Presenting Today's Cynical Look

It was at once disturbing, yet heartening to read on May 13

A week earlier, someone had rearranged the letters on the sign outside the tiny church, defacing it with a racist - and misspelled - message: No Nigers Welcome.

Whom to blame is still a mystery. Police have said they were investigating, and church members say they haven't heard anything more.

On Sunday, they carried on as usual, including with plans to commemorate the church's 214th anniversary next month...

Since last weekend, Mount Zion has received letters of support and $560 in donations from the community, said Fisher, a church member and volunteer.

Kingsway Middle School is also planning field trips for students to learn the church's history, Fisher said.

"So, something good can come out of everything that happened," she said.

Noting the unusual spelling, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Karen Heller remarked "so the hoodlums were racist and stupid."   Perhaps cowardly, too, as the African Methodist Episcopal church has only 11 congregants, though fortuitously its resolve seems to be in inverse proportion to the size of its membership.

Twenty-two months ago, the hands were broken off a statue of the Virgin Mary at two Roman Catholic churches roughly thirty miles away in Cherry Hill, NJ.  Only about 5 miles from there, in what police believed was an offense related to the others, more than 20 statues had been reported vandalized on the property of another Catholic church.

But this sort of behavior is not limited to southern New Jersey.   Worse, in February, 2010 Russell United Methodist Church was destroyed as it fell victim to

one in a string of 11 fires in east Texas churches this year. Eight have been ruled arson, leaving residents and churches on edge as authorities work to find the person -- or persons -- responsible.

"We certainly can connect several of them," said Tom Crowley, special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Dallas, Texas, office.

Two fires that broke out Monday had not been ruled arson as of Wednesday, but are considered suspicious, he said.

There is no clear theme linking the fires, which have struck various church denominations -- Methodist, Baptist, Church of Christ Scientist -- on different days of the week and at different times of the day, he said. And while the churches are in small towns -- such as Wills Point, which has a population of about 3,800 people -- not all the fires were in remote locations, Crowley said.

Nor is such criminal behavior limited to the Age of Obama.   In early 1996, President Clinton formed the National Church Arson Task Force in response to a "sharp rise in the number of reported attacks on our nation's houses of worship, especially African-American churches in the south."   Two-and-a-half years later, the co-chairpersons  issued their group's report and cited the number of incidents investigated, suspects arrested, and convictions obtained.  The NCATF concluded "The Federal effort to prosecute the arsonists, rebuild the burned houses of worship, prevent more fires and heal racial divides continues. There is more work to be done. We are committed to seeing the task completed."

The task force was formed in response to a public outraged over what was reported as a sudden rash of arson fires at churches.  Most people were unaware that, as the NCATF noted, from January 1, 1995 through September 18, 1998, there had been 670 arson fires, bombings, or attempted bombings at houses of worship.  So although acts of violence against churches and related buildings have declined significantly since the mid-1990s, we are unlikely to know without an investigation.

There will be little attention focused on the small African-American church in Gloucester County, NJ, nor on whether this is a continuing (or recurring) national problem- not, that is, until and unless we can label it "terrorism."



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Next Time, Concede Nothing


Apologies are like racism. Well, no: apologies are good and racism is bad. Bbut "apology" is similar to "racism" in that the terms are overused and hence lose meaning.  Inadvertently, the National Journal's Ron Fournier highlights misunderstanding of apology when he writes

Two days after the IRS apologized for targeting conservative groups for reviews of their tax-exempt status, a top adviser to President Obama said “GOP groups flourished” in the last two elections cycles “and they will use this to raise more money.”

The tweet by David Plouffe, who left the White House in January, could give GOP reason to accuse Obama's team of playing politics with the IRS controversy by defending or justifying the agency's actions.

But Plouffe  said in a follow-up email to me that he was not absolving the Internal Revenue Service, whose actions he had called “dumb and wrong” in the original tweet.

Our exchange:

Plouffe’s tweet: “What IRS did dumb and wrong. Impt to note GOP groups flourished last 2 elections, overwhelming Ds. And they will use this to raise more $.”

My reply: “.@davidplouffe serious questions: Why is that important to note? Is it justification for the action you called wrong? If not, why note?"

Several Twitter readers quickly offered their own interpretation, including conservative columnistJames Taranto of the Wall Street Journal. “Because it goes to the question of motive,” Taranto tweeted. I asked Plouffe to respond via Twitter, email or my cell phone. He responded within an hour. Here is his unedited email:

“In terms of impact. Reading much of the coverage layperson would get sense premeditated attempt to effectively silence political opponents. I do think not as a justification but as an evaluation of any impact it is important to note that it would not appear their aims or fundraising were affected. So indefensible behavior by IRS clearly the story. As people are doing analysis it's a secondary point.”

 “So you were speaking to the impact, not justifying the actions or (providing) motive?” I asked via email.

“Exactly,” Plouffe replied.

The tweet came amid calls for Obama himself to issue an apology for the targeting, and as the administration struggled to get its story straight...

Plouffe may have referred to the IRS action as "dumb" because he believes Republicans "will use this to raise more $."   But he didn't leave it there. He labeled it "wrong" also.
 
Taranto did not add anything to his remark because it was a tweet, a thought- disabling mode.  But to call something "wrong" is definitive because it labels something  "an unjust, dishonest, or immoral action."

Of course, most critics- including the ostensibly objective Fournier, who snidely remarks "the administration struggled to get its story straight"- will not give the reader the background necessary to understand what went on.  Fortunately, Ezra Klein has, explaining

The culprit here is partly the Citizens United and SpeechNow decisions which lifted the contribution limits on wealthy individuals, corporations, and unions. But it’s also the IRS’s reticence to regulate the murky world of 501(c)4s — a reticence partly attributable to the organization’s fear of blow-ups just like this one.

Karl Rove wasn’t the first to try to use the 501(c)4 to solicit anonymous political donations. But he was the first big player to do it. And the expectation was that he’d had a clever idea that the IRS would quickly reject. “A lot of people thought Rove would get smacked back by the IRS,” says Hasen. “It didn’t happen. And then 501(c)4s exploded.”

Now everyone from Moveon.org to the Heritage Foundation has a 501(c)4. The number of 501(c)4 applications the IRS is getting more than doubled in recent years, rising from 1,500 to more than 3,400. That, by the way, is their explanation for the added scrutiny of the tea party groups: They weren’t trying to look specifically at conservatives. They were just trying to separate out the organizations that seemed likely to be overly political. But that simply speaks to the underlying issue: The IRS hasn’t set down clear rules — either internally or externally — for dealing with these new organizations.

Klein concludes "The danger is that this experience will simply make the IRS even more terrified of regulating 501(c)4s."  Plouffe's experience won't make him terrified of apologies or explanations, though.   Next time, he'll recognize that the key is to label one's comment an "apology" while avoiding apology, as in "I apologize if anything I said offended anyone in some way."




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Being An American Citizen



Senator Ted Cruz thinks he knows why President Barack Obama advocates a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.  He told right-wing GOP spokesman Sean Hannity in April  

I think that is profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who have followed the rules, who have waited in line.  I think the reason that President Obama is insisting on a path to citizenship is that it is designed to be a poison pill to scuttle the whole bill, so he can have a political issue in 2014 and 2016. I think that's really unfortunate.

The Texas Republican and probable 2016 presidential candidate pretends to be unaware that Barack Obama will be on no ballot in 2014 or 2016.   Obama might support a bill which would allow those people whose status would be legalized to become full-fledged American citizens because it's the right thing to do.  

Joshua Micah Marshall was not addressing Cruz's remark but rather the proposal of the New York City Council to allow non-citizens to vote in municipal elections, a bad idea he opposes.   However, Marshall's explanation is, however unintentional, an eloquent rebuttal to the hostility held by the Texas Senator and other Republicans to a path to citizenship.      Marshall, who supports comprehensive immigration reform, writes

I believe in what I think of as ‘thick citizenship’, a robust bundle of rights and responsibilities. Being a citizen of the United States isn’t just a matter of carrying a US passport or being able to vote. It’s much more foundational than that. It’s a commitment to a political community, albeit a vastly large one. And it’s because of that that I don’t think there should be such a thing as dual citizenship. In my mind it’s almost a contradiction in terms.

To me, thick citizenship is really at the root of our equality as Americans. The mix of rights and responsibilities that come with it are what makes the Salvadoran immigrant every bit as much an American as someone whose ancestors have been here for centuries. We’re all equal because we’ve all made the same commitment as citizens. Being an American citizen also matters for how you’re taxed and where you keep your money.

That’s what makes the plutocrat who renounces his citizenship for tax purposes really execrable and someone who I don’t think should be allowed ever to enter the country again.

Particularly as our society becomes more economically stratified, citizenship is the sheet anchor of what keeps us fundamentally equal, at least in key ways. It’s the basis of every citizens claim on the larger national community. If our citizenship isn’t common, what really connects the affluent educated New Yorker who can live or work anywhere on the globe to an impoverished young woman in South Texas with none of those freedoms or opportunities?

If Latin American immigrants maintain citizenship in the countries of their birth, doesn’t that undermine the claim to full equality here?

I know there are other ways of thinking about it. But in my mind, real citizenship and social solidarity makes the commitment of citizenship really important. I don’t want anything that makes citizenship into something more vague and associational like a travel status or one of many transactional commitments you may have here or around the globe. I think everyone who is a US citizen should share that common commitment — fundamentally, be in the same boat.

Now, as a practical matter I know there are people who carry dual citizenship because of very practical reasons like child custody and basic convenience for bi-national families. My wife is probably arguably a dual citizen simply because there’s no obvious way to renounce her original citizenship in the country of her birth. So I don’t see people who have dual US-Canadian citizenship as some great threat to the commonwealth or something or something that we actively need to eliminate. It’s basically a non-problem. But I think it would be a bad thing if it became more pervasive - which is something that I think is possible as the free flow of peoples becomes easier and more common.

Marshall concludes by slamming "anything that blurs the lines of the political community we all (those of us who are American citizens) participate in."   As someone typically favorable to President Obama, hence amenable to compromise, Marshall probably would prefer half a loaf to none at all.  But his assertion "thick citizenship is at the root of equality of all Americans" and "the sheet anchor of what keeps us as fundamentally equal" is a powerful argument against the sort of immigration arrangement which threatens to emerge among Democrats anxious for reform and Repubs dead-set against citizenship for Hispanics.  

There are, broadly speaking, three options- legalization with path to citizenship, no immigration reform, and legalization without a clear, obtainable path to citizenship.  The last is incompatible with devotion to a political community and faith in social solidarity, and consequently the worst.



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Elemental Problem



As part of his effort to demonstrate that as firearms proliferate in the U.S.A. crime declines, Rush Limbaugh on Thursday claimed "You go back all the way to the forties and fifties, and you will see that mass shootings, like at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown or whatever, are down. They don't happen nearly as much as they used to."

You won't be surprised to learn that Limbaugh is wrong, as Ezra Klein finds six of the eleven deadliest shootings in the nation have occurred since 2007.  But Limbaugh is right about one thing (cue the trite stopped clock joke):  gun violence is down in the U.S.A.

Gun violence is down, as is violent crime generally, and as is crime generally.

The reasons probably are numerous and uncertain.   Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Stacy Burling profiles psychologist and University of Pennsylvania professor Adrian Raine, author of the recently published The Anatomy of Violence, The Biological Roots of Crime, who recognizes "there's never going to be perfect prediction" of who will turn to violent crime.  Nevertheless, he notes

...criminal behavior, like many illnesses, results from a combination of genetic, physical, and environmental risk factors.

"They are on the right path, in part," he said of those who study the nurture part of the equation. "All I'm saying is that there's another path. There's biology, and that has to be recognized."

Burling adds

He's also studied the brains of psychopaths and found they have less gray matter in the prefrontal cortex and smaller amygdalas, a part of the brain that processes emotion. Asked to ponder a difficult moral question, Raine said they knew right from wrong, but showed less activation in the amygdala than normal people. "Emotion is the engine that drives moral behavior," he said.

Less gray matter in the prefrontal cortex and smaller amydalas may be a key factor in crime causation.   In a 2007 study published in PLos Medicine, the researchers observed

Childhood lead exposure is associated with region-specific reductions in adult gray matter volume. Affected regions include the portions of the prefrontal cortex and ACC responsible for executive functions, mood regulation, and decision-making. These neuroanatomical findings were more pronounced for males...

And not coincidentally, males are more violent than females.   Kevin Drum found that Rick Nevin, responsible for the groundbreaking work on the connection between lead and criminality discovered in the mid '90s

if you add a lag time of 23 years, lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the '40s and '50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the '60s, '70s, and '80s (and later) collected lead data and crime data for Australia and found a close match. Ditto for Canada. And Great Britain and Finland and France and Italy and New Zealand and West Germany. Every time, the two curves fit each other astonishingly well. When I spoke to Nevin about this, I asked him if he had ever found a country that didn't fit the theory. "No," he replied. "Not one."

Summarizing the results of a study published by Julia Woolpaw Reyes the same year (2007) as Nevin's latter research, Drum explains

During the '70s and '80s, the introduction of the catalytic converter, combined with increasingly stringent Environmental Protection Agency rules, steadily reduced the amount of leaded gasoline used in America, but Reyes discovered that this reduction wasn't uniform. In fact, use of leaded gasoline varied widely among states, and this gave Reyes the opening she needed. If childhood lead exposure really did produce criminal behavior in adults, you'd expect that in states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime would decline slowly too. Conversely, in states where it declined quickly, crime would decline quickly. And that's exactly what she found.

The impact of lead in the environment upon violent crime remains unproven, though evidence is mounting.  There isn't much certain in the world of crime- except that, contrary to what Rush Limbaugh may think, violent crime isn't dropping because too few 5-year-olds and 4-year-olds are wielding guns.




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Correlate This

The news is good.  Politico's Dylan Byers finds that, although it remains the most popular talk show on radio

The Rush Limbaugh Program is considering ending its affiliation agreement with Cumulus Media at the end of this year, a move that would bring about one of the biggest shakeups in talk radio history, a source close to the show tells POLITICO.

Should the move take place, 40 Cumulus-owned radio stations would lose the rights to the most popular talk radio program in the country. In addition, the show might be picked up by competing regional radio stations in Washington, New York, Chicago, Dallas and other major markets.

According to the source, Limbaugh is considering the move because Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey has blamed the company's advertising losses on Limbaugh's controversial remarks about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student. In Feb. 2012, Limbaugh referred to Fluke as "a slut" because she had called on congress to mandate insurance coverage of birth control. The subsequent controversy over those remarks resulted in a significant advertising boycott.

The true extent of Limbaugh's effect on Cumulus's advertising revenue is not known. In an August 2012 earnings call, Dickey said Cumulus's top three stations had lost $5.5 million, in part because of the boycott. In a March 2013 earnings call, Dickey said the company's talk radio side had "been challenged... due to some of the issues that happened a year ago."

Limbaugh's personal and ignorant attack might have had, of all his rantings, the greatest impact on his ratings (and on his marriage).  But it was among many forays into disinformation.   Tuesday, he stated

Now, here are some interesting stats.  This is from The Blaze.com.  The firearm statistics that gun control advocates don't want anybody to see.  And it's very simple.  Seventeen of the 20 highest gun murder states are Democrat controlled blue states with the strongest gun control laws.  Seventeen of the 20 highest gun murder states are Democrat controlled blue states with the most stringent gun control laws in the country.  And those stats come from the FBI's uniform crime reports.

California had the highest number of gun murders in 2011, with 1,220.  Sixty-eight percent of all murders in the state in 2011 were gun murders.  That equates to 3.25 murders per 100,000 people.  Well, I'm just saying that 17 of the 20 highest gun murder states are run by Democrats with stringent gun control laws.  See, if you put them in charge of it, what do you get?  You get peace bricks and people who are disarmed and unable to defend themselves.

The information cited by Rush appears to come from the article in The Blaze (a Glenn Beck enterprise) which reads "According to data from the FBI’s uniform crime reports, California had the highest number of gun murders in 2011 with 1,220 — which makes up 68 percent of all murders in the state that year and equates to 3.25 murders per 100,000 people."

Note the sleight-of-hand; both The Blaze and Limbaugh point out that California had the most gun murders (actually, gun deaths), which is unsurprising, given it has by far the largest population of any state.  The Blaze then seamlessly transitions into stating the murder rate in California, thereby implying that the rate is the highest in the nation. And Limbaugh maintains that the "20 highest gun murder states"- again conflating rate with total incidence- are in Democratic states which, he neglects to mention, typically are the largest states.  More people, more deaths; his audience would understand that, were Rush to admit he speaks of numbers, not rates.

The highest rate was not in California, though it was a little above the national average.  The highest in 2011 was, by far, in Louisiana, a state with relatively lax gun laws.  The lowest was, by far, in Hawaii, a state with relatively strict gun laws.  There are, to be sure, variations in this pattern and the correlation between lenient gun control regulations and firearm violence appears to have slightly eroded in 2011.  But it is a pattern, nonetheless; in early 2011, Richard Florida displayed the map (below) and explained


The map overlays the map of firearm deaths above with gun control restrictions by state. It highlights states which have one of three gun control restrictions in place - assault weapons' bans, trigger locks, or safe storage requirements.

Firearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation. Though the sample sizes are small, we find substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and states that ban assault weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and mandate safe storage requirements for guns (-.48).

He presented also a chart (below) indicating positive and negative correlation among 21 factors and gun deaths per 100,000 people.

Florida cautions that correlation does not imply causality, and there are innumerable factors which induce a state to suffer a high violent or even non-violent crime rate.  Still, it does suggest that, as usual, Rush Limbaugh can be described as extremist, dishonest, or as Al Franken would have it.

But it is not only irresponsible media figures who mislead their acolytes.  Politico reports

"That's what many of us have argued all along, is that focusing just exclusively on the guns is not the correct approach to this," he said. (South Dakota Republican Senator John) Thune said lawmakers should aim instead at preventing future mass killings by improving mental health programs and increasing the records that state governments send the federal background check system so the checks can do a better job of keeping guns from people who shouldn't have them.

Among the factors negatively correlated with gun violence, according to Florida:  stress, neuroticism, and mental illness.   And the factor most positively correlated with gun violence: vote share of John McCain in the 2008 presidential election which, the last time anyone checked, is closely correlated with Republican states.




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Preposterous Claim


In his weekly radio address delivered on May 4 from the friendly confines of Mexico City, President Obama maintained that "commonsense immigration reform," which he accurately labeled a "compromise,"  would "modernize our legal immigration system so that we’re able to reunite families and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers who will help create good paying jobs and grow our economy."

The immigration reform plan offered by the bipartisan Gang of Eight, the Washington Post reports, "features a a new class of start-up visa for foreign entrepreneurs and would increase significantly the number of H1-B visas (those offered to highly skilled individuals) available to immigrants with advanced degrees, particularly in science and mathematics."   Significantly, for sure: Robert Oak finds the legislation would

increase H-1B Visas from 85,000 to 135,000, they are allowing the limit to go to 180,000 per year.  That is basically all of the jobs created each year in these occupations.  That means every single STEM job would end up being foreigners preferred, forcing U.S. workers out of their careers as the faux pas worker protections are clearly written to be vague and loophole ridden. 

Mr. Obama argued, additionally, "Millions of Americans earn a living right now because of the trade between our nations."   The Economic Policy Institute explains

Much recent debate over the challenges globalization poses to American workers has understandably focused on the macroeconomic dangers that an overvalued U.S. dollar and chronic U.S. trade deficit present. The downward pressure on wages imposed by trade flows is exacerbated by the overvalued U.S. dollar; the overvalued dollar makes imports cheaper and exports more expensive, which in turn increases the U.S. trade deficit. However, even if the dollar eventually reaches a sustainable level and trade deficits close, globalization will continue to impose a drag on the wages of most American workers.

This paper presents evidence from a standard trade model on the size of these effects. Bivens (2008) notes further that the impact of global trade on American wages could well double, or even triple; according to some well-pedigreed forecasts, trade in previously non-traded sectors (such as professional services) will expand due to falling communications and information technology costs.

It is important to note that various policy decisions that have governed how the American economy is integrated into the global economy have increased the damage done to American workers. These acts of omission as well as commission include pursuing expanded global integration through trade agreements that carve out protections for corporate investors but not for American workers, and failing to block the overvaluation of the U.S. dollar. It is also important to note that overall national income is likely larger because of globalization and expanded opportunities to trade, and that there has been little to no effort to ensure that these overall national gains are broadly shared. Indeed, national income gains have instead become increasingly concentrated at the top of the income distribution in the same time span examined in this paper.

Obama will acknowledge that fewer manufacturing jobs remain for individuals without a college education.  But obsessed with "free trade"agreements, he will not admit that these jobs, often with good pay and benefits, have diminished partly because of the trade with relatively undeveloped nations he touts. Increasingly, as the chart below from EPI indicates, such trade accounts for the significant decline in career opportunities for males, especially compared to college-educated individuals.

The President has pushed trade agreements throughout his presidency, and clearly many Americans have found employment because of exports to Mexico.  And many Americans have lost jobs because of exports to Mexico (and elsewhere).  Nonetheless, President Obama contended he was in Latin America because of the opportunity it "represents" for "my top priority as President: creating good, middle-class jobs."  In full context, his remarkable claim was expressed as

I’m here because Latin America represents an incredible opportunity for the United States, especially when it comes to my top priority as President: creating good, middle-class jobs.  

On Friday, we learned that our businesses created another...

Barack Obama has asserted that his "top priority" as President is "creating good, middle-class jobs." Perhaps his highest priority has been to vanquish Al Qaeda or international terrorism in general; to "bend the cost curve" on health care; or to change the trajectory of long-term debt.  Maybe it has been, as he told the Reno Gazette-Journal's editorial board in early 2008, to be "a transformational President."  Or perhaps he wants nothing as much as to "turn the page on the ugly partisanship in Washington,” as he promised during the 2008 campaign and which has motivated him to seek avidly GOP support for his legislative initiatives. Since before his election in 2008, Obama has been in pursuit of what he describes as a "balanced approach," including cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid which, investigative historian Eric Zuesse recently noted

was his long-term plan, even though the polls showed widespread opposition to it. This was a matter not of expediency, but of conscience, for him: He needed to find some way to fund both the ongoing Wall Street bailouts, and the massive federal debt that would be caused by the 2008 Wall Street crash and its resulting plunge in federal tax collections. This “balanced approach,” of tax hikes and spending cuts, would be his solution to both problems.

Neither the emphasis on austerity, nor on enhancing national security, nor even on strengthening the health care system would ever be expected to do much to create "good, middle-class jobs." (Austerity destroys them.)  Further, the President will not mention that recovery from the recession has been characterized (as revealed in the table, from the National Employment Law Project, below) by an increase of employment in lower-wage occupations. Nor will he remind the American people that jobs with benefits, adequate pay and pension have been gradually disappearing for the past four decades, a trend exacerbated by the free trade and open border policies he and his predecessors have promoted.  

So when the President claims as his "top priority" the creation of "good, middle-class jobs," he is not misleading or exaggerating.  He's merely lying.

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Really? Weiner But Not Sharpton?


Prachi Gupta of Salon, without comment, reports on a segment from Sunday's Up With Steve Kornacki:

As former congressman Anthony Weiner talks about returning to politics after an embarrassing Twitter scandal, Salon columnist Steve Kornacki reminded voters that there’s another, more compelling to reject Weiner — a history of race-baiting and slimy politics:

It was at this point that Weiner’s campaign decided to blanket the district with leaflets attacking his opponents. But these were no ordinary campaign attacks: They played the race card, and at a very sensitive time. They were also anonymous.

On his MSNBC show, Kornacki explains further:

“This is the story that reveals something important about what Weiner’s been willing to do in his public life. He made an ugly appeal to voters’ worst nature. He did it at a very sensitive time. He did it to get ahead and he did it because he figured no one would catch him. Really he did get away with it. If it hadn’t been for the Twitter silliness, he’d be well on his way to being mayor right now and maybe more.”

Kornacki, then and still a writer/blogger at Salon, is not new to the subject.  As the links from Gupta reveal, twenty-three months ago, Kornacki had explained  

... the Crown Heights riot — a deadly, days-long affair that brought to the surface long-standing tension between the area’s black and Jewish populations — had played out a few miles away from the 48th District. The episode had gripped all of New York and had been national news. It was just days after order had been restored that Weiner’s campaign distributed its anonymous leaflets, which linked Cohen — whose voters he was targeting in particular — to Jesse Jackson and David Dinkins, who was then New York’s mayor. It is hard to imagine two more-hated political figures in the 48th District at that moment. Jackson just a few years earlier had called New York “Hymie town,” and it was an article of faith among white voters in Weiner’s part of Brooklyn that Dinkins had protected the black rioters in Crown Heights — and thus endangered the white population — by refusing to order a harsh police crackdown. (Two years later, Dinkins would lose to Rudy Giuliani by an 80-20 percent margin in the 48th District.) The leaflets urged voters to “just say no” to the “Jackson-Dinkins agenda” that Cohen supposedly represented. At City Hall, Dinkins held up the flier and branded it “hateful.”

It’s impossible to say what precise effect this all had on the election, but it clearly didn’t hurt Weiner. In a surprise result, he finished in first place — 125 votes ahead of Garson, and 195 ahead of Cohen. Only after the ballots were counted did he admit that he’d been behind the leaflets, claiming that “We didn’t want the source to be confused with the message.” This prompted an editorial rebuke from the New York Times, which noted that “Mr. Weiner’s hit-and-run tactics tarnish his come-from-behind campaign.”

Opprobrium is due Weiner additionally for having selected the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who at least had (and still has) some commitment to principle, as a scapegoat rather than a more loathsome individual.   In August, 2011 Andy Soltis of the New York Daily News recalled the Crown Heights affair in which three days of riots were "touched off when 7-year-old Gavin Cato was struck and killed by a car in the motorcade of a Hasidic leader.   Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian-born Hasidic scholar who had nothing to do with the motorcade, was stabbed to death in the violence that followed."

The Reverend Al Sharpton led demonstrations and became a central figure in the controversy, even before he stated at Cato's funeral

Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. . . . All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no coffee klatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'.

There is debate about Sharpton's role in igniting the three days of rioting.  But there was no dispute about Sharpton's role four years earlier in the hoax perpetrated by Tawana Brawley, aided and abetted by Reverend Sharpton.  The latter had falsely accused a local prosecutor in upstate New York, Steve Pagones, of having "kidnapped, abused, and raped" the young black woman. However, a grand jury found that it was a made-up story and Sharpton lost a defamation lawsuit filed by Pagones.

In August, 2011 Reverend Sharpton conceded "I would have also included in my utterances that there was no justification or excuse for violence or for the death of Yankel Rosenbaum." That and other remarks fell short of a genuine apology but indicated that he understood that his behavior at the time was at least partially misguided.  Disturbingly, though, he has stood by his actions in smearing a public servant and aggressively exacerbating racial tensions in the Brawley episode.  And he is completely unrepentant about leading a boycott of two Korean-owned groceries in 1990 in Brooklyn.

A few days later Sharpton expressed (limited) regret for his involvement in the Crown Heights events.  Within days, the guy who justifiably had earned a reputation as a racial hustler and now had become an informal adviser to President Obama was rewarded with a nightly program on MSNBC. And now Steve Kornacki, himself recently rewarded with a program on MSNBC, denounces stalwart progressive Anthony Weiner for his role in the Crown Heights affair while Kornacki conveniently ignores the more destructive role played by the latter's fellow host.

Anthony Weiner will not get the Democratic nomination and therefore will not become Mayor.  And Al Sharpton no longer views events on a purely racial basis.   He is no longer merely a community organizer, having branched out to being a bad talk-show host and shill for President Obama.  But if Steve Kornacki is so exorcised by opportunistic race-baiting undertaken nearly a quarter of a century ago, principle demands he look inside the cable news network he now works for to find an even better example.




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