Salon.com > Liberals http://www.salon.com Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:41:42 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Is there a “liberal bias” in academia? http://www.salon.com/2013/06/18/is_there_a_liberal_bias_in_academia_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/18/is_there_a_liberal_bias_in_academia_partner/#comments Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:52:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13329754 Los
Angeles Review of BooksAT LEAST SINCE THE CULTURE WARS first flared in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we’ve been hearing about the “liberal bias” of professors. In books and op-eds by conservative pundits such as Roger Kimball, Dinesh D’Souza, and George Will (who asserted in 1991 that Lynne Cheney, then Director of the NEH, had a more important job than her husband, then Secretary of Defense), we heard the charges again and again: that the radicals of the ‘60s had ascended to positions of influence and power in our nation’s universities, and were busy indoctrinating our children with leftist social and cultural ideas.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/18/is_there_a_liberal_bias_in_academia_partner/feed/ 66 Study: Liberals, conservatives see mixed-race people differently http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/liberals_conservatives_see_mixed_race_people_differently_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/liberals_conservatives_see_mixed_race_people_differently_partner/#comments Sun, 09 Jun 2013 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13319847 Pacific StandardDid you notice that mixed-race gentleman who passed you on the sidewalk yesterday? During the split second as he walked by, did he register in your mind as black or white?

Disturbing new research suggests the answer to that question may depend on your political ideology.

In three experiments, “we found that conservatives were more likely than liberals to categorize a racially ambiguous person as black than white,” a research team led by New York University psychologist Amy Krosch writes in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Intriguingly, this dynamic disappeared when the study participants—white Americans—were told they were judging Canadian faces. The tendency for those on the right to more quickly categorize someone as “black” only occurred when they were evaluating their fellow countrymen.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/liberals_conservatives_see_mixed_race_people_differently_partner/feed/ 63 Liberals find common ground with … Scalia? http://www.salon.com/2013/06/06/liberals_find_common_ground_with_scalia/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/06/liberals_find_common_ground_with_scalia/#comments Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13317211 Antonin Scalia, for various reasons, is not the left's favorite Supreme Court justice. But in a spate of rulings in this term, Scalia has come down on the same side as some of the more liberal justices on the Court -- those cases related to Fourth Amendment issues, particularly involving warrantless searches conducted using advanced technological methods.

The most recent example of this is the 5-4 decision that came down on Monday, in which the Court upheld a Maryland law allowing police officers to take DNA samples of arrestees without a warrant, for the purposes of investigating crimes unrelated to the arrest. Scalia dissented with an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"Today’s judgment will, to be sure, have the beneficial effect of solving more crimes," Scalia wrote in his dissent. "Then again, so would the taking of DNA samples from anyone who flies on an airplane (surely the Transportation Security Administration needs to know the 'identity' of the flying public), applies for a driver’s license, or attends a public school. Perhaps the construction of such a genetic panopticon is wise. But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/06/liberals_find_common_ground_with_scalia/feed/ 97 How liberals saved California http://www.salon.com/2013/05/31/how_liberals_saved_california/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/31/how_liberals_saved_california/#comments Fri, 31 May 2013 17:17:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13313961 Last week, the Atlantic’s James Fallows penned what has almost become its own genre, a glorifying profile of California Gov. Jerry Brown, positioning him as the savior of the Golden State, single-handedly bringing it back from fiscal collapse. Brown, the story goes, stepped away from his “Governor Moonbeam” past and embraced a new practicality. “I find that a lot of people are more invested in position-taking than they are in the inquiry,” Brown says to Fallows, an expression of his philosophy. “Generally speaking, I am in the inquiry.”

It’s a nice sentiment. It’s also wrong. No politician in California is more invested than Brown in taking a very specific position – demanding restraint in allocating post-recession surpluses to attend to human needs. This pro-austerity pose, a defining characteristic of Brown’s entire political career, now threatens the pace of recovery in the nation’s largest state, the perception of the federal healthcare overhaul, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Californians.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/31/how_liberals_saved_california/feed/ 382 GOP: Party of crybabies http://www.salon.com/2013/05/25/grand_old_party_of_crybabies/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/25/grand_old_party_of_crybabies/#comments Sat, 25 May 2013 11:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13308290 It’s time to call out a major Republican theme of how politics should be practiced in a democracy: the supposed right to be free from criticism. It may sell wonderfully inside the conservative closed-information loop, but it’s a nasty idea that sorts exceptionally badly with democratic politics.

In case you’re unfamiliar, the right to be free from criticism is the core idea behind what used to be complaints about “political correctness” and which have now morphed into the conviction that some accusations are too terrible to be made. See, for example, former Heritage immigration expert (or is that race-and-intelligence obsessive?) Jason Richwine. As he told conservative reporter Byron York:

The accusation of racism is one of the worst things that anyone can call you in public life … Once that word is out there, it's very difficult to recover from it, even when it is completely untrue.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/25/grand_old_party_of_crybabies/feed/ 223 Sorry, Media Matters, no one actually wants your talking points http://www.salon.com/2013/05/16/sorry_media_matters_no_one_actually_wants_your_talking_points/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/16/sorry_media_matters_no_one_actually_wants_your_talking_points/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 14:49:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13300363 Yesterday, Media Matters, the liberal media watchdog group, sent out to a fairly massive email list a talking points memo defending the Obama Justice Department's obtaining of Associated Press phone logs. The talking points were distributed to 3,000 "progressive talkers and influentials," according to Media Matters head David Brock. (But not me, for the record. I am not an influential.)

Like all talking points, these talking points were dumb and full of weird weaselly language and made worse by the fact that each claim was designed to be repeated by people on TV who presumably don't believe what they say or at least don't really care that much. "For those interested in pushing back against partisan attacks while the rest of us grapple with the larger questions, here is language to guide you," the memo said. The rest of us will be back here, grappling, while you engage in your semi-scripted verbal combat, with some guy who has different talking points.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/16/sorry_media_matters_no_one_actually_wants_your_talking_points/feed/ 43 “Parks and Recreation”: TV’s most progressive show http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/is_parks_and_recreation_secretly_socialist_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/is_parks_and_recreation_secretly_socialist_partner/#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:38:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13282008 Los
Angeles Review of Books NBC’s PARKS AND RECREATION, never shying from political controversy, examines current beltway tensions in ways one might expect from a more overtly political program. This season more than ever, the tendentious questions of American governance have become the show's lifeblood, its fictive small town of Pawnee, Indiana, struggling with political tribulations closely mirroring those on the national stage — and proposing some bold solutions.

The season’s first episode follows the lead character, Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope, to Washington DC, where she met real political figures such as Joe Biden (her hero), Olympia Snowe, Barbara Boxer, and John McCain. Recent episodes have been titled "Soda Tax" and "How a Bill Becomes a Law" and highlight the nitty-gritty — if comically histrionic — details about local politics. In addition, the show's constant use of innuendo surrounding current political events, reenactment of debates concerning economics and governance, and tongue-in-cheek references to the increasing conservatism of American politics have made Parks and Rec more a comedic primer in American politics than a primetime comedy.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/is_parks_and_recreation_secretly_socialist_partner/feed/ 18 Should liberals feel nostalgia for the old-school left? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/should_we_feel_nostalgia_for_the_old_school_left_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/should_we_feel_nostalgia_for_the_old_school_left_partner/#comments Thu, 18 Apr 2013 22:27:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13275411 “The tradition of all the dead generations,” Marx wrote 150 years ago, “weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” Today, with our politics trapped in capitalism’s endless fugue state, the nightmare that troubled Marx may seem to contemporary left-wingers like a pleasant dream of days gone by.
Jacobin

At least the dead generations took Marx seriously. At least they had a powerful labor movement and center-left parties that believed in the welfare state. And at least Ralph Miliband, the dead leftist whose son is the living leader of Britain’s Labour Party, would never have answered a question about capitalism with a grudging obeisance to the creative power of BlackBerry.

It’s easy to get nostalgic.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/should_we_feel_nostalgia_for_the_old_school_left_partner/feed/ 52 White House courts progressives on chained CPI http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/white_house_courts_progressives_on_chained_cpi/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/white_house_courts_progressives_on_chained_cpi/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:15:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13266344 Even before the White House releases its budget today, the line item that's made the most waves is the inclusion of a switch to the so-called chained CPI, which would reduce benefits for Social Security recipients by changing the way inflation is calculated. This naturally touched off a firestorm on the left from many who say that, in addition to being bad policy, it's political suicide for a Democratic president to cut a social safety net program.

We've given plenty of space to the detractors, and on Tuesday, two senior White House officials laid out their case to Salon and a small group of other reporters in a background briefing. Here's what they're thinking:

First of all, the officials insisted, the White House will not go any further than what they're offering now. As they see it, they went halfway with their last offer to House Speaker John Boehner and the CPI switch, so now they're looking to see if anyone will meet them there. This way, if a grand bargain never materializes -- which they acknowledge is the most likely scenario -- it will be harder for Republicans to blame them for killing it.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/white_house_courts_progressives_on_chained_cpi/feed/ 32 How conservatives still run America, despite losing elections http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/how_conservatives_still_run_america_despite_losing_elections/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/how_conservatives_still_run_america_despite_losing_elections/#comments Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:30:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13262891 There is more than may appear in President Obama’s plan to cut the social safety net in his new budget proposal. The offer, on the face of it, reflects a significant violation of a major liberal creed, discarding the strongest liberal political card and Obama’s peculiar negotiation style of making major concessions at the opening of a give-and-take session. But it also reflects the sad but true fact that the dynamics of American politics cannot be understood in terms of Democrats vs. Republicans. Party labels aside, the nation is still being ruled by what I call a majority “conservative party.”

If Democrats and Republicans were the true divide, the meager gun control measures recently introduced in the Senate would have the majority needed to pass. After all, there are 53 Democratic Senators (and two Independents who generally side with them). Moreover, this time, the threat of a GOP filibuster is not to blame. Yet the Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, removed the assault weapons ban from the draft bill because some 15 Democratic senators, in effect, supported the conservative pro-gun position, making up — with the Republican senators — that majority “conservative party.” Thanks to this party, the same legislative defeat is about to befall liberal proposals to curtail high-capacity magazines. This leaves only better background checks on the table, but these, too, will inevitably be rendered ineffective by the conservatives via the underhanded gutting of enforcement (more about this shortly).

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/how_conservatives_still_run_america_despite_losing_elections/feed/ 63 Liberal groups threaten primaries over Obama budget http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/liberals_groups_threaten_primaries_over_obama_budget/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/liberals_groups_threaten_primaries_over_obama_budget/#comments Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:14:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13262604 Today may mark a nadir in the often strained relations between President Obama and the "professional left," as Robert Gibbs derisively called the progressive movement, which has been pushing for months to prevent Obama from endorsing cuts to the social safety net. When the White House released its budget today, it was clear the president hadn't listened to the increasingly urgent threats and pleadings from the people who helped elect him, as his spending proposal includes a change to the way Social Security benefits are calculated, called the chained CPI, as well as changes to Medicare.

The cut is anathema to liberal activists and lawmakers, who have gone all in to oppose the cut, warning Obama would face a "huge backlash" from his own base if he endorsed it. Now they're threatening primary challenges against any Democrats who vote for their president's budget.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/liberals_groups_threaten_primaries_over_obama_budget/feed/ 67 Must-see morning clip: Stephen Colbert introduces “six degrees of humping bacon” http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/must_see_morning_clip_stephen_colbert_explains_six_degrees_of_humping_bacon/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/must_see_morning_clip_stephen_colbert_explains_six_degrees_of_humping_bacon/#comments Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:12:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13261406 Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, puzzled a lot of people when he concluded that gay marriage could lead to beastiality. Thankfully, Stephen Colbert was able to break down Gohmert's sophisticated logic into terms the rest of America could understand: "Six degrees of humping bacon."

Double entendres ensue:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/must_see_morning_clip_stephen_colbert_explains_six_degrees_of_humping_bacon/feed/ 2 Do Americans still not get Reaganomics? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/do_americans_still_not_get_reaganomics/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/do_americans_still_not_get_reaganomics/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13259061 The results of a new Gallup poll released Monday reveal an unfortunate yet wholly unsurprising fact: The most commonly offered positive statement about the Republican Party continues to be its capacity for “better fiscal management.”

While not unexpected, it’s an absolutely baffling, incredible position, noteworthy even when held by an admittedly slim plurality of the public. Considering the enormous damage the Republican brand has taken recently, it’s significant that voters still reflexively assume conservatives are “better at” or more “serious about” the economy than liberals. (At the same time, voters reflexively assume that liberals care more about “people like me.”)

Still, the notion that our economy would be healthier if it were managed by Republicans — who advocate implementing a ludicrous, crippling austerity package that falls disproportionately on the shoulders of the poor and middle class — the damning evidence notwithstanding, is left completely unexamined everywhere, the focus falling instead on the poll finding that showed bipartisan distaste for Republican intransigence.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/do_americans_still_not_get_reaganomics/feed/ 52 Why conservatives hate college http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/why_conservatives_hate_college/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/why_conservatives_hate_college/#comments Sun, 31 Mar 2013 22:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13254788 If you want to understand the origins of the 21st century campaign against the liberal professoriate, you have to understand why conservatives like William Buckley were engaged in a similar campaign in their day. Some of the anger that National Review authors directed at left-leaning academics reflected the same impulses and strategic calculations that sustained McCarthyism: the sense that the nation was under threat during the Cold War; the view that the ranks of the American left were filled with communists or former communists who were either outright traitors or simply not to be trusted, especially with the impressionable minds of youth; and the awareness that even if there was a meaningful difference between communists and liberals, the distinction could be blurred to good political effect. Buckley, after all, was one of McCarthy’s most vigorous defenders, coauthoring in 1954 (with Brent Bozell, his brother-in-law) "McCarthy and His Enemies," which a reviewer for the New York Times appropriately described as “the most extraordinary book yet to come forth in the harsh bibliography ... of ‘McCarthyism,’” given its point-by-point defense of some of McCarthy’s most outlandish claims. However, most of the criticisms of academia that appeared in National Review did not allege subversion by professors per se, and this was particularly the case from the 1960s onward. What lay behind the alternative lines of critique that Buckley and his collaborators pursued?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/why_conservatives_hate_college/feed/ 104 GOP’s dumb California-bashing http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/gops_inane_war_on_california/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/gops_inane_war_on_california/#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:45:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13251947 As a columnist, I receive email every day from readers across this great country. Not surprisingly, some of these letters are angry missives frothing with apocalyptic rhetoric and dire warnings. Of late, no matter the controversy of the day nor what specific issue I happen to be writing about, these particular screeds (often in response to liberal successes) have been repeating a singular message: liberals, progressives, socialists, communists, hippies and other alleged undesirables are trying to "turn America into California."

No doubt, you've probably caught this or a similar phrase in your Web surfing, your email box and your casual discussions. It is the conversation-ender du jour. Don't like the election results and the policies that follow? Deride them as proof America is "becoming California." Don't like a bill moving through your legislature? Cite it as more evidence your state is "turning into California." Don't like what Congress is doing on any given day? Write a screed bewailing America "turning into California."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/gops_inane_war_on_california/feed/ 196 Meet the man who is always “absolutely right” http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/meet_the_man_who_is_always_absolutely_right/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/meet_the_man_who_is_always_absolutely_right/#comments Thu, 14 Mar 2013 20:12:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13229287 Mediaite's Andrew Kirell, a self-described libertarian, has been on the Martin Bashir beat, calling the host's 4 p.m. show on its "lack of liberal introspectiveness." But Kirell discovered, tipped off by the Guardian (and former Salon) columnist Glenn Greenwald, that Bashir has his fans. Not just fans -- guests who affirm everything out of their host's mouth. Mediaite assembled this montage.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/meet_the_man_who_is_always_absolutely_right/feed/ 0 Liberals should proudly cheer on Rand Paul http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/liberals_should_proudly_cheer_on_rand_paul/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/liberals_should_proudly_cheer_on_rand_paul/#comments Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:50:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13221995 Addie Stan's latest piece at Alternet is a must-read summary of one of the most insidious trends in American progressive politics: the trend toward seeing anything and everything as a purely partisan endeavor, regardless of possible outcomes.

Reporting on Rand Paul's heroic filibuster against President Obama's drone war, Stan makes the case that progressives shouldn't support such a filibuster because Paul is a Big Bad Republican. She says it is "horrifying to see" principled progressives cheer on Paul's attempt to force the Obama administration to answer basic questions about civil liberties -- horrifying not because Paul is wrong on that issue, but because he's wrong on other, totally unrelated issues and represents an evil "paranoid base" that dares to fear a government that "might soon be launching drones against them."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/liberals_should_proudly_cheer_on_rand_paul/feed/ 114 Conservatives and liberals drink different beer http://www.salon.com/2013/02/27/conservatives_and_lilberals_drink_different_beer_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/27/conservatives_and_lilberals_drink_different_beer_partner/#comments Wed, 27 Feb 2013 19:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13213646 AlterNet

It was probably inevitable, but it’s striking nonetheless. In a new study published in the journal Psychological Science, Vishal Singh of New York University’s Stern School of Business and his colleagues apply an ever-growing body of research on the psychological traits of liberals and conservatives to their consumer choices. The result? A stark left-right difference when it comes to favoring well-established brands, like Coca-Cola or Tide, over the new and generic products that are trying to compete with them.

In their study (paywall version here), Singh and his colleagues examined a vast set of sales data across 416 U.S. counties — from 135 different supermarket chains and 1,860 individual stores over a six-year period. Within this huge mass of consumerism, the researchers zoomed in on sales in the consumer packaged industry — products ranging from laundry detergents to frozen pizzas to toothpastes and razors. As they note in their study, this industry features the regular introduction of many new products and brands, and also many generics trying to compete with the established brands.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/27/conservatives_and_lilberals_drink_different_beer_partner/feed/ 104 DC’s quest to silence Elizabeth Warren http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/beltway_to_elizabeth_warren_shhh/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/beltway_to_elizabeth_warren_shhh/#comments Mon, 18 Feb 2013 17:18:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13204722 To know that the Washington media manufactures narratives wholly divorced from pesky facts is to simply compare last week's Politico article on freshman Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren with the actions of the senator in the same week.

In a vacuum and without actual evidence, Politico declared that Warren has a "quiet plan" to become a "silent senator" - one who refuses to speak out on controversial issues and therefore creates an image for herself that is "a sharp departure from her rousing campaign and outspoken consumer advocacy." Yet, that very week, Warren showed she will likely be the opposite of a "silent senator." She did this by slamming Republicans obstructing the nomination of a consumer regulator, publicly grilling negligent bank regulators and generally mustering a dominating performance at her very first committee hearing, thus generating national headlines.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/beltway_to_elizabeth_warren_shhh/feed/ 128 Check your optimism http://www.salon.com/2013/01/22/check_your_optimism/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/22/check_your_optimism/#comments Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:42:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13178021 In an inaugural speech stringing together the most tried, true and poll-tested applause lines, none was as appropriate yet also dissonant as President Obama's assertion that America should not "treat name-calling as reasoned debate."

On the appropriate side of the ledger, that line could be seen as a justifiable riposte to an Angry Right-Wing Hate Machine that relies on - and makes its money from - the business of slur. Indeed, epithets like "socialist," "fascist," "Hitler," "Magical Negro," and "monkey" (among others) are now part of the conservative movement's day-to-day vernacular in making its case against the current White House occupant, ginning up popular anger and raising money for the conservative media machine.

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