Great, But No G-8?

On May 27, John McCain called for peace talks with China as well as a heavily collaborative effort with Russia to reduce the presence of nuclear warheads worldwide. Perhaps he means to re-re-reiterate his and Obama’s differing stances on holding talks with quasi-enemies and otherwise scary, international villains. The statement also seems congruous with McCain’s general trend of late: distancing himself from the unpopular current administration’s foreign policy initiatives.

The statement, which received prominent attention from the major press, included the declaration that the United States and Russia “no longer are mortal enemies” and their “special responsibility to reduce [the number of nuclear warheads]” now must draw them together:

[The US should] enter into a new arms control agreement with Russia reflecting the nuclear reductions I will seek….In close consultation with our allies, I would also like to explore ways we and Russia can reduce—and hopefully eliminate—deployments of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.

McCain seems to be striking a certain chord with the public in these demands. But turns out it’s played in a minor key: McCain’s vision of “broad-minded internationalism and determined diplomacy” doesn’t even include Russia as a member of the G-8.

In a March 26 speech, McCain stated:

We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia.

Is it really possible for the senator to maintain this pageant-girl idealism for international cooperation while selectively excluding Russia from this influential forum? From the looks of things, that’s not a question worth answering—or asking. The only major print news outlet to pick up on McCain’s discrepancy in this case was The New York Times; none of the other major outlets—including the Associated Press, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post—seemed to find it relevant.

(hat tip to MediaMatters)

 

Os ricos, os melhores

Did you hear about Bruce Charlton’s recently published study in the Times Higher Education? Probably not, because American papers haven’t been covering the issue (not for a lack of dramatic cleavage of classes). I stumbled upon the article on BBCBrasil.com’s web site, which details Charlton’s thesis that

A pequena proporção de estudantes de classe média baixa em universidades renomadas é o “resultado natural de uma diferença de QI entre classes sociais”, afirma o acadêmico inglês Bruce Charlton.

A small proportion of middle class students in universities is the “natural result of a difference in IQ between social classes,” affirms the English academic Bruce Charlton

Other international sources, such as newspapers in Bangalore and Africa, are picking up on the story as well. Charlton’s classist study undermines all attempts at creating non-discriminating public universities and plays into a convenient and naive stereotype. Perhaps Brazil’s current class striations, for example in Rio, where the richest neighborhoods are contrasted within a stone’s toss with expansive favelas, made their editorial board more receptive to fueling a dissenting voice against these claims.

The editor-in-chief of Medical Hypotheses also stated:

When admissions are assumed to be absolutely meritocratic, social class IQ differences of plausible magnitude lead to highly significant effects on the social class ratios of students at university when compared with the general population

 

Exposed in what sense?

A few things about today’s coverage of the election, Iraq, and of completely miscellaneous details — like the fact that Senator John McCain had to have his earwax build-up removed earlier in the year and former Gawker writer Emily Gould’s 12-page musings on her boyfriends Josh and Henry (and other scintillating details).

My morning of media bafflement started off with MSNBC’s show Morning Joe, featuring such incompatible conversationalists as Mika Brzezinski and Pat Buchanan. After a week literally stuffed with conversation of the candidates pitched through the prism of gender and race, I was still shocked and angered about how much sexism Pat Buchanan shoved into the coffee talk. In a discussion over Clinton’s purported lack of ability to move crowds, he said that when she “raises her voice, and when a lot of women do…it reaches a point…where every husband in America has heard at one time or another,” she cannot reach Obama’s “levels effectively, as it is to make them sort of a rally speech. They’re not good at that.”

“I know that’s a sexist comment, but there’s truth to it…there’s truth to it.”

Really, Pat?

If the pronouns were switched, and somehow Obama’s race was implicated as the rationale for some oratory ineptitude, I’m sure this comment wouldn’t have floated through the air so breezily. In fact, Brzezinski, as the sole woman on the show, initially seemed to feel some responsibility to repudiate Buchanan’s out of line commentary. However, as Megan Garber points out in the Columbia Journalism Review’s blog, Mika’s pointed finger of justice degrades into quasi-ambivalent, polite laughter. Maybe she felt that defending Hillary and womankind would make her a “b-word” in the eyes of her male counterparts, as she previously referred to the expletive. To make matters worse, Mike Barnicle likened Clinton to “everyone’s first wife standing outside a probate court.” Apt, fair commentary being broadcast to the masses from the designated commentator of the show.

My countenance shaken and my mind reeling, as is often the case after too much time spent with Pat Buchanan in my living room, I took the subway into work, sat down at my desk, and began perusing the New York Times headlines. Here is what I immediately found: sordid details of McCain’s health situation this year, apropos earwax removals and Mrs. McCain’s training in searching for melanoma around the Senator’s belt-line. Whatever. I also was surprised to see that the site’s primary photo was dedicated to the tattooed body of Emily Gould, linking to the online leak of her Sunday feature in the NYTimes Magazine entitled “Exposed.”

For those fortunate enough not to have read about Gould (and by reading about her, I think we immediately know too much), she served as a main blogger at Gawker.com, the boring, bored Manhattan businessman’s companion to Perez. Though I’m definitely not a fan of Gould, the article was featured in such a prominent location on the web site’s page that I ended up clicking on the article and beginning to read through it.

After hitting the “next page” button 12 times, I finally reached the lackluster conclusion. No broader, sweeping revelations about blogs or even Gawker in general were hidden in the wretched loins of this piece. The only thing that was “exposed,” as the title teases, was a reaffirmation that Gould IS in fact starved for attention, long-winded, and loves to over-share about details on her personal life. After learning about her brooding ex-boyfriend Henry, who plays the bass guitar in a band and enjoys Project Runway, and her steamy trip to Fire Island with co-worker Josh, I found no deeper, more fascinating or relevant information disguised within. Instead of relating these personal stories to a larger message about blogging in general, the rambling piece fizzled to a finish with an assertion that over sharing on the internet is dangerous. Was she aware of her grossly contradicting nature in saying this and is really more ironic and fantastic than I realized, or was she simply rationalizing this cross-over into print media?

Also, I felt like I was looking at some Suicide Girls application — a barrage of artsy, half-lit photos of Emily’s tattooed body strewn across her bed, Mac conveniently crammed into the shot, littered the left sidebar of every drawn out page.

My erstwhile question was why NYTimes found this memoir-in-a-magazine important enough to a) keep in its incorrigibly bloated, ramblingly long state, b) preview it online before its Sunday release, and c) feature it so prominently on the website. Was there some ulterior motive on the Times’ part? Someone at work today suggested that such a juicy memoir might boost blog hits, thus creating smiles all around.

Whatever the reason, one thing that they DEFINITELY didn’t feature was the recently released report on the financial situation of the war. When the Pentagon itself finds that you’ve been irresponsible with billions of dollars that weren’t yours to begin with, and that you’ve signed over millions of those to nebulous purposes in completely unethical ways, it’s probably just the tip of the iceberg…but nobody seems interested. To find this headline, you had to click the “U.S.” section and scroll way down past David Petraeus’ latest and greatest remarks as to why the war is curiously not going the way he promised it would be last December.