Martin Luther King Jr was born and raised in Georgia. Yet I’ve never seen anyone wearing a t-shirt with his image as an act of “southern pride.” No. “Southern pride” is always expressed with the Confederate flag, Stonewall Jackson, or Robert E Lee.

I came upon this photo over at Hullabaloo, Now Why Would They Do This? I was stunned when I saw it. It isn’t like I’m not aware that many in the south continue to fetishize Lee and pretend that somehow the Confederacy was the true American cause — the “war of northern aggression” and all that ahistorical garbage. But it boggles my mind that a state would combine a celebration of the civil rights struggle with the celebration of the man who led the war to keep racially defined slavery.

Jamelle Bouie explained the whole thing yesterday at Slate, Happy Robert E Lee Day! In the image above, the state is Arkansas. But Alabama and Mississippi (Of course!) do the same thing. In addition, three other states — Georgia, Florida, and Virginia — also celebrate Lee, but they don’t combine him with Martin Luther King. So there’s that.

In Bouie’s telling of it, this is not really a political statement. It just is the case that Lee and King have birthdays that are close together. “As a concept, it was a poor pairing. As a bureaucratic solution, it worked.” But I think Bouie is being too fair or at least non-judgmental. This is racist pandering. It is a signal to the bigots that the state is just doing the whole Martin Luther King thing for the sake of political correctness and that we all know Lee is what the south really stands for. (In that regard, they might have a point.)

There is something more to this, however. Robert E Lee was a traitor. I discussed this in, No More Confederate General Bases! Lee was specifically given the chance to lead the union army. He declined. He chose instead to not only take up arms against his own country in a war started by the southern states, he chose to lead that army. I don’t really care that he was an honorable man. Erwin Rommel was an honorable man, but we don’t have state holidays for him! And when Rommel turned traitor against his nation, it was in the name of something good. When Lee did, it was in the name of one of the worst things this country ever did.

It’s weird, I think. Conservatives are all about how liberalism coddles minority groups — especially African Americans. That’s not true, of course — we are simply trying to create a fair nation — but that’s what conservatives think. Meanwhile, their political power is based upon coddling southern bigots. But when it comes to the southern bigots, the whole nation gets into the game. That’s why no one rises up in disgust at the south’s continued use of an American traitor as a hero and the continued use of the Confederate flag as though it were a symbol of anything other than treason.

The south will never grow up unless we force it to put away its childish illusions that the Civil War was anything but a treasonous act in defense of one of the vilest of human behaviors. There are a lot of ways that people could show their “southern pride,” if they think it necessary. As I noted a few days ago, they could lionize William Faulkner. But somehow, showing “southern pride” is always about hearkening back to the good ol’ days when blacks knew their place. I’m not keen on the whole idea of regional pride to begin with. But “southern pride” has a special smell of rot. It is a disease that is hobbling our republic.

Is Shepard Smith trying to get fired?! Actually, I doubt it. He’s just a bit of a loose cannon. And let’s just be clear here: he’s gay and he’s liberal — maybe not liberal like I am, but liberal like Hillary Clinton is. He is like this festering boil of humanity and reasonableness on the body of Fox News. And when he oozes some actual truth onto the screen, it is a thing of beauty. But if he ever pops, it will be transcendent.

On Friday’s Shepard Smith Reporting, he did a segment on the Supreme Court taking on same-sex marriage this term. In discussing it, he said, “Not in every case, but in most cases, the same states which were fighting integration, are fight this as well: those states that always seem to be behind the curve for reasons that are explainable and understandable.” Whatcha mean by “explainable and understandable,” Shep? I know that gives the network some wiggle room, but we all know what you mean: the reason these states fought integration before and are fighting same-sex marriage now is because they are controlled by bigots.

And it gets even better. John Bussey notes that there is still disagreement on same-sex marriage and Smith interrupts him and says, “There’s still disagreement on segregation!” You should watch it. Smith seems to know that he has to be very careful. It reminds me of an old article at Gin and Tacos, Fatigue Factor, “I recall distinctly from the years of being a Republican… It was exhausting, frankly, to keep one’s motives hidden.” What he was talking about was the way that Republicans claim they need to enact voter-ID laws before the voter fraud, when it is just a way to stop Democrats from voting. Smith’s in a more difficult position where he can’t even be honest with what policy he’s in favor of. But you can just tell that he’s pleased as punch:

But is Shepard Smith really in danger of losing his job? Probably not. A commenter over at Media Matters, JimWolf359, noted, “I don’t think it’ll happen. He makes good window dressing for Fox. ‘See? We are fair and balanced when we want to be! Just ask our token liberal, Shep if you don’t believe us.'” I hope he’s right. I probably wouldn’t think much of Smith if he were at CNN or MSNBC. But at Fox News, his awkwardness and liberality is charming.

There is one question. Rumor has it that in his recent contract negotiations, he tried to get the okay from the network to him to “come out.” They weren’t willing to do that. Apparently, their target audience (85 year old white men) is still anxious that television screens can transmit The Gay. But if same-sex marriage becomes the law of the land, will Fox News allow Smith to get married? Time will tell.

For the last week, I’ve felt as though I ought to write about what has happened in Switzerland, but I haven’t been able to find a hook. It’s still kind of hard to get too excited about Europe generally, and Switzerland in particular, with its economy that is roughly 4% of our own. Just the same, Switzerland’s per capita GDP is roughly $80,000 and the US’s is only $50,000. So I’m not smug about this; it is just that Switzerland is a small country. What’s more, what is wrong with European economic policy seems pretty simple: shared currency, austerity, and German arrogance. It is this last item that provides the hook.

The German government has really been impossible throughout this economic crisis. It has used the rhetoric of moral rectitude to bludgeon the rest of the European Union, “If only you acted like us, you would be doing well!” That’s just not true. As Paul Krugman is fond of saying, “Economics is not a morality play.” Germany wants to continue to keep its exports cheap, thus helping to keep the rest of Europe depressed. It’s typical conservative “shared sacrifice”: you sacrifice everything and I’ll share nothing.

Last week, Switzerland did something that is kind of the opposite. It stopped pegging the Swiss franc to the euro. Up to that point, the franc had been artificially lowered because the Swiss economy is actually doing quite well. This act caused the franc to shoot up in value — as much as 30% at one point. This is good news for the rest of the EU. It means that Swiss exports will be more expensive and Swiss imports will be cheaper. It should also mean that the Swiss economy should take a little hit and unemployment should go up (but unemployment is very low now).

This highlights one of the most exasperating issues I have when talking to people about economics. Pretty much everyone thinks that a strong dollar is a good thing. It sounds good, right? And it is good — for the 1%. If you have a lot of money, then the more that money is worth, the better. But most people don’t have a lot of money, and most people need a job. For these people, a weak dollar is better because it makes our exports more competitive and imports less competitive.

An interesting aspect of this is that most people are upset (or were in 2012 when the media was covering it) that China was artificially holding down the value of its currency. This, everyone understood, made it harder for US businesses to sell to China and made Chinese businesses unfairly competitive selling to us. But the very same people who were upset about this, also wanted a strong dollar. What China is doing is strengthening our dollar! It is inconsistent to say, “I want a strong dollar and I want American exports to be competitive!” If you are for the strong dollar, you are for shipping jobs overseas for the benefit of people who already have too much money.

So what Switzerland did last week is what we’ve wanted China to do for years and years. It’s strange that Paul Krugman thinks it is a bad thing. I think that Dean Baker, as usual, has this one right. In fact, he even related it to Germany:

This is what needs to happen. The shared currency — especially the fact that Germany is part of it — is what is stopping the currency in Greece and other depressed nations from weakening so that their economies can grow. The Swiss National Bank didn’t do this for altruistic reasons. Krugman is probably right that its reasons are bad. But it will have a good effect on the EU.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day, everyone! As you ought to know, today is not his birthday. He was actually born on 15 January 1929. Given that his father lived to be just shy of 85 years old, there is a very good chance that King would be with us today if he had not be assassinated. It’s sad on a personal level, of course. But on a public level, it was a catastrophe; it would have been nice to have had him fighting for us for these last 47 years.

Rather than write something new and brilliant, I’m just going to quote from some of the articles I’ve written about him in the past. This is very long, so I’ve put it all below the fold. Continue reading →

Aaron Carroll brought my attention to some alarming but unsurprising information, “As of this week, 45 children have died of influenza-related illness so far this season.” Further, during the last week of 2014, influenza and pneumonia accounted for 8% of all deaths. That’s above the “epidemic threshold” for that time of the year. So the flu is especially nasty right now. Carroll thinks we should all get flu shots and he is attacking the current claim that they are “only” 23% effective, “I’d like a list of all medicines people take, diets they go on, behaviors they change, devices they employ, and procedures they undergo which are better than 23% effective.” So get your flu shot — I can’t afford to lose any readers!

But that’s not what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about why it is that people don’t care about a disease that has killed 45 children so far this season, but they freaked out because one guy died of Ebola. There are a number of issues, of course. For example, the media care about unusual stories. “One man dies of Ebola” is interesting, “lots of kids die of the flu” is not. But the media largely reflect their audiences. And so I think the fundamental issue has to do with purity.

Influenza is our disease. Ebola is their disease. Of course, this isn’t true. Both these diseases move around the global. But the perception is that Ebola is foreign. So the fear is not about death, but rather the manner of death. Death by influenza is just one of those unfortunate things that kills our kids and parents. But Ebola is like a terrorist attack. It doesn’t belong in America. It is like a knife jabbing at us from the country of Africa. (Yes, that was a joke!)

You are probably familiar with those tests where you have to associate positive and negative words with different groups to test your subconscious bias. Not long ago, I took one related to young and old people and found that I am biased quite a bit in favor of old people — unlike our society generally. But many years ago, I took this kind of test regarding the countries Japan, China, and India. I was surprised that subconsciously, I had the lowest opinion of India. It seemed strange, given how many great friends and colleagues I’ve had from India. But once I thought about it, I realized that my default image of India was of this rather dirty place. This is unfair, but that’s what’s so terrible about our brains: we aren’t in nearly as much control as we think.

It seems to me that people have this same kind of subconscious bias against Africa. I’m sure if I took the same test comparing Africa with Asia, I would end up with a strong bias toward Asia and against Africa. So it just makes sense that a virus coming from Africa would cause a far more irrational fear than a virus that came from Asia. It is more or less the same thing as the constant conservative push to make laws banning Sharia law. I don’t think most people even know what Sharia law is. But it, like Ebola, is an impurity from, as Ricky Gervais says in Ghost Town, “a scary country.”

I guess Ben Carson is serious about running for president. I suspect that it is like more people who run for the Republican presidential nomination: he’s really just trying sell some books and maybe get a Fox News program. But he wants to be taken seriously. That’s why on Thursday, National Journal reported, Ben Carson to the GOP Establishment: I’m Not “Crazy.” It seems that the only reason that people think he’s crazy is because of the mainstream media. You see, they are always looking for gotcha moments. Like when Huffington Post reported, Ben Carson Likens Islamic State to American Patriots’ Willingness to Die for Cause. And why? Just because he, you know, likened ISIS to the founding fathers.

It brings up an interesting question. Why is it that the Republican presidential nomination is such a freak show when the Democratic one is not? I’m not talking about Rick Santorum. He is part of a long and glorious tradition of “issue” candidates. The Democrats have those too. In fact, Howard Dean had intended to be an issue candidate, but his campaign took off. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m talking about candidates like Herman Cain, Carly Fiorina, and now Ben Carson. You just don’t see major Democratic candidates for president who are comparable. In order to be taken at all seriously as a Democrat, you must have actually, you know, been in government before.

Part of this is just based upon the fact that Republicans have no shame and they will do anything for a buck. The best example of this is Newt Gingrich. He clearly ran for president in 2012 simply to sell whatever it is that he sells. When he managed to win two state primaries, it doubtless came as an unpleasant shock to him. Unlike issue candidates like Santorum, Bachmann, and Paul, I don’t think he was interested in being president. But I don’t think this desire on the part of Republicans — small and mighty — to cash in is the main thing that drives the freak show. I think it is more philosophical than that.

Republicans believe that governance requires no skill. And by and large, when they are in charge, they demonstrate that technically, you really can be the president and not know what you are doing. As I’ve discussed before, political amateur Arnold Schwarzenegger showed that being smart and committed was not enough to properly run the state of California. We needed a professional, and we got one when we elected Jerry Brown.

So who cares that Alan Keyes (2008) or Herman Cain (2012) or Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina (2016) have no actual political experience! The Republican Party don’t need no stinking experience. It probably isn’t a coincidence that all of these candidates are members of under-represented groups in the Republican Party. Since the party doesn’t especially appeal to minorities and women, it doesn’t have “farm teams.” Look at the list of African Americans in the House of Representatives. There are currently two Republicans — and they just got in. If the party isn’t going to vote for you anyway, you might as well run for president.

Even among supposedly real candidates, there isn’t much seriousness on the part of the Republicans. Sarah Palin couldn’t even wait for a full term in office. That still amazes me. I know that she is a fairly stupid, incredibly ignorant, and shallow person. But if you had just been through a very damaging presidential election, wouldn’t you go back to work as governor and try to prove all your detractors wrong? But even Mitt Romney — who actually got the nomination — left the governorship as soon as he could. These are people who are not interested in governing. It reminds me of the end of Primary Colors, when Stanton says:

Those people who do it just for the prize? They are the Republicans. They don’t value what the president does, but they want to honor of having the job. Get ready for the circus. It’s coming soon to a television near you.

As we all know, Fox News will bring on any kook as long as the kook is willing to say what the conservative network wants to push for the day. So last weekend, they brought on Nolan Peterson. He doesn’t seem especially like a kook, but the nonsense he was spouting was definitely pretty kooky. In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Fox News was pushing this idea that France had 741 “no-go zones” where Islamists had de facto control. According to Peterson, these areas are “pretty scary,” which says something because he’s “been to Afghanistan, Iraq.” And at times, he claimed, it felt like those places. He also said that he saw young men wearing Osama bin Laden t-shirts. And then Elisabeth Hasselbeck brought up the ridiculous poll that says that one in six French people support ISIS. Peterson said that this too was “scary.” Peterson is apparently a very frightened guy.

For the record, these supposed “no-go zones” are zones urbaines sensibles. This translates to “sensitive urban zones.” They are what we would call “urban renewal zones” or “opportunity zones.” They are, in other words, poorer areas that the government is trying to improve economically. And many of them are clearly seeing much gentrification. But in the conservative mind, poor person and terrorist are pretty much the same anyway.

The whole thing blew up in the face of Fox News. This is especially true after the French television program Le Petit Journal made fun of the whole thing. (For the video, see News Corpse.) Fox News displayed a map of the “no-go zones” in France. So, in a brilliant bit of satire, Le Petit Journal sent to people into these areas dressed like stormtroopers with motorcycle helmets. The areas — Surprise! — are very nice — even trendy. And the French people interviewed seemed to think that the comparison of their neighborhoods for Afghanistan and Iraq as pretty funny. Vive la France!

This morning, Fox News issued a apology of sorts. For the record, I think the whole “apology” and “retraction” and “update” business is a joke. A newspaper prints an above the fold story, “Obama Is Secret Terrorist.” And then, the next day, at the very bottom of page 16, they print, “Yesterday, we incorrectly claimed that Obama is a secret terrorist. We apologize for this error.” But in the case of Fox News, it is rarely even that good. In the following correction, there is no context and the apology is razor thin. The viewer is left with the idea that the only thing wrong with the story is that some of the areas labeled were wrong:

Earlier this week, Nolan Peterson wrote an article on Blue Force Tracker, To the People of France. It is not so much an apology as an apologia. But in its way, it is even worse than what Fox News did. In it, he explained that he wasn’t talking about these areas as they normally were, but rather as they were “during the 2005 riots.” But he never said anything about riots during the Fox News segment. In fact, he didn’t even provide any caveats like, “When I was there, I saw…” He was very clear: these 741 “no-go zones” were areas where Islamic extremists are able to recruit with impunity. There was no lack of clarity; he knew what Fox News want to hear and he said it.

Afterword

I don’t know the details of what he thinks should be done, but Nolan Peterson has a liberal attitude about how Muslims have been marginalized in French society. He seemed very eager to talk about this, but Elisabeth Hasselbeck was not interested.

Update (19 January 2015)

Wow. Fox News put out an actual correction:

Over at New Republic yesterday, Brian Beutler made an important but obvious point, If the Midterms Were Held Today, Gas Prices Might Have Saved the Democrats’ Skin. He even provided a nifty graph that shows that as gas prices have gone down, Obama’s approval rating has gone up. Now we all know that correlation is not causation. What’s more, in off-year elections, economic conditions are not well correlated with how people vote. (I suspect that it is correlated with how people would vote if they did vote.) But there is no denying that if the election were held today, the Democrats would do a lot better because of the way the economy has improved over the last two and a half months.

This is sad. As Beutler noted, “That’s a sobering reflection of the capricious nature of politics…” But surely it doesn’t come as a surprise to him. This is the way that our politics always works. This is the reason that the Republican Party has been able to to move to the far right without paying much of a political price for it. It has, after all, abandoned basic competence for a commitment to ideology. And as I hammer away all the time here, we know that it will be able to win the White House in 2016 as long as the economic conditions turn bad. In the simplest of terms: if gas prices go way up in a year and a half, Scott Walker could be our next president.

Of course, it isn’t specifically about gas prices. We’ve been seeing reasonable job growth for about a year now. It is only recently that people have noticed it. I am not saying, however, that Obama and the Democrats should get credit for the improving economy. But given that the electorate blamed the Democrats for the bad economy before, they should credit the Democrats now. And I’m sure they do. Beutler is right: if the election were held today, the Democrats would do much better.

It’s hard not to take this conclusion and throw your hands up, “It’s impossible!” Indeed, it is pretty much random. But the positive side of it is that it frees the Democratic Party in terms of ideology. Many Democrats are afraid that if Elizabeth Warren runs for president, we will lose because she’s too liberal; instead, we must run Hillary Clinton. But in a general election, it will make almost no difference. If the economy is booming in the first three quarters of 2016, we win; if it isn’t, we lose. So we Democrats ought to nominate the person we most like and not the person who we think is most “electable.”

Beyond this, the economic effects on voting patterns is very troubling. It basically means that we live in an oligarchy. The person most important to who becomes the next president is the chair of the Federal Reserve. If she wanted to, Janet Yellen could sabotage the Democrats in 2016 by raising interest rates and tanking the economy. It’s interesting that Paul Volcker did just that to Jimmy Carter — which is what Carter wanted him to do. It was a selfless act on Carter’s part. But what people remember about Carter was that he was a hopeless president, and all the credit due him goes to Ronald Reagan, who actually hurt the economy.

This is American politics. And if you aren’t terrified, you aren’t paying attention.