Differentdrummer

Ken Burns' WWII vs. WWII

Ken Burns has earned his reputation as a great documentary filmmaker of American history. His works not only educate, but retrieve the past in a sensual and a spritual dimension as well. Burns' ability to animate photographs, and move us with haunting soundtracks and the recitation of personal letters---most famously the juxtaposition of Ashokan Farewell and the almost unbearable  letter Sullivan Ballou sent his soon to be widowed wife during the Civil War---testify to his extraordinary gifts.

Now he is presenting us with another documentary of war. But this time it is not simply on American soil, but the Second World War. Judging from the opening episode, he has lost none of his skill, finding compelling photographs and testimonials from those on the the front and the homefront. But it may be that Burns' romance with American history---and Americans---won't serve him as ably in this project, for to capture WWII is to come to grips with some very unromantic realities:

a) The U.S.  entered the war two years after Britain declared war on Germany after the latter invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Isolationist sentiment was very strong until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. While enlistments dramatically increased for two months after the attack, they then fell back. Moreover, the marriage rate rose dramatically in 1942 and the birth rate in 1943 rose to the highlest level in twenty years. Being married and having children didn't insure  avoiding the draft, but meant one would be called after those who were single.

b) As Max Hastings, in his exhaustive account of the last year of the European war, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945  shows, by the time American troops fought in Europe, after D-Day in June 1944, Germany had effectively lost the war. Their defeat was largely the result of the herculean effort by the Soviet Union, led by a man arguably as evil as Hitler, which accounted for 88 percent of all German casualties. America played a major role in supplying their allies with food and weapons when they were desperately needed, but we did not provide the manpower that was necessary to break the back of the German army.

Allowing the Soviets to bear the brunt of the ground war was a deliberate, if understandable, decision to save American lives once it seemed clear Hitler's days were numbered. Neverthless, that decision---to avoid rapid advance and aggressively engaging the Germans---prolonged the war by many months.

The total number of American war deaths, civilian and military, in all theatres were at most 400,000, slightly less than British casualties. By contrast, the Soviet Union  lost almost 25,000,000, one third of whom were soldiers. Statistics don't tell the whole story, but they are a story worth telling to place the American role in Europe in context.

c) The performance of the American infantrymen in Europe was inferior to that of the German and Soviet armies. As Major General James Gavin observed in his diary in February 1945 "With better troops, I see no reason why we could not run all over them. The public will never know nor appreciate this. Our American army individually means well and tries hard, but it is not the army one reads about in the press. It is untrained and completely inefficient...certainly our infantry lacks courage and elan."

The relatively minor role of the US infantrymen in the defeat of the Nazis in Europe and the poor performance of our troops has been documented by virtually all serious military historians, that is, those who see the historian's role as describing and understanding reality as opposed to altering it to support what one wishes to believe.

This is not to diminish the suffering of American (and all other)soldiers on the front lines in any war or the extreme bravery of many of them. But, at a time when Americans are at war once again, clear-headedness better serves the nation and the world. For there is nothing romantic about war and there is no need to refer to largely invented patriotic and martial traditions in order to justify present sacrifices, especially in unnecessary conflicts.  WWII was a necessary one, but they are few and far between and being better suited to make love not war is not the worst thing one can say about a nation.

It is also important to understand that the explanation for the superiority of Germany and the Soviet Union as military machines can be explained in part by ideology when Germans were on the offensive and fear when they were pushed back into defending their own homeland at the war's end, as well as worries about punishment for desertion. On the Soviet side, it was a combination of patriotism, revenge and fear of the draconian punishment visited upon those who displayed, or even appeared to display, cowardice in the face of the enemy. American soldiers rarely had  ideological motives for engaging the enemy, were not avenging, at least in Europe, an assault on their nation, and had relatively little fear of being shot for cowardice or desertion.

d) American soldiers did not behave markedly better than those of other nations in the treatment of military prisoners. Captured soldiers were often executed. In the war against Japan, barbarity  was freely exhibited by both sides. For Americans, the Asian theatre was the one which generated more passion: revenge for Pearl Harbor as well as the mistreatment of American prisoners and war dead. Race differences exacerbated feelings of mutual hostility and American soldiers mutilated Japanese bodies and tortured and killed prisoners just as they were victimized by the Japanese. Skulls of Japanese war dead were often sent as souveneirs to wives and girlfriends.

The novelist, Philip Caputo, was told by a Marine seargeant in Vietnam, where Caputo served as a lieutenant, "Before you leave here, sir, you're going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen year old American boy."  Those average boys'  forbears fought the Japanese. Their progeny are in Iraq and elsewhere.

As E.B. Sledge observes in With the Old Breed, his riveting memoir of a marine in one of many battles in the Pacific war, "Peleliu....made savages of us all. We existed in an environment totally incomprehensible to men behind the lines---service troops and civilians.

e) While America did not single-handedly defeat the Nazis, there is no question we were decisive in the war against Japan. Yet, even here, recent scholarship has undermined what had been a nearly universal belief: the dropping of Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced Japan to surrender.

In 2005 historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, published Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan . Hasegawa, unlike other scholars is fluent in Japanese, Russian and English and was able to examine documents in all three languages to uncover the perspectives of the US, Japanese and Russians during the end game in the Pacific. Apparently, while the dropping of the bombs might have been necessary in moving Japan to contemplate surrender, it was not sufficient. What proved decisive was the Soviet Union's thrust into Manchuria to fulfill its pledge at Potsdam to enter the war against Japan.

The Japanese government feared that the Soviets would seek the return of territories lost in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05 if they had the time to play an important role in the current campaign. The spectre of such a development tipped the scales in favor of surrender to the Americans.

Burns' documentary will surely deliver an indelible cinematic experience, both educational and aesthetic. I hope he also covers in depth some of the well-documented issues raised above. If not, the effort will fall short of what could be a watershed in the maturation of our society: taking the blinders off when viewing WWII. If that can be accomplished it will be far easier to develop an appropriate level of humility in dealing with our role in the world today and in the future.

Christiane Amanpour's Osama Problem and Ours

Christiane Amanpour, CNN's chief international correspondent, is one of the few American broadcast journalists who is respected outside of the confines of the United States. Besides fearlessly putting herself in harm's way in the world's battle zones, her reportage is typically crisp, well-informed, and above all, devoid of the excessive jingoism and intellectual superficiality that marks so much of mainstream media.

Amanpour's stature made me particularly interested in viewing  her heavily-promoted two hour special ,"In the Footseps of Osama Bin Laden," broadcast August 23 on CNN. Amanpour, along with co-producer and so-called "terrorist expert" Peter Bergen who in 1997 interviewed Bin Laden, do manage to avoid many of the usual pitfalls of Osama coverage. First, they eschew the use of common epithets---evil, monster--that typically find themselves in any  discussion of the world's most  famous Islamist jihadist and producer of 9/11. Second, they resist the temptation to psychoanalyze their subject or to attribute his actions to some personality disorder rooted in the dynamics of his family of orgin or some hitherto undisclosed childhood truma. Finally, they present him as a person who does not seem to have many of the characteristics of earth-shaking bad-guys: Osama, though quite wealthy, has lived modestly for decades, has not been involved in personal scandals and, while having sharp political disagreements with former associates, does not seem to have followed the path of Stalin, Hitler and Mao in feeling the need to have them physically eliminated.

The CNN special's "just the facts" approach, while being commended in several advance reviews of the program, did lead others, such as Virginia Heffernan, a television critic for the New York Times ( August 23, 2006) to complain that Amanpour verged on romanticizing Bin Laden. But as Amanpour herself noted in respopnse to this charge, her perspective is that to combat one's enemy one must understand him/her and demonization and pop psychology are counter-productive in this regard.

Despite Amanpour's commitment to objectivity, however, I feel viewers of the program have been short-changed in a number of respects which dramatically weaken the educational  and political value of the effort.

One area in which Amanpour fails is in an almost complete omission  of the larger historical context within which Bin Laden's political life developed. He is perceived largely as a man who embraced an extreme form of  Muslim theology because of his exposure to or association with several key Islamic thinkers.However, these influences were not primarily spiritual, but politicizing. Osama had came to develop a deep alienation from the political elites, the "near enemies" of his native Saudi Arabia and Egypt and, finally, the "far enemy", the United States, which in his view propped up these oppressive regimes and bankrolled Israel as its surrogate in maintaining western hegemony in the region.

Instead of this glossed-over perspective the audience should have been given a thirty minute overview of exactly how the west has helped create and sustain some of the unpopular Mideast regimes. To ignore this is to reinforce the belief, already almost universally held in the U.S., that Muslim anger is irrational and some sort of collective insanity. This worldview allows Americans and their political leaders to believe that we are hated because of our democratic freedoms and lifestyles and not our own "footsteps" in others' backyard. As Bin Laden has explicitly said, if his actions were designed to show his hatred for western culture and democracy he would have launched attacks against Sweden whose citizens embrace  far more secular, gender-bending, sexually permissive attitudes and lifestyles than do Americans.

Amanpour, in her attempt to learn about Osama the man, might have also discovered what Lawrence Wright in his deeply researched book on the origins and evolution of Al Qaeda, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (2006), did: Bin Laden, misperceived as someone who eschews all modernity and wishes to re-invent the Middle ages, has one wife who is a Ph.D child psyhologist and another embraces American brand-name cosmetics and lingerie. Moreover, he allowed his young sons to play Nintendo, and had Al Qaeda trainees watch Arnold Schwarzenegger movies (albeit to learn combat tactics). But to note these surprise elements would be to muddy the narrative---the enemy from another planet.

A second shortcoming of "In the Footsteps of Osama Bin Laden" should be noted: the failure to address the critical role the U.S. played in promoting Bin Laden as well as others who would become Islamic jihadists. Bin Laden, Amanpour observes, got his first taste of Holy War in Afghanistan when he and others were ready and willing to be cannon fodder fighting the Soviet "infidels." The U.S.  clandestinely and gleefully lured the Soviets into Afghanistan as payback for their support of the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war.

Mahmood Mamdani's Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold war, and the Roots of Terror (2004) shows how the C.I.A. facilitated the recruitment of Islamists, the most extreme within the Muslim community, to fight a "proxy war" (i.e. no U.S. soldiers; no political fallout at home) to bloody the Russians. They even allowed one of Osama's eventual mentors, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called "blind Sheik", to come to the U.S. in 1990 as a reward for his work in the anti-Soviet jihad. Rahman was subsequently jailed for playing a role in the planning of terrorist attacks inside the U.S.  Amanpour discusses the Rahman-Bin Laden connection but never that between the Rahman and the C.I.A.

The omission of the C.I.A.- Al Qaeda connection in Amanpour's presentation is particularly surprising since her co-producer Peter Bergen's major work on Bin Laden dealt extensively with the Bin laden's rise to prominence in the Afghan campaign against the Soviets. To dwell on such ironies would once again depart from an ultimately simplistic story that teaches Amercans a bit more about Bin Laden without having to learn too much about ourselves---or at least our Administrations.

To understand Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organization as it developed out of a specific set of historical circumstances is not to deny that Bin Laden and the groups that engage in actions inspired by him are dangerous and should be eliminated. But unless one comprehends the roots of the problem in the development of the economic, political and social realities of Muslim life in the societies in which they have lived, and how western and U.S. policies have helped make Al Qaeda more popular than the strictly religious prescriptions which Bin Laden also embraces ever would, little useful knowledge will be gained. And a little knowledge, we all should know, is a dangerous thing.

TO CATCH A PREDATOR: Adult Sexual Contacts with Young Teens Located Through the Internet

Child Molesters Television's capacity to do quality investigative journalism is undenied. From Edward R. Murrow's pathbreaking Harvest of Shame in the 1950s, which documented the misery of migrant workers, to 60 Minutes'  countless exposes of wrong-doing in government and industry the medium has delivered the goods. But all too often sensationalism has trumped sound reportage and analysis. This is no more evident than when sex is the focus of inquiry.

In the past few  years NBC's Dateline news magazine has aired a series of dramatic programs under the title "To Catch a Predator." The shows portray sting operations involving men (women apparently never took the bait) travelling by invitation to private residences to meet persons they believed to be twelve or thirteen year old girls or boys. The initial communications between the sting's targets and adult decoys pretending to be young teens were conducted in internet chat rooms frequented by teens.

The decoys were, according to Stone Phillips, Dateline anchor (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/), young adults trained to entice those who enaged them in chat rooms. Decoys posted profiles with photos of program staff when they were young teens and always indicated in chat room exchanges that they were twelve or thirteen years old. Decoys often initated discussion of sex and indicated the possibility of meeting the men in a hypothetical circumstance. They also indicated they were home alone, but Phillips maintains that the men themselves moved rapidly from the possibility of meeting to push for a specific rendezvous and then followed it up by driving to the decoy's "home."

Once baited the routine was as follows.The men entered the residence and are told by the decoy, located in another room, to wait. At that point Chris Hansen, the program's correspondent and host appears and engages the men in conversation. He asks them why they are there. Many of the men appear nervous, assuming Hansen is a policeman, or are confused. A few flee. In the most recent  installments  of the program all the men are arrested after leaving the apartment by local police who have been monitoring the situation from a nearby home.

This scenario is repeated over and over. The men's names and occupations are provided to the viewing audience. They are seen trying to explain themselves with a variety of lame excuses which are quickly refuted by Hansen  who quotes from the transcript of the chat room exchanges. Most of the men are contrite; others mute. Amazingly, none express rage, even after they realize they are being televised and Hansen is not a cop. Of course, they do not know they are about to be arrested.

Clearly "To Catch a Predator" succeeds as drama. The schadenfreude (joy in another's misery) involved when someone else faces unanticipated public disgrace does make engaging television. Those exposed appear more often than not to look like respectable members of society as opposed to those collared on the various shows in which cops in patrol cars chase down violent members of the underclass or intervene in drunken marital brawls.

The devastating consequences for the men outed on national television---fired from jobs, doing jail time, and facing social disgrace and ostracism--- did elicit some limited sympathy despite my strong disapproval of what  brought them into the spotlight. For example, in the third episode, filmed in Riverside, California, I did feel a bit sorry for a 43- year-old married high school teacher with children of his own, who denounces himself as a "sick son of a bitch" who should be arrested immediately, taken to jail and "excecuted." He was indeed subsequently fired and jailed. Some of his students were shocked at his arrest ; others were aware he sometimes looked at their bodies in a way that suggested sexual interest, but there were no formal complaints ever lodged against him according to his employer. Nor, presumably did any of his former students, even after he was arrested, indicate he ever said or did anything criminal in nature. Had they done so surely the program would have informed viewers.

Perhaps my reaction was rare. The overwhelming majority of viewers, if one could judge from those who posting to the show's website (always risky given the unrepresentative nature of those who have the motivation to do so) probably would be happy to see the worst punishment possible given to this man and the others caught in the dragnet.

Besides performing the service of alerting the public to the phenomenon of adults contacting via the internet and possibly meeting young teens for sex, the report may have had an additional positive effect. Undoubtedly, a few audience members could identify with these men because they too had engaged in chat room sex talk and solicitation with underage children. Perhaps the program served as a deterrent for such persons.

But, as Fred Berlin, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University and founder of their Sexual Disorders Clinic which studies and treats sex offenders says,(in a useful interview with Chris Hansen which is posted but unfortunately not aired), there are a paucity of places would-be offenders can go for help to control such behavior. There are no  AA-type programs, for example, for this population. Some viewers might have been frightened away from internet-based chat and trysts. They may, however, if worried about being discovered by a sting operation, simply try other avenues for connecting with youngsters.

Despite being sympathetic to the overall goals of "To Catch a Predator" and other attempts to prevent or at least reduce adult sexual contacts with underage teenage children, I believe the program was seriously deficient in a number of respects. Its desire to tell as dramatic a story as possible to sound an alarm may be an effective audience-builder but is not evidence-based journalism and badly serves the public.

The overall impression of the series is that there is a massive threat to the well-being, if not the lives, of young pre-teens and teens from out-of-control adult internet sexual predators who manipulate innocent youth because they are mentally ill or simply evil. Yet, while Dateline suggests that  children online are at grave risk, the only known survey to measure the actual likelihood of  "solicitation"  suggests this is not the case.  In 2001 a Department of Justice study  asked 1501 teens ages 10-17 if  a stranger who had contacted them on the internet had at a later point in time called them on the phone, asked them to meet or sent them gifts. Only 3 percent  reported any of the above behaviors and half of them were from persons within  their own age group. Not a single respondent in the survey indicated they ever met the solicitors, let alone had sexual contact with them.

Apart from wildly exaggerating the extent of internet predation, let's look more closely at  other problems with the Dateline  series.  To begin with, Chris Hansen shows and tells us that more than fifty men attempted to visit the decoys. But never informs the audience the total number of men who made internet contact with them. Did all the men go to meet the children or was it a small percentage of them? My suspicion is that it may have been the latter simply because, had the vast majority of chat room men responded to the lure, the program surely would have known let us know about it. There is a big leap from anonymously instant messaging a child and actually paying a visit to their home. Only those both highly motivated and extraordinarily foolish are apt to take the penultimate step, and even among those, probably some would back off half way there or even later when confronted by a real thirteen year old. Shows that employ entrapment techniques present only the successful efforts. The failures end up on the cutting room floor.

I have little regard for men who engage in sex chat with young teens, but I believe the vast majority stay at the level of fantasy and never intend to cross the boundary into a tryst and sex with them. It may be fear that restrains them, but this is no different than what prevents many other socially undesirable acts. The show suggests that fantasy alone is sufficient to insure transgression.

The situation created by the decoys is also atypical. I am sure there are genuine thirteen year olds that arrange to meet and show up to enounter much older men for sex. However, I suspect this represents a tiny percentage of all the teenagers who ever go on chat lines and talk about sex or even write provocatively to older men. Self-deflating as it must be for adults thirteen year olds probably think of anyone over thirty-five as ancient, and the thought of even kissing them repulsive.

The chat room scene is most likely in the vast majority of cases a game consciously played by both sides. When I was eleven my friends and I called up the telephone operator and when she answered we asked her for a date and hung up. When, much to our surprise, she immediately called back to admonish us we were paralyzed with fear. Women I know say that as teenagers forty years ago ago they would, in concert with their girlfriends, randomly dial phone numbers of men listed in the phonebook and engage them in suggestive conversation simply to test their emerging "power" over males. Today's teens, or some of them, are likely doing the same thing with the most up-to-date technology and sex talk.

By suggesting adult men automatically move from fantasizing about sex with underage children to engaging in it "To Catch a Predator" also ignores critical information provided by Dr. Berlin in his online interview with Hansen. The text of the interview is on the website listed above and in it the psychiatrist who is a leading expert on pedophiles makes three points that are absent from the televison show. First, he says that less than 1 percent of pedophiles are violent. The exceptional cases are, of course, the ones that receive the most publicity. Second, he says that there is no one type of pedophile. Some are chronic offenders; others may do it once and never again. He likens the phenomenon to drunk drivers, some of whom are alcoholics and others not. Finally, he says that pedophiles who serve time in jail have a lower rate of re-arrest than other criminals. He cites a large study indicating over 90 percent are not re-arrested for a similar offense. This shouldn't be surprising because, if it's true that pedophiles come from all social backgrounds, whereas those who commit property and violent crimes tend to be poor, pedophiles often have far more to lose if they are repeat offenders. The situation is analagous to what police report in regard to the effectiveness of "restraining" orders given to men who have been accused of domestic violence. Middle class abusers are more apt to be deterred by the threat of legal penalties than are men from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Had "To Catch a Predator" offered these excerpts from the interview with its psychiatric expert it would have lowered the decibel level of fear and rage from the audience. But the show seemed intent on generating precisely those emotions.

It is also important to recognize that the male "predators" believed they were meeting underage children who wanted to meet them. In this regard they might have been delusional, but one cannot assume these same individuals are necessarily or even likely to impose themselves upon, stalk or pursue unwanted contact with children. The fact that many came "armed" with pies, soda, alcohol and condoms testifies to their viewing the rendezvous as a dating situation. This doesn't excuse their behavior but it suggests they are probably not inclined towards violence. The program undoubtedly would have noted confiscation of any weapons had the men had any when arrested.

Statutory rape laws, which these men would almost certainly  have violated had there not been a sting operation, are different from laws governing sexual assault and classic rape. They imply consent and are criminal simply because of the respective ages of the perpetrator and alleged victim. Societies have nearly always forbid sexual contacts between adults and persons deemed children. However, a cross-cultural and historical perspective illustrates that we now choose to label as children those who have been legitimate sexual partners in the majority of other times and places. As late as the nineteenth century the age of consent in most countries was between ten and thirteen. Today it has risen to between fifteen and eighteen. In the U.S., depending on the state, it varies from fourteen to eighteen with sixteen being most common. Canada,our close neighbor, allows sex for those over fourteen. In Mexico it is thirteen. Given human history then, it makes little sense to call sexual relations between adults and adolescents unnatural or pathological. Psychiatrists do not, in fact, consider being sexually aroused by images of young teens statistically abnormal behavior.

Sexual contacts between children and older persons, however,may be disapproved of on any number of grounds. I think the best reason is because sexual relations between adults and young adolescents (not to mention younger children) is almost always in the interests of the older party. It might not, as the best designed research indicates, be harmful to the younger person (see Malcolm Gladwell, "Getting Over it," The New Yorker ,November 8, 2004), but that doesn't mean it is beneficial either. If adolescents wish to engage in sexual behavior, which they typically do, they should have safe sexual contact with their peers. For even younger children, who social scientists have shown typically play "doctor" in human societies and suffer no ill consequences, their playmate should be someone their own age as well.

To treat most non-violent statutory sex offenders like those uncovered in "To Catch a Predator" as alien beings instead of psychologically non-pathological but impulsive, foolish and often pathetic persons is unwarranted. Perhaps they should be prosecuted and given very short prison terms (e.g., six months) with appropriate therapy designed to allow them to control their impulses to translate fanstasy into action. Maybe they should not be allowed to access internet chat rooms as a condition of parole. But, unlike other countries, we often give them long prison terms and notify their communities when they get out of prison (something not done with other felons, even violent ones). This may insure their ostracism, but also makes rehabilitation more difficult (e.g., see the film The Woodsman for a realistic if fictional portrait of one sex offender's experience after serving time).

If  we are genuinely concerned about protecting children it makes little sense to treat offenders as if they can't change when the evidence strongly demonstrates otherwise. Do we really want them to believe they will always be out-of-control, perhaps producing a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Children, of course, can be victimized by adults. But, the sad reality is that it's not the adult internet predator they are at most risk from, but  rather someone they already know, most likely, in fact, a parent who neglects or injures them and, in  rarer cases, sexually abuses them.  To focus attention on  bogus threats is to  channel attention and resources away from  real ones.

Postscript: January 14, 2009 The New York Times (Brad Stone,"Report calls Online Threats to Children Overblown," January 13, 2009) reported that a study commissioned by 49 state Attorneys General found that mass public concern aroused by programs such as To Catch A Predator was unwarranted. Children, the 278 page report discovered, are rarely solicited by adults online and those very few who willingly respond are typically youth from dysfunctional families or have substacne abuse problems.

BLACK.WHITE: Television's Novel Exploration of Race Relations in America

racismBlackWhite, a new six part "reality" series which premiered on the FX Network March 8, 2006 attempts in a novel form to understand the state of contemporary race relations in the United States. It may be, however, that more traditional methods, the use of historical and sociological analysis, "social audits," and public opinion polls might prove to have been a wiser choice.

The program involves two middle class families whose adult members are in their forties. One, a black family from Atlanta, Geogia consists of Brian, his wife Renee and their seventeen year old son Nick. The white family, from Santa Monica, California has husband and wife Bruno and Carmen and their eighteen year old daughter Rose. Through extraordinary cosmetic makeovers the families have been transformed so that they can easily "pass" to the other side of the racial divide.

Once the race reversal is accomplished each family tries to experience aspects of daily life as "the other." Moreover, everyone lives under the same roof in Tarzana, California, an affluent suburb of  Los Angeles, nearly devoid of blacks, where the series has been filmed. This living arrangement allows them to provide tips to each other designed to facilitate smooth behavioral adjustment to their adoptive racial identities. In the initial episode,Carmen, now passing as black, is cautioned by Renee not to ask too many personal questions in her interactions with blacks; Bruno asks whether a walking style he is affecting seems authentically "black" and counsels Brian on what he might expect working as a bartender in an all-white community.

Co-habiting also permits the participants who have lived their entire lives with one racial identity to offer interpretations of the experiences those passing are having. In what may well become an ongoing dialogue, for example, Brian urges Bruno to be more sensitive to racist undertones in what may appear to be benign interracial encounters.

Bruno is a strong believer that one's demeanor, politeness and affability, not their race, determines the course of all social interactions. When a salesman is friendly to him in a store he sees this as a confirmation that race need not matter. But Brian is equally convinced the salesman is simply "sizing him up" to make sure Bruno isn't a potential troublemaker. Perhaps Brian is correct in general, but there is no way of knowing in this case. If Bruno in blackface had been ignored it could just as likely been indicative of blacks receiving poor customer service.

From the 1947 film (based on a Laura Hobson novel), Gentleman's Agreement , in which Gregory Peck pretended to be Jewish, to John Howard Griffin's 1959 classic book Black Like Me ,"passing" experiences have been employed to inform the public about the nature and extent of prejudice and discrimination in our society.

An alternative and far superior method, the so-called "social audit", involves having members of two social groups, one of which might face prejudice and discrimination, sequentially engage in identical activities (e.g., looking for a job). During their activities they deliberately interact with the same "gatekeeper" (e.g., a potential employer) who comes from the dominant group. The back-to-back encounters allows for an assesment of any disparities in treatment.

In 1991 Diane Sawyer hosted a startling Prime Time Live  program using the social audit format in which two twenty-something well-groomed and articulate males, one black and one white, went through a gamut of activities in St. Louis, Missouri. They looked for housing, jobs, and shopped for an inexpensive used car and shoes. They hailed cabs. Both acted as if they were locked out of their cars in a busy intersection. Cameras, safely hidden, recorded their encounters with identical landlords, would-be employers, salesmen and cabbies. They not only revealed the quality of the interactions in terms of affability between the two men and those they encountered but whether the men were able to achieve their goals (e.g., be offered an apartment; a chance to apply for a job; the same car for the same price; good customer service; get a taxi to pick them up).

The outcome of the social audit revealed dramatic disparities in regard to whether the two men were able to achieve their goals in the encounters with whites: the white male, for example, was offered apartments to rent which the black male had earlier been told had been taken; a store manager confirmed the availability of a job in a cleaners to the white applicant. Previously he informed the black one that the position was already filled; a used car salesman offered the black man an opportunity to buy the same car as he would later offer to the white one. But in the former case there would be a larger downpayment and additional $500 cost for the vehicle; a taxi passed by the black man waving him down and picked up the white one further down the street; passersby in droves offered assistance to the white subject seemingly locked out of his car and completely ignored the black one.

Ironically, in light of the discussion between Brian and Bruno about the meaning of a salesman's affability towards the latter, in the St. Louis experiment a shoe salesman totally ignores the black man and lavishes attention on the white one. In that instance indifference was perceived as the racist response, which testifies to the difficulties in interpreting demeanor as opposed to goal achievement in measuring prejudice and dsicrimination.

Perhaps the most surprising finding in the Prime Time  show was not discrimination (which host Sawyer indicated happened very often but not always) but the warmth and friendliness that often accompanied it. In fact, if one did not see the back-to-back difference in outcomes of the interactions it would be impossible to imagine the black man was not being given the same opportunities as his white counterpart. Watching the program I realized that while it may be true that blacks, as many whites believe, erroneously see instances of racism in many situations, they must also fail to see it in many other circumstances when it has occurred.

BlackWhite will apparently not be using social audits in their series and that means whatever happens to the members of the two families cannot be interpreted with certainty regarding the role, if any, race plays. I have no advance knowledge of what this experiment will produce in terms of the experiences of the participants or how they evaluate them. But I will be watching and commenting on this site with updates throughout the series.

First, however, I would like to do something the program has not, namely place it within the larger context of what we know about the evolving nature of race relations throughout American history. Only by doing this can we assess the value of the series in illuminating where we stand today.

The history of race relations in the United States has gone through immense changes and continuities throughout the centuries. Slavery, in the north as well as the south, of course, institutionalized white supremacy in its most pernicious form for about 250 years. Ira Berlin's Generations of Captivity (2003) is the best introduction to the current state of historical knowledge about this era.

The abolition of slavery in the 1860s is believed by many to have fundamentally altered the opportunties of the former slaves, but, in fact very few abolitionists let alone ordinary citizens in any part of the nation were committed to a racially integrated society with equality of opportunity. Eric Foner's Reconstruction:America's Unfinished Revolution: 1863-1877 (1988) tells this story of missed opportunities and how hostility towards racial integration set the stage for the establishment of legal segregation in the south to co-exist with its long-standing de facto counterpart in the north.

Because white supremacy in its various forms never truly disappeared blacks were not allowed to compete for the dramatic new economic opportunities that rapid industrialization brought in the post-Civil War era. Instead immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, along with whites who had lived here for generations, were beneficiaries of what amounted to massive "affirmative action" policies, by law and/or custom, that deliberately prevented black advances.

The era of white supremacist ideology lasted well into the twentieth century. Unforgivable Blackness, the powerful PBS documentary on Jack Johnson's quest to become world heavyweight boxing champion in the early 1900s, is one of the best portraits of this era when white society, including its most respected members, were determined to avoid even a symbolic challenge to the reigning view that blacks must be kept in a permanently subordinate station.

Johnson finally officially became champion in 1908 by defeating Tommy Burns, but his triumph was discounted because he had never beaten the undefeated but retired former titleholder, Jim Jeffries. Jeffries had refused to allow any black challenger to attempt to become world champion. It was an honor that he and white society believed belonged exclusively to the  white race. Coming out of retirement to restore the crown to its rightful racial group, Jeffries was systematically destroyed and humiliated by Johnson in an epic 1910 fight billed as "The Fight of the Century." In its aftermath whites throughout the nation rioted and scores of blacks were killed. Leading newspapers editorialized that blacks should not take Johnson's victory as any indication they were any less inferior than before.

During the 1930s when the New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt's policies brought unprecedented economic opportunities and security to ordinary Americans blacks benefited as well, but in many respects they were still left out. Segregation laws for example, were never challenged in an era when Democrats depended on the "solid south" voting for them. Republicans, in those days,  were still associated with the hated Abraham Lincoln but were not in fact notably interested either in dismantling segregation.

What is most telling perhaps is that much of the New Deal and WWII economic program bypassed most blacks. As Ira Katznelson shows in When Affirmative Action Was White (2005), Social Security and minimum wage laws, because of pressure from southern Democrats, initially excluded agricultural laborers and domestic servants at a time when these were the two most common black occupations.

The 1944 G.I. Bill, was hailed as a revolutionary attempt to create equality of opportunity for all veterans. The Bill provided full college tuition to veterans admitted to colleges as well as helping them obtain loans to purchase first homes, start businesses or enroll in job training programs. Katznelson shows, however, that the Bill's promises were often empty in practice because local officals not the federal government administerd the programs. Most blacks, for example, lived in the south and were not allowed to attend colleges with white student bodies. Black colleges were underfunded and simply did not have the resources to admit all black applicants. Thus, tuition was paid almost exclusively to white veterans even if black tax dollars helped support the program.

The discriminatory administration of the above policies might not have been known to most white Americans, but public opinion polls as late as the 1940 showed a majority of them did not believe in racial integration and equality of opportunity for blacks whether in housing, education, or jobs.

It was not until the mid 1950s that things began to change and the power of the civil rights movements and urban riots in the 1960s eventually led to a profound alteration in the attitudes of most white Americans towards blacks'  desire for equal rights and opportunities.

By the late 1960s the public expression of racist stereotypes and white supremacist ideology dramatically diminished and  segregation by law ended. Exclusion by custom, however, still affected black opportunities for advancement in many quarters and the modern affirmative action programs, designed to compensate for past racial discrimination, were ultimately adopted.

Today, according to a January 2006 nationwide Associated Press/Ipsos poll 66 percent of blacks believe that significant progress has been made towards "Martin Luther's Dream of racial equality." But, numerous economic indicators suggest that striking gaps between whites and blacks remain. Black family income is still about 60 percent of whites. Whites' average total assets are about ten times as great as blacks largely because of huge discrepancies in the rate of home ownership, the relative value of their respective homes and the far greater white ownership of stocks and other non-residential assets. Black unemployment rates are double that for whites.

The explanation for these discrepancies has been the subject of much analysis. There is little doubt, however, that even if white supremacist ideas have been discredited and are now found only among a distinct minority of whites, prejudice and discrimination do play a significant continuing role in preventing greater equality of opportunity.

In 2003 Gallup poll. for example, a nationwide sample of whites believed that about 35 percent of their own race "disliked blacks." (When asked about their own views, an earlier 1999 ABC poll found that 32 percent of whites acknowledged holding "at least some racist feelings.") These perceptions would be compatible with another finding, from the Gallup poll cited above, that 40 percent of blacks believed they experienced discrimination at least once a month and another 35 percent felt it happened to them less than once a month, but more than once a year.

Social audits conducted by the Government Accounting Office, the Congress' bi-partisan chief investigative arm, have, in fact,shown that when white and black "job applicants" with comparable resumes apply to the same firms, blacks receive 25 percent fewer interviews and 34 percent fewer job offers (Cedric Herring, "Is Job Discrimination Dead?," Contexts , Summer 2002, p.14).

Discrimination can be a by-product of prejudice, but can also exist without it. Bank and mortgage companies' home loan policies have repeatedly been shown to discriminate against black applicants, though loan officers maintain they are applying neutral economic criteria. Realtors steer black clients looking to purchase homes away from certain neighborhoods, not necessarily because they are prejudiced but because they know or believe sellers are. Some employers may not hire blacks because they believe, perhaps incorrectly, that their customers and clients prefer dealing with whites. Racial profiling is ubiquitous, though the profilers themselves may not harbor prejudical feelings towards blacks in general.

This then is the historical context within which BlackWhite will try in its unique way to enlighten the members of its two familes and ourselves about race realtions in American society today. Given the complexities of contemporary attitudes and behavior on race the series' participants will no doubt experience a wide range of encounters with the residents of Tarzana.

It is important to recognize that the show's producers will probably not be presenting viewers with an unedited record of what happen to the families. Entertainment values and possible bias will lead to editing decisions that might highlight certain episodes and neglect or ignore others. The choice of Tarzana itself, with its overwhelmingly white and prosperous residents, may make the families' encounters different than would be the case if they were in a poorer community or one with a different racial composition. One might imagine that the class backgrounds of the families themselves might also skew the conclusions to be drawn from their experiences.

Although instances of blatant racial prejudice and discrimination might be shown I would imagine that most of Bruno, Carmen and Rose's enounters with whites while in blackface will be benign. But, as with the Prime Time St. Louis social audit, smiles alone might not tell the whole story. Hopefully those passing as black don't merely have informal social chit chat with whites in social settings or when shopping. They should also apply for jobs, try to get loans, rent or purchase homes, and attempt to join country clubs.

Brian, Renee and Nick, appearing white and interacting with whites, might be more inclined to be exposed to racist sentiments. But contemporary norms regarding public expression of prejudice might have an inhibitory effect.

As for times when Bruno, Carmen and Rose  interact with blacks, it would not be surprising if anti-white feelings emerge. After all, the same 1999 poll that showed 32 percent of whites acknowledging some anti-black feelings found 40 percent of blacks held anti-white ones.

Viewers should be cautioned to resist saying "See, both sides are prejudiced. Why should society only focus on whites?" I believe the focus should be mainly, though not exclusively, on white racism not simply because black racism is a consequence of a legacy of white supremacist ideology and practices. More critically, whites are far more apt to have the economic, political and social power to translate racist attitudes into discriminatory action. As a college professor I may like or dislike my students and they may have identical feelings, but I alone have the power to give grades. A black person might wish to discriminate against whites but if they aren't employers, landlords or putting their home on the market their options are limited.

Of course, prejudice against groups can and should always be condemned. Moreover, black racism is often counter-productive as when it leads, for example, in some,though not most, circumstances to black academic high achievers being stigmatized by black peers for "acting white." But it is disingenuous to pretend that all prejudices have equal societal impact.

As BlackWhite proceeds hopefully the families themselves will ask the tough questions that I'm afraid the producers may not and make this series the absorbing educational experience it could be. In any case, stay tuned.

Update  March 15:

Episode 2:
The episode focused primarily on the strains in the relationship between the two families, and, in particular between Carmen and Renee. Depending on one's point of view Bruno and Carmen are either misunderstood by Brian and Renee or understood all too well. The white couple believes they are sincerely trying to be open to the experience of "being black" by going to a black church or in appreciating listening to the work of young black males and femeles who their daughter Rose (in blackface) is taking a poetry class workshop with.

But Brian and Renee perceived them as "trying too hard" as when they become animated enthusiasts at the church service or, in Carmen's case,"clueless" and insensitive when she attempts to use black vernacular. Carmen is also criticized for showering  excessive praise on the young black poets and presuming to know things about them, as individuals, based on their appearance, demeanor or work. From Bruno and Carmen's perspective Brian and Renee are hypersenstive, misinterpreting benign or well-meaning behavior.

While the interactions between these couples are uneasy Rose, Bruno and Carmen's daughter, seems to be having an easier time being accepted by the poets. Even when she admits passing they don't reject her and she seems to feel transformed by her interactions with them.

What to make of all this? One can simply say that the adults are thus far not achieving mutual trust and rapport and it is due to their racial differences. Or perhaps just the mixture of personalities. It's hard not to believe some other combination of white and black middle class adults might do better. Or worse. In other words, a case study involving a tiny number of subjects proves nothing useful.

It is tempting to say that Rose's different experience is expected because research shows that racial animosity is less among  the younger generation, but again, one could easily find exceptions to this. More importantly, youthful tolerance doesn't necessarily predict future behavior as young people end up becoming involved in social institutions and situations where discriminatory behavior is not simply a reflection of personal attitudes towards race but long standing customs and incentives.

The problem with the series thus far is its total focus on prejudice within the context of informal social life. Besides squabbling with each other the adults also go to local bars and try to engage patrons on racial issues. They meet some who seem seem devoid of  prejudice (e.g., feel comfortable with racial intermmariage), others who may harbor it or, at least, embrace stereotypes, even those that are of concern to blacks, which reinforce it (e.g., black kids are stigmatized as "acting white" for doing well in school)  But everyone is polite and engaging at all times. Again, this provides only a glimpse of race relations because it exludes, for example, institutional norms in the critical housing and job markets. Given the right circumstances  bigots will not discriminate and non-bigots will. Hopefully the series will move to that arena or it will simply be spinning its wheels.

Episode 3:

This episode was the most effective and interesting thus far.  In the beginning it did get bogged down a bit with the continuing saga of Renee and Carmen, in which the former accuses the latter of using racist terms or terms that can be indicative of racism, while Carmen pleads that she is not at all racist and that Renee is misconstruing innocent word choices. My view is that Carmen is being misunderstood, but she does have an unfortunate tendency to provide ammunition for Renee because she shows no care in word selection (e.g., she tries to compliment a young woman by calling her "a beautiful black creature").

Though racial differences in ways of communicating no doubt can fan the fuels of discord, the point has already been made and it's time to move on. Fortunately that occurs, particularly when Carmen and Bruno in their black disguises go to a country western dance and Carmen senses that she isn't wanted by the all white patrons and staff. She is asked to give a credit card before getting served a drink and believes, possibly correctly (here's where the social audit approach is needed) that had she been white the drink would have been given first.

This experience shakes her and for the first time she seems to understand what it feels like to be discriminated against. Her husband Bruno does not notice any disparate treatment. Back home they get into an argument and Carmen accuses Bruno of being locked into his own view of the world without opening himself up to other possibilities.

Bruno notes that as a  school basketball player he was once deliberately frozen out by black teammates who did not want to pass him the ball even though he was the best player. He said he was very frustrated but "moved on" and blacks who feel discriminated against should as well. Of course, Bruno could move on to a world where he was very unlikely to find himself in such a situation, whereas blacks necessarily move into worlds where whites have institutional control.

In another segment, Bruno in blackface and Carmen without her disguise go to an all black neighborhood and Carmen and Bruno have strong feelings they are being shown hostility for being an interracial couple. This might be the case, but apparently there has been some dispute about whether the editing of the scenes distorted the reality of the situation. In any case, even if editing was selective, few would doubt, though Carmen seems shocked, that anti-white sentiment exists within the black community. It probably would even have been stronger if black women were present as they resent black men being with white women and neglecting their own women.

Probably the most riveting part of the episode didn't involve black-white  relations, but Brian and Renee's frustrations with their son Nick. Nick is a sweet-tempered seventeen year old, but has only an  elementary school education, having dropped out before even embarking upon high school. His parents are very concerned about his future as he isn't doing much more than living in the moment and spends whatever money he has on extravagent items.

Brian is most frustrated that Nick seems not to notice the pervasive racism that he and Renee do. He wants Nick to observe white people watching him when he goes into a store in the mall so his son can understand how he is perceived. Nick has no interest. In some sense he is like Bruno, seeing a color-blind world where only personality matters, though Bruno does see black racism against whites.

What initially seemed odd to me is that Brian feels the persistance of racism, not the necessity of advancing his education, is the most important lesson Nick needs to learn. Racial discrimination clearly exists in employment, for example, but even if it was absent I felt the propsects for someone without even a high school education in today's economy are nil. White racists don't even have to look at Nick's skin to deny him opportunities. He's digging his own grave without their help. In fact,  72 percent of black males in their twenties who are school dropouts are jobless and 21 percent are incarcerated (Erik Eckholm, " Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn ", The New York Times , March 20, 2006).

Nevertheless, after examining the relevant data, I reconsidered my perspective and was somewhat less crirical of Brian's priorities. In fact, white dropouts don't fare nearly as poorly as their black counterparts. Only 34 percent of them are unemployed. If Nick gets his GED he will undoubtedly improve his job prospects significantly, but to equal whites' opportunities he would have to exceed  their educational achievements.

If the series had simply had a graphic showing these data while Brian and Nick were conversing it would have provided a deeper understanding of Nick's situation and the role of race in America.

Episode 4:

This episode had a few notable features. Perhaps the most important one involved Rose and Carmen returning to their community in blackface noting how the people in what appears to be an all-white neighborhood respond to their presence. Because it was a residential area they were familiar with the process was quite similar to what could have been achieved in a social audit. They noticed a lack of eye contact and, more importantly, a reluctance to be helpful when  Rose inquired about a possible job at a small store.

Clearly, Rose and Carmen are being affected the most by the race reversal. Brian and Renee don't seem to be interfacting with whites very often when they are in whiteface and when they do nothing dramatic seems to occur. But Bruno is a stand-in for what they imagine the white community has to offer. There is a chasm between him and all the other participants, except perhaps with Nick, who also seems unable to fathom the existence of white racism.

Much of the episode seems to revolve around the desire on the part of the whites to have "authentic" black experiences while the black participants typically suggest there is a distinct black culture that is impenetrable to whites. But sometimes the whites are accused of stereotyping and making assumptions about blacks that deny their individuality. Much of the problem arises because  class and age divisions within the black community are observed but not analyzed. Bruno meets middle class black adults, but his image of blacks in general is largely drawn from the baggy pants, do-rag fashion of black male youth culture. Brian and Renee are aware of the existence of the latter if only because of Nick, but they want Carmen and Bruno not to notice it at all. Each side of the racial divide wants the other to have blinders on.

Episode 5

This installment was significant in two respects. First,  Renee finally had a connection with a white person that she could value. Initially, this seemed unlikely, because for unexplained reasons she tried to interface with whites involved in Bible studies and knitting and ended up meeting women who were considerable older than herself with whom she had little rapport. But, on the third try she had an experience comparable to one Carmen had with a black radio personality earlier in the series. She was astounded when she discovered the woman's daughter had a black playmate and this undoubtedly set the tone for what became a promising friendship.

Renee has always felt, with some accuracy, that Carmen acts inappropriately around blacks and is terribly naive about black life. Neverthless, Renee herself appears to have lived a very insulated social existence. The idea that there are whites who are untainted by prejudice comes as a shock to her. It would have helped if  there had been some material on Renee's normal world back in Atlanta. Does she work only with blacks, have no white neighbors etc.?  Are all her encounters with whites without informality?

Whether Renee's world is unusually restricted in terms of interracial contacts or whether this is typical of informal  social relations in contemporary America might have been clarified with polling data. Polls, cited earlier, have shown, in fact, that most whites and blacks believe that a majority of of each race is not prejudiced against members of the other race.

If Renee has now developed a more nuanced view of whites Bruno has not altered his perspective on race relations. In one scene he and Brian go to Simi Valley, a white suburb, (in)famous for being the scene of the trial and acquittal of the policemen who beat Rodney King in 1992. Much to Brian's amazement and consternation when both men (Bruno in blackface) ask shoppers in a mall parking lot if they have jumper cables for their stalled car white passersby are uniformly helpful. Bruno sees this as confirmation that white racism is negligable or withers in the face of black politeness; Brian  is simply dumbfounded at what he believes is an atypical experience. He could have been and perhaps should have been  pleasantly surprised that overt displays of prejudice did  not materialize, but he seemed unwilling to concede that informal social interactions between blacks and whites in public places might be more benign now than in the past.

Obviously, one scene proves nothing, but polls suggest that overt expressions of prejudice have lessened over the decades. On the other hand, Simi Valley's almost total whiteness suggests prejudice and discrimination might occur in other arenas. It's one thing to provide jumper cables when asked; quite another to welcome blacks as neighbors or sell your home to them. (In the Diane Sawyer-hosted program from the early 1990s discussed  earlier,  black and white social auditors pretended their respective cars broke down and waited to see if anyone spontaneously offered assistance. Only the white motorist received help).

Bruno and Brian also walked the streets of Venice, California and once again encountered personal friendliness. But, Venice is an extremely liberal community and this should have been commented upon. Instead someone who knew nothing would assume that Bruno had scored another unambiguous triumph.

Finally, Brian took Bruno to a dominoes game in a private home. The men seemed to be more working class than upper middle class and either because of that and/or Bruno's lack of interest in dominoes and drinking Bruno felt uncomfortable in the setting. Why Brian thought this was a good location  for fieldwork was not made clear, but Brian, perhaps despairing at having Bruno "see" white racism, wished Bruno to  get in touch with his own  discomfort with blacks.  Bruno's excuses for feeling ill-at-ease, however, were plausible in the absence of any scene in which we can observe him happily engaged with a group of working class whites drinking, laughing and deeply involved in some other board game he has no previous interest or exposure to. Once again, the lack of a side-by-side comparisons characteristic of the social audit method weakens what could have been a powerful moment.

Final episode:

The final episode was undoubtedly moving, with Renee and Carmen reconciling and even Brian and Bruno bonding to some extent while playing basketball. Even Nick seems to have matured slightly.
Rose, who was the person most open to the project  all along, seemed most affected by her experience.

These developments made the project worthwhile for the individuals in the two families and one can hope that white and black viewers of the series will be influenced by it to be more open to interracial  socializing.

Despite this, however, the series, precisely because it stayed at the level of  interpersonal as opposed to impersonal relations between the races. Without examining decisionmaking involving housing, employment and education, in which parties typically do not become acquainted in more than a superficial way, one cannot really explore the reality of race relations in the United States today.

The era of white supremacy and overt prejudice and discrimination is largely gone. Undoubtedly, especially among the younger generation, even covert racist sentiments have dramatically diminished. But institutional forms of discrimination still exist.  A new series by the architects of this one which focuses on that aspect of race relations woulod be weclome indeed.

Where Have You Gone, Jon Stewart?

jon+stewartJon Stewart's Daily Show has frequently and appropriately been lauded as a "fake" television news program that delivers a more accurate understanding of the events of the day than the mainstream alternatives. Stewart's style, which involves taking sides and ridiculing elites, has been the opposite of news anchors of the major networks. Mainstream anchors almost always act as stenographers, politely allowing government officals and other elites to present their versions of current events. Journalistic "objectivity" is supposedly achieved by having at least two "respectable" talking heads briefly provide somewhat different perspectives. Thus, for example, President Bush presents a rosy picture of progress in defeating "terrorists" in Iraq, while Congressman John Murtha counters that Iraq is a quagmire in which our military presence serves to increase anti-Amercan sentiment which increases the ranks of those who might engage in terrorist acts against our country.

What is missing in this version of the news is an independent assessment of rival claims. Mainstream journalists do not see their role as seeking the truth by dispassionately evaluating the evidence for each position. They merely present soundbites representing different interpretations of events within the narrow spectrum of American political ideologies in which argument is confined to the means best suited to achieve unquestioned ends (e.g., America's continued global hegemony).

It has been said that network newscasters envy the liberties that Stewart takes and wish they could be as unconstrained as he in his irreverent approach to delivering the news. Perhaps this is true, but Stewart himself seems to be slowly moving towards the mainstream. Indeed, being asked to host the Academy Awards in 2006 testifies to his increasing respectability. He now appears to be not much more than a far hipper and funnier incarnation of past liberal political comedians:Tom Lehrer and  Mort Sahl.

This is a far cry from the Stewart who attacked talking heads Tucker Carlson and James Carville for wasting the opportunity to do incisive journalistic analysis on Crossfire. That program had become not much more than mudslinging between the ideological protagonists. Stewart still is able to score points by lampooning his targets, typically members of the Bush Administration and their allies in the Congress. But his focus of late seems to be almost purely stylistic:mimicking Bush and highlighting his inarticulateness and anti-intellectualism.  All this is valuable and a necessary corrective to the mainstream media's congenital deference to authority. However, when the Administrations actions are seriously eroding democratic institutions at home and provoking unprecedented antipathy abroad perhaps it's time to go more deeply into the Big Picture...the transformation of farce into tragedy.

Stewart's treatment of the recent Samuel Alito Supreme Court confirmation hearings exemplifies his shortcomings. While the mainstream media focused on the proceedings as if they were a sporting events (e.g., Will Alito get enough votes? Did he succeed at his game plan of providing little insight into his future Court decisions? Will his wife's tears help him?), Stewart simply made fun of the banalities Alito uttered to avoid answering penetrating questions. Or he mocked the long-windedness of senators who rattled on and barely gave the nominee a chance to respond to their queries.

What was missing from Stewart was an exposure of what any exhaustive study (e.g., those conducted by journalists Stephen Henderson of the Knight Ridder newspapers and Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury News, or University of Chicago Law Professor Cass Sunstein) of Alito's voluminous paper trail of opinions and court rulings would reveal: Alito, however personable and bright he might be, would support those holding positions of authority with little concern for the rights and welfare of those who were not economically and/or politically powerful. More specifically, he would almost certainly accept a President's dramatically curbing many civil liberties in time of war or to protect the always vague "national security." In addition, he would make it more difficult for government to regulate industry in the public interest. Alito would also likely weaken efforts to protect citizens from various forms of discrimination and mistreatment if they became criminal defendents or prisoners.Finally, of course, he would vote to further erode if not overturn Roe v. Wade. These are not laughing matters, though one can imagine Stewart skillfully and cleverly skewering Alito's political/judicial philosophy.

It is true, of course, that Stewart's skill is after all as a comedian and The Daily Show would suffer if he tried to primarily focus on his target's substance rather than their style. No doubt it is a harder path to follow, but that doesn't mean it is impossible. In fact, with the aid of his "senior correspondents" whose role gives them and him the opportunity to (un)cover the real news in a manner that is both penetrating and humorous, the show has been at its keenest.

By contrast, Stewart is most disappointing when he interviews politically powerful guests. In place of the irreverent anchor is the almost fawning host. His questions, even when directed at a Colin Powell or L. Paul Bremer, two men who have played critical roles in the Iraq disaster make Larry King seem like Bill O'Reilly. Stewart's odd obsequiousness might reflect his being  caught between a desire to confront and a fear that, if he does, in the future he will not be able to book such prestigious guests. But, many of them, such as Bremer, are there to promote books (see Peter Galbraith's penetrating review in "Bremer's Mess", The New York Review of Books,March 9, 2006) and would rarely be inclined to turn down an opportunity to reach millions of would-be readers. Moreover, their egos would make it unlikely they would feel at risk and might welcome the challenge.

Whatever the cause--and it's even possible he is insecure in face-to-face conflict, star-struck, or that Stewart's superiors at Comedy Central want him to tone it down with "big fish"--he frequently adopts the persona of a naive citizen who is genuinely puzzled by the complexities of the world that seem far clearer to him in his opening segments. Powell, for example, was treated as a noble statesman instead of a cowardly  bureaucrat willing to lie in behalf of what his chief aide, Lawrence Wilkerson, has now called a "cabal" which hijacked American foreign policy.  Stewart played Dr. Phil in commiserating with Powell about his burden without trying to put the former Secretary of State on the spot for his complicity in the war-making process. His recent interview with L. Paul Bremer, Bush's top administrator in Iraq during the period in which the resistance to America's invasion grew ever more potent, was another exercise in empathy. Stewart allowed Bremer to present the debacle as simply a case of the difficulties in predicting and coping with unforseen troubles in a just invasion and occupation of a foreign country. No fault Q and A. and certainly no interest in the question of why we went to war in the first place despite ample evidence that WMD were the pretext. Bremer was smiling or laughing throughout the entire interview. Jon Stewart, the Pit Bull that confronted the Crossfire hosts and didn't back down, doesn't have to back down these days. He never fires a shot in anger at his guests.

Even if one can explain away his kid-gloves treatment of Powell and Bremer, how can one overlook his similar approach to William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard (which should be renamed The Weekly Canard). Kristol, co-author of The War Over Iraq , was a major neo-con intellectual enthusiast for the Iraq invasion. In a March 28, 2003 appearance on C-Span a week after the war began Kristol nevertheless, when pressed, said he would have to admit he was wrong to have pushed for it if  WMD were not found and U.S. troops were not greeted as liberators. He has not issued a mea culpa and has never been called on it during his numerous subsequent appearances on mainstream political talk shows. Instead of exchanging pleasantries and engaging in mild bantering with Kristol, hardly an intimidating presence, Stewart, for example, could have exposed his lack of intellectual integrity. This would be a damning indictment of someone hailed as a rare conservative pundit willing to criticize other conservatives when Kristol could be shown to draw the line at self-criticism.

Jon Stewart should use, not squander, the rare opportunity his talent and fame allows him to speak truth to power. But, whatever may happen on the The Daily Show in the future, this will apparently not occur on Oscar night. Sadly, Stewart will be given, according to his Oscar show Producer Gil Cares (The New York Times ,February 20, 2006), the opportunity to "take on the Washington establishment as long as it's even-handed."

Yes, the powerless Democrats must be pilloried as much as the powerful Republicans who, after all, only control all branches of government. Maybe some Monica jokes if  Stewart has to make introductory comments about Sophie Scholl, nominee for Best Foreign Film. It's a story about a young 21 year old German woman who was executed in 1943 by the Nazis for daring to engage in anti-regime leafletting. Wasn't Monica the same age? See, it's that easy.Bash Bush, but give it to Bill Clinton too.

Post -Oscar Poscript:

Jon Stewart's Oscar night performance was even tamer than expected. One admittedly hilarious allusion to Dick Cheney's shooting accident was about all the political humor he could muster.

Stewart's undistinguished effort aside, most annoying about the Academy Awards show was the overall failure of the program to even educate its vast audience about the content of the films nominated for awards. Whether it was documentaries, short subjects or major motion pictures, viewers who had not already seen the films would hardly  have any idea what they were about. No wonder Hollywood is having marketing problems.