NBC / Former CIA officer: Jail sentence ‘a badge of honor’

Former CIA officer: Jail sentence ‘a badge of honor’

The Editors Say: So Kiriakou finally saw the light, and we always applaud people who finally “get it” and try to atone for their crimes and misdeeds, but we have a bit of a problem with this spy who came in from the cold. Leaving aside the fact that, by own admission, not too long ago he was quite alright with the use of torture to extract confessions, doesn’t a well-educated fellow like Kiriakou have any idea what the CIA is all about? Doesn’t he know, for example, after more than 75 years of exposés, what this agency is tasked with doing around the world and on whose behalf? Even if there was no “torture” per se, which continues, by the way, only in more camouflaged form, doesn’t Kiriakou realize that serving the CIA is serving the vilest of political agendas around the world? Incidentally, as frequently —Eds.

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TODAY (NBC) | Aired on January 28, 2013
A federal judge has sentenced former CIA officer John Kiriakou to 30 months in jail, making him the first officer to be sent to jail for leaking classified secrets. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports on the case and Kiriakou says he leaked the information to speak out against torture, calling himself a “whistleblower.”

By Eun Kyung Kim, TODAY contributor
The CIA agent sentenced to prison for leaking the identify of a covert officer involved in waterboarding acknowledged he made a “terrible mistake” but said he prides himself on highlighting the agency’s use of torture.

“I wear this conviction as a badge of honor because this conviction is not about leaking. This case was about torture from the very beginning,” John Kiriakou told TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie on Monday. “If every officer or former CIA officer was prosecuted for referring a reporter to a former colleague for an interview, the prisons would be bursting with CIA officers.”

Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison last Friday as part of a plea deal. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said she would abide by the terms but called the sentence “way too light.” “This is not a case of a whistleblower,” Brinkema said. “This is a case of a man who betrayed a solemn trust.”

But Kiriakou defended his actions, denying his intent was to raise his media profile and saying what he did fit the precise legal definition of a whistleblower.

“That is someone who brings to light evidence of waste, fraud or illegality and that’s what I did,” he said.
Kiriakou originally defended the CIA’s interrogation techniques, saying in a 2007 interview he felt the agency had “gotten a bum rap on waterboarding.” But he told TODAY he was misled at the time.

Former CIA agent John Kiriakou talks with TODAY’s Matt Lauer in 2007 about the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes.

“I was relying on what the CIA had told CIA officers inside the building, that these methods were effective. That turned out to be a lie,” he said.

Prosecutors said Kiriakou leaked the name of a CIA operative to a reporter who then passed it along to defense attorneys representing detainees in Guantanamo prison. Kiriakou told TODAY he should have never revealed the name of the undercover agent.

“That was a terrible mistake,” he said. But he also said he didn’t realize he was endangering the individual because he had heard the agent had retired.

“I didn’t realize that he had retired undercover,” Kiriakou said. “That’s not an excuse. It’s not a defense. It’s an explanation.”

Prosecutors said Kiriakou endangered the life of the undercover officer and damaged the CIA’s ability to pursue, capture and interrogate key suspects involved in the September 11 attacks on the United States.
“I accept responsibility for my wrongdoing,” he said but he then turned the blame to others.
He said prosecutors also should have pursued the reporter involved “because he really wasn’t a journalist; he was working for the defense.”

Kiriakou said he also hopes President Obama will commute his sentence because “I know in his heart, he’s anti-torture.”

“This case is about torture and I would hate for there to be only one person going to prison related to the torture program and it being me when the torturers are walking free,” he said. “And those who conceived of the torture are free, those who destroyed evidence of the torture are free and even the attorneys who papered over the torture are free.”

Crabs Likely Do Feel Pain: Now What Are We Going to Do About It?

by Steve Williams

New research has demonstrated that crustaceans are likely capable of feeling pain, but will this finally be enough to prevent people from boiling them alive?

Not cuddly like a kitten, but is that their fault? Fish and crustaceans represent a missive failure of empathy in the human race.

The problem is substantially aggravated by the existence of restaurant chains like Red Lobster, that induce the notion that lobsters grow on trees. Firms like Red Lobster (currently owned by Gneral Mills) contribute greatly to the overfishing of all seas and decimation of the oceans, patterns reinforced by the latest bourgie craze, “top chef” programs on TV, which “democratize” the hedonistic fixations of the super-rich. Hey, but who cares, when the shareholders are making a nice dollar off of this thoughtless practice? —Ed.

New Research into Decapod Crustaceans

Testing animals like crustaceans for pain has been difficult because facial and auditory clues cannot be measured like they would be in other animals. However a demonstration of rapid learning after painful stimuli was, researcher Prof Bob Elwood from Queen’s University Belfast concluded, a key indicator of a pain response over a simple “nociception” response, this the term given to the reflex withdrawal of a limb following noxious stimuli that doesn’t require higher cognitive function.

Most importantly, this rapid learning could be tested for in the lab. Therefore, Elwood and his team devised a series of experiments involving 90 shore crabs.

They took the crabs and individually placed them in a brightly lit chamber. The researchers exploited the crabs’ natural instinct to run for cover by creating two dark shelters within the chamber, one of which was to be the “wrong” shelter. Then, through a series of 10 trials, every time the crabs entered the “wrong” shelter, they were given a mild shock to their legs.

Those crabs that received a shock during the trial were, by the third run through, switching their choice of shelter during subsequent tests, potentially indicating that not only had they felt the painful stimuli but, crucially, that they were discriminating on that basis.

Furthermore, during the trial many of the crabs did something that would normally go against their instincts: they shunned the usual safety of their dark shelters and remained in the lit area, seemingly to avoid the risk of shock. An increasing number of crabs demonstrated this behavior throughout the rest of the trial.

Researchers, publishing in the Journal for Experimental Biology, say this set of results, along with data collected in previous years, shows that the shore crabs demonstrate key criteria for pain experience and that the results were broadly similar to those in vertebrate studies.

Some in the field have not been convinced by these findings however. Reports the Guardian:

“It looks to me that the authors have demonstrated that crabs move away from a potentially damaging stimulus,” said Dr Magnus Johnson, a lecturer in environmental marine biology at the University of Hull. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that they sense ‘pain’.”

Prof Paul Hunt, emeritus professor of biology at the University of Leicester agreed. “I don’t think you can really say scientifically that animals, like a crab, can be aware of a sensation that we know as pain … we just don’t know.”

Still, a number of other non-affiliated scientists have said this research provides a basis of thought that decapod crustaceans certainly might feel pain. Francesca Gherardi, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Florence in Italy, says, “It is avoidance learning that makes the difference,” and that more research should be done to assess the crustacean’s discrimination abilities between painful and nonpainful situations.

With billions of crabs and lobsters being dismembered and boiled alive every year in the culinary industry, Professor Elwood is adamant that these results, at the very least, should begin a wider debate about how we treat crustaceans.

“You have the most extraordinary treatment of these animals … even if there’s a slight chance they feel pain, I feel we should start attending to that now,” Elwood says. “You have lobsters being processed, prawns that are being processed live by the front end, the head and the thorax being torn off. And the head with the brain will carrying on being a viable nervous system and will continue to go on like that for an hour or so.”

There’s more research to be done. Elwood’s next job will be to assess whether stress hormones in the crab rise after painful stimuli, another key indicator of a pain experience. If they do, that would appear to go a long way in confirming these finding. If not, it would speak against pain experience.

While this research has been called compelling, and indeed builds on a body of evidence that already exists, animal welfare standards throughout the EU and most of the world in fact fail to grant meaningful welfare protections to crabs, lobsters and shellfish, something that seems unlikely to change in the near future unless studies like these are given the attention they deserve.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve Williams (@stevenblue) is a passionate supporter of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (LGBT) rights, human rights, animal welfare and health care reform. He is a published novelist, poet and citizen journalist, and a scriptwriter for computer games, film and web serials.

Too Much: Chronicles of Inequality (Jan. 21, 2013)

	January 21, 2013
THIS WEEK
The share of paycheck income going to America’s top 1 percent, we now know,has nearly doubled since 1979. Can we put a human face on a stat like this?How about the face of Tim Cook, the Apple CEO. Cook has a rather sweet pay deal going. Even if Apple shares show 0% gain over the next eight years, Cook will still be able to pocket $532 million by year-end 2021.Or how about the face of Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan Chase CEO who turned his bank’s investment division into a high-risk profit center? A JPMorgan report out last week puts a significant share of the blame for a $6 billion trading loss JPMorgan suffered last year squarely on Dimon’s shoulders.The JPMorgan board, in response, has slashed Dimon’s annual pay in half — down to $11.5 million. Dimon may not notice. He’s already sitting on a personal stash of JPMorgan shares worth $263 million.Enough faces for you? In this week’s Too Much, we have more.	About Too Much, a project of the Institute for Policy StudiesProgram on Inequality and the Common Good Subscribe to Too MuchJoin us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter
GREED AT A GLANCE
Back in early 1980s America, “filthy rich” meant Dallas. That famed Larry Hagman TV series made North Texas “flash and cash” the prime national symbol of grand fortune. But today’s North Texas fortunes, says a new Dallas Morning News analysis, make the “oilmen of 1982 seem like quaint relics.” Back then, the most lavish home in Dallas — a four-story manse on the city’s exclusive Park Lane — carried a $2 million price-tag. In 2009, a nearby mansion on that same Park Lane went for $29 million. North Texas billionaire Alice Walton and her immediate family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, today hold $107.8 billion in net worth, half as much wealth, after inflation, as the entire 1982 Forbes 400 . . .Over 70 top U.S. CEOs think America’s seniors are getting too many of our tax dollars. They’ve joined in a “Fix the Debt” campaign that’s calling for cuts to Social Security. But these same CEOs don’t seem to have any problem with John Sperling, the 91-year-old now collecting more tax dollars than any senior in U.S. history. Sperling has just stepped down as executive chair of the Apollo Group, the for-profit education giant that runs the University of Phoenix. Apollo owes its earnings to the tax dollars that finance federal student aid programs, and Apollo’s board has just gifted a good chunk of these dollars, some $5 million, to Sperling as a “special retirement bonus.” He’ll also be receiving a $71,000 per month annuity. Sperling, notes analyst Michelle Leder, currently holds Apollo stock worth $228 million . . .The poorest 20 percent of Nebraska households pay 6.4 percent of their income on state sales tax. Sales tax costs Nebraska’s richest 1 percent only 0.8 percent of their income. Nebraska’s tax system, governor Dave Heineman declared last week, “needs to be modernized.” But his proposed modernization won’t help any of Nebraska’s poor. Heineman wants to expand the state’s sales tax — to raise the $2.4 billion in new revenue Nebraska would need if the state adopts his plan to eliminate the state income tax, a levy that hits the rich harder than the poor. In Louisiana, Bobby Jindal is also now pushing to eliminate state income taxes. Governor Jindal’s plan would reduce taxes on his state’s top 1 percent an average $25,423 and raise taxes on middle-income households by $534.	Quote of the Week“Running for federal office means spending your days and nights courting a very narrow set of very rich donors who have the power to fuel your campaign or turn off the lights.” Adam Lioz and Blair Bowie, Elected by 32 Donors, for 32 Donors,American Prospect, January 17, 2013
PETULANT PLUTOCRAT OF THE WEEK
Tomi Ryba, the CEO at Silicon Valley’s El Camino Hospital, must be feeling a little ornery these days. Ryba only makes a pittance compared to other health care execs in California. In fact, ten of them make over double the $696,000, plus 30 percent bonus, that Ryba pockets. And none of those ten have had voters trying to cut their pay! This past November, local voters passed a measure that caps Ryba’s pay at twice the pay of California governor Jerry Brown. For Ryba, the cap means a pay cut down to $347,974. But she’s fighting back. Her El Camino board is suing the two hospital workers who filed the original pay cap ballot initiative. One of the two workers sued, psychiatric technician Kary Lynch, says he will not let the lawsuit intimidate him. Explains Lynch: “I just can’t see why anybody should be paid that amount of money.”	Like Too Much? Email this issue to a friend
IMAGES OF INEQUALITY
Larry Chait, for the Billboard Project	Web GemNational Priorities Projct Build a Better Budget/ If America’s rich paid income taxes at higher rates, how much more could we do to help create a more perfect union? This interactive tool can help you find answers.
PROGRESS AND PROMISE
In 2012, a new study revealed last week, America’s top 32 donors to Super PACs contributed an average $10 million each — and together poured as much into the elections as candidates Obama and Romney raised from their 3.7 million less-than-$200 contributors combined. A “plutocracy of donors,” notes Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman, is replacing a “democracy of voters.” But this past weekend, thousands of those voters came togetherfor a “Money Out, Voters In” day of protest. Over 350 cities and towns, organizers note, have already called for a repeal of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the 2010 ruling that has opened the door to a virtually unlimited billionaire presence in America’s elections.	Take Action on InequalityHelp demand democracy. Take a look at a possibleaction plan for organizinga “Money Out, Voters In” citizens campaign in your community.
INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS
	Stat of the WeekThe world’s 100 richest billionaires netted $240 billion in income last year, calculates the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. That would be enough, notes an Oxfam International reportreleased last week, to end extreme global povertyfour times over.
IN FOCUS
Why Some No Longer Sing the Beltway BluesHow do unequal societies solve the problems — like traffic congestion — that make us miserable? They come up with solutions that make life easier for rich people.Politicians and bureaucrats “inside the Beltway” that circles Washington, D.C., pundits like to prattle, simply do not understand the challenges of daily life that average Americans face “outside the Beltway.”But here’s something the pundits have yet to realize: If you really want to understand everyday life in a deeply unequal society like the United States, the best place to look may now be on the Beltway.Right there on the asphalt concrete, anyone who bothers to look can see all the tensions and frustrations that define daily life in an America ever more divided between a prospering rich and a shrinking, struggling middle class.The highway officials who run the Beltway stretch that winds through Northern Virginia have just opened up the nation’s latest set of “Lexus lanes.” For a stiff fee, affluent motorists can now zip around the Beltway in “express toll lanes” while their less affluent fellow motorists sit stalled in rush-hour traffic jams. And those fellow motorists do a lot of stalling. The Washington region has more traffic congestion than any other major metro area in the entire United States. In 2010, the latest national Urban Mobility Report details, commuters in the D.C. area lost an incredible 74 hours to traffic jams. In 1982, by contrast, Washington area commuters lost just 20 hours to slow traffic. Something else fundamental — besides traffic — has changed around Washington since 1982. The area has become substantially more unequal. The national capital region used to be a middle class haven, a place where average Americans, the Washington Post recalls, could take home “modest but steady paychecks” as federal employees. But a string of White House initiatives, starting under Bill Clinton and accelerating in the Bush years, have outsourced a heavy share of federal jobs to private contractors. The dollars that the federal government is funneling to these contractors in the Washington area have, overall, quadrupled since 1990. For average workers, this sea-change in federal employment practice has meant less secure employment and smaller paychecks. For Washington’s “growing upper class of federal contractors, lobbyists, and lawyers,” notes a recent Reuters analysis, this switch has brought a steady gusher of windfalls. Two decades ago, a family had to be making $368,000, after adjusting for inflation, to enter the Washington region’s most affluent 1 percent. Top 1 percent status in the region today doesn’t kick in until a household is making $527,000. In 2011, the top 5 percent of households in the D.C. region took home 54 times more income than households in the poorest 20 percent. No state in the entire nation has a wider top-to-bottom gap. Economists see some powerful links between levels of inequality this high and traffic congestion. The more wealth concentrates, they explain, the more speculative the housing market becomes. In deeply unequal regions, the wealthy bid up the price of the choicest real estate, and that forces cash-squeezed middle-class families to move further out to find decent housing. The further away people live from their work, the more traffic on the roads. Those American counties where commuting times have increased the most, Cornell economist Robert Frank points out, just happen to be those counties “with the largest increases in inequality.” How should we respond to all this congested commuting? Americans have traditionally battled traffic jams by building new roads and bridges, with the dollars for this construction coming primarily out of taxes on gasoline. But state gas taxes in the United States, on average, haven’t increased in a decade. In 14 states, gas taxes haven’t increased in 20 years. In Virginia, the gas tax hasn’t nudged up in 25 years. Highway officials, denied adequate gas tax revenues, have had to hunt for alternative solutions. Enter “Lexus lanes.” A dozen metro areas, USA Todayreports, now have highways that “charge cars rising tolls as traffic increases.” The constant goal: keep the traffic in Lexus lanes moving at a fast clip. If too many people start using the lanes and traffic slows, the tolls rise — and don’t start sinking until the car volume drops enough to get traffic moving again. Toll fees on the new Washington Beltway Lexus lanes have no cap. In really bad traffic, officials acknowledge, tolls might jump to $1.25 per mile. For a 28-mile round-trip on the Beltway Lexus lanes, a motorist could face a toll over $20. Some motorists — like the top execs at Fluor, the Fortune 500 construction giant — won’t have any trouble affording fares that rise that high. Fluor teamed with Transurban, another private company, and the Virginia Department of Transportation to build the Beltway Lexus lanes. In exchange for its investment in this construction, the Fluor-Transurban consortium will now get all the toll revenue the Beltway Lexus lanes generate over the next 75 years. That should be enough to keep the CEOs of Fluor in considerable clover. The current CEO, David Seaton, made $6.75 million in 2011. The five top execs at Fluor took in $23.4 million in 2011, up from $22.7 million in 2010. A real solution to the Washington metro area’s chronic road congestion would, of course, bring public transportation into the mix. Interestingly, a project to expand the Maryland side of the D.C. area’s subway system with light-rail has been floating around for years — but still can’t find the funding to start. This inaction in Maryland reflects a broader national trend. U.S. investments in infrastructure have fallen off dramatically, from 3.3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product in 1968 to 1.3 percent of GDP in 2011, a long-term decline that began at almost exactly the same time as inequality in America started rising. Like this article? Sign up to receive the Too Muchweekly in your email inbox. Researchers see no coincidence here. The U.S. states where the rich have gained the most at the expense of the middle class turn out to be the states that invest the least in infrastructure. One explanation: Middle class people, a 2012 Center for American Progressreport points out, have a vested interest in infrastructure investment. They depend on good public roads, schools, and transit. Wealthy people don’t. If public services frazzle, they can opt out to private alternatives. And the more wealth concentrates, the more political leaders will tilt toward the wealthy — and deny public services the funds they need to thrive. And so, in an ever more unequal United States, we get more Lexus lanes. For the affluent, the lanes make for an ideal solution. The wealthy get speedy, tension-free commutes — at a cost they find negligible. The rest of us do get something out of the deal. We get a reminder, as we sit and stew in horrific traffic, why inequality as deep as ours simply makes no sense.	Email this Too Much issue to a friendNew Wisdom on WealthAdam Davidson, The Smartphone Have-Nots,New York Times, January 15, 2013. Why has the United States grown so unequal? A useful introduction to the current state of the debate.Chuck Marr, The ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Deal and Income Inequality, Off the Charts, January 16, 2013. The latest tax changes, notes this Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, undo only a tiny bit of America’s intense concentration of income in top 1 percent pockets since 1979. Government contemplates imposing higher tax slabs on the super rich, IBN Live, January 17, 2013. In India, where top tax rates have dropped from 56 percent 20 years ago to 30.9 percent today, the prime minister’s top economist is calling for stiffer tax rates on the nation’s wealthy. Emma Seery, Widening gap between rich and poor threatens to swallow us all, Guardian, January 19. 2013. In a world of limited resources, notes this Oxfam adviser, we’ll never be able to end extreme poverty without an “end to extreme wealth.” The Firedoglake Book Salon has just announced an online Sunday chat with Too Much editor Sam Pizzigati on his new book, The Rich Don’t Always Win. The date: February 10, 5 p.m. EST.The details.
NEW AND NOTABLE
An Estate Tax Primer and a Good Bit MorePaul Caron and James Repetti, Occupy the Tax Code: Using the Estate Tax to Reduce Inequality, Pepperdine Law Review, January 2013.Don’t let the title of this excellent new scholarly article fool you. Yes, this piece does detail how estate taxes have historically helped narrow the gap between our richest and everyone else. But the University of Cincinnati’s Paul Caron and Boston College’s James Repetti offer an equally useful bonus: an up-to-date survey on the stats that show how unequal America has become and a cogent summary, beyond the stats, of why no reasonable society should tolerate the levels of inequality that now afflict us. Caron and Repetti also take on those who argue that the really rich have never had any trouble sidestepping estate taxes. If that claim held water, they note, “one would have to wonder why 18 wealthy families contributed $500 million to bankroll a campaign to repeal the estate tax.”	Like Too Much? Email this issue to someone you know who might want to subscribe
ABOUT TOO MUCH
Too Much, an online weekly publication of the Institute for Policy Studies \| 1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036 \| (202) 234-9382 \| Editor: Sam Pizzigati. \| E-mail: editor@toomuchonline.org \| Unsubscribe.	Subscribe to Too MuchForward to a Friend

Is Jon Stewart Alienating His Fanbase?

He was never that clever, to begin with. Just a smartass in a nation festering with idiotized publics. It’s a disgrace that comics like Stewart should be regarded by many as legitimate journalists. —Eds

Jon Stewart is known among his fans for speaking truth to power — see his dismantling of the CNN show “Crossfire,” for instance, or his criticism of President George W. Bush and the “Mess O’Potamia” in Iraq on “The Daily Show.” However, his recent work may have turned some liberals against him.

Stewart defended present-day cinema punching bag “Zero Dark Thirty” as having not been made in cooperation with the government and said the torture it depicts is “difficult,” raising the ire of liberals across the blogosphere. (Andrew Sullivan wrote [3] that “this subject is too important for equivocation or the ‘I’m just a comedian’ cop-out.”)

Then came Stewart’s smug dismissal of the “trillion-dollar coin” idea floated in order to stop the debate debacle in Congress. While the idea was not tenable for many reasons (including optics), Stewart’s open mockery and suggestion of alternatives got him in hot water with Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist.

“Stewart seems weirdly unaware that there’s more to fiscal policy than balancing the budget,” wrote Krugman [4]. “But in this case, he also seems unaware that the president can’t just decide unilaterally to spend 40 percent less.”

Jonathan Chait at New York magazine wrote [5] that the Comedy Central host “flunks econ” and is operating under a premise about economics that was “completely uninformed.” Chait told Salon that he generally agrees with Stewart’s arguments but that the host’s “homespun Hooverism” tends to “dovetail a little bit with elite moderate liberal sentiment. Keynesian economics is not intuitive.”

The root of that so-called Hooverism (“Hoover” as in Herbert, the failed president who presided over the 1929 stock market crash) may stem from an enlightened desire to weigh both sides of every argument equally. “One of the habits he has,” said Chait, a fan of Stewart’s, “is to want to be bipartisan and value that — but sometimes he misunderstands the way he needs to do that. Basically, you’ll have Republicans in Congress do something objectionable, and the Democrats won’t agree to it. Then he’ll blame it on ‘Congress.’ It’s not fair to criticize both parties in Congress when one side is doing something objectionable.”

Leslie Savan, a blogger for The Nation, has long taken issue with Stewart’s equivalency between two sides, citing the 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, which equally criticized activists on the far right (including birthers) and the far left (including groups like CODEPINK, who called George W. Bush a war criminal). “He’s so stuck on tone,” said Savan. “If somebody looks silly, it’s like waving a cape before his comic bull. And, in a way, that came out in this thing with the coin — ‘what a silly, crazy, nutty idea.’ But it was sane compared to what could happen if the House Republicans don’t raise the debt ceiling.”

Stewart has consistently exculpated himself from serious scrutiny by declaring that he’s simply a comedian, but both Chait and Savan declared that he’s more powerful than he lets on, or perhaps knows. “He’s influential in how people process information,” said Chait, and he deserves to be influential.”

Savan stated that Stewart is able to turn his viewers against loopy-seeming but perhaps useful arguments simply with a baleful look or silly accent, cuing the audience to laugh. “If he attaches that mugging look, they start laughing, no matter who the target is. He’s cruel and he doesn’t even know it. He’s a bully! … I think he wants to deny [that he’s anything more than a comedian] so he can maintain that perch of seeing everyone else as being goofy.”

Not every one of his targets, though, is quite so unhappy with their coverage. Ed Needham, a member of Occupy Wall Street’s press relations working group, told Salon that the group hadn’t minded “The Daily Show’s” attempt to paint them as a self-satisfied mix of “moochers” and “Ivy League assholes.”

“We’re certainly worthy of criticism from time to time. There’s gonna be disagreements. There’s certainly no animosity. I think he’s someone who speaks truth to power.”

Indeed, Stewart will always have his fan base, and it’s not just made up of liberals. Afteropening the floor to commenters [6] who took a less dim view of Stewart’s remarks on “Zero Dark Thirty,” Andrew Sullivan emailed Salon: “I don’t consider myself a liberal critic of Stewart; I consider myself a conservative admirer.”

See more stories tagged with:
jon stewart [7],
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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/jon-stewart-alienating-his-fanbase
Links:
[1] http://www.salon.com
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/daniel-daddario
[3] http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2013/01/jon-stewart-on-zero-dark-thirty.html
[4] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/lazy-jon-stewart/
[5] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/jon-stewart-flunks-econ.html
[6] http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2013/01/jon-stewart-on-zero-dark-thirty-ctd.html
[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/jon-stewart
[8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/daily-show
[9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

You Can Fix Stupid

By Laurie Endicott Thomas

Comedian Ron White warns people not to marry somebody who is beautiful but stupid. He explains that a plastic surgeon can fix ugly, but “you can’t fix stupid.” The audience laughs. Who hasn’t had a painfully frustrating experience with an annoyingly stupid person?

However, I think that Ron is wrong. You can fix stupid. The problem is that stupid doesn’t fix itself. Philosophy and education were developed specifically for the purpose of fixing stupid. If people are still stupid even though they’ve been through school, then their school needs to be fixed.

What is stupidity, and how can it be fixed? In the dictionary, stupid has several definitions. The first three refer to stupid people. According to the first definition, a stupid person is “slow of mind.” However, slowness by itself isn’t necessarily a problem. Slow but steady sometimes wins the race. A person who is slow of mind may simply need a bit more time to think things through or a bit more coaching and practice to develop a particular skill. Coaching and practice are particularly important for developing skills in mathematics or music.

The second definition of stupid links stupidity to carelessness: “given to unintelligent decisions or acts : acting in an unintelligent or careless manner.” That kind of stupidity could result from a character flaw, rather than from a defective brain.

The third definition of stupid is “lacking intelligence or reason.” What is reason? The dictionary says that reason is “(1) the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking especially in orderly rational ways : intelligence (2) : proper exercise of the mind.” Thus, stupidity can be the result of a lack of mental discipline. If so, then education can “fix stupid” by helping people develop the proper kinds of mental discipline. I believe that “fixing stupid” ought to be the main purpose of schooling.

Stupidity is an age-old problem. To solve it, human societies developed philosophy, which means love of wisdom. The ancient Athenians developed a seven-course curriculum for teaching wisdom: grammar, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and music. The purpose of Athenian education was to develop a boy’s mind and character so that he would become a good citizen of the Athenian democracy in peace as well as war. The ancient Romans embraced this Athenian curriculum. The Romans called these studies the liberal arts because they considered them appropriate for freeborn men, as opposed to slaves.

The liberal arts have always been valued in societies with a democratic or republican form of government. These arts have always been taught to children who were expected to grow up to be somebody. They have always been withheld from children whose participation in political decision-making was unwanted. That explains why white girls and black boys and girls in the United States weren’t allowed to go to the schools for the rich white boys.

Interest in the liberal arts waned during the Dark Ages but was revived during the High Middle Ages, with the rise of the first universities in Europe. In Northern Italy during the Renaissance, wealthy families also cultivated a curriculum that they called the humanities. It included such subjects as literature, philosophy, and history. Like the liberal arts, these studies were intended to promote pleasant and productive political discussions within the ruling class. Nowadays, people must also understand a lot about science before they can play a productive role in politics.

The liberal arts, the humanities, and the sciences provide the kinds of skills and knowledge that one needs in order to participate meaningfully in a democracy. In fact, the word civility, which most people use to mean good manners, originally meant training in the liberal arts. Unfortunately, the liberal arts have been deliberately suppressed in public schools in the United States. In particular, language arts teachers have been pressured to stop teaching grammar. Yet grammar provides the basic concepts that you need in order to start studying logic. Without skills in logic, you cannot reason. If you cannot reason, you are unreasonable.

Stupid doesn’t fix itself because people who have poor thinking skills are unaware that their thinking skills are poor (a phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger effect). People with poor thinking skills don’t notice that they make mistakes in thinking. After their thinking skills improve, they develop the ability to judge their level of skill; but by that point, they are no longer stupid.

Stupidity can be fixed through an education that places a heavy emphasis on literacy, the liberal arts, the humanities, and the sciences. Unfortunately, “progressive” educators such as John Dewey promoted ineffective methods of reading instruction and then deliberately suppressed training in the liberal arts, the humanities, and the sciences.

As a result, even many people who have been to college “don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology.” Worse yet, their lack of training in the liberal arts has left them unable to reason and unable to notice that they are unreasonable.

The solution to this problem is simple. First, we must teach reading; then, we must teach the liberal arts, the humanities, and the sciences.

http://www.nottrivial.blogspot.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurie has worked as a medical editor and writer for many years. She is the author of the upcoming book Not Trivial: How Studying the Traditional Liberal Arts Can Set You Free, which is being published by Freedom of Speech Publishing.