28 November 2012

Female Role Models VIII

Dudes, zero tolerance for bullshit is a GOOD thing.
Susan Rice is the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.  She's a Rhodes Scholar.  Degrees from Stanford and Oxford.  Phi Betta Kappa. Stints at McKinsey and at Brookings.    She's widely regarded as President Obama's first choice to be the next Secretary of State.

However, she's also vewy, vewy mean.  There was even that time she used the bad word that means "poop."

A few Republican Senators have been apoplectic in their opposition to Dr. Rice's potential nomination.  You see, Dr. Rice went on television in October at the White House's request. She recited some talking points about Benghazi that the CIA gave her. The information was recently declassified and incomplete, and Dr. Rice said as much on television.

So just as Dr. Rice's critics realized that we're not all wearing tinfoil hats and this "allegation" is completely meaningless, an article showed up on Reuters suggesting Dr. Rice was "fighting for her political future" and her chances of being the next Secretary of State are "significantly damaged."

The main charge - Dr. Rice apparently has a zero-tolerance policy for, umm... poop.
The antipathy in Washington and elsewhere, though, is based on more than a series of TV interviews. While U.N. diplomats and U.S. officials who have dealt with Rice praise the intellect of the 48-year-old former Rhodes scholar and graduate of Stanford and Oxford, they say she has won few popularity contests during her meteoric rise.
Diplomats on the 15-nation U.N. Security Council privately complain of Rice's aggressive negotiating tactics, describing her with terms like "undiplomatic" and "sometimes rather rude." They attributed some blunt language to Rice - "this is crap," "let's kill this" or "this is bullshit."
"She's got a sort of a cowboy-ish attitude," one Western diplomat said. "She has a tendency to treat other countries as mere (U.S.) subsidiaries."
Two other diplomats - all three were male - supported this view.
"She's not easy," said David Rothkopf, the top manager and editor-at-large of Foreign Policy magazine. "I'm not sure I'd want to take her on a picnic with my family, but if the president wants her to be secretary of state, she'll work hard."
Are you kidding me?  Susan Rice offends your delicate sensibilities?

This is really coming from those "diplomats" - none of whom had the decency to speak on the record - who may prefer paragons of personal restraint like John Bolton.

Contrary to what may be popular belief, the goal of diplomacy is not to blow sunshine up the asses of anonymous pansies who whine to Reuters.  The goal of diplomacy is to influence people and organizations to do things you want without having to shoot anybody.  Henry Kissinger understood that.  James Baker understood that.  Hillary Clinton understands that.

And I'm sorry, but I read this, ahem, bullshit from Reuters and all I can think of is when anonymous staffers whined to Politico that Senator Barbara Boxer had an "abrasive personal style."  So Dr. Rice may be eminently qualified, and she may totally cleared of any wrongdoing in regards to Benghazi, but now she's just a bitch.

So it's time to do what I like to do whenever guys - and in this case, spineless turds who don't have the guts to own their words by sharing their names - say or do something profoundly stupid or hurtful toward women.  It's time to introduce you to some female role models.  These women aren't all necessarily political, but I'm sure they've all experienced challenges in their own fields like what Dr. Rice has had to deal with.   To refresh your memory, here's the criteria I use:
Someone an online mom can show her daughter [or son, a great point my wife made] and say, "See her? See what she's doing? See how she's living in the same world you are, with the same challenges you have, and see how she succeeds? THAT is how you do this. THAT is what I stand for. I want you to be like HER."
Here are the latest selections:

Stefania Pomponi Butler. Clever Girl, that Stefania.  She figured she could do online outreach to women, and particularly women of color, better than PR flacks like me. And she was right.  And we've all learned from her tenacity, her decency, and her brilliance.

Cassandra Pye.  OK, so this is a shameless plug for a colleague.  Sue me.  But Cassandra belongs here.  She's brilliant.  Former deputy chief of staff to Governor Schwarzenegger.  Bigwig at the California Chamber of Commerce.  She was a strong advocate for women's entrepreneurship and political leadership before it was cool.  And I can't think of a single person more committed to and passionate about being a mentor to young professionals.

Anne Osterrieder.  I put the call out for female role models on Twitter, and within seconds she came back to me with a bunch of great suggestions - all scientists, science communicators, and science advocates.  And then the people she mentioned insisted she be on this list - and they're right.  Dr. Osterrieder studies plant cell biology at Oxford Brookes University in the UK and spends a lot of time working on faculty outreach projects trying to reach entire families.

Veronica Arreola.  And speaking of science outreach, if you don't know about Veronica you should.  On her personal blog she says she is "trying to understand the intersection between feminism, motherhood, and her Latinadad." She also works at a Chicago university, directing its women in science and engineering program. What I like about Veronica so much is while she's never shy to speak out about injustice, she absolutely defies the stereotype of the "angry" feminist because she's doing so many amazingly positive things for so many young women.

I'm sure we'll see more crap from more whiny guys soon enough.  That's fine.  You whiners keep complaining - although it might be nice if you used your own names once in a while.  We will keep celebrating the best in people and showing everyone what we're about.

21 November 2012

I'm not a scientist either, but...

UPDATE: I was wrong about something - seems I may have been snookered by a Slate post and should have done more research.  People I respect in both politics and science appropriately point out that President Obama and Senator Rubio were NOT asked the same question, as I wrongly said below.    So while I still think the GQ question should have been more direct, and I still think politicians will try to be diplomatic and show respect to people who hold different sides of an argument, it's clear that my post is misleading.  Senator Rubio was asked a science question and gave a somewhat evasive answer with religious overtones.  President Obama was asked a religion question and gave a more direct answer, given the context.  Original post is below.
 
Anti-evolution is anti-education, Senator.
So I think this "scoop" from GQ -  Senator Marco Rubio (i.e., "tea-party favorite" and "2016 Presidential contender") says he's not a scientist when asked how old the earth is - isn't a big deal.  The way I read it, he was actually deferring to the scientific consensus while trying not to offend his more religious constituents. "I'm not a scientist, man" sounds a lot like "hey, ask someone who knows the exact number" to me.

At some point you have to understand that diplomacy is an important part of a politician's job.When asked a provocative question, a politician will give due respect to people who occupy different sides of an argument.   My proof: when asked the same question, President Obama said basically the same thing as Senator Rubio.

Senator Rubio's other point - that the age of the earth is irrelevant to many of the large economic challenges we face today - rings true to me as well.  In the years I worked on economic policy for a US Senator, I never heard anyone on either side of the aisle bring up the age of the earth in any of our discussions.  The GQ interviewer, quite frankly, asked a silly question, and in doing so diminished the point I think so many scientists and science advocates are trying to make right now.

The issue at hand is this: our political leaders are ignoring scientific consensus when making policy decisions. They are, at times, rejecting or even censoring scientific reports from legitimate, competent researchers.  They are making stuff up to justify their political positions.  In the short term this may make some people feel better or make some people more financially well-off.  In the longer term, this hurts everyone.

So rather than ask a too-cute question about the age of the earth, maybe we should ask our political leaders why they would place our students at an enormous disadvantage by diluting our science classes with the demonstrably false idea of young-earth creationism.

Senator Rubio is reportedly preparing to announce a new approach to winning over Latino voters - one that focuses on affordable, high-quality education and workforce training.   I think that's a brilliant strategy - it focuses squarely on what working families need.  Our economy is increasingly reliant on workers with training in science, technology, engineering and math.  The jobs that require this training pay good wages.

But many of those jobs need people who understand that evolution happens, regardless of who "believes in it." As Dr. Bondar says, teaching science without evolution is like teaching sentence structure without the alphabet.  If your religious beliefs dictate fealty to the idea that evolution is a "lie from the pit of hell," that the earth isn't 4.5 billion years old but only a few thousand years old, that dinosaurs and people lived together, and the way things are today is pretty much the way they were at the beginning, then you can't really support education and training in a meaningful way.

In other words, if this is the education you want to make sure Latinos get, you really want Latinos to be ignorant and paid less than the rest of us.

12 November 2012

Outing of a different kind

Outs racists?
A while back I wrote about Gawker's outing of Michael Brutsch, the infamous "troll" at Reddit who posted obscene material for fun under the pseudonym "ViolentAcrez."

Now Gawker's sister publication is at it - but with a twist.  Jezebel has decided to share some of Election 2012's greatest hits of racism on Twitter from high school-aged kids - and they actually reported the kids to their schools' leadership. (Note - this story link and this story link are still up, but they have some really nasty language.)  If you're concerned about clicking the links, suffice it to say there were a lot of people using "the N-word" to describe our recently re-elected President.  And worse.

Again, there are some differences here.  The people Jezebel pursued made no attempt to hide their identities.   They put their racist epithets right next to their names and pictures of their faces. They made these comments publicly on a Twitter feed they have to know anyone can search.  There is no reasonable expectation of privacy here.  I do note that Jezebel apparently decided not to search for the identities of those who tweeted racist comments under pseudonyms - even though I'm sure it's not that hard for a decent hacker to get that information.  They are on much more solid legal footing when they simply report the obvious facts as opposed to digging for more.

What is reasonable, I think, is to cringe a bit over this.  These kids are old enough to know better, but kids make mistakes sometimes, and now they have been publicly branded as racists.  Just a few years ago statements like these wouldn't be immortalized on the Internet. Millions of people read Jezebel every month.  I know that if anyone applies for work at my company, particularly to work in social media, we'd check them out on the various social platforms. Maybe do a Google search.  Let's just say this wouldn't go over well.

The more I think about it, however, the more I think this is what you have to expect in the digital age.   You have to own your words. And for these kids, it now seems those words own them.

Very curious to know what others think.

09 November 2012

What really happened, and what will happen next

This is NOT what America looks like
Here's my election post-mortem.  Do with it what you will.

First of all, Democrats definitely deserve to take a victory lap, but the reports of the GOP's death are greatly exaggerated.  More than 58 million Americans voted for Gov. Romney.  The American economy is NOT in great shape (though it's better than it was 4 years ago). The GOP has a well-defined base, and they completely control large swaths of the country.  Their agenda includes policy arguments that will likely always resonate well - lower taxes, limited government interference, and individual responsibility. Evangelical Republicans didn't stay at home, despite their religious differences with the Republican nominee.

Republicans still control the House of Representatives (despite losing 6 seats), and they have enough Senators to block virtually any piece of legislation or nomination that attempts to move through it. There are currently 29 Republican Governors.

Second, while I stand by everything I wrote in my previous post, the GOP theories on 2012 turnout were not completely outlandish.  Wrong, sure, but not all that crazy.   If one looks at the demographics of voter turnout over the last few decades, minority and youth participation in 2008 is arguably an "outlier."  It's not insane to think there will be a return to the mean if you simply look at plots on a chart. William Frey at the Brookings Institute essentially forecast the relevant election scenarios back in May. It included a scenario in which demographics resembled 2004 turnout.

But here's where the GOP thinking begins to break down, and the cultural isolation of this community really hurts them.  The consensus of professional, independent pollsters said 2008 wasn't an outlier, it was a tipping point.  It appears the GOP discounted the information that didn't align with their theory, and instead let things like larger crowds at rallies instill a sort of confirmation bias.

Further, the GOP has clearly known about demographic shifts for years.  But look at how the two major political parties have reacted to it. In short, Democrats have tried to grow their base, while Republicans have tried to change the rules.

Democrats have developed incredibly sophisticated outreach strategies to communities that reflect America's growing diversity, and more importantly, their agenda has evolved to reflect this diversity.  Democrats now largely support civil rights for the GLBT community, more investments in education and healthcare, and a progressive tax system that also rewards home ownership and investments in predominantly minority areas.  They have leveraged social media and information technology in a way that reflects a bottom-up approach - letting community members organize among their own and contribute to an effort in their own way - all the while grabbing every scrap of information they can get about how that community lives.

Republicans, on the other hand, have taken steps to limit the influence of these diverse communities.  Republican state legislatures and Governors have redrawn congressional district lines to minimize the impact of minority and low-income voters. They have invoked the fiction of a "voter fraud" epidemic to pass laws requiring certain forms of photo ID to vote - knowing that low-income, elderly, minorities, and students (i.e., people more likely to support Democratic positions and candidates) are the least likely to have it.  They have reduced the number of "early voting" hours and limited resources at polling places in minority neighborhoods, forcing people in those precincts to wait for hours - outside, in November - to vote.

More than anything, however, Republicans have tried to limit the influence of minorities through immigration policy.  Their proposals offer no path to citizenship and create situations that would likely force many young people born in the United States (and by definition, citizens) to leave because their parents lack appropriate status.

They haven't invested in research or technology or outreach the way Democrats have, because frankly, they haven't seen the need.  They know their community well, they know what it wants, and they basically trust it to come out to vote.

At least some of these GOP moves have worked.  The proof: while Democratic congressional candidates received more votes than Republican congressional candidates, the GOP still controls the House by a relatively comfortable margin.

But we also learned that the GOP plan isn't sustainable.   Here is the racial demographic breakdown of each Presidential candidate, per Slate:


The Obama coalition of support looks a lot more like America today - and more importantly, looks even more like America 5 or 10 years from now.  Further, look at the age distribution of the two candidates, per CNN:


So what is the Republican strategy for survival?  The easy stuff first:

They will invest in research and technology.  They are light years behind the Democrats - or more specifically, the Obama campaign - in this area.  It's funny - some people I respect told me I should look at a book about President Obama, calling him an amateur.  The only truly amateurish thing I can find in this election is the Romney campaign's approach to technology - it was, according to the most ardent supporters of the Romney campaign, an unmitigated disaster.  This is something the Republicans can and will fix, relatively quickly.

They will try to tweak district lines again. This isn't easy, but the GOP knows how to do this and they will definitely leverage their existing advantage in state legislatures and Governorships.  Redistricting is also one of those really boring and complex issues that the media can't get very excited about, so they can do it without much attention. This is only a short-term solution for them, however; before too long no amount of re-drawing lines will be able to confine population changes.

They will recruit younger candidates. To appeal to a younger population, you need younger voices. The trends aren't going in their direction, but 58 million voters should likely yield a few good young conservatives.  Again, let's not go crazy and suggest the GOP is dead.

They will do more media training for candidates.  Let's face facts: the GOP lost seats it should have won simply because their candidates said some profoundly stupid things, particularly on abortion rights and rape.  I don't think they are going to change their position on these issues, but I do think they will invest heavily in "explaining" their positions better.

The harder stuff:

They will examine their leadership. There is a fight in the GOP right now - do they want the most conservative candidate, or the conservative most likely to win? They don't know.  Once they settle on an approach, they will determine their leaders and their tactics.

They will soften their position on immigration. This won't be easy, but the GOP sees the writing on the wall.  Even the Cuban-American community in Florida- the one Latino community the GOP claimed as their own - sent a Democrat to Congress.  The GOP thinks they can build support among Latinos on social issues and on small business issues.  But to get in the door with this community, they have to relent on immigration.  It's that simple.

And finally:

They will look to bounce back in 2014.  There is little doubt the GOP will anticipate an older, more white turnout in the off-year election.  That's the historic trend.  They will not attempt to reinvent themselves, but they will try to say that the 2014 vote is a "return to normal."


07 November 2012

This is your brain on homophily

Dick Morris isn't stupid.  It's just that he gets asked if Governor Romney will win the presidential election, and he says things like this:

We're gonna win by a landslide. It will be the biggest surprise in recent American political history... I base this not on intuition or on smelling the tea leaves. I base it on reading the polls - the exact same polls that say Obama's gonna win.
He's not alone.  Karl Rove, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Barone, and Peggy Noonan headline a list of pundits who predicted something similar using basically the same data. Of course, these are the same people who chat with Morris on television, at conferences and meetings, and at parties. They are his friends, his colleagues, his ideological soulmates.  They are part of his tight-knit community of conservative pundits.

This community is no different than so many others I've described - it's filled with people who customize the news they consume to fit their interests and world view. Even conservative John Ziegler acknowledges this.  It filters out or rationalizes away the information that conflicts with community goals or values, and it reinforces the conclusions they desire. Over time, similar opinions from people you find credible get repeated so many times and opposing viewpoints get filtered out so automatically that perspective is, pardon the pun, skewed.

Photo via Frank Paynter
So of course a prediction of a narrow Obama victory is obviously a Romney landslide. And of course alternate information is inherently "biased" - just ask the "fair and balanced" news source that pulls content verbatim from a conservative "media watchdog" leader and rebrands it.

Of course, thinkers like Conor Friedersdorf are suggesting that more partisan media outlets have an obligation to scale the ideological barriers to information - but as long as the news industry sees what they do in terms of supply and demand, it's very hard to see that happening.

As consumers leverage social media technology more, they are more able to select the information that reflects their interest and world view.  They easily enter communities and can grow more entrenched in them.  What we really need is to encourage more digital exploration of other cultures and viewpoints.  It starts by committing to a more civil discourse.   It won't be easy, but perhaps we can give it another go now that the election is settled.

So this happened.