The Money Quote:
"In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she's living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/michele-bachmanns-holy-war-20110622#
Sunday Night Futures
2 hours ago
I recently read an interesting article on Slate about how the journalism industry has evolved in the past century to affect the appearance of objectivity in its reporting as a business model for increasing readership. The same article pointed out that the height of news objectivity came in the '50s when television was hitting its stride and Walter Cronkite delivered the evening news with a matter-of-fact tone that more than implied that "that's the way it is." The way it was was that communism was evil and capitalism was the great bastion of freedom in the western world. These were incontrovertible facts that everyone in journalism agreed on. Even though communism's shown itself to be a deeply flawed system in the decades since then, the popular discourse has shifted and the virtues of capitalism over communism are no longer axiomatic.
ReplyDeleteI bring all this up to simply point out that I could tell from the link that this article was going to have some heavy spin on it. And I'm okay that it's a profile that is deliberately designed to frighten uncritical readers who haven't formed an opinion on Bachmann and affirm the beliefs of readers who already think she's a loon. The writer more or less acknowledges that he isn't interested in getting attention from Bachmann supporters, since he writes them off pretty handily as equally delusional. I'm cool with all that because I think objectivity's a dirty lie that journalists shouldn't try to perpetuate, because it creates a false sense of security, an assumption that the news would never lie to us.
All that said, I just want to point out one fact that the writer was flat out wrong about as an example of how it'd be best to take this profile and weigh it against several others from different sources with varying levels of approval of Bachmann. At one point the writer catalogs a series of issues that Bachmann has gotten involved in, and he mentions condensed flourescent lighting as one of the bugbears that Bachmann opposes because they contain mercury that can be harmful to animals, children, and the elderly. The irony is that while he's clearly dismissing this issue as some nutjob's anti-green crusade, CFLs do in fact contain mercury, and it is a huge pain in the butt to clean them up. Multiple sealed plastic bags are involved and clothes are supposed to be disposed of if any bits of a broken bulb come in direct contact with them. It is nowhere near as simple as sweeping up the glass shards and moving on with your life.
Anyway, I thought it was an entertaining article, but I'd point out that the writer clearly has a bent towards discrediting Bachmann however he can, and this article cannot by itself tell you more than you'll ever want to know about Michelle Bachmann.
I suppose you're right about the article's bias but I'm definitely in the camp that believes she's a loon. I happen to enjoy the harshly partisan style of Matt Taibbi and I think he's a pretty important journalist these days.
ReplyDeleteI think you exaggerate the mercury clean up procedure. Sure the EPA has a crazy process of decontamination and if you drop a CFL on the floor they'd want to declare your house a super-fund site. That's all just a result of stupidly written regulations which don't distinguish between trace amounts of mercury and larger spills. There's more mercury in a can of tuna fish THAT YOU EAT than in a CFL bulb. (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/cfls-dirty-electricity-and-bad-science/)
The larger point isn't that the bulbs are dangerous. It's that Bachmann is opposed to them for reasons beyond their negligible health effects. She is seeing a vast government conspiracy whose aim is to kill Americans. I'm sorry but that's crazy. We certainly kill lots of people through negligence but the only government programs that kill American citizens on purpose are prisons, police, and our automated drones overseas.
Hi James, Jason gets his mercury paranoia directly from me. Having just come from a job with a major manufacturer of mercury-containing lamps, I've got an insider's viewpoint on this one. You're right - the standard CFL contains very little mercury, and my concern is not the odd broken bulb. The real issue with mercury is that since it cannot be cleaned up through normal methods (vacuuming, mopping, and so forth), the effects are cumulative when proper cleanup is not observed all along the way. I fully support any and all attempts at energy conservation, and I think we can and should continue to move in that direction, but unfortunately, by making CFLs the de facto light bulb used by all Americans (with no other options allowed for households where mercury poisoning could be very dangerous), in a few decades we will begin to see health-related issues from households where the odd broken bulb has added up to a standing environmental hazard, particularly to children and to women of childbearing age.
ReplyDeleteI'm not the leading expert on the subject, but I predict that we will eventually see a spike in mercury-related birth defects, similar to what happens when pregnant women eat too much fish. Note that the ocean is contaminated with mercury in this way as well - longterm exposure means that virtually all seafood has at least some mercury in it, which is not a problem unless you eat it in larger quantities. Unfortunately, when you have a house where you've broken many bulbs over the years here and there, you can't just avoid the house for the duration of your pregnancy, nor can you ensure that other people will follow cleanup procedures on your behalf. Maybe it's a little paranoid, and maybe the benefits outweigh the risks, but the fact remains that it is something that the public seems woefully uninformed about.
Just realized my first paragraph doesn't make sense with the repeat of "odd broken bulb" - I meant that a single broken bulb is not a cause for panic (as you point out) but that the cumulative effects of a household using these bulbs exclusively over the years is different from ingesting fish, since the fish is contained in a person's body and passes out into the septic system instead of lingering uncontained in a houses's environment. Once again, think about the difference between simply avoiding tuna if you're at risk, and a baby crawling across an apparently clean carpet with skin directly in contact with mercury (which is absorbed through skin contact).
ReplyDeleteHey James,
ReplyDeleteI think Rachael does a far better job of explaining the concern over CFLs than I could. I wanted to clarify that I don't have any problem with Taibbi's article. I think that it's a perfectly legitimate journalistic strategy to editorialize in your reporting, and I appreciate journalists who have a clear dislike of people they are researching because they won't cover up any flaws they find. As for Bachmann, I don't have much of an opinion on her either way. I do think it's a shame that people treat her like a circus act because it gives other politicians undue gravitas by contrast. Of course, I'm a disillusioned moderate who thinks both parties are full of loons.