May Each of Us Be the One

“And it came to pass as he was going to Jerusalem, that he was passing between Samaria and Galilee. And as he was entering a certain village, there met him ten lepers who stood afar off and lifted up their voice, crying, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us.’ And when he saw them he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And it came to pass as they were on their way, that they were made clean. But one of them, seeing that he was made clean, returned, with a loud voice glorifying God, and he fell on his face at [Jesus’] feet, giving thanks; and he was a Samaritan.

But Jesus answered and said, ‘Were not the ten made clean? But where are the nine? Has no one been found to return and give glory to God except this foreigner?’ And he said to him, ‘Arise, go thy way, for thy faith has saved thee.’”

The Gospel of Luke, 17: 11 – 16

As we approach this national day of Thanksgiving, we are in turmoil within our borders and across the world. One cannot dispute that many within our human race – victims of war, persecution, hate, natural disaster, accident, famine, poverty, homelessness, disease, loneliness – might see little to feel thankful for. At the same time, I would respectfully submit that most of those who read these pages have much for which to give thanks. It is, regrettably, human nature to focus on the difficult, to take the good for granted — to be among the nine. Something happened recently that underscored for me that one should never lose sight of how precious and yet fleeting the gift of life can be, that one should never take his/her blessings for granted. On our national day of Thanksgiving, may each of us … be the one. May we pause to be thankful for all of our gifts, and hug all of the loved ones whose company we are blessed to share this Holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving.

An Admittedly Conflicted View on Civilian Casualties in War

My father enlisted in the Marines right after Pearl Harbor, was a participant in the Battles of Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, was promoted for his service to his country and decorated for bravery. The Marines were then and are now rightly celebrated in American lore for their courage and esprit de corps. He, along with millions of others, left the American military for good in 1946. Anybody who knows a Marine won’t be a bit surprised to hear that although I never served in the military, part of my rearing included an imprinting that all branches of the military are to be respected, but at bottom, there are the Marines … and then there’s everybody else.

Even so, but for a couple of humorous stories – mostly about brawls in bars between Marines and sailors while on leave – he never talked about the war. Never. Except once.

I recall him standing in front of our black-and-white TV, watching the network coverage of what is now known as the My Lai Massacre, a March, 1968, incident in which American soldiers commanded by Platoon Leader Lt. William Calley, who had been ordered to undertake a search and destroy mission, killed hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese men, women, and children in the village of My Lai.

As my father stood watching the coverage of the prosecution of Lt. Calley, he was shaking his head in disbelief – I realized not at what had been done to the villagers, but at the Lieutenant’s prosecution. He said in an even tone – not soft, not loud; I think more to himself than to me – “When you’re ordered to clear an area out, you clear the area out.”

Infer from that – and consider whatever you infer from that – as you will. Having never been near a battlefield, I don’t consider my own reflections worth much. During the Second World War, the Marines were engaged in a death struggle against an unyielding enemy to defend freedom. War is messy; there is little time for deliberation; events spin. Were all actions undertaken in that just cause warranted – or at least defensible — or not?

Almost always when I publish a note in these pages, I have concluded – wisely or misguidedly – where I stand on an issue. When it comes to the justification for inflicting civilian casualties as part of a war effort, I am uncertain.

Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians on October 7 was horrific. (As shocking to me have been the breadth of overt anti-Semitic and Islamophobic sentiments and violent incidents it unleashed around the western world; the attack ripped off a thin veneer of tolerance, exposing a depth of widespread religious bigotry in the democracies that I — clearly living in my own oblivious Ivory Tower — had not recognized.) Hamas must be condemned in the most unequivocal terms; it is a Palestinian terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel, has done little to help civilian Palestinians during its almost two-decade control of the Gaza Strip, and employs Palestinian civilians and humanitarian facilities as shields in its assaults on Israel. Israel has a right to defend its existence and its citizens – which now appears to mean destroying Hamas — and given Hamas’ modus operandi, such Israeli efforts are necessarily going to result in civilian Palestinian casualties. At the same time, Israel has significantly expanded its control over the last 70 years into land intended by the international community to be inhabited and controlled by Palestinians when Israel was founded. Although much of this expansion occurred not because Israel attacked, but because it was attacked, it has maintained its de facto grip over Palestinian lands because … it can, and such has suited Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu’s political purposes. Before the current conflict, human rights groups had been referring to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as apartheid. It is not anti-Semitism to suggest — using the Biden Administration, a clear friend of Israel, as the arbiter — that in its assaults, Israel has not been particularly discriminating about protecting Palestinian civilians.

Our acquiescence to civilian casualties may be determined by our view of the virtue of the cause in which they are inflicted and their necessity to achieve victory. Such does not expunge the fact that cruel and unfair consequences can be inflicted upon noncombatants even in the pursuit of a just cause. Christianity, and likely many other faiths, holds that protection of the innocent is paramount. The reality of the flawed human condition makes clear that always prioritizing compassion would lead to subjugation of more peoples by the malignant – ultimately resulting in the maltreatment of a wider set of victims.

Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s 1864 “scorched earth” march to the sea was a major part of subduing the South and thus preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. At the same time:

“Sherman had terrorized the countryside; his men had destroyed all sources of food and forage and had left behind a hungry and demoralized people. … Sherman … burned or captured all the food stores that Georgians had saved for the winter months. As a result of the hardships on women and children, desertions increased in Robert E. Lee’s army in Virginia. Sherman believed his campaign against civilians would shorten the war by breaking the Confederate will to fight ….”

Anne Bailey, “Sherman’s March to the Sea,” New Georgia Encyclopedia

Despite Gen. Sherman’s fearsome deeds and reputation, he understood the malign nature of war, but clearly felt that some causes were worth the devastation needed to bring them about.

“War is cruelty, there is no use trying to reform it … You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it …”

Gen. Sherman, in a letter to James M. Calhoun, Mayor, E.E. Rawson, S.C. Wells, representing City Council of Atlanta, September 12, 1864.

If there has been a more monstrous atrocity in human history than the Nazis’ systematic slaughter of the Jews, I’m not aware of it. Allied forces were obviously justified in contesting the Nazis and their allies with all of their strength and means. At the same time, a young friend recently reminded me of the American and British bombing of the German city of Dresden in February, 1945, that killed tens of thousands of civilians in a manufacturing city whose resources the Allies believed – in retrospect, apparently erroneously — that the Third Reich could effectively employ to mount a counteroffensive against our D-Day invasion. Were the Allies’ efforts excusable? I would say yes. Were the civilian casualties wrought commendable? Obviously not.

The U.S. military estimated in the late 1940s that over 100,000 people died in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear explosions. Others place the total of dead closer to 200,000. A significant number of these were necessarily civilian. At the same time, President Truman indicated in a letter in January, 1953, that Gen. George Marshall told him prior to dropping the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima “that such an invasion would cost at a minimum one quarter of a million casualties and might cost as much as a million, on the American side alone.” Faced with that kind of an estimate, if advising the President I would have supported using the Bomb. Others would vehemently disagree, then and now.

We condemn the slaughter of Ukrainians civilians in Russia’s war of aggression. At the same time, would we denounce Ukrainian operations against Russian civilians if such losses seemed likely to turn Russian public opinion against Putin’s war? I’ll leave that one to you.

Increasing civilian casualties are a fact of modern war and technological weaponry. They are not going to stop. It is for one to ponder whether — and if so, when, and to what extent — these human tragedies are worth what is gained. Americans should be more aware than they appear to be that they have the luxury – at least at present — of considering such philosophical issues from their armchairs. Much of the world is not so fortunate. It is those fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, and sisters and brothers whose lives are collateral sacrifice to the designs of others.

“Abraham drew near and said, ‘Will you destroy the good with the wicked? If there be fifty just men in the city, will you then destroy the place and not spare it for the sake of the fifty just men within it?’ … And the Lord said, ‘If I find that there are fifty just men in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.’”

The Book of Genesis, 18: 24, 26. It is little noted when this passage and the subsequent exchanges between Abraham and the Almighty are read in Christian churches that although the Lord God did allow the just Lot, his wife and daughters to escape, He ultimately did destroy the city and its inhabitants.

There is obviously no ray of enlightenment in this note.

“All cats are grey in the dark.”

Musing by the fictional James Bond; Ian Fleming, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

MAGA Branding … and a Viewer Alert

It was only after a recent note published in these pages regarding U.S. LA Rep. Mike Johnson’s election as Speaker of the House of Representatives that the significance of one aspect of former President Donald Trump’s triumphant social media declaration about Mr. Johnson’s selection occurred to me: in referring to Mr. Johnson as, “MAGA MIKE JOHNSON [my italics],” Mr. Trump made no reference to Mr. Johnson being a Republican. I would venture that this omission was understandable and perhaps intentional. Mr. Trump has an acute understanding of branding, and MAGA has become the brand for Mr. Trump’s political organization. MAGAs are now so far from the principles of the Republican Party of Presidents Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon (recall that Mr. Nixon arguably had grounds to contest the 1960 presidential election outcome, and chose not to do so in order to maintain national stability), Ford, Reagan and Bushes that it is no longer accurate to refer to Mr. Trump’s supporters as “Republicans.” Members of the Trump Sect shall hereafter be referred to in these pages strictly as “MAGAs.” What this political transition augurs for those that are, indeed, still Republicans is likely to be the stuff of a future post.

On a personal note: I have posted less over the last six months than in previous years; one major factor has been a desire to be respectful of your time. It is obvious to anyone reading the majority of these notes in recent months that I have become fixed – perhaps fixated 😉 — on the rising authoritarian shift in our country brought about by the MAGA movement. It is the most perilous threat to the existence of democracy on our planet since the rise of Adolf Hitler. Even so, how many times can one impose on those who have done a blog the honor of following it by repeating in different ways the same message: that while Mr. Trump and elected MAGAs are the venomous tip of the spear, the truly dangerous poison in our national psyche is that so many of our citizens either embrace it or abide it?

Given my level of alarm at the current sentiment within our polity and given the cathartic benefit these pages provide me, I am very likely to continue with the same theme at regular intervals between now and Election Day in November, 2024. Your time is valuable; these notes many not warrant your attention.

Now my Irish Catholic conscience can rest 🙂 .

Those Were the Days

This past weekend, we were poking through one of the countless antique establishments in central Wisconsin and I came across an edition of the Milwaukee Sentinel dated July 4, 1976.

I can place myself exactly on that day – not only because of the Bicentennial, but because it was a little more than a month before we were married. I was on the east coast visiting family that Holiday weekend, but am confident that the Sentinel edition I found lying on the antique store shelf is identical to the copy delivered to my in-laws’ stoop on the morning of July 4, 1976.

I was first struck by the size and weight of the paper – a paper, mind you, that was only one of two major daily papers then published in Milwaukee (the other being the Milwaukee Journal; the papers thereafter merged into the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) — at a time when America had a limited number of national nightly news telecasts (CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS – no Fox) and regional network affiliates broadcasting local news.

Amid the Sentinel’s extensive reporting about Bicentennial celebrations and a section on the Founding Fathers’ declaration of our independence, I saw little reference to politics. By that holiday, former GA Gov. Jimmy Carter had clinched but not yet formally won the Democratic Party’s 1976 presidential nomination, while President Gerald Ford was locked in a tight contest in which he ultimately defeated former CA Gov. Ronald Reagan for the Republicans’ presidential nomination.

I well recall that there were sharp policy differences among the candidates, but there was no indication that any of them had any reason to worry that our republic would come to an end if one of their political opponents prevailed.

Later that year, Mr. Carter narrowly defeated Mr. Ford. When Mr. Ford lost, he left. Four years later, Mr. Reagan defeated Mr. Carter. When Mr. Carter lost, he left.

Although many parts of American life are better today, obviously many need attention. We cannot go back; we can only hope to make tomorrow better. Even so, as I looked over the old edition of the Sentinel, the theme song of perhaps the most renowned television comedy series of all time – which on that long-ago July day had just concluded its fifth consecutive season ranked at No. 1 in the Nielson ratings — actually came into my head:

Those Were the Days.

Marking a Milestone

Today is my mother-in-law’s 100^th birthday. Last weekend, her children and their spouses, her grandchildren and their spouses and significant others, and her great grandchildren gathered together from across the country and the world to toast her, joined by many of her extended family and friends. She remains mentally sharp and as physically able as many much her junior.

Only within the last few months – past age 99 ½ 🙂 – did she move from the independent living section of the retirement facility in which she has resided for years to its assisted living section. She indicated at the time: “I’m ready for a change. I’ve been bored.” She perseveres. She always looks forward. I would suggest that her attitude is even more important than her reasonably favorable physical genes as to why she continues on.

TLOML and I started going out as Marquette University freshmen. She was then living at home at her family’s residence in a community adjoining Milwaukee. After we had been dating a few months, when her mother heard that my birthday was coming up, her daughter told me that she declared: “That boy has been spending all of his money on you. We’re having him here for dinner for his birthday.’’ And she did – hosting my 19^th birthday party — an affair with china and crystal that I still remember clearly over a half century later.

If through providence one has the rare fortune to enter a family at such a young age and so happily, in time – in my case, well before we were actually married – one viscerally gains a second set of parents. Such a blessing has been mine.

May this extraordinary lady have many, many, many more happy returns.

On Robert F. Kennedy

As all who care are aware, the first week in June marked the 55^th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. NY Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Obviously, Mr. Kennedy is best known as the right hand of his brother, President John F. Kennedy; he managed his brother’s successful 1960 campaign for the presidency and thereafter served as U.S. Attorney General in the Kennedy Administration. His memory is closer to mind at present due to the recent declaration of his son, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

I was about two months into my first after-school job when Mr. Kennedy was assassinated, and a political junkie even then; thus, I actually have a somewhat clear personal memory of him – much clearer than I have of his brother, who had died five years before. I would submit that he is one of the most arresting Americans of the second half of the last century, evolving: from working for the Committee of the Communist scaremonger, U.S. WI Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s; through his years as campaign ramrod for his brother; through his years in the Executive branch, during which he was the president’s closest advisor; to his years after his brother’s assassination, when he reconsidered the American Vietnam policy he had helped fashion and became the most politically potent opponent of the war. It was because he was a Kennedy, and viewed as a tough guy, that his opposition to the war had particular credibility; no one considered him “soft.” President Lyndon Johnson only announced that he would not seek another term after Mr. Kennedy declared for the Democratic Party’s 1968 presidential nomination (the two men despised each other).

During his years as Attorney General and thereafter, Mr. Kennedy had become increasingly aware of and then outraged by the mistreatment of blacks he saw in America, and became African Americans’ most politically powerful advocate. (Dr. Martin Luther King was obviously their most notable advocate, but Mr. Kennedy had greater influence with America as a whole.) No white politician since 1900, with the possible exception of President Franklin Roosevelt, has been as intensely loved in African American community as Mr. Kennedy.

By all accounts, Mr. Kennedy wore his emotions on his sleeve – in contrast to his brother, who (similar to comments I’ve read about President Barack Obama) projected warmth on camera but reportedly was coolly analytical in private.

All that said: I would submit that any commentators you now hear intoning that we would have had a different world had Mr. Kennedy lived may well be missing the mark. Despite winning a string of 1968 Democratic party primaries after he declared his candidacy, it was a different era; he would have needed significant support of Democratic Party bosses across the country to win the nomination. The Kennedys, who derived their power from their charisma and their money, were never the favorites of the Democratic machines, who were much more comfortable with organization-dependent candidates such as Vice President Hubert Humphrey. At the same time, by entering the Democratic presidential primary contest after U.S. MN Sen. Eugene McCarthy had just scored heavily on an anti-war platform against Mr. Johnson in the New Hampshire primary – when liberals had turned to Mr. McCarthy only after Mr. Kennedy had rebuffed their earlier pleas to run against Mr. Johnson — he outraged Mr. McCarthy’s supporters [then considered the (Adlai) Stevenson wing of the party; they are today’s progressives]. In The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy, David Halberstam wrote: “In the spring of this crucial year [1968, Mr. Kennedy] had managed, because of his delayed entrance, to be at once too ruthless and too gutless for the liberals and the students, too radical for the middle class, too much the party man for some of the intellectuals, and too little the party man for most of the machines.”

Under the candidate selection process in place at the time, after Mr. Johnson’s withdrawal it was Mr. Humphrey who had the inside track to the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, not Mr. Kennedy.

Even if Mr. Kennedy had won the Democratic nomination, I would suggest that it was by no means assured that he would have defeated then-former Vice President Richard Nixon in the fall. While the nation’s grief about and warm feelings for his brother would have helped him, his opposition to the war would have cost him support among the then-core Democratic working class voters who have since morphed into Trump supporters, and he would have lost support among the liberal elites angered at what they perceived as his usurpation of Mr. McCarthy’s rightful place (a close parallel is the dynamic between the camps of U.S. NY Sen. Hillary Clinton and U.S. VT Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016). In their respective times, Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Clinton shared an unfortunate and crucial attribute: a high Antipathy Quotient. Most politicians need to get known. In their cases, everyone in America already knew them; their problem was that a notable segment of Americans actively didn’t like them. That said, perhaps — perhaps – the Kennedy nostalgia and charisma would have been enough to hold enough of the white working class and the African Americans and the Democratic Party machines and the liberal intellectuals (the latter two both detested Mr. Nixon) to win the White House; but it would have been close.

Of one thing I am as sure as I can be about the inclinations of someone I never met: Mr. Kennedy would be distressed beyond all bounds by his son’s declaration for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. It is patently obvious that any criticisms that Mr. Kennedy, Jr. makes of President Joe Biden in the coming months have the potential to ultimately redound to the benefit of the candidate of a Republican party that is now dominated by MAGA concepts of division and exclusion – diametrically contrasted with the positions his father was espousing the day he was shot.

If you have an opportunity, pick up The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy, Mr. Halberstam’s account of his time traveling with Mr. Kennedy’s last campaign. It is a short, easy read, published in early 1969. Mr. Halberstam is as smooth a writer of public affairs as I have ever read. A New York Times reporter who covered the Vietnam War – and whose reporting of the war incurred the wrath of the Kennedy Administration, including that of Robert Kennedy – he later authored The Best and the Brightest, a study of the tragic progression of America’s Vietnam policy. (Mr. Halberstam noted years later that he found it ironic that “the best and the brightest” had found its way into the public lexicon as a high compliment, when he had intended the title as a wry reflection on the fact that the intelligent elites had led America so far astray.) Mr. Halberstam also indicated before his own untimely demise in a car accident that despite some seemingly very positive descriptions of John Kennedy in The Best and the Brightest, he had never had any particular sympathy for the president; but at the same time he conceded that he had developed a deep affinity for Robert Kennedy by the time of Mr. Kennedy’s death.

On Mr. Trump’s Indictment for Mishandling of Classified Documents: A Postscript

Amid summer chores, I’ve been reflecting further upon some of the comments in this original post.

Let’s start with a name game: John Sirica.

Doesn’t mean anything to you? In that case, I suspect that you’re a mere youngster 😉 . I would venture that that name will ring at least a vague bell for all Americans born in 1960 or before, and is well known to virtually all American lawyers of any age.

Judge John J. Sirica presided over the Watergate trials in the early 1970s in Washington, D.C. His administration of the trials was widely lauded then and since.

Judge Sirica died in 1992. The first sentence of his Washington Post obituary referred to the fact that he had presided over the Watergate trials.

I declared in this original post: “Judge Aileen M. Cannon, whom [former President Donald] Trump appointed to the bench in 2020, has been assigned to hear his case. … [I]t seems that by her earlier rulings [in the same documents case] Judge Cannon has proven herself to be incompetent, a partisan hack, or both. The judge’s ability to influence the trial’s course and perhaps outcome is obvious: it takes no prescience to predict the coming wrangling between Mr. Trump’s attorneys and federal prosecutors over jury selection, admissibility of evidence, and scheduling (with delay obviously favoring Mr. Trump).”

We’ll get back to the ramifications of a prolonged trial schedule below. As to Judge Cannon, I haven’t been able to find any rating by south Florida lawyers as to how ably she has performed in normal cases in her short judicial tenure – since she’s only been on the bench a couple of years, she obviously doesn’t have a lot of judicial experience – and she may indeed lack the competence to preside over such a high-profile matter. That’s to be determined, and if she doesn’t feel she’s professionally up to it, she should recuse herself. But as to predictions – including mine – of her pro-Trump leanings, I’m taking a pause. It’s seemingly possible that Judge Cannon is more horrified than anyone else by her random selection to hear this case. She’s in her early 40s – literally at the age of our children and of a number of those that read these pages. She has a husband and two school-aged kids. Federal trial judges don’t float upon hallowed pedestals. She undoubtedly goes to the grocery store. Her kids probably play soccer or engage in other like activities. She has the bulk of her career in front of her. She’s already been reversed in a rather humiliating fashion by United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, a conservative Circuit, for her earlier Trump-friendly rulings in this case. She can’t escape into the curtained hush the way U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas does. She may now believe that what looked like a sweet legal gig in 2020 has turned into a nightmare of being engulfed by the Trump Maelstrom. If advising her, I’d counsel as I would one of our own kids: You are where you are. Be careful. How you handle this case will literally be the first line of your obituary. Do the best you can. For your own good, play it straight.

Judge Cannon need look no further than the other defendant in the case – Walt Nauta, Mr. Trump’s “body man” and alleged co-conspirator — to realize that abiding by Mr. Trump’s wishes does not necessarily auger a comfortable life. Do I think that if Mr. Trump is found guilty by a jury, Judge Cannon will, as some wildly progressive pundits have suggested, disregard the jury verdict and issue a judgement of acquittal to Mr. Trump? No. Do I think that Judge Cannon will refuse to admit a lot of the government’s evidence now in the public domain? Even if she is so inclined, with the Eleventh Circuit looking over her shoulder, I don’t. (Although the evidence from Mr. Trump’s lawyers, obtained by the government through a piercing the veil of attorney-client privilege, is perhaps on the fence.) Is there a likelihood that she will provide Mr. Trump more leeway in jury selection and scheduling than the government prefers? Very possibly — these are areas in which appellate courts generally accord greater deference to trial judges — but the government’s case appears sufficiently strong to withstand these likely hindrances. If Judge Cannon is savvy – or unless her career aspiration is now to become a Fox News legal analyst — I expect her to play it straight enough.

All those middle-of-the road notions now expressed, I well recall that in February of 2019, considering the Senate’s confirmation process for then-Attorney General Nominee William Barr, I declared in these pages: “Partisans on both sides are currently all too-ready to impute ulterior motives to those with whom they disagree. … I am willing to believe, unless and until I have evidence to the contrary, that Mr. Barr will do what is necessary to protect the United States while conducting his duty.” We all saw how those Pollyannaish sentiments fared 😉 .

As noted above, in the original post I also suggested that a delay in the trial helps Mr. Trump politically – a sentiment echoed by others. I would now add a bit of a qualifier, at least in my own thinking. A delay seemingly aids Mr. Trump’s campaign during the Republican presidential nomination process and it certainly helps him if he wins the election and the case hasn’t been resolved prior to Inauguration Day, 2025. (I suspect that reelection is now at least as important to the former president as a way to avoid having jail be the final culmination of a 2016 branding exercise that went WAY wrong – from his perspective and our democracy’s – than it is for the actual return to power it represents.) At the same time, I have come to believe that any still-pending charges against him for the mishandling of classified documents will weaken his support in the general election among swing and moderate Republican voters in swing states.

Enough. The weekend is upon us. May all Dads, and those of any gender who provide fatherly love and guidance to others, have a wonderful Father’s Day.

Honorifics and Beyond

One of the perks of having a blog is the occasional opportunity to vent on matters of personal pique. You have your own pet peeves; you don’t need mine; feel free to pass this post by.

On May 16, Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker advised the Journal’s readers:

“The Wall Street Journal is eliminating the routine use of honorifics, or courtesy titles, in its news pages ….

[T]he Journal has been one of the few news organizations to continue to use the titles, under our long-held belief that Mr., Ms. and so forth help us to maintain a polite tone. However, the trend among almost all news organizations and magazines has been to go without, as editors have concluded that the titles in news articles are becoming a vestige of a more-formal past, and that the flood of Mr., Ms., Mx. or Mrs. in sentences can slow down readers’ enjoyment of our writing.

For years, we weighed the tradition of using those titles against the need to be attuned to a more modern audience. In the end, we decided that dropping those titles is more in line with the way people communicate. It puts everyone on a more-equal footing and will help make our writing livelier and more approachable.”

As Ms. Tucker indicated, the Journal ceased using honorifics in its news pages on May 18. Since that time, when one of its news articles alludes to the President of the United States, the initial reference identifies him as “President Joe Biden,” but thereafter, Mr. Biden is merely called, “Biden.”

What Ms. Tucker and her team apparently view as an impediment to reader enjoyment, I consider an enhancement. What they view as facilitating reader acceptance, I consider a disappointing acquiescence. What they view as “more-equal,” “livelier,” and “approachable,” I consider a resort to a lower common denominator. While they consider honorifics to have maintained a “polite tone,” I consider them to maintain a respectful tone – not the same. While acknowledging that big time journalism must be financially viable if it is to survive, I would suggest that given the demographics of its readership, the Journal is merely bowing to a cruder culture.

While Ms. Tucker was careful to note that the Journal’s discontinuance of honorifics was limited to its news pages (the paper continues to use honorifics in its opinion pages, presumably seeking to maintain an elevated tone where the expression is more likely to incite passions), I would nonetheless maintain that decisions such as that which the Journal has made diminish the level of our discourse.

The manner in which we express ourselves is important. Decorum counts. The way one communicates has the power to elevate or diminish the substance of one’s message. Language matters. T.S. Eliot defined the man of letters as “the writer for whom his writing is primarily an art, who is as much concerned with style as with content; the understanding of whose writings, therefore, depends as much upon appreciation of style as upon comprehension of content.” In the public arena, one thrills to the linguistic artistry of an Abraham Lincoln or a Winston Churchill. I deplore our increasing use of shortcuts and slang. While I obviously use emojis in these pages as a mechanism to ensure that all reading understand that I realize that what I spout is Noise – and those that know me are well aware that my casual conversation contains expression that would in olden days have had one’s mother reaching for a bar of soap — I most ardently believe that serious issues should be addressed in terms appropriate to their import.

I agree with Ms. Tucker that use of honorifics hearkens back to “a more-formal past.” I would submit that we are the less for the abandonment of these and other such “vestiges.” Obviously, language evolves; but there is a difference between purpose and sloppiness. I am sympathetic to usages that have particular significance – for example, the use of the pronoun, “they,” to describe a transgender person; but I take issue with the use of the plural, “they,” as shorthand to allude to a single person that could be a man or woman (rather than referring to the person as, “s/he” or “him/her”).

Although I am acutely aware – and sympathize with those readers who have ruefully recognized – that many of the notes in these pages would be significantly shorter if I did away with honorifics and other seeming anachronisms, I hopefully will never resort to that; I believe that the tone one uses when addressing vital issues demands better. I believe that the only intentional omission of an honorific that occurs in these pages is for Adolf Hitler. (I have in at least one instance referred to the Nazi leader as “Herr” Hitler; I’d seen in Mr. Churchill’s speeches that he had done so on a few occasions, and decided that if he had not felt the honorific entirely inappropriate, I could employ it at least in the context of a particular post.) I am close to omitting any honorific for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Despite my deepest antipathy for former President Donald Trump’s illiberal inclinations and actions, his honorific is safe on this site given his standing as a former president and fellow American – unless he is someday convicted of seditious conspiracy.

As I said: a venting of personal pique. Am I a stodgy relic? Of course. But you already knew that. 😉

On Memorial Day

This weekend, our city of Madison, WI, hosts its annual Brat Fest, which its organizers tout as the World’s Largest Brat Fest, includes live music, and features such activities as Take Your Brat to Work Day.

When I first started coming to Wisconsin over 50 years ago – having been raised in the Chicago area by transplanted New Yorkers — I was puzzled by signs across the Dairy State that seemed to indicate that Wisconsinites, apparently unbeknownst to the rest of the country, were engaging – indeed, reveling – in the sale and consumption of unruly children; and that the rowdy tots tasted even better when coated in mustard and sauerkraut, washed down with a stein of beer.

I have since become acclimated – although I’m still not partial to sauerkraut. That’s going to take at least another 50 years 🙂 .

TLOML and I will be blessed to able to spend this Memorial Day Weekend in the company of family. We hope that you will be able to enjoy the Holiday, which at least in the frosty north of the country marks the unofficial start of summer, in the manner you prefer. At the same time, may we each give a moment to remember the sacrifices of the men and women we have marked this day to honor – those who throughout our history have given, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, “the last full measure of devotion,” but also those who came home but have ever after borne the physical and emotional scars of battle.

On the Role of Journalism: a Postscript

In a note this past February, I stated, “I entirely reject the notion that the standard of [journalistic] objectivity for collection and dissemination of facts should in any way vary according to a reporter’s gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, or other attribute. … [W]hat is vital is that journalists, as [New York Times Columnist Bret] Stephens puts it, ‘provid[e] the public with the raw materials it needs to shape intelligent opinion and effective policy.’ That’s all, and that’s enough. After journalists have fulfilled their responsibility – a sacred one in a democracy – it is thereafter up to our people, for good or ill, to form their own conclusions.”

On May 15th, New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger published an essay in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), entitled, “Journalism’s Essential Value,” in which he addresses the philosophical debate regarding the concept of objectivity currently occurring in some quarters of professional journalism. Mr. Sulzberger – whose forebears established the Times as we know it and have maintained its standing for over a century – states in part:

“Independence is the increasingly contested journalistic commitment to following facts wherever they lead. It places the truth—and the search for it with an open yet skeptical mind—above all else. … [I]n this hyperpolarized era, independent journalism and the sometimes counterintuitive values that animate it have become a radical pursuit.

Independence asks reporters to adopt a posture of searching, rather than knowing. It demands that we reflect the world as it is, not the world as we may wish it to be. It requires journalists to be willing to exonerate someone deemed a villain or interrogate someone regarded as a hero. It insists on sharing what we learn—fully and fairly—regardless of whom it may upset or what the political consequences might be. Independence calls for plainly stating the facts, even if they appear to favor one side of a dispute. And it calls for carefully conveying ambiguity and debate in the more frequent cases where the facts are unclear or their interpretation is under reasonable dispute, letting readers grasp and process the uncertainty for themselves.

This approach, tacking as it does against the with-us-or-against-us certainty of this polarized moment, requires a steadfast, sometimes uncomfortable commitment to journalistic process over personal conviction. Independent journalism elevates values grounded in humility—fairness, impartiality, and (to use perhaps the most fraught and argued-over word in journalism) objectivity—as ideals to be pursued, even if they can never be perfectly achieved. And crucially, independent journalism roots itself to an underlying confidence in the public; it trusts that people deserve to know the full truth and ultimately can be relied upon to use it wisely.”

Although his piece is not short (even compared to my more than occasional long-windedness 😉 ), I would submit that it is well worth your time. I tried to add a link here, but either due to CJR’s web protections or my technological ineptitude — almost certainly the latter — I couldn’t get the link to embed. Since I could access the essay although I do not subscribe to the CJR, I am hopeful that by entering the search, “Sulzberger” and “Columbia Journalism Review,” you will be able to reach it as well.