Monday, February 15, 2021

Althouse

Althouse

"The parents of adventurous young meritocrats paid $5,490 (plus airfare) for two weeks studying 'Public Health and Development in the Andes.'"

Posted: 15 Feb 2021 01:42 PM PST

"On that trip, the reporter, Donald G. McNeil Jr., got into a series of heated arguments with students, none of them Black, on the charged question of race. Their complaints would ultimately end his career as a high-profile public health reporter for The Times, and again put The Times at the center of the national argument over journalism and racism and labor.... The student at the center of this story is Sophie Shepherd, who isn't among the teenagers who have spoken anonymously to other news organizations. She and two other students said she was the person who spoke the most to Mr. McNeil and spent the most time with him on their 'student journey.' She was 17 at the time, and had just finished her senior year at Phillips Academy Andover, a boarding school sometimes rated America's best."

She's the kind of teenager who is excited to talk to a New York Times correspondent about public health, and perhaps to put the adventure on a résumé. She had even done the optional reading Mr. McNeil suggested, Jared Diamond's 1997 book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel," a Pulitzer-winning history that argues that environmental and geographic factors produced the global domination of European civilization. 
The book has drawn criticism for a deterministic view that seems to absolve colonial powers of responsibility for their choices.... She asked him, she recalled, about the criticism of the book. "He got very defensive very quickly about it," she recalled. "It's just a book, it's just making this point, it's very simple, it's not racist." She said she backed down, apologized and "felt terribly guilty — like I must have come off as a crazy liberal." 
At lunch that day, she said she sat down the table from Mr. McNeil at a cafe overlooking the town's narrow streets, where he was talking to another student when he uttered the N-word, and used the word in the context of a discussion of racism. Some of the teenagers responded almost reflexively, she said, to object to his use of the word in any context. 
"I'm very used to people — my grandparents or people's parents — saying things they don't mean that are insensitive," another student, who was then 17 and is now attending an Ivy League college, told me. "You correct them, you tell them, 'You're not supposed to talk like that,' and usually people are pretty apologetic and responsive to being corrected. And he was not." 
Ms. Shepherd said she thought the word was inappropriate but hardly the worst thing that happened on the trip, which she documented in a diary that she referred to in describing details to me. She also felt sorry for Mr. McNeil. "There was this atmosphere where people didn't like him," she said. "He was kind of a grumpy old guy."...
A few nights later, after a hike up Machu Picchu, she sat with Mr. McNeil at dinner at El Albergue.... On the walk over, she said, she talked about her favorite class at Andover, a history of American education that covered racial discrimination. He responded, she recalled, that "it's frustrating, because Black Americans keep blaming the system, but racism is over, there's nothing against them anymore — they can get out of the ghetto if they want to." 
Ms. Shepherd said she tried to argue, but he talked over her whenever she interjected, their voices getting louder and attracting the attention of other students, two of whom confirmed her account of the conversation. "This is the thing with these liberal institutions like Andover — they teach you the world should be like this but that's not how reality is," she recalled him telling her. 
(I sent Mr. McNeil a full account of Ms. Shepherd's recollections; he said he won't be responding publicly until he has officially left The Times on March 1. "I'm sure we'll have different memories of conversations that took place that long ago," he said in an email.)

She kept a diary. You never know how accurate any given observer's observations are, but contemporaneous day-by-day notes give her substantial power. Perhaps McNeil too has his notes, but his statements "I'm sure we'll have different memories of conversations that took place that long ago" suggests that he did not write things down as they occurred. 

When Ben Smith gave McNeil a "full account of Ms. Shepherd's recollections," did he include the fact that Shepherd kept a diary? I'm thinking no, because he said "memories of conversations that took place that long ago." She made a point of preserving her impressions and not merely relying on memory — though, of course, the impressions could have been inaccurate at the time, she could be interposing inaccuracy as she relies on her notes now to talk to Smith, and she could even be dishonest in her claim that she did keep a diary. Hearsay problems galore.

Now that Shepherd has come forward and connected her identity with McNeil's fate, it's quite possible that the critics of cancel culture will come after her. Unlike McNeil, who can retire from his reporting career and still do well by writing books, Shepherd has her entire career in front of her. She may be a privileged young woman, with parents who could afford to send her on the trip and to Phillips Academy Andover, but she did nothing wrong, reading and thinking and talking about her ideas in a setting where McNeil was holding himself out as a resource for her and owed her those conversations. She doesn't even sound as though she was impudent and self-righteous.

I'm seeing things like this at Twitter:

Take care not to become the thing that you deplore.

"She said, I don't introspect hardly ever, hardly at all — meaning she spends almost no time looking inward."

Posted: 15 Feb 2021 06:35 AM PST

"She doesn't really think about herself, her thoughts, her feelings about the world almost ever.... Diane says insightful things. She's considerate-- always considerate.... How did she have that insight? She doesn't look inside.... 'Well, since you started asking me about this, I've been thinking about it.... So walking into the grocery store the other night, I was walking in, and I was just like, what would I be thinking about if I were introspecting right now? And I had no idea. I was like, what could you possibly think about besides, there's some red shopping baskets. I'm going to take a red shopping basket. Oh, this is a spinach mix. Is it just spinach, or is there kale? That's literally all that's going on in my head. I can't imagine what else you could be thinking about.'... Here's what I think about at the grocery store. I think, there's a red shopping basket. Should I get a basket or a cart? I don't like the rickety ones. I can't imagine shopping for a big family. I wonder if I'll ever have a big family. That ship has probably sailed. It must be expensive. Why did my mom always ask the person bagging groceries to help her to her car? Whatever happened to Volvos? I bit that hole in the headrest of her Volvo when I was five. Or was I four? She was so sad. Why was I like that? Is that guy looking at me? Is he mad? What's he mad about? I wonder how much that cashier makes? Are people nice to her? It must take a long time to memorize all the codes to the produce so you don't need that sheet anymore. I'd be bad at it. Do people ask her if it's hard? Would she like that question or find it rude? A lot of my thoughts are just imagining other people's thoughts and feelings, all tangled up with my own. It's probably like 95% of what I think about. Diane says she doesn't do that — at all."

 From "731: What Lies Beneath" (This American Life)(transcript)(audio).

The word we're given for what the one woman does is "introspection," but no word is used for what the other (Diane) does. Did they deliberately avoid saying "mindfulness"? Isn't that mindfulness? At the end of the segment, the first woman (Lily) tries making her mind behave like Diane's but never opines about whether it's good or bad and never connects it to anything like "mindfulness" or Zen. I'm guessing — as I introspect — that they must have noticed this larger context but decided not to complicate the presentation that was just about 2 women noticing their minds were different and finding a connection — not with the larger world — but with each other. 

"Today's temperature is forecast to be WARMER than yesterday."

Posted: 15 Feb 2021 05:22 AM PST

But right now...

And I need to get to an appointment soon!

"Bipartisan Support Grows For 9/11-Style Commission To Probe Capitol Riot."

Posted: 15 Feb 2021 05:03 AM PST

Headline at Forbes.

Trial first, investigation afterwards. Kind of risky, isn't it? Just to assert that now what we need is an investigation is to make the fanfare of the last week seem, retrospectively, sketchy. We were urged to believe that we saw everything, and we know what we saw and what it all might. Are we just supposed to forget all that and imagine we're back at square one? How can this commission dare to find things that don't synch with the prosecution's case? Was Brian Sicknick beaten to death with a fire extinguisher?

From the Forbes article: 

"Of course" we need a 9/11-style commission, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) told ABC News' This Week on Sunday, arguing it should be "impartial," and "filled with people who would stand up to the courage of their conviction."

Who is impartial? And who are "people who would stand up to the courage of their conviction" who are also impartial? What does "their conviction" even mean if not that they are partial? 

"There's still more evidence that the American people need and deserve to hear," Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos Sunday.

Note the implication that the evidence heard at the trial was all good evidence. Nothing amiss there. Just that there's "more evidence." I doubt if Coons is open to a commission that draws the evidence presented at trial into question. 

The House Managers' trial memo said "The insurrectionists killed a Capitol Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher" — an overeager assertion that isn't holding up. How much more damage to the Insurrection Myth can American tolerate? Is the point of this commission — the one elected officials are getting bipartisan about — to shore up the legitimacy of the already-concluded proceedings? 

Defending himself as one of the few GOP lawmakers to vote to convict Trump in an interview with ABC News Sunday, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana called for "a complete investigation" including "what was known" and "who knew it" so "this never happens again in future."

Notice how Cassidy doesn't open up the question of what "it" was, just what was known about "it" and by whom. And by the way, what did you know, Mr. Cassidy, when you chose to vote guilty when there hadn't been the investigation that you say is needed now? What I wanted to know, what I thought was the crucial question in the impeachment, was whether there was a plan to breach the Capitol and whether Trump knew about it when he gave his speech. That's the "what was known" and "who knew it" that matters to me. Why didn't it matter to you, Mr. Cassidy? 

Also I'd like to know whether whether there was a plan to breach the Capitol and whether those in charge of Capitol security knew about it and, if they knew, why did they not provide adequate security? And then if there was a plan and if Trump knew about it, did he have reason to rely on Capitol security to prevent any fulfillment of whatever plan there was and to focus his intention on the free-speech-protected rally of his supporters? Were they overwhelmingly peaceful?

Though Republicans and Democrats... disagree about what the committee should focus on. On Sunday, Graham said he wanted to know if there was a "pre-planned element to the attack" while Coons wanted the commission to focus on Trump's role in the riot and "lay bare the record just how responsible and how objectfully violating of his constitutional oath" the former president was. 

You can't trust Republicans and Democrats to do this Commission properly, because they have such a strong stake in justifying what they have already done. The 9/11 Commission was given an appearance of impartiality by balancing 5 Republicans and 5 Democrats. That approach won't suffice this time. 

At the Sunday Night Café...

Posted: 14 Feb 2021 05:12 PM PST

 ... you can talk about whatever you want.
at

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