The prevailing political foofaraw right now involves Ben Carson’s account, in his 1990 autobiography, regarding a phantom “offer” to attend West Point. Before some analysis, a word or two..
Ben Carson has no business running for President. His supporters are irresponsible and deluded. I was just on WGAN (Maine) on Arthur King’s show, and Carson was discussed. A Carson supporting caller took issue with my statement that he was flat out unqualified for office whatever had been said to him about West Point, and protested that he was a brilliant surgeon, and successfully managed his surgical team. We ran out of time, and I didn’t get to say, “So what?” Is Ned Yost a potential President because he successfully managed a baseball team to a World Series victory? Yost’s training and experience have as much correlation to political leadership as Carson’s, and arguably more. Carson has no qualifications for high office. He is easily the least qualified candidate in either field, with no management experience, no political talents, weak speaking skills, negligible presence, irrelevant education and training, and terrible political instincts. You could throw a rutabaga into a crowd and have a good chance of hitting someone who would be a more promising President.
Wrote J. Christian Adams succinctly about the current controversy,
“[T]he incident reveals a recurring and perhaps unrecoverable trait of candidate Carson. He just doesn’t seem to know what he is talking about, whether it be Cuba, the Voting Rights Act, or how West Point works.”
Yes, and that too.
So if this typical example of the news media blowing a relatively minor incident out of proportion because a Republican poses a threat to Democratic domination should result in Carson’s demise, good. Something has to. It is wrong, another example the double standard we are all used to; and the news media should be called on it hard. Still, if it ends the embarrassing distraction that is Ben Carson, I’m not weeping. The ends don’t justify unethical means, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy the ends anyway.
Let us pretend that Carson is a competent, qualified and deserving candidate for President, just to try to strip the bias away. How significant and serious are Carson’s various misrepresentations?
These all arise from what Carson wrote about his youth and early years in 1990, 25 years ago, when running for President wasn’t a twinkle in his eye. He…heck, we can’t pretend, because a competent candidate would be smart and experienced enough to say,
“You know, I didn’t expect anyone to read the book, I wrote most of it off the top of my head, my memory was faulty, I didn’t check the facts and I should have. The West Point story is typical. To me, it sounded like I was being told that I could get into West Point if I wanted to, and that I wouldn’t have to pay tuition, which to me meant a scholarship. I wasn’t trying to fool anybody then or now. I’m sorry. I’ve learned a lot in 25 years. I know most of our personal memories are distorted over time, and cannot be relied upon; mistakes like these turn up to varying degrees in all personal accounts. Bill Clinton says he remembered lots of church burning in Arkansas when he was growing up. Hillary Clinton said she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who didn’t become famous for climbing Mount Everest until six years after was born. The difference between my memory flawa and theirs was that mine can’t be attributed to political dissembling. Next question.”
If he had said that, then his other statements that didn’t check out could be explained the same way, and reasonably so. Instead, Carson and his defenders are denying, accusing, double-talking and parsing words like the Clintons. This is foolish because
I) Carson’s not as practiced at it as the Clintons,
2) …The truth is always better, and,
3) Unlike when the Clintons lie, most of the news media are looking for justifications to destroy him as it did Herman Cain. Reporters do not want to not be fair or reasonable with Carson, and certainly not complicit in deception as regularly is for Hillary.
Now the news media is going through “Gifted Hands” like it is the Rosetta Stone—something, by the way, they never did with Barack Obama’s books in 2008. This is not to say they shouldn’t be checking Carson’s book out now; not at all. It is to point out, yet again, that Obama got a free ride from the press in 2008. For example, Obama’s reefer past was not widely discussed until his re-election campaign, nor was his taste for dog, if you believe that anecdote.
So now the floodgates are open for Carson. He claimed in his book that he met General Westmoreland in conjunction with the episode that led to the “offer” of a West Point “scholarship,” and Westmoreland’s schedule doesn’t match Carson’s account. Was Carson lying? I don’t know, and at this point, maybe Carson doesn’t either. Our memories shuffle and combine disparate events. Maybe he met Westmoreland at some other time. Maybe he met a general whose name he’s forgotten and who became Westmoreland in his mind over time. This happens to normal, honest people, and it easily could be the explanation for some, most, or all of these discrepancies.
I’m editing my father’s memoirs. Several of the accounts in his book don’t match up with dates, and some are at odds with the versions of the same stories I heard growing up. My Dad was very self-deprecating in his book; the original title was “Tales of A Timid Commando.” I doubt he was lying—-he never lied, in my experience, a Boy Scout to the end– and since won’t be running for President, being dead, and since most of the stories can’t be checked, it makes no difference. It’s how he remembered what happened.
We also have this story from Carson:
“The day before I’d been informed that the final examination papers in a psychology class, Perceptions 301, ‘were inadvertently burned’….So I, with about 150 other students, went to the designated auditorium for the repeat exam….[The questions] were incredibly difficult….Soon half the class was gone, and the exodus continued. Not one person turned in the examination before leaving…..Suddenly the door of the classroom opened….The professor came toward me. With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘A hoax,’ the teacher said. ‘We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class.’ She smiled again. ‘And that’s you.’ “
The Wall Street Journal checked the story, and reported that “no photo identifying Mr. Carson as a student ever ran, according to the Yale Daily News archives, and no stories from that era mention a class called Perceptions 301. Yale Librarian Claryn Spies said Friday there was no psychology course by that name or class number during any of Mr. Carson’s years at Yale.” What does this prove? It proves that Carson got the story wrong, that’s all. Maybe he made it up whole-cloth, but that would be strange: Carson hardly needs to make up fanciful tales to impress people.
I could easily see this kind of discrepancy happening to me. When I was in law school, I was known as the student who started and ran the student theater organization, a rarity in a graduate school. (The company is still operating, and, as it likes to say, “the only theater company with its own law school.”) The Dean had told me I was doing a service to the school, and by my third year I was treated like a star student athlete, given all sorts of leeway and assistance to ensure that the show would go on. That year I took Antitrust Law while I was directing the production, and the course was personal disaster. The show was a huge success, but when I took the exam a month later I was sure—am sure—that I flunked it. When the grade sheet was posted, there was a mysterious “p” by my name among all the other D’s and F’s. That meant “pass,” but I hadn’t taken the course pass/fail. Puzzled, I went to the registrar and asked what “p” meant. “Don’t ask,” she said. “It means you passed.”
Later I learned that that course didn’t allow pass/fail.
I’ve been telling that story for years, but I could imagine ways in which an investigation would call it into question. The registrar, the professor and the Dean are dead; maybe someone later caught the weird letter and said, “”This can’t be right,” then changed it to a “D.” Something happened that Carson remembered as he told the story in his book. Even if the facts don’t check out decades later, he was not necessarily lying.
Conservative blogger and lawyer John Hindraker concludes:
In the history of “fabrications” by candidates for office, this is very small beer. Nor, I think, can it plausibly be claimed to be important because it sheds light on Carson’s character. (Hillary Clinton’s lie about being named after Sir Edmund Hillary might be an example of an otherwise insignificant fib that betrays a flawed character.) No one can seriously claim that Carson makes a habit of exaggerating his academic or professional accomplishments. He has had a brilliant career, of which he is justifiably proud, but about which he is quite modest. I have discussed his career with him, and can attest that in person, that is exactly how he comes across when he talks about his years as a surgeon. The West Point episode is so minor in the context of Carson’s accomplishments that I don’t see how much significance can be attributed to it.
Nonetheless, conservatives and Republicans are foolish to indulge in the same kind of excuses and rationalizing to defend Carson that the liberal media allows Hillary Clinton’s team of enablers to get away with, month after month, week after week, day after day. All that does is make their job easier. Of course it’s true that what Ben Carson wrote in the memoirs of a neurosurgeon 25 years ago isn’t within a mile of being as significant as the whoppers Clinton tells constantly; as the whoppers she told during the Presidential candidates’ debate to accolades from the same journalists attacking Carson now.
Just recently, Hillary revised history by claiming that she and Bill were always gay rights supporters, and he only signed the Defense of Marriage Act as a “defensive action” to block an anti-gay Constitutional Amendment that might have passed. This is epic Clinton bullshit; even Slate’s gay blogger, Mark Joseph Stern, gives it no credibility at all. At worst it was a naked and cynical political move by Bill. At best, and Bill Clinton said this in an interview (but what does that mean?) he believed in DOMA when he signed it, but like most Americans, changed his mind about gay rights over time. Furthermore, nobody except pro-gay rights hysterics (like Slate’s Stern today) and anti-gay rights fanatics thought that a Constitutional amendment had a chance of passing.
So Hillary lies daily, and occasionally it’s a one-day story in the “conservative press,” as in “Faux News.” Carson messes up tales from his teens and twenties in a 25 year old book, and it’s a front page thunderclap: want to read all about it? Here: MSNBC, New York Times, Telegraph, Business Insider, PoliticusUSA, addictinginfo.org, The Hinterland Gazette, Mediaite, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Week, Drudge Retort, The Moderate Voice, Lawyers, Guns & Money , Balloon Juice, PoliticusUSA, Latest from Crooks and Liars, ThinkProgress, Guardian, New York Times, CNNMoney, Business Insider, CNN, Fox News Insider, and The Washington Post, and here as well.…just for starters.
Yes, it’s good for everyone, Republicans, the nation, even Carson, if this excessive media mugging kills his campaign. And if the news media becomes embarrassed about its shameful double standard and even a few respectable journalists measure the leading Democratic candidate’s long, long trail of lies against Carson’s flawed memories—thus becoming more respectable in the process—Carson will not have been mugged in vain.
______________________________
Sources: memeorandum, , Detroit News, PJ Media, WSJ, Powerline, Mother Jones, Bloomberg
Ethics Alarms 
Embarrassed about its shameful double standard? Sometimes, I can’t help but wonder if they’re even cognizant of it.
http://i.imgur.com/405Fydb.jpg?1
Such peccadilloes are “Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”
Too early in the morning for GG&SS quotes …..
I don’t think Zoe is familiar with the Georgetown Gilbert & Sullivan Society…you added an extra G and S. I can relate, and you get many brownie points.
Your own biases are showing.
Why would a media that only cares about a Clinton win go after Ben Carson now?
Tactically you go after a weakness when it’ll hurt the most. Since he’d have little chance in a general election what’s to be gained by knocking him down a peg during the primaries, especially when his opponents can do it themselves. It’d be better, tactically, to wait and see.
Maybe he flames out and gets that job on Fox News he’s angling for. Then you use the biography to call him a lying liar who lies just as he starts to pump up right-wing candidates. Oh you think Brian Williams is unacceptable for exaggerating then why are you lining up behind Freddie fibber here, is it just because he’s on your side? And you complain of bias.
Maybe he survives deep into the primaries and you shoot him down just when he’s amassed a ton of delegates, force a brokered convention. Maybe he locks it up and you start questioning his honesty the very next day so he has it hanging over him heading into the convention. You use it the day he announces his vice president both stealing the news cycle and buying time to do oppo research on the VP pick.
Or if he’s weak enough, and I think he is, October surprise. Last nail in the coffin. It isn’t as if there’s any effort needed to turn talk of the primaries into personalities rather than issues. Trump has Joe Arpaio syndrome wherein the most dangerous place on Earth is between him and a camera.
If you’re going to assure the media of offering one side an unethical advantage why are you doing the discourtesy of assuming they’d be half-assed about it?
In war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory. — Sun Tzu
The point is that a good journalist would go after Carson. It’s selective practice, as I said—not to be aggressive vetting Carson, which is ethical, but not doing the same with Obama and Hillary, because reporters are so biased and unprofessional that they don’t think it’s necessary. Journalists aren’t trying to be unfair. Bias makes us stupid, and a lot of journalists aren’t that smart to begin with.
“Why would a media that only cares about a Clinton win go after Ben Carson now?”
Because he just started to lap Trump. The media flogs the person ahead. Always. First Jeb, and then Trump, and now Carson. They’ll attack the low hanging fruit, always, but they really pull out the stops for the front-runner. But there’s a difference between the flack he gets and the flack that he deserves. This West Point story? It’s more of a story because of how he reacted to it, but he shouldn’t have had to react to it, because Politico shouldn’t have dropped every journalistic standard to try to smear him. The Pyramids being built by Joseph to store grain? Disqualifying.
Here’s the original story released by Politico. It was stealth edited once, before being edited again and an editor’s note being put in place. I particularly like the third paragraph hammering home the shot that West Point has no records of Carson ever having applied or being accepted, while not acknowledging that Carson has said for years that he never applied. It was a hit piece from the beginning.
Of course it was. Which is why I said “Politico shouldn’t have dropped every journalistic standard to try to smear him.” But after the story was run, Carson’s inability to form coherent sentences to explain what happened, I think, speaks to a disability to function in a crisis.
When we evaluate specific allegations, we need to separate them from our feelings about the person. Whether Ben Carson is qualified to be President is a rather global assessment of him as a person, but the alleged misrepresentations of events in his past need to be evaluate based upon logic and common sense free from pro or anti Carson bias.
Twice I faced the situation of being offered admission to colleges where I had not applied. After I was accepted at Colgate, they wrote me that they would appreciate it if I would apply since they had accepted me. While I was at The Yeshiva University in NYC, JTS said that they could provide me a full scholarship. If I were to include these two incidents in a book, no one could check them out, but that does not make them untrue.
My deportment in high school was A+, but I did beat up a kid in the locker room because he was a bully who had abused me when I was very ill years before and I had just caught him bullying a younger kid. The fact no one can verify my story does make it is false.
I see the same situation with Ben Carson — Unlike Jay Leno who had his whole life videoed [LOL], a gazillion things happen to us about which no one knows. These are the type of things over which people are quibbling with Ben Carson.
I do not blame the media for these stories. The media reports what sells. Thus, I blame the American public. They buy the racist rants that Obama is not a real American, they love The Donald’s calling Mexicans rapists and criminals. Americans shun learning about economics — the most important aspect of their entire lives! They don’t know that the heart of Keynesian Economics is the same as the dream of the lean cows and the fat cows which Joseph interpreted for The Pharaoh.
America did not end up as one of the most corrupt industrialized nations with the worst public educational system because we yearn for “Truth, Justice and the American Way.” We need to distinguish our vital interests from petty gossip.
Excellent comment. Awful last paragraph. The U.S. is far from one of the most corrupt industrial nations—what standard would you be applying? Russia? Japan? China? Korea? Germany? France? Mexico? MEXICO? Brazil? All of industrialized Africa?The U.S. is easily among the most strict nations regarding bribery–one of the great impediments to our international corporations is that bribery us routine overseas and forbidden here. Nepotism is worse everywhere else. Sexual harassment in business is worse. What’s your basis for that statement?
“They don’t know that the heart of Keynesian Economics is the same as the dream of the lean cows and the fat cows which Joseph interpreted for The Pharaoh.”
I’d love to see that analogy explained. Given that the heart of Joseph’s dream about SAVING during fat years to cover during lean years is predicated on spending LESS during the fat years to generate a SURPLUS to save for the coming lean years. Yet our leading Keynesian solution seems to be outspend your income during fat years and then outspend your income EVEN MORE during lean years.
Sort of breaks the analogy at it’s heart.
Keynes requires less spending during the fat years or more exactly, Keynes requires more savings. This is done by various programs, e.g. unemployment insurance is a good example. During the fat years, which are during the upswing in the business cycle such as we are having now, we need to set aside a significant portion so that it can be added to the economy when we hit the down cycle.
The people about whom you correctly complain are NOT Keynesian economists. I prefer the simple term “fools,” but I know that does not advance the discussion. A better explanation is that people who do not understanding the business cycle and Keynes fail to realize the need to set aside funds for the future.
There is a feature which should be mentioned. Keynes requires the savings for the future downturn, that does not mean we need to reduce spending. That conclusion is fuzzy thinking. One needs to assess the amount of wealth which is being generated and the amount of savings which we need to undertake. A “balanced budget” is a myopic goal — it is a buzz term without analytical significance.
Another program which is needed is to increase the Social Security deductions by raising the cap on the top income and we need to place those funds in a separate account to provide an extra jump in Social Security income when a down turn occurs. This new aspect of Social Security will take a little more money out of the economy when it is overheating and provide that extra boost when we enter a downturn.
We need to also develop extra educational and training programs for businesses for the downturn. Again, this requires businesses to set aside additional funds during the hot years. A downturn is NOT the time to lay off workers. It is an opportunity to increase workers’ education and training.
These ideas are never discussed because the American people prefer gossip over serious discussion. They prefer buzz words over analysis.
Apparently Keynes failed colossally at teaching his acolytes this principle…doesn’t seem that they believe it…(if that is actually an accurate interpretation of Keynes…as those who practice it don’t seem to interpret him that way).
Of course, I did intentionally leave out the other bit that breaks down the economic analogy…
Egypt’s proto-agricultural society is closer to the simplicity of a family in analogy than it is to the complexity of a modern economy.
You’re last 3 paragraphs are wishful thinking…following the same error of Keyne’s: that an economy can actually be controlled. It can’t.
Keynes provided the path. People who ignore the route that Keynes showed are not Keynesians, and it is misleading to pretend that they are. Keynesian himself noted the political difficulties in having people enact wise policies. That is a political problem — not one of economics.
It is a problem which is complicated when people lack the integrity to take the time to understand Keynesian economics and instead, they pretend that it includes elements which Keynes himself rejected.
The additional programs which we need do not discredit Keynes. They show the dearth of political leadership and the triumph of Trumpism shows that ignorance prevails because the American people do not value facts or study of facts. It is easier and more fun to take pot shots without sound analysis.
No True Keynesian?
Ha! Awesome!
And you, sir, are underestimating the power of wishful thinking!
Is it possible for anyone to do something wrong without it being compared to Secretary Clinton.
Not as long as she is the beneficiary of double standard as she corrupts both the public’s values and the electoral process, no.
Here: https://ethicsalarms.com/2015/07/12/a-brief-statement-regarding-hillary-clinton-and-ethics-alarms/