What Would Be Wrong About Being Wrong?

You know, in talking to people about current events I have come to the realization that there are a lot of people out there that don't take the whole Global Warming thing seriously. As mentioned in the Newsweek article on the subject, sceptics don't like the label "deniers" but instead prefer "doubters." That's a subtle difference but I'm going to make it the crux of my argument.

Through the ages one thing in science has remained undisputably true: There is nothing that is impossible, only improbable. Label something beyond the realm of possiblility and you can rest assured that it will be found to be fact. As Tommy Lee Jones' character says in Men In Black, "a thousand years ago everybody knew as a fact, that the earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat...imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

Now, for me the really surprising thing about the whole debate is that for the most part it seems to be drawn along liberal/conservative political divisions. I can't quite figure that out. Making the argument political seems to relegate it to a question of economics and maybe I should start thinking of this whole thing in those terms.

There are extremists on both ends and they have done their part to shape the discussion by polarizing the subject. The most common characterizations go that anyone that believes we are affecting our environment is a "treehugger" more concerned with bark beetles than people, and anyone that is a "doubter" would sell their grandmother to make a buck. However, the truth is that for the most part we are all centrist; as one person I know put it: "My wallet says I'm a conservative but my heart says I'm liberal."

Surely there would be economic ramifications to changing how businesses do busisness in a greener world. But haven't we seen some of the same dread before? Didn't the South make the argument that their industry couldn't survive without slave labor? Then the same argument was made at the turn of the century about child labor. With each sucessive change industry and our economy has adapted and we now look back and wonder, from a moral high ground, how those systems ever came to be in place, when we all know that the answer is pure economics.

Now, I'm not demonizing the doubters as proponents of slavery, child labor, or other evils (after all, that's the job of the "treehugger" extremists of this debate.) On the contrary, I take a much less drastic approach to the problem. The fact that the doubters avoid the title "deniers" implies that they are not 100 percent sure of their position; there is room for doubt. So, how can they afford to be wrong? I mean, if there is any hint of merit to the global warming concept, and we might possibly be headed for dire straits, do we dare take the chance to be wrong?

Contradictions Of The Day

1. Frosted Mini-Wheats Big Bite (pictured at right and found on the shelf at my Publix.) Need I say more?

2. I saw a car this morning with a sign on it that read: "Make $8000 a month 10 Persons Needed." The sign was actually some shoe polish on the rear window of a beat to hell Chevy Lumina. $8000 you say? Chevy Lumina held together with bailing wire? Well, anything fancier would be ostentatious now wouldn't it?

Because He Said It Betterer

I am posting an editorial piece from Newsweek in violation of copyright laws. I had thought about composing a post on this very subject but Mr. Ellis Close has beaten me to the punch and hit more efficiently and effectively with the choices he made in composition.

Ignore the Noose Makers
Because of lynching's violent, racist history, the mere invocation of it can make people insanely angry.
by Ellis Cose

In an age when lynching is no longer accepted, what is the meaning of a noose? When a twisted rope, evocative of such a hideous history, hangs so far away from the horrors that defined it, is it still worth getting worked up about? Or when nooses appear on trees, on doors and in well-traveled public places, should we dismiss them as tasteless diversions? Cries for attention from sick, benighted souls? If only the questions were purely hypothetical. In the past few weeks, nooses have appeared in numerous places, spawning an orgy of coverage along with questions about their significance and potential harm.

The catalyst seems to be the brouhaha in Jena, La. Last year six black students there were accused of beating up a white student after three nooses were found hanging from a tree outside a school. The blacks were charged with attempted murder. Though the charges were subsequently reduced, outrage over the students' being charged with such a serious crime culminated in a demonstration last month that drew an estimated 10,000 protesters to the tiny town of 3,000.

Now, it appears, nooses have become the totem of choice for some troubled people. Earlier this month a black professor at Columbia University's Teachers College found a noose hanging from her office door. USA Today recently cataloged an array of such incidents: nooses at the University of Maryland, in a Long Island, N.Y., police locker room and in a bus-maintenance garage in Pittsburgh, to name a few. RACIAL CRISIS? OR JUST ROPE IN THE HANDS OF FOOLS? asked the headline atop a New York Times column.

I'd lay odds on the latter. This is an outbreak of copycat idiocy perpetrated by mean-spirited people who get a thrill out of seeing others riled up. And a lot of people have taken the bait. At Columbia, the noose spawned a rally in support of the targeted professor. In her State of the College address, president Susan H. Fuhrman said the perpetrator had "targeted all of us who believe in diversity."

It's unclear exactly what effect the noose was supposed to have. But it is clear that it stirred emotions out of proportion to its threat. The reason, of course, has to do with the history of the noose—or, to be more precise, the legacy of lynching.

Between 1882 and 1951, more than 5,000 people were lynched in the United States, according to statistics kept by the Tuskegee Institute. Not all were black. Roughly a fourth were white, Mexican or Asian. But lynchings of blacks were different from lynchings of whites. Many were "spectacle" lynchings, public rituals designed to make the point that "black bodies still belonged to white people," writes Cynthia Carr in "Our Town," which explores a 1930 lynching in Marion, Ind. Newspapers and public officials frequently egged on the lynch mobs, plying them with lurid (and often false) details. "Stories of sexual assault, insatiable black rapists, tender white virgins … were the bodice rippers of their day … The cumulative impression was of a world made precarious by Negroes," reports historian Philip Dray in "At the Hands of Persons Unknown."

Because of lynching's violent, racist and sexually charged history, the mere invocation of it can make people insanely angry—or, as Clarence Thomas demonstrated during his Senate confirmation hearings (when he referred to his treatment as a "high-tech lynching"), silence a roomful of normally loquacious politicians. Still, 2007 is different from 1907.

Hate crimes didn't even have a name then. It was reasonable to believe, especially in the South, that "uppity," or even just random blacks, could be lynched with impunity. In 1990, Congress mandated the attorney general to collect data on hate crimes, and the FBI pledged to work with local officials to prosecute such transgressions. More important, lynchings and other hate crimes—be they anti-Semitic, anti-gay or anti-black—no longer have broad public support.

People still engage in hateful behavior: the FBI recorded 7,163 bias incidents in 2005, the last year for which statistics are available, down slightly from the 7,947 recorded a decade earlier. The majority were racial incidents, mostly against blacks. Still, no one really believes a Columbia professor is about to be lynched.

A position paper by the American Psychological Association concluded that most hate crimes were the work of "otherwise law-abiding young people." Their actions were sometimes fueled by alcohol or drugs, "but the main determinant appears to be personal prejudice," which blinds aggressors "to the immorality of what they are doing." Extreme crimes "tend to be committed by people with a history of antisocial behavior."

Maybe it's time to stop getting so upset about these stupid gestures. Use them as occasions to educate—to revisit and extract lessons from history. And in cases where prosecutable crimes are committed, make the fools feel the full impact of the law. But to treat their acts as a serious expression of anything other than cruelty is to grant them an importance that they do not deserve.

The Price Is Wrong, Drew

Recently, Drew Carey took over host duties on The Price Is Right from the retired Bob Barker (pictured at right leaving the stage for the last time.) Bob had hosted for thirty-five years, many of which were filled with some kind of off-screen drama including affairs with the staff and numerous sexual harrassment lawsuits. As a testament to his likability he survived all of them.

Often, when I'm home, I like to eat my lunch while guessing dollar amounts for things that I will never buy. But you know, Ever since Mr. Carey took over hosting duties, I have felt that he's not going to last. It's not a case of him hitting his stride. He's just not right for the job. But if he does plan to stay he's got a few things that he's going to need to address:

1. He won't shut up. Bob didn't feel the need to fill every silence with his voice. Drew Carey can't stand the silence and feels like he should be saying something. His hosting duties most resemble an announcer at the dog track. For instance, when a contestant is called down to contestants' row he calls the action all the way down; "She's getting up...She's getting up...She's running down...Here she comes...Here she comes." And as you can see he has a habit for saying the same thing twice. Even better is his calling out the numbers on the Big Wheel as they come around; "there's 35¢, now 60¢, 20¢, 40¢, here comes 75¢, now 55¢, now 95¢, now 50¢..." Perhaps he feels that a large portion of the viewing audience can't actually "view."

Advice: Shut up and let the show happen. Silence=Confidence. The people will say and do things that are entertaining. You aren't doing stand-up.

2. Mr. Carey often makes fun of the models; Bob merely had fun with the models. Drew is constantly jokingly pointing out that the models are wearing high heels while demostrating the treadmill or exercise bike prizes. Well Mr. Carey, you should know that there are a lot of us that watch the show specifically for the models in high heels. I mean, there's only so many times I can bid on "A New Car!" or the perennial sauna before it loses it's appeal.

Advice: Don't make fun of the show; viewers don't appreciate it because it makes them think you are making fun of them. And let the models do their thing; point and be pretty. They have more fans than you do.

3. The advertisers on the show seem to believe that the same people are watching as before while Mr. Carey, it seeems, is trying to make the show a little younger. All of the ads are still for "HoverRound" Scooters, mail-order diabetes medication, laxatives that "taste good," and Medicare Health Plans. Somebody needs to get the advertisers and producers together so that they can decide what their target demographic is. Something tells me the advertisers will win out.

Advice: Slow down and act more like a distinguished older fellow. Court the blue-hairs and they will immortalize you. Show the program some respect as though it were an elderly person. The viewing audience demands it.

You know, in the end, none of this should surprise me. Drew Carey has a habit of making it all about him. When he ressurected "Whose Line Is It Anyway," contrary to the British version, he made the "Grand Prize" an improvisation with him. And he was easily the worst improviser on the show!

Something's gotta give. I can't watch The View and keep my lunch down.