The Schrug

Jay Severin is Boston’s local version of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, etc. How anyone takes him seriously, I don’t know. One of my guilty pleasures is listening to his show and, when I’m able to get through, berating him on the air. Here is a transcript of my call with him from February 25, 2008 at about 5:45 pm. The conversation lasted 5 minutes, 45 seconds. That’s a LONG time in talk radio.

David: Hey, Jay!

Jay: Hey, David.

David: I’m doing a little blogging, and I wanted to get you on the record about what you said previously about the poor. And I know you don’t like to be misquoted, so maybe you’d want to just repeat that about, exactly what you said about their hygienic habits.

Jay: Well, I don’t recall exactly. Would you like to ask me a question? I’ll be perfectly candid with you.

David: Well, what I thought you said was "I don’t have anything against the poor, except for the fact that they don’t bathe very often and don’t smell very good." Is that accurate?

Jay: I did say — The best of my recollection is I said that or words to that effect.

David: And you believe that?

Jay: Well, obviously there was some dark humor involved in what I had to say, but I — You’re asking me whether I said it, and so –

David: Well, because –

Jay: (inaudible) … words to that effect.

David: You’ve previously said something to the effect of "you don’t say anything on the air unless you honestly believe it."

Jay: OK, well, all right. If you wish a debate here, if you wish a parsing of words I’m certainly not reluctant to administer one. You know, the — Now again, this is not necessarily in relation to what we’re talking about, but if you’re asking me to speak to this, a smarter man than myself would just, you know, not pick this fight, but I’m here and what I say is fair game, therefore what I’m saying is that poor people, socio-economically speaking, poor people have different habits of every kind than do the affluent. That’s to say, by the way, people of different classes have different habits in every realm of their lives than people in other classes. And the fact is that if you were to say that there are some people who have better or not so good practices of personal hygiene, clearly the more affluent one happens to be, the better one’s practices of hygiene happen to be, by and large, and the poor tend, for one reason or another, not to have either access to or inclination toward hygiene the same as the middle, upper-middle, or upper classes. It seems to me that’s a straightforward socio-economic or sociological observation.

David: OK, but that’s not what you said. You didn’t say that wealthier people tend to bathe more often –

Jay: No, I didn’t say that. You’re saying that.

David: Right, you said, I think — and again, I don’t want to misquote you, this is why I’m on the phone — you, essentially you said that poor people smell bad.

Jay: I said, I said something like, very much like, in fact maybe even verbatim, I said something like "poor people are boring, and often smell."

David: OK, so they’re often smelly but they’re always boring.

Jay: I didn’t say always.

David: You just said that. Poor people are boring and they often small bad. So –

Jay: I don’t contest that.

David: OK, so can you define "poor" for me then? Because I just want to let these folks, you know, know who they are that you think are boring.

Jay: You know, I enjoy a good joust, but I’m not a fool. No, I think you can probably go on from here and identify the poor.

David: Well, I don’t know, I mean … anyone who makes less than you?

Jay: I think I’ll let you define the poor. The Democrats, of which you are clearly one, you define pretty well who the rich are, like anyone with a family income of $75,000 or more? So I’ll let you do what you’re so good at, because by the way, the Democrats practice every day the religion of class warfare –

David: Now now, now wait a minute –

Jay: I’ll let you define the poor.

David: No, no. You’re all about "words have meaning." You know, you’re very precise in terms of language.

Jay: Indeed I am.

David: And so if you’re going to use a word like poor, I assume you know what it means. It’s a relative term, so what does it mean to you?

Jay: "The poor" is not a relative term. The poor are the poor.

David: What do you mean it’s not a relative term?

Jay: I mean it’s not — I mean "the poor" is not open to interpretation. The poor are the poor.

David: Are you talking about the definition of the poverty line?

Jay: Look, my opinion of the poor is not different than your opinion. There’s a certain fact quotient here. The fact quotient is that either one is poor or one is not. One may disagree on the standards, but the fact is somewhere, somehow, there’s a definition of what it means to be rich, much as there’s a definition to be what it is to be poor.

David: Well, I would suggest then that you –

Jay: What are you after? What do you want me to tell you?

David: Basically, I want you to admit that you said something stupid for once. Why can’t you just do that? Why is it so hard for you to be confronted with something stupid that you said and say "you know, gee, that was a dumb thing to say. I take it back."

Jay: I don’t take it back. I was clearly — I was clearly trying to have fun with everyone when I said words to the effect that poor people are boring and they don’t bathe a lot. Now, if you can’t be — Is that something you might maybe hear on Saturday Night Live or someplace else?

David: You don’t hold yourself out as a comedian, Jay. You hold yourself out as one who offers social commentary and wisdom.

Jay: I’m asking you, is it reasonable that you might hear someone say that — Is it reasonable that you might hear, say, Eddie Murphy, or Chris Rock say that in the course of their performances?

David: It’s totally irrelevant whether they would say it or not. I’m not going to answer that question –

Jay: Totally irrelevant quickly is –

[At this point Jay hung up on me. I was unable to get to a radio in time to hear the final comments he made before going to commercial or the next caller.]

This is classic Severin:

• He ridicules callers who disagree with him if they don’t know the dictionary definition of words like racist, bigot, and discriminate. He lights into people when they things like "what I mean by sexist is…" But he refuses to define a word that he brought into the conversation, and even refuses to admit that "poor" is a relative term. Is someone with a $25,000 salary and $2,000 in the bank poor? In some places yes, in some places no. Jay, if I ever hear you roll out that "words have meaning" line again, I’m going to call you a hypocrite. And I’ll be right.
• When trapped, he tries to counter his opponent by changing the subject and demanding yes or no answers to irrelevant questions. The Saturday Night Live thing was typical. Fortunately, I didn’t take the bait.
• He will note that politicians’ true sentiments are conveyed in off-hand remarks, and he may have a point there. But in this case he tried to simultaneously stand by and distance himself from his own outrageous, off-hand remarks. You can’t have it both ways, Jay.
• He seems to pride himself on his debating skills, yet he makes fundamental errors that most of his listeners either can’t or won’t point out. He scoffs at the (conveniently unnamed) Democrats who define "rich" as anyone with household income over $75,000. By that logic, $75,000 is too low; one shouldn’t be considered rich unless one has household income of perhaps $100,000 or $200,000. And he seems to think there’s a pretty clear division between being rich and being poor. So in other words, Jay, you think that all people making less than $100,000 or $200,000 — that is to say, the vast, vast majority of Americans — are boring and smell bad. Is that right, Jay?

Jay could have taken it like a man and left it at that. But after the 6:00 news, he felt it necessary to further impugn my credibility, referring to me as an unemployed wanker. I’ll post the transcript of that bit when I get a chance. I’m actually NOT unemployed, so I may not get to it right away.

The pundits on CNN (including my former babysitter) are pretty good when they talk about the complexities of the presidential campaign. They talk about proportional voting, congressional districts, the difference between regular delegates and superdelegates, and so forth. But the visuals tell a completely different story. The largest graphics on the set are the national maps where the “winner’s” color gets spread over an entire state, regardless of the margin of victory. Even when the delegate counts are shown, there is rarely a clear distinction between regular and superdelegates.

The Republican race is over, so I don’t much care what they do about that. But the Democratic campaign is going to be the closest imaginable. The viewers deserve visual representations of the battle for delegates that don’t oversimplify and mislead.

We’ve all seen the red state / blue state maps. That’s essentially what CNN is using now. But how about something that shows not only final result but margin of victory. For example, take a look at this map of the 2004 presidential election from Electoral-Vote.com — the darker the color, the bigger the win:

Or maybe a true district-by-district map, like this one by Mark Newman that shows us the party affiliation of the current House of Representatives:

If CNN can assemble the best political team on television, they ought to be able to spring for some decent cartographers.

If this election turns out once again to be about “The Economy, Stupid,” I’m afraid the “stupid” label will apply more to the voters than the campaign staffers. How, exactly, is the average voter supposed to decide which candidate’s plans for the economy make the most sense? Or even to know how to define “makes sense?”

I have a little bit of education in economics. I took Economics 10 at Harvard 23 years ago and I took courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics, and finance as part of my MBA at Boston University about 10 years later. Now I don’t want to be smug, but I’m guessing that means I have learned more about economics than 90%, 95%, or maybe even 99% of registered voters. And you know what? I DON’T KNOW JACK SQUAT ABOUT ECONOMICS. And if I don’t know enough to make an intelligent decision, what hope is there for the average Joe?

What percentage of voters could give accurate definitions of the following terms?

• Economy
• Recession
• Unemployment Rate
• Inflation
• Federal Reserve Bank
• Gross Domestic Product
• Stimulus
• Corporate Earnings
• Budget Deficit
• Trade Deficit
• Weak Dollar
• Progressive vs. Regressive Taxes
• Tax Credit vs. Tax Cut vs. Tax Rebate

And yet the media and politicians throw these words around as if they were talking about the weather.

Even if we understood what they were talking about, is anyone out there telling us the truth or are they all just saying stuff that sounds good? As far as I can tell, Americans believe that somewhere out there is a magic economic policy that will provide:

• Higher wages
• Lower prices
• Higher stock values
• 100% employment (but only in “good jobs”)
• More consumer spending
• Less consumer debt
• Lower prices for imports
• Higher prices for exports
• A stronger housing market
• More affordable housing
• Lower interest rates (for borrowers)
• Higher interest rates (for investors)
• Lower (preferably zero) taxes
• Less government borrowing
• Everything we want, now
• Nothing we don’t want, ever

Does anyone out there have the guts to explain to us why we can’t have it all?

Dear political interviewers:

Can you please explain to me exactly what you’re trying to do during this primary season? Because it sure seems to me that you have little interest in helping your viewers make an informed, intelligent decision in the voting booth. Instead, it seems that your chief concern is to ensure that you get people tuning in every night to watch the cockfights that you are staging.

Please do us a favor and stop asking questions that candidates can’t answer without provoking a new round of squabbling. It’s obvious that the candidates don’t want to get those questions, but I think you somehow interpret their reluctance to respond as a sign that you are onto something important that we, the voters, need to know. That’s really not the case. We don’t need our politicians boiled down to nasty caricatures of themselves, nor do we want this election to be about one or two decisions that any of these folks made 5, 10, or 20 years ago.

What we need is a better understanding of how these people will behave once they stop campaigning and start governing. I’m not talking about specific policies. We all know that any action requiring legislation is going to end up a lot different from what the next president originally proposes. So don’t ask whether a certain number should be $100 billion or $150 billion, or whether a health care plan would cover 98% or 99% of the public.

Instead, how about asking the following:

• Who are your top domestic and foreign policy advisors right now? Whose counsel would you seek in those areas if you are elected?
• Generally speaking, under what circumstances should the will of the majority be trumped by the rights of the individual or the minority?
• When you get conflicting advice from people whose opinions you trust and respect equally, how do you make a decision?
• Sometimes it’s necessary to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains. But it’s hard to get popular support for anything that causes short-term hardships. How would you get the American public to rally behind programs that might be painful to swallow?
• Does the United States have any responsibility to pursue policies that might improve the lives of people in other countries at the expense of its own citizens’ well-being? If so, give some examples and explain why this is appropriate. If not, what are some current or past examples of policies in this arena that have been wrongly pursued?
• What kind of person should be nominated to the federal judiciary in general and to the Supreme Court in particular?
• When is it appropriate for the president to use a signing statement to reinterpret or even negate legislation that has just been enacted?
• It is inconceivable that the United States would ever allow a foreign government to establish a military base on U.S. soil. Generally speaking, without specific reference to Iraq, when, where, and why is it appropriate to have U.S. military bases established on foreign soil?
• If a current federal law conflicts with your religious beliefs, would you work to have that law overturned or perhaps simply unenforced? Why or why not?

If you like those questions, give me a call. I’m sure I can think of some more. And yes, I will submit these questions at Politico.com.

What do you think about having these folks run the country?

President: Barack Obama

Vice President: Bill Richardson

Chief of Staff: Hillary Clinton

Secretary of State: Joe Biden

Secretary of Defense: John McCain

Attorney General: John Edwards

Secretary of the Treasury: Michael Bloomberg

Secretary of Education: Ted Kennedy

Secretary of HHS: Dennis Kucinich

Secretary of Commerce: Mitt Romney

Secretary of Transportation: Michael Dukakis

Secretary of Homeland Security: Condoleezza Rice

Secretary of the Interior: Al Gore

Secretary of Labor: Mike Huckabee

Ambassador to the UN: Bill Clinton

I think I’m still leaning toward Obama because I think/hope that he might enjoy more popular support while in office than Clinton would, but Hillary showed today on Meet the Press why she would also be a good president. She was smart, quick, insightful, tough, articulate, thoughtful, gracious, … well, watch it yourself and make up your own mind.

Very few, if any, media folks are talking about how the candidates are doing in the delegate count. CNN explains how the delegate apportionment works (in theory, anyway): Why delegates matter in the presidential race - CNN.com.

I guess a headline of “Hillary beats Barack by 3 points” sells more ads than “Hillary and Barack tie, get equal number of delegates.” That’s a shame. I suppose it may be true that a “victory” in New Hampshire means more than the actual number of delegates pledged, but that’s only because the media plays it that way.

As I saw the headline about today’s arguments regarding lethal injection, it occurred to me that this year’s campaign has been uncharacteristically quiet about the judicial branch. Where are all the questions about activist judges, litmus tests, strict constructionists, and so on? Just because none of the current SCOTUS justices are currently in intensive care doesn’t mean there won’t be a vacancy or two in the next four years. And we’ve got oodles of openings in lower courts. Why is nobody talking about this?

I am so tired of seeing pundit after pundit and reporter after reporter use the same canned analysis during the primary season. It feels more like they are covering each other’s coverage than covering the campaigns themselves. I think there should be a one-month moratorium on the following words and phrases.

• Candidate of change
• Inevitability
• Phenomenon
• Movement
• Reinvent himself / herself
• Tapped into
• Momentum
• Rock star
• Strong organization
• Appeals to the base
• Values voters (thanks for this suggestion, Lori)

It would be interesting to see if the talking heads could come up with anything original to say.

Looks like the handy red envelopes are not Post-Office-friendly. ZDNet has the story.