Posted on 10/28/2004 1:43:29 PM PDT by Cableguy
Seymour M. Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter now writing for The New Yorker magazine, was asked Tuesday at the University of Michigan why Sen. John Kerry isn't easily leading the presidential race over George W. Bush when the war in Iraq is going so badly.
"I think one thing you have to face up to is the fact there are roughly 70 million people in America who do not believe in evolution - and those are Bush supporters," said Hersh, who is up front about his support for Kerry.
Hersh's observations about the presidential campaign, the war in Iraq and how he produces stories brought about 700 people out Tuesday to nearly fill the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater at the Michigan League. As part of The New Yorker's national college tour, Hersh and his editor, David Remnick, sat on stage for a conversation followed by a question-and-answer session with audience members.
Hersh, who broke the story of U.S. military abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, said conditions aren't much better at the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where suspected terrorists are being held. When all the details come out, Hersh said, the comparison will be to Andersonville, the infamous Civil War prison the Union Army ran in Georgia.
"What's going on there is unbelievable," he said. "Our definitions of the words torture and abuse are the strangest in the world."
Remnick acknowledged that the support of Kerry by the magazine and the two journalists on stage Tuesday plays well in Ann Arbor and other college towns such as Berkeley, Calif., and Madison, Wis. But he also took exception when an audience member suggested that the media spend too much time trying to be fair and obtain mundane comments from Bush or other top officials in the Republican administration.
After Hersh explained how much he learns by listening to the other side, Remnick said getting both sides to every story is always the goal.
"To think that one side of the political ledger always and historically has a monopoly on what is right and light and good is preposterous," Remnick said.
When a woman in the audience asked how journalism got to the place it is today, with mostly repetitious spin control by the campaigns rather than solid issue reporting by the media, Remnick responded, "It works!"
"Negative campaigning works," he said. "Negative ads work. Spin works. That's the horrible secret of it."
Asked about the use of unnamed sources, Remnick said some stories are so serious that people would lose their jobs if their names were used. He said he knows the name of every one of Hersh's unnamed sources, and that New Yorker fact-checkers call the sources.
Hersh said that readers are accustomed to unnamed sources now and that the public can trust reporters who have a track record of ferreting out the truth - even those like himself who support one side of the political spectrum.
"It's not about politics," he said. "It's about what you write and, if over a given period of time, it's proved to be accurate. Which I'm happy to say is the case with the stuff in The New Yorker. That's why people pay attention to it. Because there's some accuracy there. It's not because I shoot my mouth off."
Perhaps the biggest laugh of the afternoon came when a woman asked what it would take to change the country from being "jaded, dumbed-down, with 50 percent of the people still loving George Bush, right or wrong."
"What would make the change in America that would stop all this descent into darkness?" she asked.
"The Easter Bunny!" Hersh said.
He said people should read more and talk about issues within their families or group of acquaintances.
Hersh ended the program on a sober note, insisting the country should prepare to spend billions of dollars on long-term care for returning veterans.
"The question you have to ask is: For what?"
Why are Republicans so much more successful in life if they are so stupid?
I've never understood this one.
So that Mr Hersh can continue to babble about whatever he damn well wants
Gee, wonder what could have made you think that? Talking to anyone lately?
"Perhaps the biggest laugh of the afternoon came when a woman asked what it would take to change the country from being "jaded, dumbed-down, with 50 percent of the people still loving George Bush, right or wrong."
"What would make the change in America that would stop all this descent into darkness?" she asked."
"The Easter Bunny!" Hersh said."
Looks like these Communists think Bush is going to win.
Deep musings from Hersh here.
:)
The vision of Nuancyboy.
Well...no.
But this is exactly the kind of generalization and sterotyping I'd expect from someone who's a John "F is for Frankenstein" Kerry supporter.
Christians are really shooting themselves in the foot by insisting on talking about evolution. They've driven people away from God by telling them they can't believe in the scientific evidence in front of their faces and have faith at the same time.
I just don't get it. I see no serious conflict between evolution and the Bible. No more conflict than I see between Genesis chapters 1 and 2, which contain two entirely different creation stories with a beginning, middle and end.
And there's only a few hundred words in the Bible about creation. How could that possibly be the whole story?
"I think one thing you have to face up to is the fact there are roughly 70 million people in America who do not believe in evolution - and those are Bush supporters,"
What an A-wipe. He might be surprised to know that the religious right is not W's only support.
LOL! Good 'un!
Another elite NewYorker trying to call us stupid.
> Kerry believes in evolution. His positions on the issues are constantly evolving.
Entirely backwards. Positions evolve as the environment changes. Kerry's positions are being constantly Created out of nothing. Kerry is the *epitome* of Poofism.
"...there are roughly 70 million people in America who do not believe in evolution..." No, that`s "SOCIALISM" that we don`t believe in.
Well, I believe in devolution--Exhibit A, Seymour Hersh, correspondent from The Island of Dr. Moreau.
We've got to find a reason to either lock these guys up or shoot them after a quick trial.
We Christians don't believe in Evolution?
I didn't know that...
"Don't believe in evolution = stupid."
I do not wish to offend the person who wrote this. I have no quarrel with him, but I want to set the record straight for people who think that Christian creationists are de facto antedelluvian knuckle-draggers.
Gregor Mendel, the founder of the science of heredity did not believe in Darwinian evolution, a philosophy in vogue at the time. He said,
“Hybrids between species lose none of their stability after 4 or 5 generations,"
and
“I have never observed gradual transitions between parental characters or a progressive approach toward one of them.”
These are not the quotations of an evolutionist. Additionally, Louis Pasteur did not believe in evolution. Neither did Father Joseph Lemaitre, the first man to propose the concept of the Big Bang based on extrapolating Einstein's Relativity. In contemplating the Big Bang, Father Lemaitre meditated upon the Genesis account of Creation. In his journal he wrote,
"It must have all begun with light.” (See Genesis 1:3)
A close examination of the supposedly two separate creation acounts depicted in Genesis is actually quite easily harmonized. The first account actually describes the creation of the earth and the universe. The second describes the creation of the garden of eve, the sanctuary of temple of creation, of which Adam was to be the high priest, tending the garden in a manner similar to the way God commanded the Levitical priests to tend the Tabernacle.
More than that, in modern times, science has been exalted to the level of deity. Science must explain all things. Many think that it explains the Resurrection event in the gospel to explain it away as something not supernatural. Let us question the dogmatic positions of science.
I, for one, am a Creationist, and I take incredible offense when the self-annointed say that I must be put beneath their boot to win some election. Just to present my credentials, I am an electrical engineer whose undergraduate work emphasized mathematics and physics. I am now pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Wisconisn.
But I can't spell "Wisconsin." See above :)
I realized after I posted that this would be misunderstood. My meaning was that this is the assumption made by people who understand evolution. It's not my view.
The point of my post was that because of the arguments put forward by Creationists, many people who might come to follow God do not. It's a silly argument about a trivial issue that shouldn't be allowed to stand in the way of people coming to know God.
When I grew up only 50 years ago, the arguments over Evolution had been fought and settled decades before. Christian College professors I knew actually taught in Church retreats that there were no discrepancies between Genesis and Science. At the same time, Christians were not looked down on. I tie the recent ascendence of Creationism dogma (I never heard of it till I was 30) to the decline in the status of Christians, and the decline in respect for them.
It's also telling that you have to go into history to quote people like Mendel and Pasteur etc to defend Creationism. They lived long before the unraveling of the DNA molecule and many other scientific developments, and I seriously doubt they'd have the same opinion today.
Similarly, quoting someone who's field was the Big Bang (which personally I have doubts about) is evidence that you're way off the subject. Evolution and the Big Bang need each other as much as the proverbial Fish needs a Bicycle.
And you are correct. The two creation stories can be easily harmonized. Just exactly like Evolution can be harmonized with Genesis as well. If you sequence the scientific version of the beginning of the Earth, it matches quite nicely with the sequencing in Genesis. I believe that in this case, science actually helps prove the story in Genesis. Rather than that Genesis DISproves science.
If you're in graduate school, then perhaps you're still quite young. I'd urge you to rethink Evolution. Re-read the creation stories (and there are many DIFFERENT stories) in Genesis, and then ask yourself "can that be all there is to know about the creation"?
Explain to yourself exactly HOW God created the universe. The Bible has just a few pages on what happend and Who did it. It does not tell how.
Genesis does not explain Atoms and Molecules, but I'm sure you'd agree that electrons are what you're working with in Grad School. Genesis left those details out. What other details did it leave out? Evolution perhaps?
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