NOTEBOOK: Simplistic storytelling on TV news pushing nation to war

By David McElroy · February 23, 2012

Cleaning out the notebook again…

Cable news can rot your brain and make you crazy. A place where I’ve been going a lot recently almost always has a TV on cable news. After being subjected to this garbage for awhile, I sort of understand why so many people favor going to war — or at least “intervening” — in countries with oppressive dictators. The simplistic, emotional and context-free reports from television leave the impression that the obvious right thing to do is to intervene.

It seems that most people have seen so many simplistic television shows and movies — and TV news mirrors that simplicity — that they believe fixing complex problems is simple and easy. It’s maddening, because the solutions aren’t as easy as implied by the narratives laid out on news channels.

Speaking of wars, I’m worry about what’s going on in Iran. I’m not making a prediction about what’s going to happen there, because there are too many possible scenarios. But I can see the very real possibility of it leading to a large war that most people don’t want — all because the small players there are aligned with bigger powers outside the region.

If Israel attacks Iran, there’s a possibility that Russia could try to intervene to defend Iran. The Russians have already been warning Israel not to attack. If Russia gets involved — which might not even happen, of course — there’s going to be a lot of internal pressure here for the United States to get involved on the other side. Wasn’t there some big war nearly a hundred years ago that was triggered by an assassination simply because big powers were aligned with the players in a smaller-scale conflict? The Iran-Israel conflict isn’t exactly the same, but it’s similar enough to bring World War I to mind for me.

Did you watch Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate? I didn’t. Other than catching a few specific segments on YouTube, I haven’t seen a single debate during this campaign cycle. It keeps me saner not to get frustrated with the idiocy that comes with these things. I like to pretend they don’t exist. Now if I could just pretend that the federal government didn’t exist, that would be a good next step.

Those who oppose manufacturing in China are today’s Luddites. That hit me the other night while I was listening to an economics podcast. The Luddites were those in England in the 19th century who didn’t want the mechanization of the textile industry and went so far as to destroy equipment to try to “save jobs.” Those who are trying to stop international trade just don’t understand economics and don’t understand that the distributed manufacturing process that we see today is good for everybody involved.

On the same subject, those who complain about Chinese manufacturing because they say it’s terrible for the workers need to watch the ABC News report from this week about what it’s like in the Foxconn factory that makes Apple equipment. People are lined up competing for those jobs, because they’re far better jobs than they can get back in their small villages. Take a look at the conditions in the villages they’re escaping from. Would they like easier work and higher pay. Of course. (Wouldn’t we all?) The work they’re doing is making their lives better. It’s making their families’ lives better. And it’s providing those in the West with products for lower prices than we’d otherwise pay. It’s a win for everyone.

If you’re interested in how American companies can successfully compete against Chinese manufacturing, there’s a fascinating discussion of that on this week’s EconTalk podcast. Adam Davidson of NPR’s Planet Money talks about his recent reporting about what makes some U.S. manufacturers successful. I learned a lot from the interview, and I highly recommend it.

Did you happen to notice that the National Enquirer has what it claims is a picture of Whitney Houston in her casket? That sparked a bit of discussion on my Facebook page Wednesday about the propriety of it. At least one person saw it as disrespectful, but someone else objected to the “inherent gnosticism” of being upset about such displays.

I neither object to it nor promote it. I just find it funny. I’m amused that there’s this weird fascination with celebrities that creates a market for it and I’m amused that the tabloids cater to that in ways that make it seem like important news. All around, it’s just self-satirizing.

One of our regulars around here got some very good news on Wednesday. He’s recently returned to full-time ministry and got official word from his denomination that he’s been reinstated to the roster of active, full-time ordained ministers. This is great news for him and for the church he’s recently started serving. We’re proud of you, JB. Keep up the good work.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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