Black living in hiding for fear of retaliation from violent Christian fanatics (not that that would necessarily be bad)? 

Then there are the issues of life and death. Abortion and euthanasia are couched in terms that make them both look like moral goods, or even moral imperatives. Those in favor of abortion claim to favor “a woman’s right to choose.” Those opposed are called misogynists. President George W. Bush was accused by a Hollywood actress (Cameron Diaz, I believe) of being prepared and willing to legalize rape because of his anti-abortion views. Abortion is portrayed as a woman’s ultimate expression of freedom in a patriarchal society.   It is also portrayed as a right equal to, or possibly even superior to, the right to free speech. Euthanasia is similarly portrayed. The “right to die with dignity” is considered an important right in the Leftist pantheon. “Assisted Suicide” and other right-to-die laws are demanded so as to protect the “terminally ill” from “undue suffering.” (If you’re wondering why I use the derisive quotes around terminally ill, read my “Desperation, Despair, and the Culture of Death” parts I and II.) They don’t tell you that abortion is a form of death that makes anything done at Auschwitz (never mind Guantanamo Bay) look humane. They try to explain that the aborted child feels no pain, despite visual evidence to the contrary. They try to show the developing child as simply a parasitic mass of cells and squawk at the idea of the newest sonogram technology (that which shows 3D images of the child with real-time movement). They claim that laws requiring clinical sterility at abortion mills put an undue burden on women who want abortions because clinically sterile abortion mills are not all that common (please note that the part about clinical sterility is buried deep within the referenced Washington Post article).

Taxes are another commonly spun issue. Across-the-board tax cuts are cast as disproportionately affecting the rich, and making the “rich” pay higher taxes is cast as being their social responsibility. Of course the definition of rich may vary depending on whether you are the taxor or the taxee. When being spun, tax increases for the rich are shown only to affect people who make Bill Gates or Warren Buffett money. When actually enacted, it commonly means families making more than $100,000 a year. That’s a lot in most jurisdictions, but in places like DC, New York, LA, Seattle, or San Francisco, that’s barely upper-middle class. For example, most married GS employees in the 9 and up range (like my wife) in the DC area have a family income well in excess of $100K. High 13s, 14s, and 15s can make 100K by themselves. Trust me, with a house, kids, and a long commute, $100K isn’t nearly as much as you think it is. And those families who do make that kind of cash are not, in a major metropolitan area, anyway, “rich” by any measure.

Government sponsored healthcare requires a great deal of spin. The first part of the spin is the proof that it is necessary. The Left talks a lot about the “crisis” in which we find US healthcare. They talk about how decisions are made by insurance companies and how people who don’t have any money can’t get healthcare. They talk about drug companies who inflate the prices of medications. They talk about how doctors charge exorbitant rates for their services. They don’t tell you that the American healthcare system is, except for those parts controlled by the Government (Medicare, Medicaid, the FDA, and the court system) better by an order of magnitude than most anywhere else. They don’t tell you that the profits drug companies make on some drugs go to research on other drugs. They don’t tell you that most public hospitals take uninsured patients, and ERs are generally required to. They don’t tell you that the primary reason for high costs of healthcare is not greedy doctors, it’s greedy lawyers who sue for malpractice judgments in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and the resultant excessive cost of malpractice insurance. They don’t tell you that your healthcare decisions will be taken out of the hands of your doctor and your insurance company and put into the hands of an unfireable mid-level government bureaucrat who has a 33% chance of being at least minimally competent for his job (the other 67% being utterly incompetent).

Gay privileges is probably the one issue requiring the most leftward spin to make it appealing. The spin, as with most leftist ideas, encompasses both propping up the Left’s utopian position, and tearing down positions based in real life. Homosexuals are held up as being the civil rights leaders of the modern era. Their “plight” is cast to mirror the actual oppression of blacks under slavery and Jim Crow laws. Their lifestyle choices are portrayed as “genetically programmed” and, therefore, totally outside their control. Because their genetic programming is “different” (not “faulty,” mind, but “different”) they expect to be accorded special accommodation for their “differences.” They want marital relationships to be redefined to include same-sex couples. They cast opposition to their way of life as “intolerant.” The Bible has been called “Hate Speech” because of its condemnation of homosexual sex. The homosexual lifestyle is cast as functionally, morally, ethically, and biologically equivalent to heterosexuality. What they don’t tell you (and generally consider hate speech to state) is that there is no equality between homosexuality and heterosexuality. It is considered hate speech to state that a society made up entirely of homosexuals cannot survive, certainly not without significant artificial help. It is considered hate speech to deny that there is any genetic coding for homosexuality, or that the supposed genetic coding is, as yet, undiscovered. It is considered hate speech to point out that there is an infinitely greater historical and modern basis for the inclusion of polygamy and adult-child marriages than for same-sex marriages, despite the fact that no one with any sense supports the former two in this country. 

EFCA is, according to its proponents, intended to facilitate the organization of workers into unions. If passed and enacted, it will surely make unions easier to form. The important part of the bill is this text (My emphasis):

[W]henever a petition shall have been filed by an employee or group of employees … wish to be represented by an individual or labor organization for [collective bargaining] purposes, the [National Labor Relations] Board shall investigate the petition. If the Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations designating the individual or labor organization specified in the petition as their bargaining representative and that no other individual or labor organization is currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit, the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative …

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) currently requires that 30% of employees publicly sign a petition to be represented, and then an election by secret ballot is held amongst all employees to be represented. EFCA will do away with the secret ballot and simply make the publicly signed petition the place where the majority is counted. 

Let me say that again: EFCA replaces a secret ballot with a public petition. So your choice whether or not to be represented by a union is out there for all to see. The union bosses and the company bosses get to see every name that voted for the union and extrapolate those who voted against, particularly if they don’t stop collecting signatures at 50% + 1, or, worse, if the Union measure fails.

Freedom to choose necessitates a secret ballot. Open ballots leave opposition voters in a position to be intimidated before the election or harassed afterward. The core of our democracy is that we only reveal whom we voted for because we choose to, not because our name is associated with the vote. The idea that anyone in a democratic government would support a measure replacing a secret ballot with a public one is horrifying. And, yes, I would say the same thing if the measure were supported by Republicans. The potential for abuse in a system like that is astounding.

Let’s think about it this way, how comfortable would you be casting an open ballot for your preferred candidate in a given election? What if your candidate were to lose the race? Would it make you feel good that his opponent has access to your choice? What’s to prevent that candidate (the one you didn’t vote for) from trying to bribe or intimidate you into voting for him next time around? Perhaps he floods your home with spam, junk mail, and phone solicitations. Perhaps you start getting calls or letters claiming you owe back taxes, or are being fined for some traffic violation caught on camera. It’s not necessarily true that something like that would definitely happen with every politician. But to believe that an open ballot would never cause someone that sort of trouble is to believe terrorists would never hijack planes and fly them into buildings. 

Sure, this only covers union election. For now. But if open ballots are good enough for union leaders, why aren’t they good enough for other elections, like city council, state legislature, Governor, Congress, or the President? Do I think the one will inevitably lead to the other? Certainly not, but it’s one possible course and you know that there are politicians out there that would love to know the names and numbers of people who voted against them. 

Like every other “freedom” initiative pushed by the Democrats, the Employee Free Choice Act has nothing to do with individual freedom and everything to do with pushing some leftist agenda item, Big Labor in this case, and increasing Left’s power over the lot of us.

So, I’m watching a hockey game on TV and up comes a commercial break.  In particular, we get an advertisement for the Washington Auto Show which is going on in downtown DC as I write this.  The advertisement played up the fact that the theme for this year’s show is being “Green.” And it occurred to me just how stupid that marketing idea has been.

Now, before all the Global-Warming acolytes start huffing and puffing, let me say that I have no fundamental problem with a company or organization that chooses to be Green.  Making a voluntary effort to protect the environment as much as is reasonable is a good thing. It’s not that a company is promoting Greenness that bugs me.

Being a Green company is not a bad thing. But if your only high-point is being Green, don’t expect people to run to your door to buy your product.

Those of you who actually bother to read anything on this site probably notice that I’m not usually the most timely, topical writer in the world. Sure, sometimes I’ll have something to say on the news of the moment, but other times I have a new inspiration about an old topic. This is one of those times.

I got to thinking about my last piece, where I took a comment from a reader who disagreed with me and told him precisely why he was wrong, and one particular line from the referenced comment.  The reader said that gays were just asking for “simple equality” as opposed to my charge that they are asking for special privileges. And the more I thought about the “simple equality” phrase, the more wrong I believed it to be.

Does anyone remember Senator Larry Craig (R-ID)?  If you don’t, he was the one arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in Minneapolis for allegedly propositioning gays in the bathroom at the airport.  He was caught tapping his foot in a stall and sliding his foot into the neighboring stall.  He claimed it was because of a “wide stance,” a phrase that will haunt him for the rest of his life, I’m sure.  He pleaded guilty to the disorderly conduct charge in the hopes that it would go away.  And why not? Republicans don’t want to tear down a good, conservative member of the Senate, and the Democrats wouldn’t want to be perceived as coming down on gays. Well, he was wrong

Senator Craig’s voting record was straight down the right side of the aisle. His stance on gay privileges has always been one of disapproval. He voted against hate-crime legislation particularly to benefit gays. He voted against same-sex “marriage.” And he voted against laws forcing employers to hire gays.  Thus, when it came out that he could, theoretically be gay, he was blown out of the water by the Leftist wing of the media. “Gay” suddenly became an acceptable term of derision. There was suddenly “something wrong with that.”  Craig was pressured to resign from the senate by both parties, the Left wanted him out because he could, theoretically, have been gay.  The right because he was getting too much bad publicity for what should have been one stupid mistake.

Then there’s Ted Haggard, former minister of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs.  Haggard was implicated in a gay-sex-and-drugs scandal a couple of years ago.  He was apparently caught using the services of a male prostitute and methamphetamine dealer.  Haggard soon admitted the charges on both the drugs and the sex, resigned his ministry, and sought therapy. Haggard still shows up in the news as the media likes to remind us that this man, who preached against homosexual sex at his pulpit, practiced it behind closed doors.

The gay privileges community wants us to believe that all they want is equality, but they don’t even treat each other equally.  If you’re gay, but you realize the wrongness of it, you’re not “the right kind of gay.”  It’s OK, apparently, to deride those who accept the wrongness of their actions solely for being gay. I mean, where was the gay lobby defending Craig for “trying to carry on a private rendezvous?”  Where were they supporting Haggard for trying to carry on a relationship that “more accurately reflected his true feelings?”  Why force either to resign? Should homosexuality be a bar to employment?

Equality, ladies and gentlemen, must include acceptance of viewpoints that we may not agree with.  Isn’t that what the Tolerance and Diversity crowd says? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, because I’m right: the gay lobby does not want equality.  They want their view to be the only “right” one, and anyone who disagrees should be ridiculed or punished.