SUMMARY: what follows is the text of an open letter from me to Mark Winkler, publisher of the Desert Sun. In it, I address the unwillingness or inability of his newspaper to bear the slightest accent of criticism or reproof. I also address the extent to which the corporate culture of the desert sun appears to be driven by personal antipathies. Moreover, at a time when the mainstream media are embracing an ethic of transparency and responsiveness to differences of opinion, the desert sun has been marching steadfastly in the opposite direction, embracing a Fox News ethic of “cutting off the microphone,” so to speak of any critic or dissenter. When I had the effrontery to express views differing from those of the Desert Sun’s staff, I was blacklisted from either commenting on articles the Desert Sun or participating in the Desert Sun’s “You’ve Got Issues” Facebook group. I’ve written to the publisher of the Desert Sun because the buck has to stop somewhere; I’ll post in this blog any response I might actually get from a newspaper that has never felt the need for either an ombudsman or a public editor.
Mark Winkler
THE Desert Sun
750 North Gene Autry Trail
Palm Springs, CA 92262
RE: AN OPEN LETTER CONCERNING THE DESERT SUN’S UNWILLINGNESS TO TOLERATE DIFFERING VIEWS AND OPINIONS; BLACKLISTING OF DISSENTERS
Daar Mr. Winkler:
At a time when increasing numbers of mainstream media outlets are adopting a culture of responsive transparency to reader concerns and expressions of differing views and opinions, The Desert Sun appears to be marching steadfastly in the opposite direction. Apparently, your so-called community conversations staff have preferred to take instruction from Fox News, and to suppress expressions of opinion, particularly from the undersigned, that they appear to find uncongenial.
More disturbing even than The Desert Sun’s apparent inability to bear the slightest accent of disagreement or reproof is the almost aggressively defensive posture of the newspaper when it is caught out in grave and serious error.
Your newspaper’s inability to bear the accent of criticism or reproof has been expressed in an apparent decision from one or more members of your staff to disable the undersigned’s ability to comment on any of your articles, and in the undersigned’s exclusion and blocking from the so-called “You’ve Got Issues” Facebook group which The Desert Sun apparently regards as being an adequate substitute for having either an ombudsman or a public editor. In short, the undersigned has been effectively blacklisted. Because your newspaper has neither a public editor nor an ombudsman, the undersigned addresses his correspondence directly to you, the accountable manager with whom the buck must stop.
A couple of examples of The Desert Sun’s unwillingness to tolerate the expression of differing or alternative views will suffice.
THE UNDERSIGNED’S EXPRESSION OF CONCERN RESPECTING HIGH SCHOOL FOORBALL COVERAGE
Recently, the undersigned, commenting in The Desert Sun’s much vaunted “You’ve Got Issues” Facebook group, expressed concerns about the tone and amount of Desert Sun coverage of local high school football. Given the tone and tenor of the national conversation about high school football and the social paradigms it enables, to say nothing of the serious medical consequences it can, and frequently does, and gender, my expression of concern was well within the national mainstream of discussion.
But James Folmer, your “Community Conversations Editor,” was having none of it. With all of the zealous vigor of orthodoxy stamping out heresy, Mr. Folmer responded to the undersigned that high school football was a “big deal” in the Coachella Valley, and that notwithstanding any expressions of concern from the undersigned or others, The Desert Sun would continue to treat high school football as a “big deal.”
The tone of Mr. Folmer’s comments was such as to indicate to the undersigned that he was absolutely unwilling and unprepared to acknowledge even the slightest degree of merit to the undersigned’s concerns. (Though Mr. Folmer appears not merely indifferent, but hostile, to the undersigned’s concerns, it is worth noting that the cover story of the September 29, 2014 number of Time magazine deals with the football-related death of 16-year-old Chad Stover, of Tipton, Missouri, and showcased the very real and rising concern among parents, physicians, and political leaders about the medical risks associated with the “big deal” that The Desert Sun apparently considers high school football to be.)
The undersigned also expressed concern that The Desert Sun’s apparently uncritical and even breathless coverage of high school football tended to shortchange the achievements of high school students whose talents are not expressed on the gridiron, and that such coverage also tends to reinforce often dysfunctional social paradigms in our secondary education system. The undersigned also noted that in secondary school social paradigms such as those Mr. Folmer apparently considers normative and optimal, varsity football players and cheerleaders often enjoy a kind of tacit permission to engage in transgressive behaviors which would call down a world of hurt and punishment on students outside the relatively small, select circle of the varsity football program. Again, Mr. Folmer was having none of it.
THE “GENERAL ASSEMBLY” MISNOMERS
The other major issue with respect to which your staff and of the undersigned have found themselves in disagreement is the fairly serious blunder The Desert Sun made recently when your interactive media staffer, Rob Hopwood, constructed an interactive feature designed to show which candidates were seeking office in any given election. Mr. Hopwood, who had worked for Gannett in North Carolina before relocating to California six years ago, referred to our California Legislature as the General Assembly (as it is in North Carolina). The undersigned called Hopwood’s attention to the error. When Hopwood acknowledged that he had been resident in California for six years prior to constructing the interactive display, the undersigned expressed some degree of surprise that so much time would pass without Hopwood acquainting himself with California’s public institutions of self-government. Though Hopwood corrected the error, he felt it necessary to cast himself as some kind of victim, and quickly personalized the issue.
This is not the first time that The Desert Sun has erroneously referred to our state Legislature as the General Assembly. Shortly after coming to The Desert Sun, James Folmer made the same error in his self introduction column, asking “how did the General Assembly do?” Though the error is plain for all to see in the cloud and in print in back numbers of The Desert Sun, Mr. Folmer indignantly denied to the undersigned that he had ever done such a thing.
When the undersigned suggested that referring to California’s Legislature by the name of a foreign jurisdiction’s parliamentary body sent a non-recommending message about the extent to which this newspaper and its staff are engaged with and invested in this community, that was apparently the last straw. It now appears of the undersigned that a decision appears to been taken, perhaps in consultation with a number of Desert Sun staffers, to blacklist the undersigned and to exclude any of the undersigned’s expressions of opinion from any so-called community conversation of which The Desert Sun is a part
To the extent of The Desert Sun wishes to treat the undersigned is a nonperson, it is free, like Fox News or Pravda, to do so. However, the undersigned will continue to offer alternative points of view through the vehicle of the undersigned’s independent blog. Among those alternative points of view, the undersigned will not be at all hesitant to raise the issue of the extent to which The Desert Sun seems to be abandoning an emerging journalistic ethic of inclusive, responsive, responsible transparency.
If, as the undersigned sadly suspects to be the case, decision-making at The Desert Sun is being driven by personal antipathies and an unwillingness to entertain viewpoints that differ from your own, then you will have only ourselves to blame when others in the community begin to call you out for the one-sided perspective that inevitably attaches itself to a newspaper that believes itself to be the only game in town.
The undersigned trusts you will have the courtesy to look into the matters the undersigned has raised, and to tender to the undersigned a thoughtful, non-dismissive, merits-based response, addressing the issue of whether blackisting differing opinions comports with basic canons of journalistic ethics. The undersigned does not seek a personal confrontation with you; however, as the undersigned has observed hereinabove, you are the publisher, the head shot-caller; the buck does stop with you, and you, as publisher, are ultimately responsible and accountable for the corporate culture of your newspaper.
LAW OFFICES OF PAUL S. MARCHAND
/s/
By: Paul S. Marchand
PSM:
Friday, September 26, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
A WIN FOR EDMUND BURKE: THOUGHTS ON THE FAILURE OF SIX CALIFORNIAS AND THE SCOTLAND SECESSION REFERENDUM
Summary: the failure of the Scots secession referendum and of Tim Draper’s so-called Six Californias initiative should not surprise us. What should disturb us is the extent to which California Democrats simultaneously opposed “Six Californias” but cheerled for Scots secession, often for intellectually shoddy reasons. Instead of pouring scorn on the Unionist majority in Scotland’s secession referendum, California Democrats should thoughtfully knowledge that both Unionist voters in Scotland and California Democrats who rejected Six Californias were drawing from a common wellspring of the principled conservatism first articulated by the great Irish statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke, who postulated that institutions which are working well should not be lightly or frivolously abolished or materially altered. While SNP leader Alex Salmond and bloviating billionaire Tim Draper may be the big losers, Edmund Burke seems to have been the real winner.
In the last several days, two efforts to break up long-established, substantial bodies politic have been tried and found wanting. In California, Tim Draper’s Six Californias initiative failed to qualify for the November, 2016 ballot. It looks as if the conservative Silicon Valley billionaire’s effort to blow up the state of California and replace it with six smaller, squabbling jurisdictions has failed for the foreseeable future. In Scotland, in a referendum that commanded a larger voter turnout than any in Scottish history, 55 percent of the Scots electorate rejected the Scottish National Party’s bid to have Scotland secede from the United Kingdom.
Here in California, opposition to “Six Californias” was almost a litmus test issue among California Democrats. We correctly saw the effort as being largely Tim Draper’s ego trip, and we set our collective faces against what Draper had tried to market as a “reboot” of California.
But as much as California Democrats rejected partition for themselves, many were prepared to eagerly embrace the sundering of a British Union that had functioned more or less successfully since 1707. Some California Democrats offered thoughtful, principled arguments for Scots secession. Others poured forth word salads that leaned heavily on such undefinable left-wing jargon as “neoliberal neocolonialism” or its apparent fellow traveler “neoliberal neoimperialism,” couching their arguments in nothing more than some kind of reflexive, ostensibly progressive desire to pound a stake into the last home island remnant of the once vast British Empire. Finally, a disturbing number, perhaps even a plurality, of California Democrats couldn’t resist the temptation to see Scots secession as an ethnic revolt -a national liberation struggle, even- against the Sassenach English, as some kind of real life, 21st-century remake of Braveheart, with that sedevacantist idiot Mel Gibson daubing his face with woad and bellowing “they’ll never take our freedom!”
The disappointed reaction of Scots secession-supporting California Democrats has been predictable. The usual expressions of disappointment have traveled hand-in-hand with the almost standard “stupid voters” reaction so often felt by those on the losing side of a hard-fought election. Indeed, some California Democrats even found themselves Moscow’s fellow travelers, uttering rather Republican-sounding, conspiracist claims that the election had been tainted by voter fraud. Only one foreign government, that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, has made such a claim, presumably to delegitimize the Scots secession referendum result in the service of Moscow’s evident desire to poke a huge hole in the northern flank of NATO.
Yet, in the end, Moscow’s claims of Scots voter fraud are risible. Britain has a long and honorable history of conducting squeaky clean, aboveboard elections at every level, while Russia has a long and dishonorable history of conducting elections so obviously marred by fraud and vote rigging, and so obviously fraudulent on their face, as to be unworthy of the slightest credence.
Pot, meet kettle.
California Democrats should run, not walk, away from any bullshit Muscovite claim that the Scots secession referendum was vote-rigged, presumably by the Sassenach English.
Yet, as long as disappointed California Democrats have seen fit to open up vials of wrath on the Scottish electorate because Scotland didn’t vote the way certain ostensible progressives in California would have had them vote, California Democrats fail to recognize a reality that links them far more powerfully to Scotland’s “No” voters than many California Democrats might feel comfortable with. For, when all the sound and the fury are over, both the California and Scottish electorates have behaved in remarkably similar ways.
In most Anglo-American bodies politic, influenced in many ways by the thinking of the great Irish statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke, there is a strong streak of what can best be described as Burkean conservatism. Even those of us who identify as progressive often find ourselves confronting an existential Burkean paradox. We embrace progress, but not ungoverned, undisciplined, unthoughtful progress. We tend to look at existing institutions and prefer to conserve them as long as they are functioning reasonably effectively. While we stand for change, we tend to be skeptical of headlong alterations of tried and tested civic institutions. Maintaining a workable civil society is as important to progressives as it is to those who call themselves conservative, if not more so. Just saying “no” to all change has never been a workable option for progressives.
And this has been what distinguishes Anglo-American progressivism from typical American conservatism. Though Edmund Burke himself acknowledged the ineluctably and importance of change, an awful lot of American conservatives find themselves embracing the Falangist conservatism of men like the late William F. Buckley, Jr., who once famously declared that "a conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'".
It might be easy for certain California Democrats to belabor the Scots electorate with being reactionary, stick in the mud Buckleyan conservatives. Yet as tempting as such a characterization might be, it only serves to demonstrate a kind of willful myopia about the profoundly Burkean reality of the process by which 55 percent the Scots electorate reached its decision to remain within the United Kingdom.
There has been substantial coverage in British and international media and in the Scots and non-Scots blogosphere about the careful, thoughtful nature of the secession debate within the northern kindgom on both sides of the issue. Now the Scots have a reputation for being thoughtful, canny people, and for being heirs of world-famous Scottish Enlightenment, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the run-up to the referendum should have provided Scotland with an opportunity to think things out, and discuss the question of the utility of the Union in a considerate way we Americans can only envy. While the referendum was certainly accompanied by soundbites, snappishness, and all the angst and agita that accompany a hugely consequential election, it does seem to have been accompanied by a thoroughly civilized, thoroughly adult, very Scottish thought process.
Indeed, the Scots' discussion of the Scots secession referendum would have done Edmund Burke himself proud. Burke had an abiding faith in the power of rational debate to form sensible and cogent policy. At the same time, Burke also reprehended the kind of undisciplined, revolutionary enthusiasms he saw taking place in France. Burke may well have been right on that score; the history of France and her five Republics has been a history of an ongoing effort by the French people to develop and perfect strong, rational institutions for civil society. Yet, in more Burkean conservative societies in the Anglo-American world, we have been largely free of the hiccups and convulsions that have so marked the history of France since 1789.
The voters of Scotland were not looking to repeat 1789 in the streets and squares of Edinburgh, along the Royal Mile or in Holyroodhouse. What is relatively safe to infer is that Scots voters, whether supporters or opponents of secession, wanted to send a very clear message to Westminster that, whether in or out of Union, Scotland was no longer prepared to tolerate being treated as the negligible quantity Margaret Thatcher and the Tories had so long regarded Scotland and northern England as being.
To the extent that California Democrats rejected Six Californias and the Scots electorate rejected secession, both tapped deep into the ineffably Burkean wellsprings of much of our own political thinking. Much of Burke’s philosophy can indeed be summed up in the homely aphorism “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and in Bill Clinton’s equally homely aphorism “mend it, don’t end it.” For progressives, the real fight has often been defining how dysfunctional an institution must be before it can be considered broken.
Our fight has also been determine the degree to which we can mend before we must end. In both California and Scotland, both of which tend to break progressive in their political thinking, voters made a thoughtful determination that neither California nor the United Kingdom were so broken as to need radical alteration. Both bodies politic were felt to need nothing more than some routine mending to keep them functional well into the foreseeable future.
Advocates of radical change should consider carefully the extent to which Burkean thought is in many ways the default setting for an awful lot of political thinking worldwide. Instead of seeking to blow everything up, our natural tendency is to embrace the philosophy enunciated by the late Adm. of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergey Georgiyevich Gorshkov, who used to express his disdain for overengineered weapons systems by declaring “good enough is best.” For all of our dysfunctions and complaints, we and the Scots seem to have accepted Adm. Gorshkov’s pragmatic view that “good enough [really] is best.”
Moreover, in taking a “good enough is best” view, the canny Scots have arguably performed a uniquely clever bit of political jujitsu on the posh toffs down in the sweltering, Sassenach subtropics of London. Given that David Cameron’s Tory Government has apparently been frightened into promising to devolve even more extensive powers to the Scots Government at Holyroodhouse, Scotland now enjoys a unique faculty of taking credit for that which goes well in the northern kingdom, while shunting all blame for that which does not work well onto the sleazy, Sassenach politicians at Westminster.
At all events, the failure of Scots secession and Six Californias may yet have the prophylactic effect of forcing many of us who identify as progressives to confront our own internalized Burkean conservatism. For, when the sound and the fury are over, we can safely say that Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond and bloviating billionaire Tim Draper were the losers, but that Edmund Burke was very much the winner.
In the last several days, two efforts to break up long-established, substantial bodies politic have been tried and found wanting. In California, Tim Draper’s Six Californias initiative failed to qualify for the November, 2016 ballot. It looks as if the conservative Silicon Valley billionaire’s effort to blow up the state of California and replace it with six smaller, squabbling jurisdictions has failed for the foreseeable future. In Scotland, in a referendum that commanded a larger voter turnout than any in Scottish history, 55 percent of the Scots electorate rejected the Scottish National Party’s bid to have Scotland secede from the United Kingdom.
Here in California, opposition to “Six Californias” was almost a litmus test issue among California Democrats. We correctly saw the effort as being largely Tim Draper’s ego trip, and we set our collective faces against what Draper had tried to market as a “reboot” of California.
But as much as California Democrats rejected partition for themselves, many were prepared to eagerly embrace the sundering of a British Union that had functioned more or less successfully since 1707. Some California Democrats offered thoughtful, principled arguments for Scots secession. Others poured forth word salads that leaned heavily on such undefinable left-wing jargon as “neoliberal neocolonialism” or its apparent fellow traveler “neoliberal neoimperialism,” couching their arguments in nothing more than some kind of reflexive, ostensibly progressive desire to pound a stake into the last home island remnant of the once vast British Empire. Finally, a disturbing number, perhaps even a plurality, of California Democrats couldn’t resist the temptation to see Scots secession as an ethnic revolt -a national liberation struggle, even- against the Sassenach English, as some kind of real life, 21st-century remake of Braveheart, with that sedevacantist idiot Mel Gibson daubing his face with woad and bellowing “they’ll never take our freedom!”
The disappointed reaction of Scots secession-supporting California Democrats has been predictable. The usual expressions of disappointment have traveled hand-in-hand with the almost standard “stupid voters” reaction so often felt by those on the losing side of a hard-fought election. Indeed, some California Democrats even found themselves Moscow’s fellow travelers, uttering rather Republican-sounding, conspiracist claims that the election had been tainted by voter fraud. Only one foreign government, that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, has made such a claim, presumably to delegitimize the Scots secession referendum result in the service of Moscow’s evident desire to poke a huge hole in the northern flank of NATO.
Yet, in the end, Moscow’s claims of Scots voter fraud are risible. Britain has a long and honorable history of conducting squeaky clean, aboveboard elections at every level, while Russia has a long and dishonorable history of conducting elections so obviously marred by fraud and vote rigging, and so obviously fraudulent on their face, as to be unworthy of the slightest credence.
Pot, meet kettle.
California Democrats should run, not walk, away from any bullshit Muscovite claim that the Scots secession referendum was vote-rigged, presumably by the Sassenach English.
Yet, as long as disappointed California Democrats have seen fit to open up vials of wrath on the Scottish electorate because Scotland didn’t vote the way certain ostensible progressives in California would have had them vote, California Democrats fail to recognize a reality that links them far more powerfully to Scotland’s “No” voters than many California Democrats might feel comfortable with. For, when all the sound and the fury are over, both the California and Scottish electorates have behaved in remarkably similar ways.
In most Anglo-American bodies politic, influenced in many ways by the thinking of the great Irish statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke, there is a strong streak of what can best be described as Burkean conservatism. Even those of us who identify as progressive often find ourselves confronting an existential Burkean paradox. We embrace progress, but not ungoverned, undisciplined, unthoughtful progress. We tend to look at existing institutions and prefer to conserve them as long as they are functioning reasonably effectively. While we stand for change, we tend to be skeptical of headlong alterations of tried and tested civic institutions. Maintaining a workable civil society is as important to progressives as it is to those who call themselves conservative, if not more so. Just saying “no” to all change has never been a workable option for progressives.
And this has been what distinguishes Anglo-American progressivism from typical American conservatism. Though Edmund Burke himself acknowledged the ineluctably and importance of change, an awful lot of American conservatives find themselves embracing the Falangist conservatism of men like the late William F. Buckley, Jr., who once famously declared that "a conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'".
It might be easy for certain California Democrats to belabor the Scots electorate with being reactionary, stick in the mud Buckleyan conservatives. Yet as tempting as such a characterization might be, it only serves to demonstrate a kind of willful myopia about the profoundly Burkean reality of the process by which 55 percent the Scots electorate reached its decision to remain within the United Kingdom.
There has been substantial coverage in British and international media and in the Scots and non-Scots blogosphere about the careful, thoughtful nature of the secession debate within the northern kindgom on both sides of the issue. Now the Scots have a reputation for being thoughtful, canny people, and for being heirs of world-famous Scottish Enlightenment, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the run-up to the referendum should have provided Scotland with an opportunity to think things out, and discuss the question of the utility of the Union in a considerate way we Americans can only envy. While the referendum was certainly accompanied by soundbites, snappishness, and all the angst and agita that accompany a hugely consequential election, it does seem to have been accompanied by a thoroughly civilized, thoroughly adult, very Scottish thought process.
Indeed, the Scots' discussion of the Scots secession referendum would have done Edmund Burke himself proud. Burke had an abiding faith in the power of rational debate to form sensible and cogent policy. At the same time, Burke also reprehended the kind of undisciplined, revolutionary enthusiasms he saw taking place in France. Burke may well have been right on that score; the history of France and her five Republics has been a history of an ongoing effort by the French people to develop and perfect strong, rational institutions for civil society. Yet, in more Burkean conservative societies in the Anglo-American world, we have been largely free of the hiccups and convulsions that have so marked the history of France since 1789.
The voters of Scotland were not looking to repeat 1789 in the streets and squares of Edinburgh, along the Royal Mile or in Holyroodhouse. What is relatively safe to infer is that Scots voters, whether supporters or opponents of secession, wanted to send a very clear message to Westminster that, whether in or out of Union, Scotland was no longer prepared to tolerate being treated as the negligible quantity Margaret Thatcher and the Tories had so long regarded Scotland and northern England as being.
To the extent that California Democrats rejected Six Californias and the Scots electorate rejected secession, both tapped deep into the ineffably Burkean wellsprings of much of our own political thinking. Much of Burke’s philosophy can indeed be summed up in the homely aphorism “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and in Bill Clinton’s equally homely aphorism “mend it, don’t end it.” For progressives, the real fight has often been defining how dysfunctional an institution must be before it can be considered broken.
Our fight has also been determine the degree to which we can mend before we must end. In both California and Scotland, both of which tend to break progressive in their political thinking, voters made a thoughtful determination that neither California nor the United Kingdom were so broken as to need radical alteration. Both bodies politic were felt to need nothing more than some routine mending to keep them functional well into the foreseeable future.
Advocates of radical change should consider carefully the extent to which Burkean thought is in many ways the default setting for an awful lot of political thinking worldwide. Instead of seeking to blow everything up, our natural tendency is to embrace the philosophy enunciated by the late Adm. of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergey Georgiyevich Gorshkov, who used to express his disdain for overengineered weapons systems by declaring “good enough is best.” For all of our dysfunctions and complaints, we and the Scots seem to have accepted Adm. Gorshkov’s pragmatic view that “good enough [really] is best.”
Moreover, in taking a “good enough is best” view, the canny Scots have arguably performed a uniquely clever bit of political jujitsu on the posh toffs down in the sweltering, Sassenach subtropics of London. Given that David Cameron’s Tory Government has apparently been frightened into promising to devolve even more extensive powers to the Scots Government at Holyroodhouse, Scotland now enjoys a unique faculty of taking credit for that which goes well in the northern kingdom, while shunting all blame for that which does not work well onto the sleazy, Sassenach politicians at Westminster.
At all events, the failure of Scots secession and Six Californias may yet have the prophylactic effect of forcing many of us who identify as progressives to confront our own internalized Burkean conservatism. For, when the sound and the fury are over, we can safely say that Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond and bloviating billionaire Tim Draper were the losers, but that Edmund Burke was very much the winner.
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