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Election, 2010

By Bill James
November 3, 2010

             See, this is what drives people crazy about political reporting.   Roger Simon is arguing—I think—against excessive anger, paranoia and hyper-partisanship in politics; I believe that is what he is saying.   But his lead sentence is:

 

In this election: A woman gets flung to the ground and stomped on the head.

 

Except that a) she very clear is NOT "flung" to the ground, b) she very clearly is not "stomped", and c) it is very clearly not on the head.   I challenge you to go get the video, right now, and look at it.    The woman is trying to push forward, trying to get near Rand Paul so that she can embarrass him somehow, and is confronted by Rand Paul volunteers.  She is grabbed by Paul’s defenders, one of whom loses his balance and drags her to the ground.   If you said she was "wrestled" to the ground it would still be inaccurate, because this would still imply that someone intended for her to be put to the ground, which does not seem to be the case.   But that’s a judgment call, and if you said she was wrestled to the ground, I wouldn’t argue with you.   But saying she is "flung" to the ground is clearly and absolutely not what happened.

            "Stomped"?   Stomped, really?   Judgment call, I guess.   "Stomped", I think, usually means that the foot is brought down with maximum force so as to deliver a blow, usually repeatedly.   Stand up, lift your left leg, slam it to the ground.   That’s a stomp.   Lift your left leg, lower it so that it is in contact with something, and then push down; push down hard.  Is that really a stomp?   Go watch the video.

            And, point three, it’s very obviously her shoulder that is being pushed down, not her head.

            Now, here comes the part where some jackass will say that I am "defending" the stomper.   I’m not ‘defending" him in any way, shape or form.   When a woman is wrestled to the ground in a crowd, you help her up--whether you like her politics or not.

I’m defending integrity in journalism.  People think that sportswriters are second-class journalists who write emotionally and exaggerate things so that they seem important.  Suppose that a sportswriter said that the ball was drilled to the second baseman, and fired to the shortstop covering second for a double play, only the video clearly showed that the ball was grounded to second and flipped backhand to the shortstop, and there was no out on the play.    The sportswriter would get fired, right?   Maybe he wouldn’t, but. . .he ought to be.

But sports, because they are not really important, are objectively reported.   Politics, because the people who write about politics are so convinced of the urgency of what they are saying, are reported on constantly in passionate terms that bluntly ignore the objective facts well documented by easily available video. 

Simon is pretending to argue for lowering the temperature of the debate, but he is doing so by childish exaggerations of an emotional incident—and the only people who will be criticized for that will be those of us who try to point out that what he is saying is not actually what happened.

Here’s how we can fix politics in America, in one sentence.

Anybody and everybody who says that that woman was stomped on the head should have been fired.

 
 

COMMENTS (31 Comments, most recent shown first)

MarisFan61
I was *grateful* for the mis-title because it gave us (me) an excuse to talk about Nate Silver, Bill, and the Nobel Prize. :haha:
3:32 PM Nov 12th
 
flyingfish
Well, I agree with the subtance of your column, but it's not about the election, despite its heading. It's about careless or otherwise inaccurate reporting. So, did you use the "election" heading just to get our attention?
10:13 AM Nov 11th
 
Bucky
I don't agree on the objectivity--at least not in local sports. The reporters actively root for the local teams. I suspect they would be fired if they didn't and certainly if a Minnesota reporter were to express happiness over a Vikings loss.
I think all reporting should be more objective.
5:03 AM Nov 10th
 
evanecurb
I am a political moderate and independent voter. I have been dismayed at the state of politics and what passes for political reporting these days. On election day, I had two informative experiences: (1) I went to the polls and realized I didn't know who was running against our incumbent Congressman (Eric Cantor - yuck - no moderate, he). I also realized I had no idea that there were three state constitutional amendments on the ballot. So, the problem with the process, at least in my case, was in the mirror. Walt Kelly had it right - "we have met the enemy, and he is us."

(2) Wanting to hear news about the elections, I turned to the POTUS XM radio station. The broadcaster was going around the country to various election "hot spots" and talking to - guess who - veteran political reporters in the locations where the elections were held. He spoke with reporters from the papers in Louisville, Charleston (WVa), Columbia (SC) Columbus (OH), and Sacramento. Each of the reporters seemed to be professional, objective, and informative.

I haven't seen any of them on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, or any other TV network. To Bill's point ( I think), it reinforced the importance of accurate reporting in the political sphere.
5:43 PM Nov 8th
 
Richie
A provably untrue truth only stays 'true' if people overwhelmingly prefer the untrue 'truth' to the real (much more boring) story.
8:19 PM Nov 7th
 
tiller88
Here is a similarly annoying (to me, at least) example from the world of sports writing. How many of you remember the play from 2004 where Derek Jeter caught the pop up and fell into the stands against the Red Sox? As I recall, everyone at the time reported (and they still do so today) that Jeter caught the ball by "diving into the stands". Just as Bill suggests with the 'foot stomp' video, go back and look at that play again. Some of you may be amazed to see that Jeter catches the ball in the field of play, runs several steps, and then falls into the stands. Nice play, certainly, but how can anyone describe that play accurately by saying he caught the ball 'by diving into the stands'? It's not possible. Yet, it's become part of the accepted conventional wisdom. Repeat an untruth often enough, and it becomes the truth.
7:18 PM Nov 7th
 
Kev
JD,

Yeah, you're right.




2:27 PM Nov 7th
 
jollydodger
The first time anyone assoctiated with news worried about ratings, the media became unethical opinion and no longer news. Hardly a recent event.
1:05 PM Nov 7th
 
Kev
Maris61,

...Maybe, like wrong angle at 2nd base? But Hirohito, after Hiroshima, in his first communication to his people, said: " The war is proceeding not necessarily to Japan's advantage". Actually I was pissed over the incident, not its reportage, which is drawing more buzz than the incident itself, and , as
Hirohito showed, "truth" can be rendered several ways: one the fact, and two, all the other euphemisms.

And how about Bill? Turning OUR sports site into political forum. You'd think he owned the thing!



And in defense--to level the subject--MoveOn is a good organization. More needed. This country is so polarized, and so many weapons exist electronically, that scoring a point in a discussion evokes the image of a predator, bloody after a kill. When do we debate solutions and common ground instead of seeking conquest?
2:59 PM Nov 6th
 
MarisFan61
......no it's not, because one can look at the tape and reach a different conclusion, as I did.
Unless you think I'm not 'one.' :-)
4:02 AM Nov 6th
 
Kev
Bill,

Well said. But your solution fails. It polarizes by suggesting truth is found only in hyperbole or half-truth. The next logical step after hyperbole is the outright lie, which repeated enough, becomes doctrine.

You shattered the hyperbole early by countering each claim with a truthful rebuttal. But dismissal of he bad guys only changes the discussion into a claim of persecution (the lie) by those who were wrong to start with. Their exposure is much more effective. Your one-to-one refutation accomplishes just that, and provides both truth and closure, leaving no room for further attempts at untruth. The challenge to look at the tape is the clincher.



12:45 AM Nov 6th
 
OldBackstop
It would be pretty rare to see a cop take anyone down softer than that. Anyway, Simon had his legs amputated earlier this year, so maybe we can cut him some slack on his perspective of a stomp.
4:41 PM Nov 5th
 
MarisFan61
Freddie, we don't know who you are :hahaha: but your protestations may be to little effect. :-)
11:21 PM Nov 4th
 
Richie
Hey!! I said "no Nobel", and I meant it! Now no more arguing about it, I have dynamite on me!
11:01 PM Nov 4th
 
hotstatrat
I second MarisFan61's Nobel Prize nomination for Bill James. As for this incident, I'm inbetween MarisFan61 and Bill James. Simon's description is decidedly an exaggeration and I agree it is too bad journalists aren't more accurate. However, it sure looks clear to me one guy does wrestle her to the ground (she was passive about it) - with a hand on her head so that it gets pushed into the hard ground (probably concrete or asphalt as it was right next to a car). It looks like he pushed her fairly hard, but that observation is inconclusive. At least her head landing was softened by landing on another guy's foot. That roughness was plausibly reasonable. It is a stretch to call it a "fling". However, with the woman being held on the ground sideways, that other guy put his foot on her top shoulder and using the power of his leg muscles rammed her shoulder to ground - her jaw (which is part of her "head" may have been in the way - an action I would say is not unfairly describable as a "stomp". I wouldn't be surprised if he did some serious damage.
10:29 PM Nov 4th
 
OldBackstop
Well....on the one hand, I think the MoveOn.org woman is lucky she didn't take a security bullet, since her disguise and actions could be reasonably taken as those of an assassin. On the other hand what the guy did was a tad uncool. Not a varsity stomp, but it wasn't meant to simply hold her for the cops, and the look on his face revealed it. He could have effectively smooshed her face much more effectively with a bit of subtlety and looked like Rosie Greer in the LA kitchen.

The larger point here is, Move-On.org are a bunch of angry fringies who pull these stunts hoping for exactly this sort of emotive publicity. Their goal is to drowned out the process with unrest and turmoil. For a journalist to paint that sad scuffle as something indicative as a larger indictment on the Paul campaign or American democracy is so inane as to be beneath retort. I'll spot him the "stomp" and still say it was irrelevant.

And, PS, Roger Simon wasn't around in the 60s if he is handwringing at the violence in November's elections, in which a mere 42 people were killed. Oops, I mean zero.
7:10 PM Nov 4th
 
Richie
Well, unerroneous speech/reporting is exactly what a journalist's job is supposedly composed of. So firing an egregiously erroneous journalist is like firing a doctor who takes off the left leg even though the right one clearly had the 'X' on it. Or like firing a baseball manager who takes last year's division champs to a 61-101 record the following season.

Really, if egregious erroneousity ISN'T a professional firing offense for a journalist, what would you see as being so? Or should we tenure them?

Of course, so few of them are actually being paid for journalism. Rather to agitate/entertain, and so sell more Propecia.
6:51 PM Nov 4th
 
rgregory1956
Bill, over this past weekend, I re-read you Managers Book. I had forgotten all about the Marge Schott Incident. Your wise words, at the end of the piece, were "(T)here is much more to be said for forgiveness and tolerance than for self-righteousness and hypocrisy. The principle that citizens may be punished for 'erroneous speech' is a short road to hell. The idea that we should punish people for expressing erroneous ideas is a million times more dangerous..." Simon is expressing "erroneous speech" just as Schott did. Let's point out the errors, but let's also be tolenant.

And how does firing someone for mis-reporting fix politics?
5:09 PM Nov 4th
 
MarisFan61
Chisox: A little strong, don't you think? :-)
Sure, putting it as "stomped" and "on the head" went a bit afield. How far? I had to think about it a little. Like, it was just a semi-stomp, or 3/4 of a stomp. And "on the head"? Well, I think the foot did hit the head....
IMO it was kind of like, if the ref called it a stomp on the head and we looked at the video, we wouldn't think it was a great call but the evidence isn't sufficient to overturn it.

But thanks for your post -- it puts me in the center on this. :-)
1:36 PM Nov 4th
 
chisox
Sorry, but I think the real jackass here is Bill.
12:16 PM Nov 4th
 
THBR
Bill -- your last sentence: ABSOLUTLELY!
Marisfan -- your last paragraph: definitely. And that's why Bill James should be AT LEAST in the HoF.
10:20 AM Nov 4th
 
MarisFan61
Cool!!
My stuff may not make too much sense, but I succeeded in recruiting a dead person to the site!
And pretty fast too!

I'm sure Bill adapted his methods from other fields. Like, about "similarity scores," in his early material he presented this as an already-existing concept that was used in (for example) weather forecasting. But I don't think meteorologists did much in the way of getting people to recognize or understand the concept, or to apply it to their own lives and fields. Moreover, I think sabermetrics has been a model for questioning accepted assumptions, and for analyzing and objectifying things that had seemed unobjectifiable. Things don't have to be brand-new-original to be seminal; they can also achieve it by showing the way.
2:53 AM Nov 4th
 
Richie
Actually, BillJ adapted his methods from other fields. And I think the only ones who have in turn copied him are a decent number of journalists. And I didn't assign a Nobel Prize for Journalism. Too much of a weenie field.
1:20 AM Nov 4th
 
MarisFan61
By the way: My comments have been tangential, for which maybe I should apologize, but, sticking to the subject:

I can't agree that the "stomping" and "head" references were so far off that the descriptions are an issue. I don't think they're necessarily even wrong. Would I have put it that way? No. But I'm pretty picky about language, and I don't think it misrepresented what occurred.
12:12 AM Nov 4th
 
MarisFan61
As Bill knows, sports journalists are sometimes held accountable even for what they didn't say.
Like, when he "predicted" that Jeff Bagwell would win the batting title as a rookie....
11:20 PM Nov 3rd
 
bjames
1) As to what defined "Democrat" and "Republican". . .mostly loyalty.

2) And I LIKE Andrew Sullivan. I don't dislike Roger Simon. I just wish political reporters would be held to the same standards of integrity that sports journalists are.
10:49 PM Nov 3rd
 
MarisFan61
To Trailbzr, re "....I miss the 70s when the Democrats still had southern conservatives and the Republicans liberal northeasterners":

What, then defined "Democrat" or "Republican"?
8:35 PM Nov 3rd
 
Scott_Ross
If you find Roger Simon's recounting of the events to have been irresponsible and inflammatory, let me direct your attention to Andrew Sullivan (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/10/q-2.html), who said the woman had been "curb-stomped." I'm not sure how familiar you are with the practice, but it is a very specific act--horrifyingly recreated in the film "American History X"--in which a person's opened mouth is placed over the corner of a curb, and they are then stomped on the back of the head.
8:35 PM Nov 3rd
 
Trailbzr
I agree that political journalists like to think they're writing the first draft of history, when in actuality the last three election cycles have been the normal ebb and flow of politics. President Obama's election was not "transformational;" it was the normal exchange of the White House that has happened every 8 years like clockwork since the 22d Amendment was ratified before the 1952 election, except for one 4/12 split in the 1980s.
However, the tone of politics today is governed by the fact that each party has little ideological breadth. There are conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats and among CANDIDATES nothing in-between. But most VOTERS are in-between. So every change in mood becomes this enormous ideological shift in Congress.
I miss the 70s when the Democrats still had southern conservatives and the Republicans liberal northeasterners; so every ideological difference didn't predictably break along partisan lines.
6:22 PM Nov 3rd
 
MarisFan61
Let me take a little tangent. :-)

I think most of us have heard "Bill James for the HOF," and I imagine most of us would agree with that, although the exact category might be up-for-grabs.

But how about this: NOBEL PRIZE. Not now, but in time.
Because........because of how his methods have been adapted to other fields. Most famously, it's Nate Silver with elections. But I would guess there will be more and more overt applications, and that Bill will rightly get credit as the originator.

Much of what *I* do, both professionally and personally, is guided by 'sabermetric' principles, perhaps most particularly by "similarity scores." Of course I don't go around doing calculations, but I think in terms of the principle, and it has been highly useful. Bill might cringe at this :-) but in my own field of medicine, much of what I do has been determined by such thinking. I've never systematized it, and probably nobody in any other field has done it yet as Nate has done it for electoral politics -- but in time, they may. It will add up to huge influence beyond baseball.
6:21 PM Nov 3rd
 
Marinerfan1986
Bill James hit it right on thr head. Didn't stomp thpugh.
6:06 PM Nov 3rd
 
 
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