Go Akron

While my daily news diet includes (sometimes too much) information from social media and favorite professional sources accessed electronically (yes, starting with ESPN!), my bread & butter remains our amazing local newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal. Michael Douglas is like my daily seminar leader and news curator extraordinaire and I appreciate his work and the contributions of everyone at the ABJ every day.

Maybe even more so at a time when 24/7 news, global internet information campaigns, and presidential tweets are both reflecting and reinforcing a concentration of power and influence in a mass media already tilted heavily toward corporate perspectives and in recent decades with a strong rightward skew.

In this context, my local newspaper has become even more valuable to me. Thanks. Again, today, the ABJ suggested I consider three columns that turned out to be well worth reading. And it is worth noting that the core perspective in each story here would be considered conservative in normal times, because the point of a free press is to cover more than one side of an issue, to clarify what is at stake and the trade-offs we have to wrestle with before deciding how to move forward.

It is not news to note that much of America now sees even these conservative perspectives as just more liberal elitism deserving of ridicule as fake news. Reminding us that we are living through a transformation of our own making that we do not understand. My local paper helps me make some sense of it again today, but the challenges are daunting.

George Will in the Washington Post argues that in the wedding cake case the cake maker should lose as a matter of law. I appreciate his reminder that the Civil Rights Act comes identifies the legal principle we should be thinking of when discussing this case.  

“Six decades ago, the civil rights movement gained momentum through heroic acts of civil disobedience by African-Americans whose sit-ins at lunch counters, and other challenges to segregation in commerce, produced the “public accommodations” section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

It established the principle that those who open their doors for business must serve all who enter. That principle would become quite porous were it suspended whenever someone claimed his or her conduct was speech expressing an idea, and therefore created a constitutional exemption from a valid and neutral law of general applicability… 

It is difficult to formulate a limiting principle that draws a bright line distinguishing essentially expressive conduct from conduct with incidental or negligible expressive possibilities. 

Nevertheless, it can be easy to identify some things that clearly are on one side of the line or the other. So, regarding Phillips’ creations: A cake can be a medium for creativity; hence, in some not-too-expansive sense, it can be food for thought. However, it certainly, and primarily, is food. And the creator’s involvement with it ends when he sends it away to those who consume it.

Phillips ought to lose this case.”

Kugler & Schrup in the LA Times argue persuasively that the US Supreme Court should rule in US v Carpenter that government agents ought to be required to secure a warrant to access phone data. This does not mean access is beyond reach, only that it requires evidence sufficient to persuade a judge that the inescapable invasion of privacy involved is justified. Seem reasonable and prudent in an age of big data.

Jonathan Bernstein in Bloomberg View argues that words matter, particularly words spoken (or tweeted) by a president. This appears to be a lesson the current president cannot (or refuses to) learn, perhaps because this is one of his character traits that his core supporters like most about him: he just says what comes to mind without the constraints of decorum or diplomacy, without concern for consequences or harms, law or democracy.

“Everyone in politics, at home and abroad, listens to what presidents say and do. It counts. It sets policy. It establishes the president's professional reputation, which is always being carefully evaluated by those who have to deal with the president, from bureaucrats to members of Congress to foreign politicians….
The lesson for real presidents is that what they say really does matter.

That's one reason Barack Obama (and all other modern presidents) used teleprompters and read from written speeches, and frequently answered questions with pat, prepared answers even when there was no visible script: Presidents never want to say something by accident. Get a fact wrong, and the president will find it harder to use facts in the future to persuade. Get the nuance wrong, and the president may offend those he had no intention of offending. Sound like a moolyak, and people are going to treat the president as if he has no idea what he's talking about. 

Trump, of course, ignores all of this. He shoots off his mouth (and his Twitter finger) constantly, seemingly oblivious that it has real effects that it never had when he was just a reality-television star. And he, and the nation, are constantly paying the price.”

These commentators today makes me feel like things are even worse than the daily headlines suggest because the tools we use to fix things—elections, political communication, bureaucracy, fair competition, the rule of law—are themselves caught up in the turmoil in ways that detract from their capacity to function as they have in the past (not to be overly nostalgic and suggest these have ever been power-free, but to recognize they function best when their power is directed toward moderation, balancing trade-offs, and tempering the worst instincts of the free market).

I draw comfort from observing younger generations—here in Akron and around the world—stepping up with new ideas and less entrenched perspectives, in coalitions based that include women and men, white and black, native and immigrant. These are the allies they grew up with, not identity groups they studied at a distance. These young leaders have shared experiences with diverse people as friends, and now bring this experience-based awareness to the table in the form of a more grounded and pragmatic and innovative problem solving.