Lionel Shriver is a novelist who is controversial in the literary world for her withering criticism of “cultural appropriation.” It’s the notion that if you belong to one ethnic, racial, or gender group, you’re barred from writing fiction with characters from another group. If you’re Asian, for instance, you must stick to Asian characters. Shriver calls this idea, which extends to cuisine, music, and fashion, a “cockamamie concept.”
She’s fearless. We know this because she’s now attacked one of the biggest shortcomings of journalists, who are sensitive to criticism. Shriver’s practice is to “avoid squandering time on what ‘might happen.’ Half the average newspaper falls into this category,” she writes in the Spectator, the British magazine. “It’s hard enough to keep up what is happening.”
Public speakers, she goes on, “promote courses of action that they’re in no position to institute: all talk. The government ‘might’ adopt some policy about which we’ll never hear again. Were all those ‘promising’ medical studies to have proved out … we’d now have eliminated cancer, Alzheimer’s, malaria, eczema, heart disease, criminality, schizophrenia, ageing, obesity, HIV, and hair loss, not to mention mortality.”
It wasn’t just the British press Shriver, who’s from North Carolina, was upbraiding. The future is an obsession of American papers, magazines, and TV news shows. Journalists are addicted to what “might” happen. They love dubious studies about the future seriously.
Take the coverage of the Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. Everyone knows how wildly unreliable CBO’s findings are. Yet the CBO estimate that the GOP plan would lead to millions fewer people with health insurance received big-time coverage. The Washington Post led its front page with the story.
Computer models of economic growth are also treated respectfully by the media (so long as they don’t support tax cuts). But growth projections after a year, maybe two, are worthless. And while recessions happen, models never project them. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that “economists” think Republican tax reform won’t speed up growth. Thanks for that.
Then there are the computer projections of rising temperatures. Global warmists would have us believe they know what the earth’s temperature will be dozens of years from now. Sure enough, the mainstream media takes them at their word. And since the projections are far in the future, there’s no accountability.
Election polls months, even years, before anyone votes are pointless. But we’re flooded with them. Pollsters insist they merely reflect a moment in time, which is true. But average folks tend to see them as predictions of what’s likely to happen, but frequently doesn’t.
In the age of Trump, there’s a special type of story about the future. It speculates about what the president “may” cause to happen. Invariably, the results are bad. Millions of people will suffer due to Trump and not just immigrants. The presidency is in jeopardy. Autocracy is just down the road. The list is long.
Reporting about the future has become a bad habit that’s hard to break. I’ve tried and failed, and a few days ago wrote about what Republicans “may” achieve over the next year.
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Ken Wainstein is not a household name. But he’s been interviewed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and deputy AG Rod Rosenstein for the job of FBI director. He is a former FBI official, assistant attorney general for national security, and White House adviser on security issues to George W. Bush. The Wall Street Journal said Wainstein is a “widely respected defense lawyer [who] is seen as having the bona fides and experience” to lead the FBI. Pretty impressive credentials, I’d say.
A conservative friend of mine says Weinstein is “tough on crime and terrorism and extraordinarily knowledgeable about how the FBI and Justice Department work.” And he’s not “a showboat like James Comey,” who was fired as FBI chief by President Trump.
I don’t know Wainstein, but I do know another possible FBI director, former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating. He too has top-notch Washington credentials as an FBI agent, associate AG, and general counsel and acting deputy secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Secretary Jack Kemp.
After so many years in Washington, I have a jaundiced view of government officials. I don’t think of them as “public servants.” Keating is an exception. But as admirable as his time in the federal government was, it was overshadowed by his masterful handling, as governor, of the crisis after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
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Speaking of Comey, there’s a special question or two he should be asked when he appears before the Senate intelligence committee. They involve all those leaked stories of misconduct by Trump during their private meetings, stories attributed the media attributed to “associates” of Comey.
What was Comey’s role in this campaign to discredit Trump, which insinuated the president may have been guilty of obstructing justice? Did Comey authorize it? Did he direct it? Was the attribution to anonymous “associates” used to mask his involvement?
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At a Washington dinner a few days ago, a White House official spoke about Trump as a “disrupter” in laudatory terms. The official indicated the president will continue to disrupt. It’s his tool for shaking up Washington in general and the bureaucracy in particular.
Might Trump tone things down after his trip to the Middle East and Europe? He’s been advised to do that by congressional Republicans and many others in the Trump orbit. They believe the president’s disruptions hurt him politically far more than his targets. We’ll know soon there’s a New Trump in our midst.
