“Discord? What discord?”
Anderson Cooper seems to have decided to single-handedly stand for objective journalism in the midst of Democratic cheer-leading from most of his colleagues in the broadcast media. Of course, he chose the lowest-hanging fruit imaginable as a target: the Democratic National Committee’s ridiculous, abrasive, shamelessly dishonest chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who earned a Jumbo for persisting in a falsehood that nobody could possibly believe.
The Democrats walked into a controversy of their own making when they approved a platform that removed any mention of God (since God is not, presumably, a Democrat, I don’t know why anyone cares) and an assertion that Jerusalem is the proper capital of Israel. Both of these apparently were also approved by the candidate, President Obama, and conservative blogs and the Republican campaign had a field day with the supposed implications of both. [This was a classic “tit for tat,” because the Democrats had loudly insisted that anything appearing in the GOP platform was attributable to Mitt Romney.] Someone, maybe the President, then concluded that God and Jerusalem needed to go back into the language to stem the bleeding, and what followed was a raucous, and, depending on your orientation, embarrassing or ugly display on the convention floor, with some delegates booing the return of God and Jerusalem and with a repeated voice vote that allowed them back sounding much more like a tie than the required two-third ayes.
All of this was front and center, on live TV and well-reported. Naturally, Wasserman Schultz told CNN, in essence, “What are you going to believe, me, or your own eyes?” “Essentially, with Jerusalem, it was a technical omission and nothing more than that,” she told CNN after the vote. “There was never any discussion or debate commentary over adding or subtracting it.” When CNN White House correspondent Brianna Keilar asked her about the messy process of changing the platform, which took three voice votes, and the discord on the floor (exemplified by the audible jeers and booing). Wasserman Schultz replied, “There wasn’t any discord.” Keilar persisted, noting that many delegates didn’t believe there was a two-thirds majority based on the voice vote. (There obviously was not.)
Wasserman Schultz replied, “It absolutely was two-thirds.”“Elephant? What elephant?”
Then Keilar noted that this was a reversal from Wednesday, because the Obama campaign had stated Tuesday that it stood by the platform as it was originally passed.
“No, no, it’s not actually,” Wasserman-Schultz said.
In the CNN studios, rather than taking the usual lazy and enabling journalistic course of allowing such dishonesty to pass unchallenged, an incredulous Anderson Cooper told his panel:
“I just got to go to the panel with this. I mean, Debbie Wasserman Schultz said it wasn’t a change of language, there was no discord that we saw, and it was a two-thirds vote. [“And it was a technical oversight!” injected panelist David Gergen] I mean, that’s an alternate universe…I just think from a reality standpoint, you can defend it as the head of the DNC, but to say flat out there was no discord is just not true.”
Exactly.
Thanks, Anderson
Start a trend.
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Sources:
Graphic: Nova Scotia Scott (Note: The photo is of a brawl in the Turkish Parliament, not the Democratic Convention)
Ethics Alarms 
Deserving awardees, both: Cooper and Wasserman-Schultz.
I suspect that something’s going on with that man’s, Anderson Cooper’s, career that most of us just don’t know enough about yet. First, he “outs” himself; then, just today, I read a rumor that he was in the running (at least, in some people’s minds) to replace the retired Regis Philbin on the TV show with Kelly Ripa (but former football star Michael Strahan got that job).
Disregarding that his touche’ was too easy, and that Wasserman-Schultz’s ridiculous denials were more than mere low-hanging fruit (they were more like pies to the faces of anyone who was paying any attention), Cooper’s mini-rant was downright…wait for it…fair and balanced.
Still, Cooper spoke ill of a Democrat on the air. These days, that’s a “Bozo no-no.” For that, (God save him!) he may be at risk of ending up a permanent panel member on that other TV show, The View.
Could be Cooper figures CNN is on its way out and he is angling for a spot as house liberal at Fox.
Or it could just be that the Democratic politicians have piled it so high that it is right under his nose he cannot help but smell it. Goodness knows they’ve piled it pretty deep, but so much of the press are still saying Democrats smell like roses, they must be taller than Cooper.
Strawman. “they say”. *sigh*.
WARNING TO “max”: I still don’t have a valid e-mail for you, or your real name. The next comment is getting spammed without them. Final warning.
I watched the vote, and I agree that neither side seemed to have a two-thirds vote. Is it just me, or did the ‘nays’ sound louder than the ‘ayes’ all three times?
No, they were.
This was, well, embarrassing all around. The Democrats had made their platform more secular. Good. This was criticized. Bad. The Democratic leadership freaked instead of pointing out that secular is actually the spirit and letter of the US. Bad. Changing it back was booed. Good. Everything that Wasserman said. Bad.
Ugh.
(Also, the email subscription mentions Wasserman’s “lair”. I approve of this typo).
You missed another BAD, the reason for the booing: the resolution to change the platform back clearly didn’t get 2/3 approval, and so was defeated. LA’s mayor dishonestly declared it passed. I’m not generally in favor of jeering, but in this case it was the only remaining course.
God being is either party’s platform is an archaic tradition, and I was proud of the Democrats for eliminating Him. But it doesn’t do any good to be momentarily courageous if you’re going to back down as soon as you’re challenged.
Is it concievablee that Wasserman Schultz is even worse than Michael Steele? I didn’t think that was possible.
To both tgt and Jack: Well stated. I couldn’t agree more.
I’d say Schultz is more competent generally than Steele (granted, my cat is more competent than Steele), but her lack of ethics kind of evens it out. On the plus side, Schultz has more ethics than my cat, as the cat randomly scratches people after she begs them to pet her.
Yes, this is exactly right. (I changed “bet” to “pet”. If your cat begs people to gamble with her, she really IS unethical.)
Well, when people scratch her, they’re betting that she’s sane, so that’s something.
I wouldn’t gamble with my cat; she cheats.
Why is that something to be proud of?
Because it’s serious. The political parties are not religious organizations, and government is secular. There is no reason other than naked pandering to religious interests to have God in a party platform. No reason why a nation’s choice of capital belongs there either.
This is the kind of thing that I am most curious about.
It is my studied opinion that without that “archaic tradition” morality, ethics, empathy, and education do indeed deteriorate.
I also understand why just suggesting that is infuriating to atheists. They don’t need to invoke God to be upstanding, and certainly not to be intelligent. I agree; they don’t. That’s not really the point, though. THEY (the articulate, educated, moral atheists) aren’t the only people out there, and their atheism didn’t arise in a vaccuum free of holdover Christian morals.
We don’t really know what happens when you raise a generation entirely in such a void; it hasn’t happened yet. And what evidence I have compiled tells me that the results will be disastrous (in post-Christian parts of Europe first, and soon afterwards here in the States.)
Not hoping to start a dialogue here about this opinion; just registering it. I believe that there are plenty of good reasons for a wise government to invoke the Creator. (It gets complicated when a larger chunk of the populace couldn’t care less about the Creator and the government becomes increasingly hypocritical by invoking Him, though.)
It is my studied opinion that without that “archaic tradition” morality, ethics, empathy, and education do indeed deteriorate.
Citation needed. You do realize that morality arose in Greece and Asia and India and South America and North America without the Abrahamic religions, right?
Also, that mainly atheist countries in Northern Europe have not deteriorated ethically, right? (Unless you beg the question by using the Bible to determine right and wrong)
also understand why just suggesting that is infuriating to atheists. They don’t need to invoke God to be upstanding, and certainly not to be intelligent. I agree; they don’t. That’s not really the point, though. THEY (the articulate, educated, moral atheists) aren’t the only people out there, and their atheism didn’t arise in a vaccuum free of holdover Christian morals.
No, Atheists have had to fight AGAINST Christian morals. *sigh*. With the way Christianity is interpretted differently by well, nearly everyone, and those interpretations always seems to line up with the individual’s desires, I’d say God does not generally help people to be upstanding people. God is a rationalization of desired behavior.
We don’t really know what happens when you raise a generation entirely in such a void; it hasn’t happened yet. And what evidence I have compiled tells me that the results will be disastrous (in post-Christian parts of Europe first, and soon afterwards here in the States.)
What’s disasterous in Belgium and Norway?
Not hoping to start a dialogue here about this opinion; just registering it.
Oooh..an attempt to keep your opinion free from criticism. Of course, it fails. If you can’t defend your ideas, then they aren’t worth the energy it took to type them.
I believe that there are plenty of good reasons for a wise government to invoke the Creator.
Like to protect the incredibly ignorant. Unless you believe in the need for a ruling class to save the peons from themsselves, it’s pretty hard to back theocracy.
“You do realize that morality arose in Greece and Asia and India and South America and North America without the Abrahamic religions, right?”
Wrong. Everyone has “morality”, but all of those civilizations practiced infanticide, slavery, and extreme misogyny such as your pampered Western self would not long be able to stand the sight of. Those institutions were not questioned in the absence of the Abrahamic religions.
“No, Atheists have had to fight AGAINST Christian morals. *sigh*”
And they’ve succeeded very well at it. To the tune of unprecedented levels of mass murder by social Darwinists and Communist regimes. If you are referring to Enlightenment-era atheists, their entire culture arose from Christian environs, as did yours.
“With the way Christianity is interpretted differently by well, nearly everyone, and those interpretations always seems to line up with the individual’s desires, I’d say God does not generally help people to be upstanding people.”
You’d say that. Impartial observers and sociologists say otherwise. Because, you know, reality. I’d bomb you with statistics, but they are readily available online to anyone who cares.
“What’s disasterous in Belgium and Norway?”
You are talking about regions that are the birthplace of the Reformation, with hundreds of years of evangelical moral and social foundations, in the most Protestant-soaked region of the world. And they’ve only been post-Christian for a generation or so. Give it time. Norway is already a world leader in suicide rate, and Nazi-era anti-Semitism and racism are creeping back in too.
“If you can’t defend your ideas, then they aren’t worth the energy it took to type them.”
Ideas NOT backed by any data are the ones that generally require defending. If you don’t think that God should be mentioned in politics, that’s a fine opinion for you to have. If you think that faith doesn’t help people and isn’t good for the world, then you are the religious equivalent of a Holocaust-denier. You are the one who had defending to do, and that is why your arguments consist of cherry-picked historical places and events, rather than any comprehensive understanding of what you are talking about. Very Dawkinsian.
“Like to protect the incredibly ignorant. Unless you believe in the need for a ruling class to save the peons from themsselves, it’s pretty hard to back theocracy.”
Except that “invoking the Creator” is not theocracy. I’m not sure at this point that you even care what your words mean. It’s like you just string buzzwords together. George Washington and Congress created the first Thanksgiving as an acknowledgment of Providence in the creation of the United States. Abraham Lincoln codified this into a national holiday with a fixed date. Were either of them backing a theocracy? Do you even care to respond to the things that people are actually saying?