KPCC: Opinion News

President Obama’s black jobs dilemma

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:02:17 -0700

President Barack Obama pauses as he makes a statement at the State Dining Room of the White House. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters minced no words when she said that members of the Congressional Black Caucus are frustrated and impatient because President Barack Obama is not doing enough to tackle the crisis problem of black unemployment.

Previously, Waters and other members of the caucus have gently chided Obama on the jobs issue. But this time their criticism has taken on even greater angst, with a tinge of antagonism to boot. The unemployment lines have gotten longer, the time that the unemployed have been out of work has stretched from weeks to months, and there is little end in sight. Many major businesses have flatly said they’re not hiring.

Worst of all, Congress has made it even clearer that it will pinch pennies tighter. That means even less likelihood for increased federal spending on job creation initiatives. This drastically narrows the president’s options, and even though he’ll propose a jobs bill in September, almost certainly it will have little chance of getting around the scrooge mindset in Congress.

It’s equally certain that the president’s proposals will be race neutral and not specifically single out blacks for special spending initiatives and programs. This is in keeping with his firm position that spending more on jobs for all will help blacks, because they are the neediest and hardest hit among the jobless.

This line won’t fly with many in the caucus and for blacks who demanded that Obama roll his jobs tour buses and economic forums through the poorest of the poor black neighborhoods in Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles and other hard hit inner-city neighborhoods. But there was never much likelihood of that.

Obama’s eye is firmly set on re-election. And he can’t, or won’t publicly at least, depart from the race-neutral formula that got him into the White House. He’s walking too fine a line to take that chance.
Obama operates on the same principle that Democratic presidential candidates and presidents have followed for the last three decades: to avoid like the plague the perception that Democrats inherently tilt policies and initiatives toward the poor and especially minorities.

This political cross weighs even heavier on Obama. He would have had no hope of winning the Democratic presidential nomination, let alone the presidency, if there had been any sense among white independents that he embraced the alleged race-tinged politics of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. His campaign would have been marginalized and compartmentalized as merely the politics of racial symbolism.

Polls continually show that the president has lost major support among white voters, and the sharpest drop has been among moderate and conservative white independent voters. They provided his margin for victory in 2008.

No Democratic president or GOP presidential challenger can win without significant backing from them. The slightest hint that Obama is tilting toward African-American voters with a big, bold and aggressive jobs plan, or with other special programs primarily targeting blacks would likely blow any chance that he had of winning a significant number of independents back in 2012. It’s just too risky.

Even if Obama were willing to take the gloves off and turn part of the battle for increased employment spending into a battle explicitly to help the black poor, there would be little political gain. There is absolutely no chance that black voters will desert him in 2012. They are Democrats en masse, and will give any Democratic president, or presidential candidate, a lock down 85 to 90 percent of their vote.

The top Republican contenders offer the worst choice of any GOP presidential candidate, who has come down the political pike in ages as an alternative to him. Their set-in-stone, laissez faire, business-friendly, slash-and-burn attacks on government services and programs, and their silence or outright hostility to expansive civil rights and civil liberties protections have sent chills through the black electorate.

Blacks’ frustration, discontent and grumbles with and about Obama won’t move their vote dial even a tiny tick toward a GOP candidate. This would be tantamount to political suicide. This especially includes the Congressional Black Caucus. With one exception, they owe their offices, position, authority, patronage, perks and total allegiance to the Democratic Party.

The caucus will hector Obama to do more on jobs and poverty for blacks. But in 2012 they will be in full throttle on the circuit campaigning for the president. They have no choice.

Still, it would have been nice for Obama to direct his bus driver on a detour through a few desperately needy and job starved black neighborhoods.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. An associate editor of New America Media, he co-hosts the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. Hutchinson also host the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and Internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com. Follow him on Twitter.

New Republic: No Rapture, Just Judgment

Mon, 23 May 2011 05:45:04 -0700

Believers in New York City hand out literature on May 13, warning that the world would end on Saturday, May 21. Judgment Day did not come but popular Google searches show a preoccupation with the disappointment of those who awaited the event. Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Despite Harold Camping's passionate guarantee of the end of the world, May 21 came and went without a hitch. Tiffany Stanley of The New Republic expresses her disgust at media's obsession with the disappointment of believers.

Tiffany Stanley is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic.

The trumpets sounded. Judgment Day was upon us. At least in theory. Harold Camping — an 89-year-old former civil engineer turned radio mogul who seems to command a number of followers — had predicted Saturday, May 21 as the day of the Rapture. And the media, as well as the people who consume it, have responded with barely contained glee. Friday, references to Judgment Day made up the entire top five of Google's Hot Searches. At The Washington Post, a story about Family Radio — the Christian broadcast network that Camping owns — was the site's most popular item. Another piece, on the group's followers, was the most-emailed from The New York Times. Meanwhile, Huffington Post devoted an entire webpage to doomsday coverage, under its standard heading: "Some news is so big that it needs its own page."

Here at TNR, we thought about joining the circus. Last week, when we learned that Camping was predicting the apocalypse, I was tasked with spending May 21 — the day of the Rapture — with a few of his true-believing followers, who have been filling websites, billboards and city squares, handing out pamphlets and generally warning the world to repent. What an amazing story, I thought. I'll spend time with people who believe the world is going to end, and then be able to watch their reactions when it doesn't.

But before long, I had second thoughts. First, I ran into some accessibility snags. While the media-friendly end-timers wanted to warn heathens beforehand, they really just wanted to spend their last day on earth surrounded by loved ones, in quiet preparation. Their response to me was something like: Why would you want to follow us around on Saturday? We're not going to be here anymore. Yes, there was a certain humor to this. But the more I looked into the story, the more it began to turn my stomach to think of spending my Saturday evening in someone's living room, waiting for that gotcha moment when they realized it was all a lie — leaving me to file a story the next day, poking fun at their gullibility. I decided I couldn't do it.

Yet the media coverage has continued, and now to me, the schadenfreude has turned sinister. Based on the high traffic the articles are garnering, it would seem as if many of us are intrigued voyeurs, gleeful in knowing the exact day when these people will experience their life's greatest disappointment. We feel superior, knowing that even though they told us we were heading for death and destruction, now, they get theirs.

While some news stories have been nuanced and evenhanded, others have opted for smug superiority and cheap laughs. The Daily Beast featured "Your Guide to the End of the World," with such salient tips as "Where's the best place to weather this sucker?" (Note: avoid fault lines.) In its "comedy" section, Huffington Post made an exhaustive set of lists, from "9 Ways to Tell the World is Over" to "21 Reasons Why May 21 is NOT the End of the World" (on the latter: "Justin Bieber wouldn't let it happen"). A blog item on NPR — under the headline, "The Rapture supposedly starts tonight" — invited readers to take a quiz on who is most likely to be left behind. (By an overwhelming majority, politicians will feel the fiery furnace; journalists, surprisingly, are more likely to be spared, at least ahead of bloggers and those who talk on their cell phones.)

Do the end-timers seem ignorant? Yes. Are they insane? Possibly. But should our reaction to them be chuckling glee or something more like sadness? Pay attention to their individual stories — their willingness to sacrifice everything in anticipation that their earthly lives are over — and I dare you not to feel the latter. Ashley Parker of The New York Times writes about a mom who stopped working, and stopped saving for college for her three teenaged children. One of the kids admitted, "I don't really have motivation to try to figure out what I want to do anymore because my main support line, my parents, don't care." At NPR, Barbara Brown Haggerty reports on a young couple, with a toddler and a baby on the way, who are spending the last of the savings. The wife says, "We budgeted everything so that, on May 21, we won't have anything left."

Laughing at religious fanatics is nothing new. And, at some level, there's nothing wrong with it. But this story didn't just take off in popularity because people wanted a quick laugh or some insight into a quirky subset of our country. There's a cruelty underlying our desire to laugh at this story — a desire to see people humiliated and to revel in our own superiority and rationality — even though the people in question are pretty tragic characters, who either have serious problems themselves or perhaps are being taken advantage of, or both.

Sure, it's an interesting story when a fringe group decides the world is ending tomorrow. But it's also a small story. Come Sunday morning, as news articles flood in about the disillusioned end-timers, and those articles instantly become some of the most popular on the web — as they surely will — we might want to ask ourselves not what is wrong with this sad group of apocalyptic believers, but rather what is wrong with a society that takes such pleasure in their dysfunction. Copyright 2011 The New Republic. To see more, visit http://www.tnr.com/.

One View: Corrupt as it is, Pakistan does not want to keep crisis going

Tue, 17 May 2011 05:13:00 -0700

Pakistani military and police officials cordoned off a street in Abbottabad near the compound where Osama Bin Laden was found and killed. (May 8, 2011, file photo.) Credit: Asif Hassan /AFP/Getty Images

Anatol Lieven, author of the new book "Pakistan: A Hard Country," argues that Pakistan has been hurt more by the ongoing war on terror than it's been helped by billions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

The New Yorker's Lawrence Wright makes the case that Pakistan's military has become addicted over the years to the billions of dollars it gets from the United States. And he says one reason that country's military and intelligence services didn't discover that Osama bin Laden was living just an hour or two from Islamabad is because they didn't want to know.

"The Pakistani Army and the I.S.I. [Pakistan's intelligence service] were in the looking-for-bin-Laden business, and if they found him they'd be out of business," Wright argues.

On Morning Edition today, there was a different view.

Anatol Lieven, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and author of the new book Pakistan: A Hard Country, disputed Wright's conclusion. "I don't think Pakistan has an interest in keeping this crisis going," he said of the war on terrorism and the hunt for al-Qaida leaders.

About 3,500 Pakistani soldiers and police have been killed by terrorists. Another 30,000 "ordinary people on both sides" of the war have died in Pakistan. And, Lieven said, the country has "lost considerably more in economic damage ... than [it has] gained in aid from the United States."

That said, he concedes that Pakistan is among the most corrupt nations on earth — though that corruption also helps keep the country together, Lieven argues.

Other news Pakistan-related news this morning:

-- "A NATO helicopter attacked a Pakistani army post near the Afghan border on Tuesday, injuring two soldiers and further increasing tensions following the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Pakistani officials said." (The Associated Press)

-- Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), during a visit to Islamabad, "said Pakistan agreed to hand over the tail of a classified stealth helicopter that was destroyed by the American commandos when it malfunctioned on the raid on bin Laden's hideaway." (The Associated Press) Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Paper Tigers: What happens to the kids of tiger moms and dads when they grow up?

Wed, 11 May 2011 12:06:48 -0700

Cover of New York Magazine featuring Wesley Yang's article, Paper Tigers. Credit: New York Magazine

Author Amy Chua raised eyebrows earlier this year with her autobiography of motherhood, "The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." The book suggests strict parenting can help kids get into Ivy League schools. But what happens to those kids when the test taking is over? That's the question New York magazine writer Wesley Yang set out to answer in his article, "Paper Tigers."

There are certain values Wesley Yang sees as intrinsically Asian. Values like filial piety, deference to authority, humility, hard work and "earnest, striving middle-class servility."

Yang says he was never a fan of those values.

"Like all of these things that were kind of sold to other Asian American people I never really bought into them and I didn't want to have anything to do with them."

Yang is the son of Korean immigrants. But he wasn't pressured to conform to the traditional Asian values, in part because his parents had already lived in America for 20 years when he was born and they'd adopted a more western worldview.

"You know, my father was a little bit different than other immigrants. He didn't go out of his way to instill those values in us."

But Yang says no matter how he felt, he thought the world still saw him as typically "Asian."

"I didn't identify with this culture," Yang remembers. "I didn't feel a part of it. And yet my face would always identify with it to me in the eyes of others. So there is this estrangement I would feel to my identity."

Yang learned he wasn't alone. For his recent New York Magazine article he interviewed other Asian-Americans who felt neither fully Asian nor American.

One gripe Yang and others have with Asian values is the obsession with getting into top-notch schools and acing tests. Yang spoke to one student at a prestigious private high school in New York City who told him the focus on testing left his Asian peers ill-prepared for what comes next.

"One of the kids that I interviewed... told me there are all these kids that can get 800 on their verbal SAT who cannot write. And people know about it. College admissions officers know about it."

This lack of real world skills leads to discrimination after graduation, according to Welsey Yang. He calls it the "bamboo ceiling."

He points to American law firms as a classic example. Yang says Asian Americans are the most represented group at the associate level. But he says Asian Americans are the least likely group to be promoted to partner.

"There is a way Asian people are trained to be that is not consistent with American ideas of how a leader is supposed to be. They have been trained to be humble and hard working and if they face an obstacle at work, simply to double down and work twice as hard."

In Yang's view, that attitude will only lead to Asians being taken for granted. Sure, it's frustrating, but Yang points out that Asians like him don't always have the cultural knowledge needed to transform into a take-charge kind of person.

On top of that, he points to a book by author Jane Hyun called "Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling" that argues that it can take four to five generations for a family to abandon some of these deep Asian values.

In the end, Yang accepts his Asian and American values. They've taught him a lot and besides, he says, it's too late to start over now.

"I'm not going to change. This is who I am and I am just going to bare all the costs that are associated with it."

Wesley Yang spoke with Madeleine Brand for the Madeleine Brand Show. For the full interview listen here.

Analysis: US-Pakistan relations in trouble

Thu, 05 May 2011 06:02:16 -0700

Pakistani seminary students gather during an anti-US rally in Quetta on May 4, 2011, against the killing of Osama bin Laden. Credit: Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images

Osama bin Laden's death has Congress pointing fingers at Pakistan and many in the Obama administration expressing thinly veiled exasperation. But it probably won't mean the breakup of a marriage of convenience that is maddening to both the U.S and nuclear-armed Pakistan. The alternative would be worse.

The commando raid Monday on bin Laden's comfortable house deep inside Pakistan exposes a stark truth that bodes ill for the decade-long U.S. strategy to coax greater cooperation from its wavering counterterrorism ally and bankroll its weak leaders: Pakistani officials tolerated or helped the biggest-ever mass murderer of Americans or were so inept that he lived for years right under their noses.

Shamefaced Pakistani authorities say it is the latter, but some in Congress are already clamoring to cut or eliminate the nearly $1.3 billion in annual aid to Pakistan. And the Obama administration may be tempted to opt for more go-it-alone operations.

Through either complicity or incompetence, Pakistan's failure to do anything while the al-Qaida mastermind spent up to six years in a conspicuously oversized villa near a military academy raises alarming questions.

Asked Wednesday which explanation the White House assigns to Pakistan's inaction, spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment.

U.S. officials have griped for years about fringe elements of Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment who've aided the Taliban and other militants using the country as a rear base to launch attacks on American and Afghan forces over the border in Afghanistan. But the government has been seen as a committed partner against al-Qaida, and thousands of Pakistanis have died at the hands of bin Laden's group.

The Obama administration is investigating. Any evidence that points to Pakistani support for bin Laden or his terrorist network would amp up the pressure in the U.S. to cut off military and civilian assistance for President Asif Ali Zardari's fragile government.

Neither government wants that. The U.S. needs Pakistan's assistance to fight bin Laden's followers and exit from Afghanistan; Zardari's government fears overthrow from an emboldened Islamist opposition if it loses its American backing.

Members of Congress are divided for now on Pakistan, with some lawmakers saying the death proves that Pakistan has been playing a double game all along - supporting U.S. enemies on the theory that it might one day need them - and others calling for more U.S. engagement to expand the fight against terrorism. The prevailing idea seems to be to press the U.S. advantage while Pakistan's military might be more motivated to demonstrate its resolve.

But the tension released by bin Laden's killing couldn't come at a worse time for U.S.-Pakistani relations. In recent weeks, popular anger in Pakistan spiked when CIA contractor Raymond Davis killed two Pakistanis, on top of disagreements over U.S. drone attacks on Pakistani territory. And just last month, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Pakistan's military-run spy service of links with the Haqqani network, a major Afghan Taliban faction.

The bin Laden operation has revealed the shifting ground: The Obama administration trusted its partner so little that it only told the government of the military incursion when it was over. And in a statement Tuesday, the Pakistani government warned that an "unauthorized unilateral action cannot be taken as a rule," calling it a "threat to international peace and security." It has made clear that it had nothing to do with the operation.

"We have a complicated but vital and important relationship with Pakistan," Carney said. "We don't agree on everything, but their cooperation has been essential in the fight against al-Qaida."

Pakistan's government is clearly embarrassed, though it insists that it was ignorant of bin Laden's whereabouts. The Zardari government and the Pakistani military are balancing a response that answers domestic anger at perceived U.S. high-handedness yet avoids focusing too greatly on violated sovereignty so they don't feed that anger or make it appear they are courting those aggrieved by bin Laden's death.

That also could partly explain Obama's decision Wednesday against releasing bin Laden's death photos, saying their graphic nature could incite violence. "There's no need to spike the football," he said in an interview Wednesday with CBS' "60 Minutes".

But the problems with Pakistan aren't likely to go away - especially if the U.S. gathers intelligence that more top terror suspects such as new al-Qaida No. 1 Ayman al-Zawahri, the Taliban's Mullah Omar or militant Siraj Haqqani are hiding there. U.S. officials said this week they suspect that al-Zawahri is in Pakistan, and the others have long been assumed to use the country as a haven to attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner suggested the U.S. could conduct more solo operations.

"Al-Qaida hasn't abandoned its intent to attack the United States," he said. "This is an ongoing armed conflict, and we believe that the United States has authority under international law to use force to defend itself when necessary."

Washington has clung to an uneasy, post-9/11 consensus spanning Republican and Democratic administrations and Pakistan's transition from dictatorship to military-backed democracy.

Pakistan is an unreliable partner but one worth holding onto, the thinking goes. No cooperation on fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida is a far scarier notion than the half-hearted assistance Islamabad sometimes appears to offer. Pakistan is key to ending the war in Afghanistan and bringing American soldiers home. Letting the weak government wobble too much is unacceptable because that could allow Islamist radicals to get their hands on Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

"That won't change until the U.S. forces in Afghanistan are gone," said Gilles Dorronsoro, a South Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Pakistan will have to play a significant role brokering a political solution to the violence in Afghanistan, reconciling the Taliban with President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed government, he said. And while the U.S. succeeded in killing bin Laden on its own, it will surely need Pakistan for future operations.

Some analysts weren't so sure, seeing in bin Laden's killing the recovery of a lost American swagger, the feeling in the United States after 9/11 that al-Qaida's defeat was inevitable - with or without Pakistan's help.

"I wouldn't mind if this were seen as a precedent," said Daniel Markey, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It shows we mean business."

EDITOR'S NOTE - Bradley Klapper covers foreign affairs for The Associated Press.

Don't get mad at royal wedding coverage - Ryan Seacrest didn't invent undue fixation on young love

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 06:21:07 -0700

Kate Middleton and Prince William visit Whitton Park on April 11, 2011 in Darwen, England. Credit: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

While there's plenty of overemphasis on the upcoming royal wedding, it's important to keep in mind that people have found a way to be more invested than they should be in the doings of young lovers and royals since long before television.

There's a very funny comment attached to yesterday's post about London, in which someone points out that apparently, some media outlet or other "did a minute and a half on the vacuuming of Westminster Abbey." To all who lament this particular kind of fixation on finding an angle — ANY angle — on which to hang a story, I say: I am with you. Whether it's the "it turns out that this international incident that took place in Paris hit close to home for someone right here in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin!" story on the local news, or, yes, the vacuuming of Westminster Abbey, it can be trying.

But let me posit something else, which is that it wouldn't be unreasonable to give people a break for looking forward to watching the wedding.

Look, you can blame Disney for Disney princesses, but you cannot blame Disney for princesses. Storytelling about princesses — or girls who grow up to meet princes — go back a lot farther than Disney, or cartoons, or television, or the all-in all-the-time environment that brings you "The Abbey Vacuumed: A Special Investigation."

Storytelling about princes and princesses — and their equivalents — goes back considerably longer than television and is not a product of American media. If you don't believe me, ask Andromeda.

Moreover, I keep hearing that (some) Americans are more interested in this wedding than (many) actual British people, which I'm sure is true, and which makes sense as well. Let me ask this: How often do you read about the British monarchy from the incredibly America-focused American popular-culture machine? I would venture to say that the answer is probably that you don't hear about them all that often. Yes, for a few years, there was the occasional Prince Harry Is At It Again tale, and back when Diana was alive, she was obviously heavily covered, both in life and in death.

But these people, the ones getting married? William? How many times have you actually heard William's voice? If you heard it on the radio, would you recognize it? I doubt I would. I certainly wouldn't recognize Kate Middleton's. Compared to our own celebrities, who are always popping up on late-night television and in magazines to talk about themselves, we barely know these people. And that, it seems to me, is a bit of a relief, particularly if you don't usually experience it.

American media has a chokingly chatty relationship with the famous. They talk constantly to us. They're interviewed, they're on DVD extras, they're making their own perfumes, whatever. And sometimes, this is fantastic — I love it that actors go on Fresh Air and talk about their work for an hour at a time. But everything has ups and downs, and the trade-off here is that what you don't get with this approach is any sort of remove that allows the romanticizing of public figures in the way you can romanticize them when they talk a lot less. This is not to condone the romanticizing of celebrities as a good thing, but again, it's not something that's been ginned up for this wedding, and it far predates Ryan Seacrest.

The paparazzi, of course, follows the royal family doggedly; we need not repeat the stories of that, I don't think. But they don't chatter back all the time. They'll do an interview now and then, but for the most part, they're not yip-yapping in public about every thing that comes into their heads. It's kind of quaint, when you read regularly about celebrity sex tapes, to see people who issue official palace statements when they have something to say instead of calling TMZ.

It's perfectly logical that this event has raised questions about the monarchy and whether it should continue to exist, and about lavish ceremonies during bad economic times, and about whether "The Abbey Sucked Clean Of Lint" should really be dominating the news. Absolutely fair questions, absolutely.

But if you find yourself saying, "I cannot imagine why anyone is interested in this story of young love involving a handsome prince who has experienced terrible adversity and now seems to have found love with a beautiful young woman who undoubtedly never expected to become royalty," try to pause on that bafflement and think about how how much sense it makes. It's not necessarily correct or brutally rational to be touched by all this, and if we knew more about it, it would undoubtedly lose some of its luster, and for actual British people who have to contend with their own form of government and the consequences thereof, the frustration makes more sense to me.

But the buttons a royal wedding pushes at some level were not installed by E! and are not unique to crass American consumerism. There's a reason why royalty, going back as long as royalty has existed, frequently goes hand in hand with pageantry. (This despite the fact that British royal weddings specifically have certainly not always been the hootenannys you see today.) Enjoying a certain amount of ceremony and ritual — big dresses, military uniforms, horses in formation, music in a chapel — is not a sign that the end of civilization is upon us. In fact, it has a fairly long history as part of any number of civilizations that did not have cable.

Don't get me wrong: There is an entirely reasonable debate about how much fixation on which aspects of an event like this makes any sense at all. But being utterly confused about how a big fancy event centered around a love story between two young and pretty people gets anyone's attention seems a little silly to me. Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Analysis: Obama had no choice in 'birther' fight

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 05:56:14 -0700

President Barack Obama speaks to the press in the Briefing Room of the White House April 27, 2011 in Washington, DC. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Confronting doubters who harbor questions about his place of birth, President Barack Obama chose to defy one of his White House's own rules: Don't get dragged into the news skirmish of the day.

This time, he decided he had to. In an extraordinary step, the White House produced a copy of his detailed Hawaii birth certificate Wednesday after obtaining a special waiver from the state to make it public.

For his allies and even many of his political critics, it was about time.

The debate over his birth was becoming a media preoccupation. Celebrity developer Donald Trump, who took the lead in sowing doubts about Obama's birth, was gaining a following as he flirted with a Republican presidential bid. A recent poll showed two-thirds of all Republicans - and smaller percentages of independents and Democrats - believing Obama was born overseas or voicing uncertainty about his place of birth.

Standing in front of cameras in the White House briefing room Wednesday, the president sought to rise above the fray by first succumbing to it.

"We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshow and carnival barkers," Obama said.

But the issue was not just a distraction. The rising public doubts about his birth, with their hints of xenophobic and even racist attitudes, threatened to feed broader suspicions and grievances among millions of Americans. Unchallenged, those sentiments would linger through his re-election campaign.

"A huge segment of the Republican Party, whether or not they concede it or even know it, looks foolish and conspiratorial," said Jim Jordan, a longtime Democratic operative and veteran of numerous political campaigns.

"But also it's likely that this was becoming a genuine distraction, that the question itself was seeping beyond the right fringe of the Republican Party and it was just time to demystify the whole thing."

Many Republicans also breathed a quiet sigh of relief at the sight of Obama's new documentation.

Among many party activists, questioning Obama's birthplace - and thus his constitutional legitimacy as president - was a test of party allegiance. Republican presidential hopefuls were forced into uncomfortable corners where they had to distance themselves from the birthers' claims without alienating potential voters.

"There's a lot of evidence out there that it was a distraction for a number of Republicans," said GOP pollster Wes Anderson. "It became a purity test for some voters. For others it was a test of whether you were serious about other issues. There are just as many Republicans as Democrats who would be glad to get to fighting about other things."

Todd Harris, a Republican consultant who has worked on a number of GOP presidential campaigns, said some Republicans fanned the birthplace cause to get an easy headline and open up the wallets of some activists.

"It may have a short-term payoff for a handful of Republicans," he said. "But for the party as a whole, it is a terrible long-term issue to build a campaign around."

Recognizing the potential backlash, Republican House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday promptly put some distance between the GOP establishment and the conspiracy theorists.

"This has long been a settled issue," Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said. "The speaker's focus is on cutting spending, lowering gas prices and creating American jobs."

There was no guarantee that the topic of Obama's birth would simply go away. The Internet on Wednesday was already beginning to hum with questions about the authenticity of the newly produced document.

But what had given the issue its drive was the success critics such as Trump achieved by simply questioning why Obama had not released the long-form version of his birth document. "Essentially the discussion transcended from the nether regions of the Internet into mainstream political debate in this country," Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said.

The White House choreographed the release of the birth certificate. Aides said Obama decided last week that he had had enough of the issue and asked his White House counsel, Bob Bauer, to look into getting a waiver from the state of Hawaii to release the document.

The copy of the documents arrived at the White House around 5 p.m. Tuesday. Aides released the copy Wednesday morning. Bauer, Pfeiffer and press secretary Jay Carney briefed reporters. Only then did Obama take the podium.

"Now, normally I would not comment on something like this," he said.

He did not brandish his birth certificate. He did not offer a point-by-point rebuttal. He conceded that for some, the issue would not go away.

"But I'm speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press," he said. "We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We've got better stuff to do."

Jim Kuhnhenn covers the White House for the Associated Press.

Charlie Sheen: A Bellwether For What Is Next

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:34:06 -0800

Actors Charlie Sheen, Angus T. Jones, and Jon Cryer pose backstage during the 35th Annual People's Choice Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium on January 7, 2009 in Los Angeles. Credit: Frazer Harrison/Gettty Images

In her weekly commentary, host Michel Martin tackles the media spectacle around actor Charlie Sheen. She suggests the controversial behavior of celebrities like Sheen serve as a bellwether for where the rest of society is headed.

If you can stand it, I'd like to be the ten thousandth person to have a word about the actor Charlie Sheen and what appears to be some kind of major breakdown being acted out on multiple media platforms over the last couple of weeks.

The broad outlines in case you missed it: he is the star of what is or has been the country's most popular network sitcom Two and a Half Men, which airs on CBS. Because of that show, he is said to be the highest paid actor working in television right now. But he has also been in and out of the tabloids for some time for his disturbing and sometimes violent behavior involving his two ex- wives, as well prostitutes and porn stars.

There's also been lots of alcohol and drugs, at least until recently, and his rants have been taking place on bigger and bigger media platforms. Here's a sample of what we've been hearing from an interview on NBC:

"I am tired of pretending like I am not special; I am tired of pretending like I am not bitching a total freaking rock star from Mars. And people cannot figure me out, they cannot process me. I do not expect them to. You cannot process me with a normal brain."

Now a lot of people, most especially but not exclusively those of us in the media, have been feeding on and repulsed by the story in almost equal measure. You can see why the story has everything. He is a famous actor from a famous family, he's rich, sort of good looking, and he's putting his business all out in the street.

When asked why he had a thing for women who make their living in porn, he allowed as to how he is the best at what he does and so are they. As The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus put it, it's the same impulse we have to slow down at an accident scene. Marcus goes on to say the decent thing to do would be to avert our eyes and hope he gets help.

Can I just tell you? I beg to differ.

We are fascinated with Sheen because he is us, or rather he is what some of us already are and will be. Celebrities, for all their outlandish behavior, are often the bellwethers for what is next for the rest of us. Even as we tut, tut, tut about it, we are all taking notes.

What about the over-the-top, crazy, expensive weddings? Those used to be the exclusive province of royalty and the very rich. Now, as any advice columnist or wedding planner will tell you, they are considered almost the birthright of the children of the middle class. This is evidenced by the fact that wedding planning as a profession even exists. Ditto designer clothing and cosmetic surgery, and yes — the quickie divorce.

It used to be that only celebrities could dissolve their marriages with dispatch. While divorce remains emotionally traumatic, it is no longer the expensive and protracted proposition that probably kept many families at least legally intact, even if the emotional ties were broken. In fact alternative family arrangements are probably the area where celebrities have been out front, not least because of their resources.

When megastar Michael Jackson married the former dental assistant Debbie Rowe, it was clearly an arrangement meant to provide him with biological children. Except that nobody knew to call it what it was — a surrogacy arrangement. Yet, a little over a decade later when Ricky Martin hired a surrogate to deliver his twins, he not only did not need to hide the arrangement, he talked about it openly. As have parents who are not famous.

The taboo was broken. So too, Michael Jackson's struggles with racial and gender identity. While his skin color transformation was apparently caused by a medical condition called vitiligo, it still seems clear that he had the desire to live across boundaries of race and gender. In a way that many people who are not famous also want to do. Whether through dress, by going online as an alternate identity or simply refusing to be circumscribed by traditional gender norms.

Back to Charlie Sheen. I don't know whether he has an ongoing substance abuse or mental health issue but if he does, he's not alone.

And I know this; he is not the first and will not be the last person to want to tell his boss to stuff it. He will not, in these times when loyalty to employees is non-existent, be the last to point out inconveniently that however much he is being paid his bosses are making that much more from the fruits of his labor. He will not be the last to believe, as many people seem to think in many other fields of endeavor, that he can do what he wants: sexually, financially, to other people's retirement accounts. As long as he is bringing in the cash (and while I personally don't think his behavior is healthy for his five kids to witness) is it any worse than seeing your parents humiliated by long term unemployment? But a million people aren't tweeting about that, are they?

Years from now, mark my words, we'll have seminars on how to manage people who are as he put it:

Shhhh! Quiet People At Work

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:07:34 -0800

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas rarely speaks from the bench. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Justice Clarence Thomas rarely speaks during a Supreme Court argument. Perhaps he reserves his opinions for private conversations with the other justices. There are Quiet People in all walks of life. They can be quite social and sociable. They just don't say much.

Justice Clarence Thomas has not spoken during a Supreme Court argument in five years, according to a recent New York Times story. In the past 40 years, no other member has been totally silent through a whole term — not to mention, five terms.

That could change when the nine justices reconvene after a midwinter vacation on Tuesday. But it probably won't.

Reporter Chris Cillizza, in a Washington Post videocast, puts forth several possibilities for Thomas' taciturnity: Perhaps Thomas is embarrassed about his speaking voice. Maybe Thomas chooses to let the lawyers before the court argue their cases without distraction. Or maybe Thomas reserves his opinions for private conversations with the other justices in chambers.

Whatever the reasons, there is a lot of talk about Thomas' lack of talk. And much speculation about his speechlessness. But the truth is: There are Quiet People in all walks of life.

You Don't Say

Loud People, of course, get all the attention. But if we stop talking for a second and look around, Quiet People are everywhere. They are in the corner at the soiree, drinking something clear with a lime and stirring gently with a swizzle stick. They are at the dinner table, knowing when to pass the rice pilaf without being asked. They are on the basketball team, staying late, running ladders, working on their free-throw shooting. They take notes in class, don't use cell phones in hospital hallways, never whistle or hum or exhale loudly.

Quiet People are different from loners or introverts or recluses.

And quietness is not the same as shyness. Those who are shy keep to themselves and shy away from others. Quiet People, however, find it easy to be around other people. They can be quite social and sociable. They go to parties. They can have lots of friends. They get elected president — Calvin Coolidge. They become a famous singer — Peggy Lee. They sit on the Supreme Court — Clarence Thomas. They just don't talk much.

There are two kinds of Quiet People, says Nicholas Christenfield, a psychology professor at the University of California, San Diego. "There are people who wish to talk, but are too timid to do so" and there are those who "simply choose not to say much."

Christenfield specializes in researching human communication. He is exploring the idea of "volubility," the opposite of quietness. But in his studies, he has found two basic notions of why people remain quiet, "which my research has attempted to untangle," he says. "One is that their minds are less fertile, and fewer expressible thoughts occur to them."

The other idea, he says, "and the one most people intuitively embrace, is that their minds are at least as productive, but their threshold for saying things out loud is much higher. In this case, the average utterance of a Quiet Person should be of higher quality than that of a talkative one. They have had mediocre thoughts, but declined to share them."

A Man Of Few Words

Though Coolidge didn't say much, he was no intellectual slouch. According to the White House's official biography, "Silent Cal" is considered the most remote of presidents. He once explained to financier Bernard Baruch why he chose to be so quiet during interviews: "Well, Baruch, many times I say only 'yes' or 'no' to people. Even that is too much. It winds them up for twenty minutes more."

Talk begets more talk and Quiet People don't like talk so much.

Two more stories from the White House archives about Coolidge: "His wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, recounted that a young woman sitting next to Coolidge at a dinner party confided to him she had bet she could get at least three words of conversation from him. Without looking at her he quietly retorted, 'You lose.' "

And while on vacation in South Dakota's Black Hills, Coolidge let out another iconic laconic utterance: "I do not choose to run for President in 1928."

Treasuring Silence

Google the term "Quiet People" and you will be amazed at the animosity — and discomfort — some people feel around Quiet People.

"QP tend to make me nervous," writes one blogger.

"Why are Quiet People weird?" asks another.

Anneli Rufus, author of Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto, has thought a lot about the difference between loners and Quiet People. "Loners," says Rufus, who considers herself one, "tend to be quiet most of the time because, most of the time, we're alone. We loners usually feel quite calm and collected and even joyous in times of silence — unlike really social people, who seem unable to tolerate silence."

On the other hand, Rufus says, Quiet People "treasure silence for its own sake. They wouldn't want careers that require lots of talking."

And Quiet People, she continues, "might have lots of friends — which loners don't."

In fact, she says, Quiet People with lots of friends are really the "good listeners" and the "supportive audiences," who are "always ready with a smile or an encouraging glance or a warm laugh when others — the Loud People — need validation and backup."

So does the from-the-bench silence of Thomas increase his efficacy? Is he able to quietly bring the opposing sides of an argument together? NPR's Nina Totenberg, who covers the Supreme Court, says, "Because we can't know if Justice Thomas talks internally at the justices' conferences, I don't think we can really make an assessment of just how effective he is."

More to the point, Totenberg adds, "he does take positions that some people would say are 'way out there.' They are often positions that no other justice takes. Positions that have no precedents."

And that, Totenberg adds, may have an effect on the quiet man's effectiveness and influence. But why Thomas is so quiet remains an enigma.

For Christenfield, Quiet People in general are a mystery. But, "in some ways, the greater mystery is why the talkative talk," he says. "One learns, presumably, from listening, and silence is not generally dangerous."

Rex Ryan: The Future Of Coaching?

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 10:42:28 -0800

Head coach Rex Ryan of the New York Jets looks on during warm ups against the Indianapolis Colts during their 2011 AFC wild card playoff game at Lucas Oil Stadium on January 8, 2011 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Credit: Andy Lyons/Getty Images

The New York Jets may have lost Sunday, but whoever wins the Super Bowl, in many respects the most memorable character of this NFL season was the Jets' roly-poly coach, Rex Ryan.

And, please, I'm not talking about the foot-fetish business. It is Ryan's ebullience, his braggadocio, that make him so unusual. Football coaches tend to be phlegmatic, even distant personalities — far different from baseball or basketball coaches, who almost by definition must be open and engaging. Many baseball managers are out-and-out raconteurs. Dealing with the media is as much a part of their job as tacking up the lineup card, for they must confront the press every day in their dugout salon, banter — and at least appear to enjoy the intercourse.

Football coaches, by contrast, are more like CEOs. They have large staffs, and so much of their work is so private that it borders on the monastic — going to the darkened office alone before dawn, watching game film hours on end.

Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots is, of course, Exhibit A. He and others of the best football coaches are often referred to as intellectual giants, even geniuses. Coaches in other sports tend instead to be praised as mere strategists, leaders, good people persons.

There's been a tendency to mock Ryan as a big-mouthed clown — perhaps all the more so that he's fat and garrulous. But I think his critics, who have been most everybody except his players, have missed the point. Football players have changed.

They're not the strong-but-silent little varsity soldiers of gridiron lore. They're brash, narcissistic showoffs. They literally beat their breasts. You may not like that, you may hate the dancing and prancing in the end zone, but it sure is the way of the football world now. Why do you think these swaggerers wouldn't want someone whose personality matches their own as their boss?

The idea that something inflammatory Ryan or his surrogate players would say about the opposition before a game — that that would stir up the other team – is so childish. It's just a tired old newspaper staple that grown-up professional athletes in a brutal game are sleeping dogs who will get riled up at what their opponents say beforehand if someone suddenly pins up a clipping on the bulletin board. Oh, come on.

Rather, Ryan was a positive influence on his own team. His players loved his attitude. They loved it that he didn't act like just another buttoned-up, standard-issue football coach.

Okay, the Jets got beat, but for the long term, I think the example of Rex Ryan will be influential — the football coach who has some life and humor to him, who is an extension of the modern player's own personality. He may be an exception now, but for the future he may well be the new model pro-football coach. Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The Super Bowl: Baby, It's Cold Outside

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:01:00 -0800

NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle speaks at a press conference before Super Bowl XXII in 1988. Rozelle was commissioner of the league from January 1960 to November 1989. Credit: Rick Stewart/Getty Images

Who wants to sit out in the cold in midwinter, watching a football game? Frank Deford isn't sure he does, even if it is the Super Bowl.

Every year now, about this time, the thermometer falls and the Roman numerals rise. Why, the Super Bowl is certified vintage now.

Patriotic football fans, along with Tom Brady himself, keep filling the Broadway pews of Lombardi to solemnly listen to an actor pass on the revealed wisdom of one of the Super Bowl's Founding Fathers, as sure as we citizens heard members of Congress read us, less artistically, the profound words of Madison and his sacred brethren.

Ah, but the Super Bowl Constitution has been amended, too. When Commissioner Pete Rozelle, the General Washington of the pro football wars, found peace and created the Super Bowl, his guiding principle was that the heart of winter was no time to play important football games. No -- the championship must be exported to more benign latitudes, leaving January to do its mischief to temperate America without tarnishing the gridiron game and forcing team season-ticket holders to venture out into an ugly second season.

In 1967, Rozelle's first Super Bowl was played right about now, in mid-January. This year, it will go on three weeks later: Feb. 6, with playoff games scheduled all January. Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?

And sacrilege to the memory of Pete Rozelle: The 2014 Super Bowl itself will actually be played in New Jersey, a snow-covered land whose governor was pilloried for abandoning the state to take refuge in Disney World.

Jersey? Not so sure.

Come on: Who knows the Garden State climate better? The chubby governor, who leaves New Jersey for Florida, or the fat-cat NFL, which foists the Super Bowl on us there?

To compound this madness, NFL owners want to add two games to the annual schedule, thus taking the Super Bowl closer to Presidents Day than Groundhog Day. The addition of extra games would come at a time when even the owners agree that no longer can we blithely employ that hoary euphemism "there's a player shaken up on the field" when in fact, he's laid out with a concussion or some other serious battlefield wound.

Pro football -- played by behemoths who clang into each other at warp speed -- is a brutal game that uses up bodies, and to lengthen the regular schedule to 18 games on frozen fields seems irresponsible, if not grotesque.

But NFL ratings are sky-high and winter is great for television precisely because the frosty weather keeps many Americans inside, where they can gather round the high definition and watch January from the safety of their homes. Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

NCAA: Show Me the Money!

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 00:01:00 -0800

Auburn quarterback Cam Newton picks up the Heisman Trophy after his acceptance speech. Newton's father has been accused of trying to solicit Mississippi State for money in exchange for his son's athletic service. Credit: Kelly Kline/Heisman Trophy Trust

NCAA football has suffered some scandals this year, and many of them have been about money. Can those 19th century NCAA rules about players and money really be enforced in a 21st century world?

The NCAA can fairly be called cynical and calculating and just plain stupid, but the latest of this year's many scandals primarily shows that big-time college football just doesn't work any longer with a model developed for a 19th century culture.

OK, latest scandal: Ohio State. Five players, including the star quarterback, Terrelle Pryor, are caught selling their own memorabilia. That is: Doing business with stuff that is your property, like uniforms you wore -- yourself -- merits punishment when you go down the NCAA rabbit hole.

Previous scandal: NCAA declares that the father of Cam Newton, Heisman Trophy winner at Auburn, tried to sell him to Mississippi State.

Other recent scandals: reports from various and sundry agents and investigators that one way or another, college players are taking money. Probably lots and lots of them.

Why should any of this be surprising? College football is a billion-dollar enterprise now, and everybody involved is making money -- sometimes millions -- except the players themselves. Human nature tells us that it is impossible to expect that the performers wouldn't also want to share in some of the bounty.

You know what the NCAA looks like now? Like the Soviet Union as it struggled to maintain communism in a changing world that wouldn't tolerate its outdated nonsense any longer.

Proof that the NCAA is being whipsawed by reality comes in its decisions in these last two scandals. It decided that somehow Cam Newton didn't know that his own father was hustling his talent. No penalty.

It listened when the Ohio State athletic department pleaded that it hadn't done its job right in advising the players.

Newton and Auburn suffered no penalty. The Ohio State five were suspended ... but, get this now: only at the start of next season.

Obviously, the NCAA made these curious decisions because it realized that expelling Newton or suspending the Buckeye players now would deal heavy financial losses to its distinguished member schools and its meal ticket, the bowl games -- taking Auburn out of the championship BCS game and damaging the Sugar Bowl, which Ohio State played Tuesday night on ESPN, the network that the NCAA wants so much to please.

The NCAA is influenced by all the money at stake. It mouths crazy, old-fashioned moral pretense, keeping its players as serfs, yet is primarily just looking after the economic welfare of its so-called educational constituents.

TMI, Mr. President! TMI!

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 05:00:00 -0800

Barack Obama gestures as he arrives to sign the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 into law. Credit: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Once upon a time, Americans were in the dark about the fact that their president (FDR) used a wheelchair. Now, we see President Obama's busted lip up close and even know he snores. (And let's not get started on what we know about former President Clinton.) Does familiarity breed contempt for the office?

Do you know who recently stopped smoking Marlboros? Here are some hints: He received 12 stitches in his busted lip. He wears a size 11 or so shoe. And his wife says he is sometimes "too snore-y and stinky" to share the marital bed.

Here are some more hints. He collects comic books. He loves shrimp linguini, berry-flavored tea and Moby-Dick. He hates ice cream. He told elementary students this about his dog, Bo: "Sometimes I have to scoop up his poop."

Of course. It's Barack Obama, the president of the United States.

Thanks to these reported facts, we think we know everything about the guy.

But does our increasingly informal relationship with the man in the White House -- not just President Obama, but any sitting president -- diminish our respect for the man and reverence for the office? Should we leave the uncovering of private and behind-closed-doors habits to the historians?

We're not talking about major scandals here. We're talking about a puff of tobacco or a mild BlackBerry addiction. Do we need to know all of these details? Would we be better off as a country if we focused less on the personal quirks and traits and more on the professional successes and failures of our commander in chief? In other words, when it comes to the most famous politician in America, does familiarity breed contempt?

Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, believes there are pros and cons to having Too Much Information. "Knowing too much about a president makes them seem more human, but it certainly detracts from some of the prestige that Americans once held for the office," says Zelizer. "If the president is too much like us ... we have more trouble developing respect for the officeholder and we start to find fault, too easily, about issues that don't really matter."

After all, Zelizer says, "we should be more concerned with Obama's economic policies and political strategy than whether he snores."

Sonny And The Duchess: A Whitewashed White House

In days of yore, personal details about the sitting president were hard to come by. When Warren G. Harding was elected in 1920, he promised a "return to normalcy" in the wake of World War I. The man from Ohio was swept into office by the greatest popular-vote differential up to that point.

By all contemporary accounts, life inside the White House during Harding's abbreviated two-year term, from 1921-1923, was prim and proper. Occasional intimate tidbits emerged in news reports. For instance, reporter Kate Marcia Forbes -- who was also a close friend of the first lady's -- revealed in a 1922 Baltimore Sun article that Florence Harding called her husband "Sonny" and the president's pet name for his wife was "the Duchess." The president liked to eat fudge and popcorn balls, and the couple often sat on a davenport by the fireplace.

Most of the stories of the day, however, provided little detail. There were observations about the "stateliness" of events at the White House and the propriety of Florence Harding's wardrobe. "One thing I most admire in our President and his wife," Forbes wrote, "is the devotion they have for each other." She and other reporters whitewashed the White House, and Harding enjoyed great popularity while in office.

But in fact, according to historians writing much later, the Harding home on Pennsylvania Avenue was a nexus of bad behavior. Behind the scenes, writes James S. McCallops in the 2004 volume Life in the White House: A Social History of the First Family and the President's House, Sonny and the Duchess "were far from the upbeat and optimistic duo they portrayed in public. Petty jealousy, infidelity, illegal drinking, gambling and corruption plagued the Hardings. Yet, in the two-plus-year period the Hardings lived in the White House, the public was kept in the dark about the First Couple's private lives."

Having won 60 percent of the vote in 1920, Harding was able to appoint some of his friends, known as "the Ohio Gang," to his administration. Some of them betrayed him, and his administration was rife with political miscreancy -- including the Teapot Dome scandal.

In 1923, Harding died unexpectedly, from a stroke or heart attack. And it wasn’t until after his death that more details of his private life were made public. "Only as the scandals began to surface," McCallops writes, "did the American people discard their adoration of the Hardings and replace it with scorn and ridicule."

Harding was a popular president about whom the public knew little. Was he perhaps popular because of that fact?

And Then Came The Details On Bodily Functions

The increasing pervasiveness of media in the post-World War II era changed the relationship between presidents and the public, says Michael S. Mayer, a history professor at the University of Montana who has written extensively about the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

"Eisenhower's presidency consequently represented a step in the increasingly invasive nature of coverage of the personal lives of presidents," Mayer says.

In September 1955, while Eisenhower was on a fishing trip in Denver, he suffered a heart attack. That event, Mayer says, "seems to me to be something of a watershed."

The administration released daily reports that included details about the president's bodily functions and the color of his pajamas. Newspaper reporters and broadcasters dutifully repeated them.

"Many at the time questioned the taste of such reports," Mayer says. "Others wondered about the limits of the public's right or need to have access to personal matters relating to the president. In the case of the president's health, though, some maintained that the public clearly did have an interest."

Arguably, from that point on, personal details about the president have become more and more commonplace. President John F. Kennedy could not hide the fact that he had a bad back -- though the White House was able to keep journalists from knowing about the president's debilitating Addison's disease and his reliance on medications. Journalists also kept the president's extramarital affairs from the public -- perhaps more out of respect for the office than for the man.

Lyndon Johnson, according to The Chicago Tribune, became the first president to tell the public ahead of time that he was going into the hospital, for gallbladder surgery. To this day, the image of LBJ showing his scar to reporters is a lasting one. Richard Nixon was plagued by phlebitis. Jimmy Carter had hemorrhoids and Ronald Reagan had polyps.

More and more delicate details were revealed about sitting presidents -- and less and less homage paid to the office -- by tabloid newspapers and cable television. And then in the mid-1990s, the Internet, with its unruliness and rudeness, let the cat completely out of the bag. Bill Clinton and the two George Bushes lived in constantly scrutinized -- and widely reported on -- fishbowls.

We seemed to know everything -- and more -- about Clinton. His health, his skivvies, his sax, his sex, his Socks. The fact that Clinton had a 66 percent approval rating when he left office is an anomaly.

The second Bush, on the other hand, fell from 90 percent approval rating in September 2001 -- at the time of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon -- to just 34 percent when he left office in 2009.

President Obama's numbers, so far, have the same downward trajectory.

Real Men Of Genius

We know, for example, that Obama drinks beer. And we know what brand: Bud Light.

That's more than we knew about Rutherford B. Hayes, who professed to be a teetotaler. In fact, according to Barry H. Landau, author of The President's Table: 100 years of Dining and Diplomacy, Hayes was a private drinker. While president, Hayes would gather favored guests upstairs for a secret cocktail, Landau told Time magazine in 2009, while the first lady, known as "Lemonade Lucy," stayed downstairs with other guests and served nonalcoholic drinks.

We also know about Obama's "beer test." Many political pundits have written that Obama chose Joe Biden as his vice president because the former senator from Delaware is somebody you'd like to go have a beer with. The truth is, as Biden told The New York Times, he doesn't drink alcohol.

Conventional punditry tells us that Americans are drawn to down-to-earth candidates whom they'd "like to share a beer with." But once the people get into office and Americans know that their politicians -- even a president -- are actually drinking a beer and what kind of beer, they are liable to lose some respect.

Of the seven two-term presidents in the past 60 years, only Reagan and Clinton had higher average approval ratings during their second terms. For the most part, the longer we had the chance to know our presidents, the less we approved of the job they were doing.

"It is healthy not to turn our presidents into kings," says Zelizer, "but too much of this leaves us without enough respect for the most important office in the land."

The disillusionment is in the details.

Maybe it is our thirst for these details that drives the increased amount of details. Or perhaps the White House has learned that giving out a constant barrage of small details keeps Americans from asking really big questions.

Personal details, says reporter Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, "are part of the Theater of the Modern American Presidency. As always, it is the behind-the-scenes that gets closer to the real story. Stitches and Marlboros are part of the sideshow. It is the important decisions and how they are made that matter." Copyright 2010 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Sports Sucked In 2010. Admit It

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:01:00 -0800

The World Cup went to Qatar; Sylvester Stallone was chosen for induction in the International Boxing Hall of Fame; the LeBron show was technically foul. And Brett Favre. Maybe next year will be better? Frank Deford doesn't think so.

I want to jump the queue here to get ahead of all the annual stories about what a wonderful sports year it was.

Please understand: In sports, it is always one fabulous year.

That's because, in all sports years there are myriad games, so therefore there must be lots of winners. Ergo: What a great year we had, sports fans!

Sorry to be such a sourpuss, but you know things are desperate in sports when the Boxing Hall of Fame selects Sylvester Stallone for induction just because he acted like a boxer.

And, hey, you know things are at a new low when the United States can't even beat out Qatar in its bid to host World Cup soccer. Bummer.

Golf as we know it actually disappeared in 2010 because whatshisname, the guy who was guaranteed to be the best golfer of all time, got into a spot of trouble and couldn't win at all. 0-for-2010. So golf didn't exist anymore.

But in NASCAR, there, the same driver -- somebody named Jimmie Johnson -- keeps winning, but Jimmie is one boring dude and he never gets into trouble, so NASCAR fans are just as unhappy as golf fans.

Yo, what was the basketball highlight of 2010? A game, maybe? No. LeBron James, whom everybody used to like, made a calculated fool of himself on his own reality show, took his talents to South Beach, and now everybody roots against him.

The good news is, all the evidence suggests that by next season there will be a lockout in the NBA, so nobody will even care about LeBron James. Or basketball.

The NFL is also in lockout mode for next fall. Well, there is a silver lining: There'll be nothing for Brett Favre to come back to even if he wants to.

Everybody is in a funk about college football because of the stupid BCS. And the guy who won the Heisman Trophy was arrested for stealing a laptop at Florida and is playing for Auburn only because his father couldn't sell him to Mississippi State. Oh well, be grateful for small favors. The likely MVP in the NFL is an ex-con.

But then, hooray! We finally had a hero everybody could cheer for -- Zenyatta, the wonder horse. But she missed going undefeated, lifetime, by a nose. That's 2010 for you.

The best athletes in the world in 2010 were a Filipino, a Spaniard, a South Korean and a Canadian: Manny Pacquiao, Rafael Nadal, Kim Yu-Na and Sidney Crosby.

Unless, of course, you count Sylvester Stallone.

Girls Hunt Too -- And Story About That Ignites Debate

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 11:44:00 -0800

Magan Hebert, 15, poses with the young buck, or "spike," that she shot in Waynesboro, Miss., in November. Magan has been hunting since she was in the fourth grade. Credit: Tamara Keith/NPR

People are passionate about hunting — those who are for it and those who aren't. Join the conversation that Morning Edition's story has touched off.

People are passionate about hunting -- those who are for it and those who aren't.

That's become clear yet again with the reaction to Morning Edition's story today headlined "For Some Girls, The Ultimate Goal Is To Kill A Buck." It's about 15-year-old Magan Hebert of Wayne County, Miss., who is among the 300,000 female hunters in the nation under the age of 16 -- a group that doubled in size from 1991 to 2006. So far, it's generated several hundred comments on NPR.org and more than 1,000 on NPR's Facebook page.

We'll put a player with the full audio of the story at the end of this post. But here's the minute that has really gotten some listeners upset (so consider yourself warned if you don't approve of hunting). You're with Magan as she shoots and kills a young buck:

Here's a sampling of the comments we've gotten on the story page and at NPR's Facebook page:

-- "Thank you NPR for providing an interesting, personal and unique story. From the first words of the story I could tell that this would stir extreme emotions from your listeners and I am pleased that you followed through and produced it, despite the likelihood of a vehement backlash." (Chris Rinaldo)

-- "This story turned my stomach and caused me to turn the radio off." (Gil Martian)

-- "Get down out of your ivory towers NPR listeners. The hostility towards this girl and this story is pathetic. She is happily engaged in an activity that provides sustenance for herself and her family. What good did you do this morning?" (Holly L)

-- "I was unfortunate enough to turn on the radio in the middle of this story. I was most disturbed by the gunshot, the pride, and hearing there were photos of the slain animal on the NPR website." (Carie Greiff)

-- "I don't know what is funnier, the fact that ya'll are shocked that girls hunt or the fact that y'all are outraged by hunting. If you think hunting is wrong, you are out of touch with our country and a little something known as the cycle of life." (Duder Jones)

-- "NPR - I love you, but please provide us with something more enlightened than the subject of girls hunting. If this is intended as a 'girls are equal to boys' article, then it has chosen a poor example. The smart, strong, independent, and articulate women I know recognize the difference between causing unnecessary suffering for sport and responsible, enriching forms of entertainment that cause no harm. We are not Neanderthals - hailing hunting as indication of a gutsy girl is simply short-sighted, out-of-touch and evidence of a severe lack of compassion." (Abigail M)

-- "How many of you holier than thou types that say this story is disgusting do as much as hunters do to preserve wildlife habitat? Seriously, deer leases, wetlands, other wild areas receive a lot of care and protection from hunters. We get it. You think children and fawns are equals and that killing animals is like the holocaust. Get over yourselves!" (Mark P)

We expect the discussion will continue for some time. Here's another way to express your opinion:

Baseball's Courtesy Gap: Post-Game Handshakes

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 00:01:00 -0800

The post-game handshake is a time-honored tradition in most sports -- but baseball isn't one of them. A discerning sports observer asks the question: Why can't courtesy thrive on the diamond?

It occurred to my friend The Duchess, the sports connoisseur who seeks out all that may be indecorous in athletics, that there is a glaring lapse of etiquette in one sport.

Writing to me from her yacht, as always, in her lovely cursive hand, she begins: "If I am not mistaken, my dear Frank, amongst major sports, baseball players are the only ones who never shake hands with each other in the spirit of good will. What a dreadfully rude lapse of manners."

The Duchess went on to note that basketball players are the most social. The starters shake hands before the game and often kibitz on the court afterward. Moreover, after college games, the two teams all pass by each other in a line, sort of like a Virginia reel at a square dance.

Even those whom the Duchess called "ruffians on ice" may pound each other all season, but when a hockey playoff series is over and one team is eliminated, the players on both teams, including the goons, skate slowly past each other and shake hands.

As the Duchess wrote: "I find that really quite lovely, Frank. Even brutes can be taught to be civilized upon occasion."

Further, the Duchess pointed out that football players mingle on the field after every game, as she wrote, "rather as their fans tailgate."

The "concussion candidates," as the Duchess labeled football players, tend to mate up by position. Always, the quarterback from one team seeks out the quarterback from the other.

The coaches at least acknowledge one another even if they can't stand each other, and the more religious players from both teams even join together in a circle and pray.

Golfers make sure to shake hands with the other players' caddies. "Very egalitarian, don't you think, Frank?" Yes, indeed, Duchess.

And tennis players meet at the net. It used to be that the winner might jump the net, but there's a certain triumphalism to that, so the custom's pretty much gone out.

The last man The Duchess could remember jumping the net was Bobby Riggs, after Billie Jean King creamed him. "A gallant display of testosterone," The Duchess suggested.

Boxers, of course, touch gloves before the fight after the referee opines, "May the best man win." And my gracious, exclaimed the Duchess, soccer players and rowers, even literally, give each other the shirts off their backs.

The Duchess concluded her letter to me, noting how especially curious it was, that while baseball players do not congratulate each other after the game, they're quite convivial during the game. If a batter hits a double, he'll be sure to pass the time of day with the opposition shortstop or second baseman.

Afterward, though, it's only the winners who come out on the field and fist-bump each other.

"I wish the losers would at least tip their hats to their conquerors," The Duchess concluded. "There is no reason why baseball players can't be gentlemen, like others of the sporting persuasion." Copyright 2010 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

With Tax Deal, Obama Embraces Clinton's 'Third Way'

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 08:41:00 -0800

U.S. President Barack Obama announces a bi-partisan deal to extend expiring tax cuts for two years and to extend unemployment benefits for 13 months. Credit: Roger L. Wollenberg-Pool/Getty Images

ANALYSIS: The deal suggests President Obama may be betting that he can spend the next two years running against popular distaste for both major political parties. That's what President Clinton did on his way to reelection.

By accepting his own reduced political standing and admitting Republican thinking into his own policy formulation, President Obama has plunged headlong into the political calculus known as triangulation.

That's what we called it back in the mid-1990s, when President Bill Clinton tried to save himself (and the last power the Democrats had in Washington) by posing himself against both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

All the tough talk in the president's statement Monday night was directed at Republicans, who over the weekend blocked the president's effort to extend current tax rates except on income above $250,000 per family. They even threatened to filibuster an attempt to raise rates only on incomes of $1 million or more. The GOP was ready to let taxes go up on everyone Jan. 1 (when current rates revert to higher rates from the 1990s) rather than permit a policy change unfriendly to the wealthiest.

But after the tongue lashing for the Republicans, the president proceeded to outline a deal that lacerated the Democrats. By agreeing to a two-year extension of tax cuts for the wealthy -- sacrificing his own long-held position -- the president can be seen as embracing the centerpiece of Republican orthodoxy. By doing so, the president is putting considerable distance between himself and the convictions of progressives everywhere.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine the Barack Obama of 2008 making such a deal, even if he got a payroll tax reduction and extended job benefits in the bargain. And that is not all. The president also agreed to reinstate the estate tax (after a one-year hiatus) only on estates larger than $5 million and at a rate of 35 percent, substantially reducing the revenue from this longstanding assessment on the wealthiest families.

The spectacle of this onetime community organizer signing off on a major reduction in the estate tax is enough to give plenty of Democrats a case of vertigo.

So who will be happy with this deal? In the short run, probably no one, including, as he said Monday night, the president himself.

Republicans will flinch at rhetoric they call "class warfare," even as they go to war for the uppermost class and risk the interests of all others. Democrats will ask, with arms outstretched and mouths agape, how the man they put in the White House two years ago could have joined the "revolt of the haves" against the needs of the have-nots.

And the crossfire from both parties will be the point. That is how triangulation works. If it works. Right now, Mr. Obama is betting his presidency on his own personal perception of the American voting public. If he is right, he will likely win a second term. If he is wrong, he almost surely will not.

He can read the polls that say most Americans do not favor tax cuts for the rich and are ready to see them expire. But he also knows the same Americans are loath to press the point if it means paying more taxes themselves. Most wage earners would rather have a few hundred or a few thousand to keep than savor the satisfaction of seeing the rich compelled to pay far more.

And in any event, as this White House calculates, the average American would rather not pay a suddenly higher tax bill in January just to prove that the Republicans can't get away with that old "class warfare" line any more.

Here's another way of thinking about the bet the president is making: It represents a wager that he can spend the next two years running against the popular distaste for both of the major political parties -- including his own -- while still seeking the votes of people in either party and people in neither.

If that seems implausible, it is. But it is also precisely the path President Clinton followed on his way to a surprisingly easy re-election in 1996.

It should be remembered that Clinton achieved that re-election just two years after suffering a midterm election disaster just as bad as Mr. Obama endured last month. The Clinton response was to pose the two parties against each other and emerge as a third option. The operative term at the time was "Third Way." Watch for something similar to emerge from the Obama White House in the months ahead.

The key here is not just to be different but to be closer to that ineffable American center than either of the two parties is or can be. The parties are animated by the heat at their innermost core, the fervor of their most intense supporters. We saw that in the primary defeat suffered by Republican moderates and some establishment conservatives in 2010. We also saw it in the November defeat of Democratic moderates and the survival of Democratic liberals.

Propelled in this way, Republicans are willing to say "tax cuts for all or tax cuts for no one." They will brave the bad poll numbers because they think they will prevail and the voters will move on. For their part, many Democrats will now rail and vote against the president's deal and risk having the current tax rates expire. They believe they can ride the wave of popular anger that follows to a confrontation they can win.

Both parties are willing to go to the brink to please their base. The president is betting the less intensely political middle of America does not want brinksmanship but statesmanship. And he is betting that, in the long run, they will see his deal-making in such terms. It is a high-stakes bet, not only for his own political future, but for the direction of the economy and the Republic as well. Copyright 2010 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Put Marvin Miller In The Baseball Hall Of Fame

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:01:00 -0800

Marvin Miller gave baseball players free agency, abolished the illegal reserve clause and helped overhaul all professional sports in the United States. He has more than earned his place in Cooperstown, Frank Deford says.

As a general rule, I try to take a wide berth of Hall of Fame arguments -- especially in baseball, where what is always called the "shrine," matters more passionately to the cognoscenti.

The fans who champion some old hero are ardent and unrelenting in their support of their guy. They're armed with arcane statistics. They won't take so much as "maybe" for an answer. I've even had admirers of Pete Browning, the so-called Old Gladiator whose major league career ended in 1894, hound me. And I don't even have a vote.

But I must suspend that policy today, to plead with the 16 former players and officials and journalists who are on the special old-timers committee that is considering the candidacy of Marvin Miller, the original players' association chief.

Surely, there must be, among the committee, the necessary dozen men, tried and true, who can vote this week to escort Miller out of the vestibule and into the hallowed rooms where the plaques of the other immortals stare out from the walls.

It is a travesty that Miller has already been denied admission in four previous elections. We are not talking here about some fringe candidate, like The Old Gladiator or Tommy John or Billy Martin. Miller is arguably the most significant figure in 20th century baseball -- certainly no less important to the national pastime than was Jackie Robinson or Branch Rickey or Babe Ruth.

For that matter, because Miller outsmarted the entire establishment, giving baseball players free agency and abolishing the illegal reserve clause, he not only turned the business of baseball on its ear but effectively overhauled all professional sports in the United States. Who has done more? Who?

Had there been no Marvin Miller, Derek Jeter, who is now in emotional disarray because the Yankees only offered him a measly $15 million a year until he is a diamond fossil, would probably be looking at an, oh, $400,000 take-it-or-leave it one-season offer.

Miller changed everything. To be sure, later, he made one gigantic mistake, arguing that his union minions should not have their bodies invaded by steroid testing, but all that he accomplished before that for good puts that one gross misjudgment in shadow.

It is all the more insulting that Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner whom Miller undressed at every turn, has already been safely domiciled for all eternity in Cooperstown. This is like voting Goliath into the Biblical Hall of Fame and keeping out David. This is like putting Jefferson Davis in the Presidents' Hall of Fame and voting down Abe Lincoln four times.

Marvin Miller is a widower, 93 years old. To deny him election is implausible. Not to elect him while yet he lives is cruel. To twist the old Groucho Marx line: For those already in the Hall of Fame, I would not want to be in any shrine that wouldn't let Marvin Miller in. Copyright 2010 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Analysis: For North Korea, Timing Is Everything

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:37:00 -0800

North Korea's most recent provocations include shelling a South Korean island and showing off the regime's latest nuclear facility. The question isn't so much why, but why now?

There is never anything random about North Korean provocations.

In recent days, North Korea fired shells at a South Korea island near the countries' disputed maritime border and revealed its long-hinted-at uranium-based nuclear technology.

Why now?

A large part of the answer has to be that the regime sees an urgent need to build a foundation of putative achievements for "Comrade Youth Captain" Kim Jong Un -- recently promoted to full general -- to justify plans for the youngster to succeed his ailing father, Kim Jong Il, as supreme leader.

Kim Jong Un is way too young and inexperienced to have chalked up earth-shaking achievements, whether as statesman or as general. His official age is listed as 28, though evidence suggests he could younger, only 26 or 27.

Despite his youth, the regime has been building a personality cult in which he appears as a great man whose sweeping futuristic vision is transforming the country's production processes with "CNC" -- computer numerical control.

That sets him up to take credit for what Western visitors to the Yongbyon nuclear site the other day found to be a surprisingly advanced facility for producing nuclear energy with thousands of computer-controlled centrifuges, using uranium-enrichment technology.

North Korea's nuclear program certainly began years before the younger Kim came of age. But the regime clearly hopes its subjects won't do the math. The succession process is troubled, and the boy general badly needs something that will help him earn the respect of the military, whose interests are given official priority behind only those of the leader himself.

The Seoul-based, defector-staffed news organization Daily NK last week quoted recent orders that reportedly came straight from Kim Jong Il and direct that "People's Army soldiers must become a military of steel of which the whole world is scared." In the process, military trainers must teach soldiers to "devote our youth according to the high will of the Comrade Youth Captain."

Daily NK quoted its unnamed North Korean source for this information as saying that "in each meeting there was a lecture about how 'Comrade Youth Captain watches us always.'" Soldiers, however, "just complain," the source said. They "worry about how they will spend the winter, what they will eat." North Korea is expecting a shortfall of 500,000 tons of food in the coming 12 months, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program jointly reported last week.

Assuming North Korea is playing its cards as usual, unveiling the uranium-enrichment program was intended to set up a win-win situation for the younger Kim in the context of the six-party talks in which the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have negotiated with North Korea on and (currently) off for a reversal of its nuclear program.

If there is no renewal of those talks followed by concessions big enough for Kim Jong Un to boast of, the country's propaganda apparatus can still argue that under his leadership North Korea has achieved an additional deterrent against attack by the United States and South Korea.

To intensify pressure for concessions and at the same time highlight its deterrence advances, North Korea may well escalate its recent string of provocations, which also included torpedoing and sinking a South Korea warship on March 26. An international investigative panel said North Korea was responsible, which Pyongyang has denied.

The Japanese newspaper Sankei last week predicted a third North Korean nuclear test, citing satellite photos that it said showed tunneling in the area where the 2006 and 2009 tests were held.

Martin wrote this analysis from Bangkok, Thailand. He is the author of "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty." Copyright 2010 GlobalPost. To see more, visit .

On NPR: Harsh Criticism Over Juan Williams' Firing

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 18:30:05 -0700

Former NPR analyst Juan Williams poses on the red carpet upon arrival at a salute to FOX News Channel's Brit Hume in Washington, DC. Credit: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

Media and political analysts interviewed on All Things Considered agree: NPR acted hastily when it terminated the news analyst's contract following his comments on Fox News about Muslims.

The controversy over this week's termination of news analyst Juan Williams' contract with NPR continues and much of the discussion, including on today's edition of All Things Considered, centers around harsh criticism of the way NPR handled his firing.

It was "a very poor decision," New York Times conservative columnist and NPR contributor David Brooks said on the air just a short time ago. "The merits of what Juan said ... (were) certainly within the realm of acceptable discourse."

Williams' contract was terminated two days after he said on Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor that he gets nervous when he sees people in "Muslim garb" on airplanes. Also on that show, Williams argued that Muslims should not be stereotyped as terrorists.

"He should have been given a chance to talk" to NPR management in person before the dismissal, said E.J. Dionne, liberal columnist for The Washington Post and another NPR contributor. Williams has complained that he was dismissed during a phone call from NPR Senior Vice President for News Ellen Weiss. NPR has said that he was advised several times in recent years not to express personal opinions about controversial topics if he wished to remain as a news analyst with the organization. It is NPR's position that Williams' contract was terminated because his comments violated the organization's standards. Williams has said he thinks NPR wanted to end its relationship with him because he also appeared as a paid commentator on Fox. That network announced Thursday it was extending its contract with Williams.

Kelly McBride, who teaches about journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute, said on ATC that NPR was within its rights to end its relationship with Williams, but that if management had "attended to the conflicts" raised by his commentary on Fox earlier, any problems "could have been avoided."

Finally, American Journalism Review editor Rem Rieder said NPR appears to have acted "abrupty ... rashly" and made "an overly hasty decision."

One other point of agreement among the analysts on ATC: As Rieder put it, this is "a totally unnecessary black eye" for NPR.

"It looks like (NPR is) hell bent on enforcing political correctness," he added. "It kind of just reinforces all those notions."

"I'm concerned about the damage to NPR," Brooks said. Critics -- many from the conservative side of the political spectrum -- are again accusing NPR of having a liberal bias. In Brooks' view, "that stereotype has been completely unfounded" for at least 10 years. But now, "NPR's reputation will be hurt."

Rieder, by the way, wrote today that NPR was "moving too fast" when it cut ties with Williams.

Also weighing in on the Tell Me More blog was frequent contributor Jimi Izrael, who notes that he is "one of the few regular black male voices on NPR." His post, Here Today, Juan Tomorrow?, expresses concern about diversity issues ... and wonders whether he might one day find himself on shaky ground for offering commentary. Copyright 2010 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.