The Ghettoization of the Right

I was disappointed to hear that George Will jumped over to Fox News, following his former colleague at ABC, John Stossel, who left for Fox in 2009. While it may seem tidy to group all the conservative and libertarian-leaning voices under the Fox banner, I think this is a bad situation. We need a diversity of viewpoints across media channels if we are to avoid furthering the "echo chamber" effect on the left and the right.

Sadly, it seems people see this sort of ghettoization as the expected norm. In an interview with Will, the Deseret News states, "Some questioned why he hadn't made the move to Fox News in the past, and he had said it was because Roger Ailes hadn't asked." Or as New York magazine put it, "George Will Is Finally Joining Fox News," where he gets to work with "a team more his speed."

Maybe I'm overstating the problem, since other conservatives (e.g. Ann Coulter, Peggy Noonan) do appear regularly on ABC's "This Week," where Will was a mainstay. But losing Will's contribution marks a big change. I doubt we are going to see a liberal with his stature joining the ranks at Fox News anytime soon—and just this week, Sally Kohn, whom the New York Times calls "one of Fox News Channel's most visible liberal pundits," left the network for MSNBC.

Barack Obama, the Moderate Conservative

In a sane political environment, Barack Obama would be considered center-right.

This was first made clear to me by Andrew Sullivan, on the Colbert Report and in his blog, and it's undeniably true. Obama shepherded through Congress a health-care law modeled on Mitt Romney's, which incorporates many elements originally recommended by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Obamacare works with private insurers and other existing health care delivery systems and relies on free-market incentives to reduce health care costs—an element of the law that is already working.

Obama is pro business, and pro tax cuts. He lectures African-Americans on personal responsibility. He has allowed Bush-era surveillance and anti-terrorism methods to stand (earning the ire of libertarians and many on the left), and ramped up the pursuit of Osama bin Laden, leading to his killing. He has agreed to unprecedented cuts to the federal budget in an effort to appease hard-liners in the Republican party. The number of public employees under his administration has shrunk, largely due to cuts in federal money for the states. Federal spending is flat since 2009, and has decreased as a percentage of GDP.

Obama is in every rational sense a centrist, and is best understood as taking a center-right stand on most matters of public policy. He is, as Sullivan states, "America's Tory President." Yet the right hates, fears and distrusts him, seeing him as some kind of closet socialist dictator. How can this be?

I think it's useful to make a comparison with Richard Nixon. Nixon was elected a Republican president in an era when liberalism was at its apex, and calls for radical social and political change came most vehemently from the left. In response, Nixon acted in a way that was essentially center-left, supporting the Clean Air Act and the EPA and pushing myriad big-government policies during his tenure. Had he been president today, he would be seen as more liberal than Obama or Bill Clinton. Yet the left of the late '60s and early '70s did not see it this way. To them, he was a right-wing warmonger, a fraud and a disaster for the nation (all this years before Watergate).

Nixon tacked left in reaction to the winds of his time. Obama has tacked right in reaction to the winds of his. Today's right, like yesterday's left, just doesn't see it. In years to come, when Tea Party hysteria dies down, I am certain this will be accepted fact, and I pledge to point it out to my Republican friends ad nauseum.

What Today's Headlines on Obamacare Should Be

It's a shame. This should be a day of excitement and hope. Today we implement a health care law that will cut the number of uninsured Americans by 25 to 30 million. A law that prevents denial of coverage for preexisting conditions. A law that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will reduce the federal deficit over time. A law tested in Mitt Romney's Massachusetts and full of provisions recommended by the conservative Heritage Foundation as recently as the early '90s. A law most of us should be able to get behind.

Sure, it's not perfect. So we implement it and work out the kinks as they are revealed in practice. We make it better. We don't shut down the government because a minority of lawmakers dislike it in principle. That's not how our democracy works.

Obamacare is about helping poor and middle class people get insurance. That's what it's for. That's what it does. The ideologues of the Right, who compare their childish escapades on Capitol Hill to the heroism of Flight 93 (I'm looking at you, John Culberson) need to stand down. You failed to convince Americans last year that Obamacare should be repealed, and lost the presidential election. It's time to move on. Fund the government, fix the postal service, pass a farm bill. Do some work.

A Few Words On Wawa

It's shocking, in a way, that I have maintained this blog for so long without commenting on Wawa. Wawa, for all my hypothetical readers out there, is a family-owned chain of convenience stores based near Philadelphia, with locations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Florida. I once, long ago, wrote about the "Hardee's-Roy Rogers Factor" in determining whether you were in the Northeast or the South; Wawa holds a similar regional connotation. For millions who grew up, or live, in Eastern Pennsylvania or South Jersey, when you see a Wawa, you're home.

"Wawa," by the way, is a Native American word for the Canada Goose. On Wawa Hoagie Day in Philadelphia, the goose can be seen ambling around Independence Mall, giving out free hoagies to thousands of happy people. Yeah, Wawa is like that.

Respect the goose: Wawa on Independence Mall

I am generally reluctant to get overly excited or partisan about brands, but with Wawa, my loyalty developed early. There's the no-fee ATMs. The good coffee. That it started out as a dairy, so you could trust the milk. Today, my kids crave the sandwiches and mac n' cheese, love the touch-screen ordering, and sing the Wawa Hoagiefest song in the car. All hail the next generation.

I was annoyed by a recent article in the New York Times comparing Pennsylvania's two dominant convenience stores, Sheetz and Wawa. Sheetz was set up as the rural, Pa. heartland market, and Wawa as the tony suburban sandwich shop. I don't know much about Sheetz, but Wawa is a very democratic scene, loved by people from all walks of life. Rather than illustrating the increasing cultural/economic divide, Wawa, I think, represents the kind of no-nonsense quality it's getting harder to find. (NPR commentator Marion Winik once complained of pizza in Texas: you have to choose between "the bad" and "the froufrou." Wawa is neither—this is what I'm talking about.)

So if you find yourself in the Mid-Atlantic, be sure to check out The Wa. You can thank me later for sharing the love.

Public Shaming on Twitter a Nightmare for all Parties

This is really horrible. Two guys at a tech conference are overheard privately making jokes about "dongles" and "forking," which were interpreted as sexist by a woman sitting in front of them whom they did not know. The woman then tweeted a picture of them with comments in order to publicly shame them.

Cue the, at turns, hyper-PC, hyper-insensitive and often nasty Internet, which within hours turned the story into a career and public-relations nightmare for the parties involved, their companies and the tech conference they were attending. What in years past would have resulted in a nasty look or, at worst, a testy conversation between the jokers and the offended party—most likely ending in apologies, a better understanding of each other and perhaps even friendship—has now resulted in the firing of one of the jokers and the offended tweeter herself.

The biggest problem with these sort of viral situations is that things quickly spin beyond the initial issue at hand. Was the tweeter right to publicly shame the men, rather than privately rebuke them? Were the tech guys being offensive or just a bit childish in their banter? What's the proper reaction for conference organizers and others on Twitter to this incident? Instead, we have hateful people tweeting horrible things about the woman. Her employer's website was hacked and shut down. The employer, running scared, fired her, around the same time the employer of one of the men fired him.

It's hard to say what can be done about such things in the wide-open world of social media. Restraint from all parties involved is called for, of course, but perhaps the key missing element here is courage. The offended tweeter could have brought the issue up with the men. The men could have apologized to her directly, or on Twitter, once they knew someone had taken offense (the one who was fired did apologize in a blog comment). The companies involved could have stood by their employees until the furor died down. Most of all, the cowardly Internet trolls and haters could have put up or shut up—they are the ones most deserving of shame.