“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel: The Distorting Reality of ‘False Balance’ in the Media
False equivalence in the media-giving equal weight to unsupported or even discredited claims for the sake of appearing impartial-is not unusual. But a major media organization taking meaningful steps to do something about it is.
Earlier this month, the BBC’s governing body issued a report assessing the BBC’s impartiality in covering scientific topics. When it comes to an issue like climate change, the report concluded, not all viewpoints share the same amount of scientific substance. Giving equal time and weight to a wide range of arguments without regard to their credibility risks creating a “false balance” in the public debate.
This is a lesson for all media on both sides of the Atlantic-and not just when it comes to science coverage. There are many sides to almost every story, but that doesn’t mean they are automatically equal.
Ana Marie Cox: The GOP self-destruction is complete: millennials officially hate conservatives
The backlash machine has finally backfired with a generation that cringes at old people yelling at gay clouds
Conservatives are stuck in a perpetual outrage loop. The reappearance of Todd Akin, the horror-movie villain immortality of Sarah Palin, the unseemly celebration of the Hobby Lobby decision – these all speak to a chorus of “la-la-la-can’t-hear-you” loud enough to drown out the voice of an entire generation. Late last week, the Reason Foundation released the results of a poll about that generation, the millennials; its signature finding was the confirmation of a mass abandonment of social conservatism and the GOP. This comes at a time when the conservative movement is increasingly synonymous with mean-spirited, prank-like and combative activism and self-important grand gestures. The millennial generation has repeatedly defined itself as the most socially tolerant of the modern era, but one thing it really can’t stand is drama.
Republicans were already destined for piecemeal decimation due to the declining numbers of their core constituency. But they don’t just have a demographic problem anymore; they have stylistic one. The conservative strategy of outrage upon outrage upon outrage bumps up against the policy preferences and the attitudes of millennials in perfect discord.
Teens – whether you like the idea of them having sex or not – deserve information that can keep them healthy. Anything else is criminal
When you send your child off to school, you expect her to learn math, literature and science. Maybe some athletics thrown in for good measure. What most parents don’t count on, however, is for their kids to be told that condoms cause cancer and that women get cervical cancer because of “promiscuity”. Or that “each time a sexually active person gives that most personal part of himself or herself away, that person can lose a sense of personal value and worth.” Yet this is exactly the kind of nonsense taught to students every day thanks to religiously-based, abstinence-only sex education programs.
These false, ideologically-driven programs are turning out sexually illiterate young people whose lives and health are put in literal danger by “educators” handing out false information. All this, just so your teenager might be scared straight enough to forgo sex for a few extra months.
Joan Walsh: Wingnuts’ anti-child disgrace: From Murrieta to Oracle, America’s worst at it again
The GOP sheriff accused of threatening an ex with deportation foments protest — to scare away immigrant children
Waving yellow Gadsden flags and looking like refugees from Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch, dozens of immigration opponents have amassed on a local road in Oracle, Arizona, to block the expected transfer of 40 undocumented children from Central America to a nearby juvenile detention facility. So far the group, which includes members of the “patriot”/wingnut Arizona State Militia, has only blocked a bus carrying kids from a local YMCA. Like their friends in Murrieta, California, the Oracle heroes think the proper way to protest U.S. immigration policy is to threaten young children. [..]
Leadership is also coming from Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, who is trying to rival Maricosa County’s Joe Arpaio when it comes to macho intimidation of undocumented immigrants. Babeu, you may recall, had to abort a 2012 GOP congressional campaign when a gay ex-lover, who was Mexican, said Babeu threatened him with deportation if they broke up. (Babeu denied the charge.) Rather surreally, he’s become a national leader in the anti-immigration movement, and now he’s crusading against relocating 40 immigrant children to his county.
Michelle Chen: Hobby Lobby Is Now Discriminating Against a Transgender Employee
The Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Storesre revealed just how far the law now allows corporations to reach into women’s private lives. Now, another case against the same craft store chain is reaching into the ladies’ room as well.
Meggan Sommerville, a Hobby Lobby frameshop manager in Aurora, Illinois, has for years been shut out of the store’s bathroom because her boss insists that, as a trans woman, she cannot use the facilities. She is pressing a discrimination case with the Illinois Human Rights Commission, contending that the ban is both insulting and illegal under state laws barring discrimination in both employment and in public accommodations. The lockout has become a full-fledged civil rights battle-and perhaps the next legal showdown in the debate around corporate personhood, religion and civil rights at work. [..]
Although Sommerville brought her case under Illinois state law, advocates hope a ruling in her favor could set a precedent for other states’ treatment of transgender people under the rubric of civil rights and labor law.
But whatever Hobby Lobby does in the political arena, Sommerville is primarily anxious about how she’s treated when she shows up at work each day-to do a job that she still loves. She’s just waiting for her employer to recognize what her coworkers and her community have already accepted.
Jessica Grove: Parents Are Now Getting Arrested for Letting Their Kids Go to the Park Alone
Debra Harrell, 46, let her 9-year-old daughter play outside alone at the park. The South Carolina child had a cellphone she could use to call her mother in case of emergency. On the girl’s third day alone at the park, someone asked her where her mother was. The girl said her mom was at work. (Harrell works at McDonald’s and didn’t want her daughter to have to sit inside the restaurant for hours on a beautiful summer day.) The result? Harrell was arrested for “unlawful conduct towards a child” and put in jail; her daughter is now in the custody of the department of social services.
Most commentators – save for a few busybodies interviewed by the local news who nattered on about the possibility of the child being abducted by a strange man, something that’s extremely rare – think that authorities went way too far in arresting Harrell. It angers me, as a citizen, to see the police overreach this way. How is it benefiting this child to be put in the custody of social services? And since I’m a parent, Harrell’s arrest scares me: How can I appropriately parent my child when doing something that seems relatively safe, if out of fashion, can get you arrested?
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