Archives for November 2012

One of the key story points in “The Wizard of Oz” is that a magical man with all powers ruled the entire land from the Emerald City and could grant whatever he chose to give out of the goodness of his heart. Some people believe the same of the U.S. president.

The Ohio State Buckeyes are 11-0 right now, with just one game to go. Ohio State’s group of football fans is as rabid as any of the other top 15 or 20 college football programs, and they would normally be excited about a possible chance to play for the national championship. There’s just one problem. The Buckeyes are on probation this year and are ineligible to play a post-season game. That was part of the punishment they suffered because of a cheating scandal a few years back.

Now, I understand that a sane person would wonder how these two stories are going to tie together. But even though the ruling body of college football — the NCAA — has judged Ohio State guilty and handed down the sanctions, some of the school’s fans are unhappy. They don’t think it’s fair. So they actually started a petition on the White House website asking Barack Obama to intervene — and somehow declare that Ohio State must be allowed to play for the national title. Here’s what the petition said:

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Most people seem to have very strong feelings about who’s right in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, despite knowing remarkably little about the history surrounding it. Do the details of the Middle East conflicts make your eyes glaze over, because you’ve heard the same stories over and over again? The Onion had a classic article five years ago making the point that these news articles are basically interchangeable as far as Americans are concerned.

As the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians flares up yet again, so are tensions between supporters of the two sides. On Facebook, it’s been pretty heated. When I read the comments from partisans on both sides, you’d think that each side was reading only half of the news and facts from the Middle East — and the other side was reading only the other half of the news and facts.

You can almost take much of their rhetoric (from both sides) and switch it to the other side by changing the names. The cheerleaders for the two sides don’t seem to understand that it’s a complex dispute with fault on both sides, not something that can easily be reduced to a tale of heroes and villains.

I’ve been surprised in the last few days to get questions from people who really don’t know that much about the dispute, people who hear both sides screaming at each other and don’t know what to believe. As a result, I’d like to take a quick look at some of the basic facts of the conflict and show you why I don’t see either side as “good.”

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I found out Sunday night that the Hostess Brownie Bits — and a few other Hostess products — are still on the shelves of the Target near me. But the shelves for Hostess products was mostly empty. I couldn’t find a Twinkie anywhere. What’s really going on as these iconic brands disappear from our store shelves?

Since the company best known for making products such as Twinkies and Wonder Bread announced it was shutting down, I’ve heard two consistent narratives about it. One comes from conservatives and one comes from progressives on the left. I’d like to suggest that both narratives are overly simplistic.

For conservatives, the story of Hostess Brands is a narrative of evil unions destroying an otherwise-healthy company. For progressives, the story of the shutdown is valiant workers standing up against evil bosses in the name of fairness. I don’t think either side has the facts to really back up the story in just those terms.

Let me admit my bias right up front. I can’t stand unions. I wouldn’t be a member of a union. I think they tend to make companies function poorly, because they tend to infect the workers’ attitude with an us vs. them mentality. I still remember when my father worked for a coal mining company when I was in high school, and the miners would go on “wildcat strikes” on the first day of deer-hunting season or when they wanted a day off. They were lazy and had lousy attitudes, from what I could tell.

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