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I would like to call for an end to the use of the term “czar” in our political discourse. I have been hearing on the news lately about  the possibility of appointing a “car czar” and that is what spurs this message.

As we well know (from reading wikipedia), Tsar is a term referring to a monarch in Bulgarian, Serbian, and Russian histories.

Our country was built upon the struggle against monarchy and I feel that the use of the term “czar” should be very out of place in the American political discourse.

Let us not let the tendency of the national news media to employ the use of buzzwords and soundbites influence the way we talk about our own government, let’s put an end to it.

I fully realize that this is not an issue of utmost importance but I do think it is important to think about the ways we talk about our government and I don’t think terms such as “czar” belong in that discussion, when referring to one of our own government posts.

On Monday, November 17 there was a community meeting of the 94th precinct in Greenpoint. There was a large attendance and I went as well. Here’s a link to some notes on the meeting. We are going to have a subsequent meeting with Captain Fulton at some point in the next couple of weeks.

Notes From The 94th Precinct Community Meeting

Whoever said that news had to be fair and balanced? I understand fair but I do not understand balance. Is that a central tenet of journalism? According to Wikipedia:

Grade the News, an American website, identified seven yardsticks on the basis of which it judges the standards of some local media houses’ news quality. These yardsticks are newsworthiness, context, explanation, local relevance, civic contribution, enterprise and fairness.^[7]

Here’s are three standards of journalism that Wikipedia reports as a professional and ethical ones:

• Find and report every side of a story possible;
• Report without bias, illustrating many aspects of a conflict rather than siding with one;
• Approach researching and reporting a story with a balance between objectivity and skepticism.

So, there’s that word, “balance.” But it is not in reference to finding balance between the two sides of a story. Also, is the requirement to be unbiased, stating that all sides of the story must be reported on. That, however, does not imply that all sides of the story are equally valid or equally correct. Just that they exist.

“Balance,” on the other hand implies that both sides of the story are equal. But, they are equal only in that they must both be reported on, not that they both hold equal importance, value, or correctness.

Where am I going with this? I think you can guess. Fox News prides itself on being “Fair and Balanced.” Also, many conservatives in the US complain about the media being biased towards Obama and the left. They complain that the news isn’t being balanced enough. A site called OneNewsNow asks in an article headline, “News media in bed with Obama?” (This tactic, by the way, is somehow acceptable. The idea that because there is a question mark at the end of the headline makes it unbiased, is backhanded and sneaky. Of course, that headline without the question mark would be biased. But this one isn’t.) In the article, it reads:

An analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that 57 percent of the print and broadcast stories about John McCain since the political conventions were decidedly negative, while only 14 percent were positive. The study concludes that 29 percent of the mainstream media’s coverage of Barack Obama was negative.

Who got the idea that fair (and balanced) means that there must be equal percentages of positive and negative reporting done on “both sides of the story,” or in this case, both opposing candidates? This is just ludicrous and delusional. How is it possible that McCain and Obama would happen do and say the equal percentage of things that could be reported on as positive and negative.

I am going to make an example but I don’t want to draw comparisons to either of the candidates. I just want to show an example why the news cannot and should not be balanced.

Take a simplified murder case. There is a shooting in a neighborhood where there are two people involved in a fight, guns are drawn, shots are fired, and an innocent 6-year-old girl is shot dead. Assume these are the facts of the case and cannot be disputed. Now, how is it possible that all sides of this story are balanced? Would Fox News ask us to report equally positively and negatively on the participants of the fight and the innocent bystander? Is there any way that we could find as many negative things to say about the young dead  girl as we could about the shooter? If there is, please let me know. We can report on all of the facts of this case, but there is no way that we could report that the girl is equally as “negative” as her killer. In some (most) cases, that would be impossible.

This is a mathematical approach to proof. If we can show one case where where being “balanced” is impossible, then there is no was to assert that all reports must be balanced. Therefore we cannot ask reporting on anything, including the presidential race to be balanced in that way.

So, to all the complainers, drop this idea that news needs to be balanced.

Today, my friend Dan Ledger sent me a link to an interview with DMX at XXL Mag. There’s a portion of it that’s about the presidential race and Barack Obama in particular. It’s pretty amazing:

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” [laughs] “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.

Is that why you’re not following it?
No, because it’s just—it doesn’t matter. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. It doesn’t really make a difference. These are the last years.

But it would be pretty big if we had a first Black president. That would be huge.
I mean, I guess…. What, they gon’ give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a Black president now. They should’ve done that shit a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the fuckin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done fucked this shit up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”

Right, exactly.
It’s all a fuckin’ setup. It’s all a setup. All fuckin’ bullshit. All bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about none of that.

We could have a female president also, Hillary Clinton.
I mean, either way it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. No one person is directly affected by which president, you know, so what does it matter.

Yeah, but the country is.
I guess. The president is a puppet anyway. The president don’t make no damn decisions.

The president…they don’t have that much authority basically?
Nah, never.

But Bush pretty much…
You think Bush is making fuckin’ decisions?

He did, yeah, he fucked up the country.
He act like he making decisions. He could barely speak! He could barely fuckin’ speak!
Can’t be serious. He ain’t making no damn decisions.

Well Barack has a good chance of winning so that might be something.
Good for him, good for him.

How’s your family and your kids?
They’re good. My son is rapping now.

And, now for a picture of me and my beard at work on April 1!!