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If you occasionally glance at the web site run by Amendment E’s California “publicist,” you’ll see the disjointed stream of consciousness rantings and ravings are directed more and more at the media. Could it have anything to do with the fact condemnation of Amendment E keeps coming in from around the nation? Here’s a couple more columnists who have recently chimed in.
The publisher of the Watertown Public Opinion attended a Farm Bureau town hall meeting in Clark Monday night where four ballot initiatives, including Amendment E, were discussed before a full house. Here’s an excerpt from his op-ed column Tuesday on the meeting:
It got even better on the next item: Amendment E, the so called J.A.I.L. amendment. The proponent first discussed all the “bad guys” who support the defeat of E … characters like South Dakota bankers, insurance companies and attorneys. Meanwhile, his second point spoke volumes of those who favor E … that’s where he spent the bulk of his seven minutes, speaking about how he had spent the better part of his life suing just about everybody in his township, his county and this state. He made his point so well with me, I’d like to recommend an official change for the pro E crowd — they change their slogan to G.E.T.E.V.E.N.A vote for Amendment E says you want to “get even” … is that a common sense value which characterizes this great state of South Dakota? I didn’t think so.
At the San Antonio (Tex.) Express-News, the paper’s former political editor wrote an op-ed piece about two weeks ago. Among other things, he said:
Texas’ gubernatorial race is strange indeed, but even Kinky Friedman & Co. can’t outdo South Dakota this year in the bizarre category.
Voters in the Mount Rushmore State will decide whether to allow angry, unsuccessful litigants to haul judges and other government officials who make judicial decisions before special grand juries and possibly impose civil and criminal penalties on them for doing their jobs.
* * *
Most people are content to appeal to a higher court when they disagree with a judicial decision. [Ron] Branson and his allies would rather create a new Wild West system of retribution. So much for interpreting the law without undue outside pressure.
Amendment E represents the anti-judiciary movement at its most extreme.
* * *
The entire system of settling legal disputes in a civilized manner would crumble if the J.A.I.L. 4 Judges proposal were enacted.
South Dakota voters can become eccentric trendsetters, or they can crush this bad idea on behalf of their fellow Americans.
No wonder Bill, Bonnie and friends seem to hate the media. Oh, that’s right. I forgot the media is part of the grand New World Order conspiracy Bill is so worried about.
That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.
Thomas H. Huxley, Universities: Actual and Ideal
It is by pure happenstance that within the month I read something by Orhan Pamuk, this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel Prize committee lauded the Turkish writer as one “who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures”.
I recently read Pamuk’s The New Life. I happened to pick it up in a bookstore in the Old City of Dubrovnik. Aside from the description on the back cover, the first sentence may rank among the best ever written: “I read a book one day and my whole life changed.”
Because the bookstore did not take Euros and I had no Croatian money, I didn’t buy it. Knowing Pamuk was Turkish, however, I made a point of buying the book in Istanbul, his native city. While I had planned to keep the book because of where I bought it, the fact Pamuk won the Nobel Prize less than a month later makes it that much more special.
The New Life almost defies description, which is why I have not yet posted a review of it. Inadequately summarized, the narrator, Orhan, is so affected by the book that he embarks on a search to enter the world it describes. Even before seeing The New Life, however, Pamuk’s novel Snow had been on my “you should pick this up” list for some time. My recent trip also generated interest in his Istanbul: Memories and the City. I intend to pick both up at the library later today.
Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head.
Orhan Pamuk, The New Life
Linda Grant’s The People on the Street won this years Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. The book tells the story of Grant, a non-religious Diaspora Jew, traveling to and in Israel in 2003. (Via The Millions.)
Kiran Desai won Britain’s most prestigious literary award, the Man Booker Prize, for her The Inheritance of Loss. The book tells the stories of an orphaned girl who goes to live with her grandfather, a retired judge, in an Indian village in the northern Himalayas and the son of the grandfather’s cook, who has emigrated to New York City.
Taking a huge step down, the winners of The Quill Awards also were announced. A glance through the winner’s list, particularly Book of the Year, shows why this truly is in search of a point.
The National Book Award finalists have been announced. I’m not doing well from a literary standpoint as I have read none of the fiction or nonfiction nominees. I note, though, that at least one of the fiction nominees, The Echo Maker, doesn’t even hit the street until next week. Last year’s nonfiction winner, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, was named a finalist the week after it hit the stores.
Although not awards-related, a hat tip to SFP at Pages Turned for the closing quote.
[E]very real book (as opposed to dictionaries, almanacs, and other compilations) is a mind, an imagination, a consciousness. Together, they comprise a civilization, or even several.
William H. Gass, A Temple of Texts
Although he and I come from wholly different ends of the political spectrum, I am happy to call Joel Rosenthal, former state GOP chairman, a friend of mine. Why are we friends? While we disagree, there is a mutual respect that stems from being honest with each other about what we think and where we stand. JR also generally pulls no punches and calls it as he sees it.
The latest case in point: his blog post Monday, “Mell of a Hess.” The most notable excerpt:
Americans want solutions to real problems, protecting America, affordable health care, solutions to the energy crisis, retirement security, quality education, and good jobs. Congress has for the most part ignored some of these problems while focusing on divisive social issues and other issues that have little chance of being enacted but play to the electoral base.
I both agree and disagree. I not only agree that this is one of our major problems but also that there’s plenty of blame to go around. The Democrats can’t claim cover just because the GOP is in control. That does not excuse their lack of spine and the fact far too many votes are cast for cover, not principle.
Where I disagree may be a minor point. JR says Congress “for the most part” has ignored “some” of these problems. I would use a much broader brush. Congress has ignored virtually all of these problems as it runs from hot button issue to hot news item. And given the last couple sessions, I think we are starting to see the same in the state Legislature. We’ve got plenty of hot button issues on the ballot and in the campaigns but very little work on education, health care and energy, to name just three.
Perhaps my praise of JR’s post, as well as that offered by CCK, will even further endear JR to various elements of the state and national GOP. But guess what? Sometimes the truth hurts.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain, quoted in Albert Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography
As I have distanced myself from politics over the years, I likewise am probably years if not decades behind on polling. That said, it looks like there’s some interesting developments in polling on Amendment E (J.A.I.L.).
I heard over the weekend that within the last 10-14 days, three separate polls — one by the No on E committee and the others by groups independent from it — show the “No” vote has a 10 point lead over the J.A.I.L. proponents. While I have not seen any actual results and evidently a large number remain “undecided,” I speculate this change reflects that voters are paying more attention as the election nears. Certainly, the undecided will move significantly between now and the election. More important, if accurate, these results indicate voters are learning the J.A.I.L. campaign is built upon the lie that the amendment would apply only to the judiciary.
How does this jibe with the Zogby poll South Dakota J.A.I.L.er-in-chief Bill Stegmeier commissioned? A recent Watertown Public Opinion article not only confirms questions about the poll’s applicability, it may reveal the poll’s true purpose.
The Public Opinion is the only media outlet of which I am aware that actually took the time to look behind Stegmeier’s poll, which he claimed showed a 3-to-1 margin in favor of Amendment E. Jennifer Carstensen, a reporter at the paper, interviewed someone from the Zogby polling organization. Fritz Wenzel, Zogby’s director of communication, admitted the poll was what is known as “message polling.”
According to Carstensen’s article,
This particular polling questions (sic) was not meant to test the amendment as it would appear on the ballot, Wenzel said, but rather to test the message that Stegmeier wanted to examine related to the issue.
* * *
The question represents Stegmeier’s interpretation of the amendment, he said, and the way that Zogby officials summarized the amendment.
“That’s why we asked the question they way we asked it. We simply wanted to test a message for the client, and that’s what we did,” Wenzel said.
(Emphasis added.)
Wenzel also told her that “based on the question that we’ve asked,” Zogby thinks the responses are accurate. As the Public Opinion said in an editorial, responses to the question “do you love motherhood and apple pie” would also produce accurate results that are about as valid on the J.A.I.L. issue as the question it asked. Basically, the poll simply told Stegmeier and crew that they need to keep pushing the lie that the proposal applies only to the judiciary.
Stegmeier also seemed to confirm this was a “push poll.” He told the paper, “The whole idea is that you need to persuade the majority of people to vote the way you want them to vote.” Thus, trying to persuade — by using a misleading statement — was the goal, not a true assessment of voter attitudes.
But Stegmeier may have revealed the ultimate purpose of the poll, telling Carstensen that
you want to have something in case the vote turns out to be quite a bit different [from the poll results]. You might need to request an investigation or a recount. So if you don’t have anything to compare the final vote to, you’ll never get anywhere if you want to dispute the vote.
Can you see the handwriting on the wall? If and when Amendment E is defeated, Stegmeier and crew will point to this biased push poll and claim it shows there was election fraud or some such rot. If adverse to J.A.I.L., the J.A.I.L.ers won’t say the election reflects the expression of “we the people,” the phrase they always bandy about. Instead, the election will be another of those government/New World Order conspiracies Stegmeier and his friends see everywhere. Not only does this mindset indicate the paranoia is showing already, it may say more about the results of any unbiased questions Stegmeier had Zogby or other polling organizations ask.
Anyone with a beef can start a conspiracy theory.
British sociology professor Frank Furedi,
quoted in Time Magazine, Jan. 23, 2006
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