Hanan Cohen sends along a link to the American Jewish Committee’s 2003 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion. The sample of 1,000 self-identified Jews, a representative cross-section of Americans, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points.

76% of us think caring about Israel is a very important part of being a Jew. Only 5% are more positive this year than last about the chance for peace. 81% of us think “”The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel,” but 54% support the creation of a Palestinian state. 69% support dismantling at least some of the West Bank settlements. 60% support the current handling of relations with the Palestinian Authority. 63% think American Jews ought to support Israel even when we disagree with it. 76% believe 9/11 does not reflect the true teachings of Islam.

Only 16% of us identify ourselves as Republican. 51% are Democrats and 31% are independents. 40% of us are some type of liberal, skewing toward the “slightly liberal.” 27% are conservatives. We voted for Gore over Bush 66 to 24. Clark, Dean and Kerry beat Bush 2:1. Lieberman beats Bush 71:24. We’re more mixed about the Iraqi War: 54% disapprove of it, and 54% disapprove of the way Bush has handled the campaign against terrorism.

We definitely do not want tax payer funds going to faith-based programs (73%) and don’t want government aid to religious schools (73%), but we do want “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance (66%).

97% of us think ati-Semitism in the US is a problem, and 37% think it’s a very serious problem. (For perceived anti-Semitism in Europem the figures are 96% and 55%.) 67% of us expect global anti-Semitism to increase.

My own views frequently are outside what the survey says is the Jewish mainstream, so please spare me your rants. Thank you.

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David Reed — you know, the End-to-End guy — goes through the candidates one-by-one. He’s captured a lot of what I think and feel about these guys.

This dance remix of The Scream that’s been going around makes me laugh.

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I thought this was a good interview, despite Sawyer’s alternation between being insipid and baiting them. It was the first time I’ve heard Judy Steinberg, and I think it gives a pretty good picture of what he and they are like, modulo their political concerns and Sawyer’s entertainment concerns. (FWIW, I liked Steinberg a lot. The fact that she’s about my age and grew up a couple of miles from where I grew up I’m sure has no affect on my feeling comfortable with her immediately.)

Salon has a good summary and analysis of Steinberg’s presence in the interview.

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In a speech to the World Economic Forum, according to the AP, “Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday urged nations…to fight corruption, which is costing the world economy more than $2 trillion every year.”

“Follow our moral lead,” Ashcroft said. “Surely in your own country you have a highly visible woman who is resented for her success. I urge you to go after her with the full power of the law. And God bless America.”

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If a respected paper such as, say, the Boston Globe, set out to drive down a candidate, what do you think they might do? Run a front page story saying that Dean’s pep rally “Yeah!” was a sign of his anger? Nah, too outrageously slanted. After all, if it was an angry yell, what was it denouncing? Fury that the campaign was going to continue? No, Doc got much closer to it when he called it a Whitmanesque barbaric yawp.

But here’s the money shot from the first paragraph of The Globe’s front page story:

Dean found himself struggling to explain the reaction, casting it as a show of passion, while critics said it confirmed the angry streak they hear in his speeches and campaign rhetoric.

And the evidence that Dean was struggling to explain it? None. The critics who think it was a sign of his “angry streak”? Sixteen paragraphs in, the reporter, Sarah Schweitzer, finds a professor who wrote a book about the New Hampshire primary who says, “That moment crystallizes a lot about what’s been said about him, that he’s the angry man.” This is such a clear case of media self-confirmation that it’s almost touching.

In between, we get a repetition of the Angry Man meme:

Dean has sought to soften his image by layering speeches with references to community. Yesterday, he described his campaign as one of “hope” and himself as a “neighbor.” But he has erupted at times on the campaign trail — he recently berated an insistent Iowa voter for interrupting him.

And the evidence that the community theme is an addition to a core of anger? And the evidence that this has been “layered” onto his speeches not because Dean believes it but in order to soften his image? And the evidence that he has “erupted” more than once on the trail? And when Bush silenced hecklers, this was certainly evidence that W is The Angry Man, right?

Schweitzer doesn’t miss the opportunity to selectively quote the person on the street to make the point that she wants to make, the sleaziest practice in professional journalism: “Bob Scipione, 66, a retired biochemist of Bedford and a committed Dean supporter, offered this explanation: ‘The man has to be out of control to beat Bush.'” Sarah, what possible justification do you have for choosing that quote from that person? I’d love to know.

If this sort of biased reporting is unwitting, then the Globe ought to get a reporter with some wits. But, unfortunately, the problem is bigger than that. Jay Rosen is right. It’s the power of The Narrative. It is no less shameful for it.

Some generous words of support for Deaniacs from Michael Moore, who’s supporting Clark. Subtext: There will be plenty of time for you to support Clark once Dean’s run is done.

And more medicine for the heart from Doc.

I just realized that I blogged in November about another article that struck me as just as lazily biased as this one. Same author. I’ve taken a guess at her email address and am sending her the links. Sarah, my comments are working. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong.

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David Isenberg examines the language of the Cato Institute’s shabby paper on Internet policy. (Lessig has also written about it, as have I.)

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Congratulations to the Kerry supporters. Edwards’, too.

See you in New Hampshire :)

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Advertising Age writes:

Anti-Bush Ad Contest Submits Super Bowl Commercial. A spokesman for CBS said the Viacom-owned network has received the request from MoveOn to run the ad in the Super Bowl, but added that the ad has to go through standards and practices before CBS will say if it can run an advocacy ad during the game. The spokesman said he didn’t think it was likely that the spot would pass standards and practices.

Have you seen the ad, the one that won MoveOn.org’s contest? What possible standard or practice does it violate? Is our country stronger because a TV network refuses to air an ad because it criticizes our president?

(Thanks to Dan Gillmor and Sheila Lennon.

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[NOTES: 1. At no point in the following do I compare George W. Bush to Hitler. 2. All those who take quotes out of context will be prosecuted, or at least whined about.]

Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine, suggests a New Year’s resolution in her Boston Globe column today (which will be de-linked by the Globe tomorrow):

No more Nazi or Hitler analogies to describe policies or politicians you dislike. Unless, of course, those policies include actual mass murder and torture, or those politicians who engage in such acts.

Likewise, Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby thinks any comparison to Hitler is hate speech. Not to mention the field day the conservative groups are having with the fact that two of the 1,500 entries into the MoveOn.org ad contest compared some aspects of this administration’s policies to Nazi Germany’s. (Oddly, none of these commentators have complained about the Bush administration’s repeated characterization of opponents of the Iraq war as “appeasers,” a direct reference to the British policy of appeasement that failed to stop Hitler, or about its use of the phrase “Axis of evil” with its implicit comparison to WWII’s Axis.)

So, let me come out firmly against stupid, thoughtless comparisons of anyone to Hitler. Often such comparisons commit an informal fallacy: Because person A is like Hitler in property P, A is like Hitler in property Q, where Q is Hitler’s evilness. That’s not only fallacious, it trivializes what is important.

But ruling out all comparisons with Hitler and Nazism can also be a way of forgetting what should be remembered.

Here’s one thing I think should be remembered: Nazi Germany’s unfathomable evils were perpetrated by one of the most civilized of cultures. Yes, “civilized” is a loaded term. Deconstruct it as you will, Germany — a country that gave us many of the West’s most revered artists and philosophers — seemed to be operating well within the norms of Western politics and culture. Yet it democratically voted in Hitler and watched (or worse) as it murdered its children and rolled tanks into its neighbors’ cities.

I don’t know, and I don’t believe it can be known with certainty, whether there were particular aspects of the German situation that made it susceptible to turning evil. Certainly Germany’s particular way of being evil was rooted in the particularities of German history and culture. But one big lesson I take from this is that cultures that are convinced they are good can nevertheless become evil. And they can be evil when they think they are at their greatest.

That’s why I think Cathy Young is profoundly wrong. We should learn from the horrors of Nazi Germany that it can happen anywhere, even here. But, we should not expect it to happen in the same way, with concentration camps, jackbooted soldiers and a hypnotic demagogue. In fact, we are so aware of those particular forms of evil that we’re less likely ever to fall for them. We need to remember Nazism especially when we’re looking at the forms of evil that do not mirror the particulars of the Nazi expression of evil.

Before the death camps and the invasions, there were the steps that somehow led a country to embrace great evil. The Nazis came to power not by military takeover but through an election. Each subsequent step seemed justified or was at least so palatable that there was no civil uprising. We honor those who fought Nazism and we remember those whom Nazism murdered by being vigilant about the steps we take, for we understand that some steps can lead a country from good to evil.

So, yes, comparing Bush to Hitler is worse than stupid. But we forget the lesson that we should have learned if we don’t publicly notice that some steps our country has taken could lead our great nation into evil:

Demonizing enemies

Questioning the patriotism of dissenters

Monitoring the political expressions of citizens

Establishing a special class of offenders who are removed from the protections of the judicial system

Lowering the intensity of the threat required to justify preemptive action

Disregarding world opinion

Playing on fear in order to sway public opinion

Lying in order to get us to invade another country

Do these acts make us into Nazi Germany? Of course not! Is any of these acts on a scale with death camps or the invasion of Poland? Not in the least! Each may be entirely justifiable: It may be the responsibility of a courageous country to ignore world opinion in some instances. Some dissenters may actually be unpatriotic. It’s possible that our enemies are demonic; I have nothing good to say about Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. Even so, we should take such steps with open debate and genuine trepidation. Shutting off the conversation does not help us preserve our genuine American values. We should remember that it can happen here because it did happen there…and also that if were to happen, the it would certainly be different. Is it happening here? That’s exactly what we should be talking about, even if our answer is a resounding No.

If all comparisons to Nazi Germany are out of bounds, then we’re saying Nazism was sui generis, unique, something from which we can learn nothing about how we humans can go so astoundingly wrong. And that truly dishonors all those who suffered its horrors.

Mitch makes a good point about why MoveOn’s open posting of ad entries is as American as multimedia pie.

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Dean opted out of the campaign finance reform law because its cap on fund raising would have meant that this spring, even though he’d raised the maximum allowed, he’d be out of money. He might have the nomination sewn up, but he’d have to sit on his hands as Karl Rove spends $150M against him, right up through the Democratic Convention in August. What candidate could survive that type of blitz?

So, let’s say Gen. Clark wins enough primaries to become the nominee. Clark has opted into the campaign finance reform law, so he’ll be out of money in March. Or maybe in May. Either way, how is he going to win the general election? What is the Clark strategy for winning? Does anyone know?

(If you tell me that blogs will enable a candidate to withstand a $150M negative TV campaign, I will ask you to send me a sample of what you’re smoking.)

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