"The journalism in these pages will strive to be free of party ideology or partisan bias..."

"... although it will showcase passionate writing and will continue to wrestle with the primary questions about our society."

Our purpose is not simply to tell interesting stories, but to always ask why these stories matter and tie their reporting back to our readers. We hope to discern the hidden patterns, to connect the disparate facts, and to find the deeper meaning, a layer of understanding beyond the daily headlines.

So writes Chris Hughes about the redesign of The New Republic, which I was cranky about yesterday, because it kicked off with a kissy interview with Barack Obama.

I must say, I'd never paid any attention to Chris Hughes before, and I didn't yesterday until pushed by my commenters. On the evidence of the interview he and Franklin Foer did with the President, I saw him as another media suckup doing Democratic Party politics under cover of journalism. Seeing this "free of party ideology or partisan bias" business now only inclines me to scoff. If that's what you wanted as your brand, why did you lead off with that interview?

But I realize I need to get up to speed on this Chris Hughes character. I didn't even bother to name him in yesterday's post, and I've only just made a tag for him now. Sorry, I didn't bother watching "The Social Network." To the extent that I follow celebrities, I'm not particularly drawn to new media businessmen. I can keep track of Mark Zuckerberg up to a point, but I've never paid attention to the lesser Facebookians.

Here's a HuffPo article from last March about Hughes's purchase of TNR, noting that he was "a key player in President Obama's online organizing efforts in 2008." Why would we expect this man — who's only 29, by the way — to strive to be free of party ideology or partisan bias? I've got to assume the striving is toward seeming to be free of party ideology and partisan bias, because that's what journalists always say they are doing when they have ideological and partisan goals.

Based on that interview with Obama, I'd say Hughes is not striving that hard or he's not good at what he's striving to do or — most likely — he only wants to appeal to Democrats, so he only wants to do enough to seem to be free of party ideology and partisan bias to Democrats. Is this enough to make our target audience feel good about the nourishment they're getting from this source? The good feeling is some combination of seeming like professional journalism while satisfying their emotional needs that are intertwined their political ideology and love of party.

Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel "say one of the things that really politicized the abortion issue was the efforts of those working to re-elect President Richard Nixon in 1972."

"His aides, including future Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, wanted to lure Northern Catholic voters, who had traditionally voted Democratic, over to the Republican Party."

Nixon "was strongly advised by his strategists ... to make a play for a Northern urban Catholic Democratic vote," says Greenhouse. "A kind of Northern strategy that mirrored the Southern strategy."

In fact, up until then, top Republicans tended to be more in favor of abortion rights than Democrats, including, for much of his first term, Nixon himself....

So, taking his aides' advice, Nixon switched sides on abortion, even reversing an earlier relaxation of an abortion ban in military facilities.

"The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man..."

"... who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States."

On "Meet the Press" today, Obama mostly came across as the moderate, pragmatic politician I like.

Now, I'm not a sucker for mere posing, and in fact, I get suspicious when I hear what are simply assertions of pragmatism:

But generally if you look at how I've tried to govern over the last four years and how I'll continue to try to govern, I'm not driven by some ideological agenda. I am a pretty practical guy. And I just want to make sure that things work. And one of the nice things about never having another election again, I will never campaign again, is I think you can rest assured that all I care about is making sure that I leave behind an America that is stronger, more prosperous, more stable, more secure than it was when I came into office.

Well, no, I'm not going to rest assured. Much as I would love these statements to be true, they make me nervous. And that assurance came right after the most partisan thing he said in the whole interview. The moderator, David Gregory, had asked Obama how "frustrated" he was about the difficulty of getting things done with Congress. Gregory asserted that people were constantly coming up to him saying "Don't they realize, all of them, the president, Republicans and Democrats, how frustrated we all are?" And President Obama showed a little irritation:

Well, I think we're all frustrated. The only thing I would caution against, David, is I think this notion of, "Well, both sides are just kind of unwilling to cooperate." And that's just not true. I mean if you look at the facts, what you have is a situation here where the Democratic party, warts and all, and certainly me, warts and all, have consistently done our best to try to put country first.

Country first. Where'd he come up with that slogan?



Then Obama started inching away from this assertion that the Democrats are better. He shifts to more neutral boilerplate about trying "to work with everybody involved to make sure that we've got an economy grows" and "Make sure that it works for everybody. Make sure that we're keeping the country safe." Then he retreats again, making abstract concessions (in question form):

And does the Democratic party still have some knee jerk ideological positions and are there some folks in the Democratic party who sometimes aren't reasonable? Of course. That's true of every political party.

So are the Democrats better or not? He's melted into squishy blandness. And it's exactly here that he does the not-an-ideologue/practical-guy riff that appears at the beginning of this post.

"Boy, I can't think of a better Christmas present than to read about these vile unpleasant asocial deluded individuals suffering..."

"... all locked together in a big metal box. Schadenfreude to the max."

"How Maps Helped Republicans Keep an Edge in the House."

Headline at the NYT, where the first 2 paragraphs talk about Wisconsin. Is Wisconsin a clear majority-Democrat state rigged at the district level to elect Republicans?

It's hard to analyze exactly how bad or unfair this is. Either party, when it controls redistricting, takes advantage, and Democrats have the special problem that is referred to in the article as "“unintentional gerrymandering": "the natural geographic patterns that lead many Democrats to choose to live in dense, urban areas with very high concentrations of Democrats, effectively packing themselves into fewer districts." (Strangely worded, no?)

It's not hard to see that Democrats' majority in Wisconsin is caused by a concentration of Democrats in Milwaukee and Madison, and the representatives from these districts can lean way left without risking defeat in the next election. Is it necessarily evidence of a problem that elsewhere in the state, the elections are closer and Republicans can win?

In states where Republicans controlled the [redistricting] process, [a study] found, their candidates won roughly 53 percent of the vote — and 72 percent of the seats. And in the states where Democrats controlled the process, their candidates won about 56 percent of the vote and 71 percent of the seats.

That doesn't mean the Republicans are more advantage-taking than Democrats, though, because of the way the population is dispersed.

An analysis by The New York Times of states where courts, commissions or divided governments drew the maps found a much smaller disparity between the share of the popular vote and the number of seats won in Congress. In those states, the analysis found, Democrats won slightly more than half the vote and 56 percent of the seats, while Republicans won 46 percent of the vote and 44 percent of the seats.

Isn't this because the Democrats, when they control, choose not to cut up those urban districts? And which states ended up in that comparison group and why? I'd like to know more detail. Why is there no more detail? Articles like this clearly serve the political purposes of the Democratic party, stoking the belief that the Democrats really deserve much more power than is reflected in actual legislatures. 

Obama says right-to-work laws "have everything to do with politics."

Okay, but which way is that supposed to cut? If it's all political — and not really about what benefits people economically — then which side should we be on? Both parties are doing politics around this issue. That's a good observation. And then....?

"A federal jury believed the University of Iowa’s law school illegally denied a promotion to a conservative Republican because of her politics."

"However, jurors said they felt conflicted about holding a former dean personally responsible for the bias. They wanted to hold the school itself accountable, but federal law does not recognize political discrimination by institutions."

[Teresa]Wagner was turned down despite enthusiastic praise for her interview performance by members of the faculty appointments committee and members of the law school administration. Not all on the faculty were supportive, however. Carolyn Jones, the law school dean at the time, said she rejected Wagner for a faculty position because of opposition within the faculty. According to testimony, Jones said “she always adopts the faculty’s recommendations.”

Faculty members testified that they opposed hiring Wagner because she had performed poorly in the job interview. But an associate dean expressed concern in an email that Wagner might be opposed by professors who “so despise her politics.”

"Wagner is a Republican who has worked for anti-abortion organizations."

Did Chris Christie "sudden love-in" with Obama hurt Mitt Romney?

"Sudden love-in" is the Washington Post's terminology.

There is no professed motivation for Christie’s newfound feelings for the president, other than that the two men are now partners in a massive effort to rebuild his state. Asked about the election on “Fox & Friends,” Christie said, “I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested,” adding: “If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me.”

I want to say Chris Christie is saying and doing the right thing, not only morally and in his own political interest, but in the interest of Mitt Romney and the GOP. Saying it's not political and acting like politics are suspended, the best approach morally, happens also to be the best approach politically.

It's good politically because it's a vivid demonstration of devotion to public service and the capacity to rise about partisanship and do the things that need to be done.

Compare the Christie's interaction with Obama to the way Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco interacted with President Bush after Hurricane Katrina. Here's how Bush described some of it in his book "Decision Points" (at page 308-309):

The initial plan had been for me to land at the New Orleans airport, pick up Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin, and survey the damage on an aerial tour. But on the Marine One flight from Mississippi, we received word that the governor, mayor, and a Louisiana congressional delegation were demanding a private meeting on Air Force One first.

The tone started out tense and got worse. The governor and mayor bickered. Everyone blasted the Federal Emergency Management Agency for failing to meet their needs. Congressman Bobby Jindal pointed out that FEMA had asked people to email their requests, despite the lack of electricity in the city. I shook my head. “We’ll fix it,” I said, looking at FEMA Director Mike Brown. Senator Mary Landrieu interrupted with unproductive emotional outbursts. “Would you please be quiet?” I had to say to her at one point.


I asked to speak to Governor Blanco privately. We walked out of the conference room, through a narrow passageway, and into the small cabin at the front tip of Air Force One. I told her it was clear the state and local response forces had been overwhelmed. “Governor,” I pressed, “you need to authorize the federal government to take charge of the response.”

She told me she needed twenty-four hours to think it over.

“We don’t have twenty-four hours,” I snapped. “We’ve waited too long already.”

The governor refused to give an answer.

Next I asked to meet privately with Mayor Nagin. He had spent four days since Katrina holed up in a downtown hotel. He hadn’t bathed or eaten a hot meal until he used my shower and ate breakfast on Air Force One. In a radio interview the previous evening, he had vented his frustrations with the federal government. “Get off your asses and do something,” he said, “and let’s fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.” Then he broke down in tears. When I met him on the plane, Ray whispered an apology for his outburst and explained that he was exhausted.

I asked the mayor what he thought about federalizing the response. He supported it. “Nobody’s in charge,” he said. “We need a clear chain of command.” But only the governor could request that the federal government assume control of the emergency.

Maybe it makes you Mitt Romney supporters nervous to see Chris Christie working smoothly with President Obama. You need to visualize the alternative. Governor Christie is doing exactly the right thing.

Mitt Romney likes to portray himself as a Republican who can work "across the aisle," and Chris Christie is modeling that very behavior. Message: That's what Republicans do. That's a good message, speaking to the very moderates who might drift over to Obama if the Republicans created friction and rancor in the wake of the hurricane.

"A presidential candidate who gives millions of dollars a year to charity does a storm relief event in Ohio..."

"... and an MSNBC anchor is disgusted by it because the Red Cross would prefer people donating cash"... even with the large video monitors displaying the message "Sandy: Support the Relief Effort. Text ’REDCROSS’ to 90999 to make a $10 donation."

Can the NYT stop providing phony "balance" and help readers know what to believe?

The NYT has a new "public editor," Margaret Sullivan. She introduced herself last week and explained her concept of the role: "Put readers first... Encourage conversation... Promote transparency and understanding."

The Times’s decision to open itself to criticism from the inside, criticism that is made public, is a clear indication of its desire to keep its standards high.

It's a clear indication of its desire to clearly indicate its desire to indicate that it desires to keep its standards high. We'll see what Sullivan actually does. This week, her column is about "the journalistic practice of giving equal weight to both sides of a story" — taking cover under the appearance of balance — instead of "more aggressive on fact-checking and truth-squading." Journalists, we're told, have been feeling "pressure" recently "to be more aggressive on fact-checking and truth-squading." Recently? Why recently?

It’s all a part of a movement — brought about, in part, by a more demanding public, fueled by media critics, bloggers and denizens of the social media world — to present the truth, not just conflicting arguments leading to confusion.

Diagram that sentence. Or, don't... just rewrite it. New media is continually applying this pressure. It's not your movement. It's your reaction. The old cover of phony balance doesn't work anymore. Now, what is the NYT supposed to do? Sullivan says:

Journalists need to make every effort to get beyond the spin and help readers know what to believe, to help them make their way through complicated and contentious subjects.

Help readers know what to believe... The one recent example she gives is the conflict over voter ID laws, in which one side points to the asserted problem of voter fraud and the other contends that the new laws are really about vote suppression. NYT readers wrote to her to complain about an article that presented the statements of both sides, instead of helping readers know what to believe: "that there was little evidence of voter fraud."

The national editor, Sam Sifton, rejected the argument. “There’s a lot of reasonable disagreement on both sides,” he said.... “It’s not our job to litigate it in the paper...We need to state what each side says.”

... “Both sides have become very angry and very suspicious about the other,” [said the author of the article, Ethan Bronner]. “The purpose of this story was to step back and look at both sides, to lay it out.” While he agreed that there was “no known evidence of in-person voter fraud,” and that could have been included in this story, “I don’t think that’s the core issue here.”

Sullivan's next line is "On other subjects, The Times has made clear progress in avoiding false balance." So the accusation — stated weakly, but stated — is that the NYT falsely equated the 2 sides' assertions and has failed to make enough progress in the movement to help readers know what to believe.

There's your problem with the NYT, according to the new public editor: It's just so darned balanced and so reticent about manipulating reader opinion. And — this is the funny part — new media is pressuring the NYT to get with it and tell us who to believe. Hint: It's the Democrats. Why can't the NYT amp up their support for the Democrats? Hmm. It's what new media wants, sayeth the new promote-transparency-and-understanding editor, telling us about something a reader wrote.

Letters to the editor! That's not really new media, even if it was email. Does Sullivan understand much of anything about the pressure new media has been putting on the NYT? She thinks the solution is to be more clear about vouching for the Democratic Party's arguments? That would relieve the pressure?

Take the "I Side With" quiz to see the extent to which you agree with the various presidential candidates.

And the extent to which you agree with the people of your state and of the country.

What I think is most interesting about the results you get — and I've seen mine and a couple others — is the strength of agreement with multiple candidates when the candidates are disagreeing with each other. That's because there's really a lot more agreement among the candidates — and among the people of your state and among Americans as a whole — than it seems when we're plunged into these periods of political campaigning (which, these days, seems to be all the time).

For example, on the agreement with Americans line, I've seen results as high as 90%. How can there be that much agreement? Well, the truth is we agree about an awful lot of things, but if we're going to fight, it accentuates what we don't agree about. And I think that's why so many people feel that they are not political and they don't like politics. Most of my life, until I started blogging and covering politics, I have said, even when being completely honest with myself, that I'm not political. I counted it as a deficiency of mine that I didn't have political opinions. You hear so much about politics, but not so much about all the things we share very strongly.

I'd like to make a quiz with 20 questions, about important political matters, where the results would show that 99% of Americans agree. You know, things like: Everyone should have the right to believe in whatever religion he or she chooses or not to believe in any religion at all — yes/no/something else.

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union doesn't "think it's cool at all" for Scott Walker to serve beer...

... at his "beer and brat summit" — a post-recall-election, bipartisan outreach effort.

The cookout menu features brats, a local sausage whose name is pronounced "brahts"...

(Somebody tell John Kerry before it's too late!)

[Rita Wert, president of the WCTU] said the problems facing Wisconsin are serious, and policy makers shouldn't cloud their judgment by drinking alcohol.

"That portrays kind of a party atmosphere, and I don't think that's what people want," she said. "It's just really a shame that it has to be that way."

The group raised similar objections in 2009 when President Barack Obama invited a black scholar and the white police sergeant who arrested him to the White House to share a beer and talk about race relations.

Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said the governor respectfully disagreed with the WCTU's objections. "In keeping with the bipartisan theme of the event, in this case we agree with President Obama" ...

He's bipartisan, and they are consistent. A toast!

"I think if I work very hard, I should be able to gather the fruits of my labor."

"And I think if you’re not about to work, you should get minimal and leave me alone. I think if you don’t wear a helmet and you fall off your bike, you pay for the doctor."

Says Joan Rivers, who denies she's making a political statement. She hates politics.

"They’re all a bunch of garbage... I’m definitely in favor of a monarchy because they’re there, they look good, and they always have good gift shops when you leave the palace. … I feel that it’s just all about party affiliation and it’s all about voting the way your party wants to vote and it’s not at all about what we should be about."

(Here's a movie about Joan Rivers. It's really good. One of the very few movies I've seen in the theater in the last 3 years. )

"Gov. Scott Walker's call for a bipartisan 'brat summit' is being met with its first boycotts."

And not just from Democrats:

State Rep. Steve Nass, one of Walker's fellow Republicans from Whitewater, said... he was not attending the event because Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate said at his party's convention over the weekend that "Scott Walker will see the inside of a jail cell before he sees the inside of another term." Nass also criticized weekend comments by Democratic Sen. Fred Risser of Madison about Walker.

Meanwhile, state Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison) said in a tweet he won't be attending either.

"I'm passing on 'Brat Summit' photo op. We need cooperation & compromise from Gov., not brats & beer," tweeted Pocan, who is running for Congress.

Rejecting an offer of beer and brats... What has happened to Wisconsin values?

Jeffery Rosen's complicated idea about why the Supreme Court really should uphold Obamacare.

Generally, I'm tired of these MSM articles that seem to be trying to push the Court to uphold the Affordable Care Act — as if the Justices are reading these articles and vulnerable to efforts — by writers who obviously politically support the law — to scare them into thinking people will lose respect for the Court. I say "seem to be" because I think these articles are really about shaping public opinion. They're not telling the Justices that people will disrespect them. They are stoking the people's disrespect in advance of an opinion that strikes down the law (in case that's what happens), and they are laying the groundwork for arguments about why Obama should be reelected (and Democrats need to keep control of the Senate).

But I'm going to link to this new Jeffrey Rosen piece in The New Republic. Why? It's just so amusingly complicated. I'll paraphrase the points he makes, in order:



1. A new poll (which we talked about on the blog here) shows declining approval for the Supreme Court and a belief that the Justices are sometimes influenced by their personal/political beliefs.

2. Some people — including Chief Justice John Roberts — think that public opinion is affected by all the 5-4 decisions that reveal that there is a set of conservative Justices and a set of liberal Justices.

3. There's a new study (by Nathaniel Persily and Stephen Ansolabehere) that says people decide whether they approve of the Court based on whether they like the outcomes of the cases, which suggests that an effective way for the Court to get respect would be simply to provide the outcomes people want.

4. A survey shows that people do like the outcomes of most of the big Roberts Court cases, and that's out of line with the declining approval of the Court, but it might be that people are giving extra weight to some of the big cases, the ones they don't like — maybe Kelo (for Republicans) and Bush v. Gore (for Democrats).

5. Maybe people support or reject the Court based on whether they are conservative/liberal and whether they believe that the Court is what they are — conservative/liberal.

6. A lot of people don't know which Justices were appointed by Republican Presidents and which were appointed by Democratic Presidents. (Rosen assumes the conservative/liberal split among Justices tracks whether they were appointed by Democrats/Republicans, which happens to be true of the current Court, though it was untrue before the Obama appointments were made.) But a study found that in the set of people who know that Republican Presidents have appointed a majority of the Justices, Republicans tend to support the Court, and Democrats are less supportive.

7. Even though a large majority of Americans say they want to see the health care law stricken down, and despite the Persily/Ansolabehere finding that people like the Court when they like the outcome, it's a mistake to think that the Court's approval rating will climb if it strikes down the law by a 5-4 vote. This is because, over time, 5-4 decisions remind people that the Court has a partisan split, and while this will make Republicans like the Court more, Democrats will like it less. Rosen doesn't specify this point, but it needs to be understood here: Only 24% of Americans surveyed by the NYT/CBS want the Court to uphold the law, so it would seem that many, perhaps even a majority of Democrats will approve of the outcome. But Rosen is saying that somehow it will still hurt the Court's approval among Democrats because they will see the Court as partisan and conservative — especially with "elites, including the President" pestering them to think about the Court that way. 

8. Rosen concedes that even if everything in point #7 is right, the Court might move up in the approval rankings because of the increased approval coming from Republicans who like the Court for being so partisan and conservative.

9. John Roberts should eschew that method of moving up in the approval ratings, because he'd be a better leader if he avoided the appearance of partisanship.

ADDED: Here's my analysis:

1. Rosen had material that added up to the conclusion that the Court would improve its stature among Americans if it struck down the health care law.

2. Rosen doesn't want the Court to strike down the health care law.

3. Rosen wrote some complicated paragraphs and then declared that he'd shown why the Court shouldn't strike down the health care law.

Bill Clinton did not come to Wisconsin to help Tom Barrett win the recall election.

The Democrats have given so little help to Tom Barrett in his effort to oust Scott Walker, but Bill Clinton did show up for a rally yesterday, 4 days before the recall election. Barrett's impending loss was so apparent that — I think— the Democratic Party elite had decided that it was best to avoid association with him. Spin it as an insignificant, local matter, even as the Republicans are portraying it as a test of whether governors all over America can make bold reforms and a prediction of what will happen in the fall election.

So what changed? Why does Clinton show up now? I'm going to say: Money! Scott Walker is about to win, about to collect his new mandate, and the Democrats are going to want to raise money off that event. The terrible Scott Walker — now with more power — threatens America! Quick, send money! That's the pitch they want to go out next Wednesday. But how can they do that if they did nothing to help Tom Barrett defeat Scott Walker? The savvy recipient of the quick-send-money email might think: If Scott Walker was so dangerous, why didn't you people do what you could to defeat him when you had the chance? But if the well-loved, charismatic President goes to Wisconsin, that's the one thing people will remember. The clips and quotes of the man can be mobilized for money gathering.

You can watch Clinton's whole speech over here. You can comb through that and see what might prove useful to the Democratic Party as it pursues victory in the fall elections.

But I want to focus on something else, a second theory about why Bill Clinton came to Wisconsin. I'm not convinced Clinton is devoted to the short game of reelecting Obama. I think he might be playing a long game: Hillary 2016. The game of Hillary 2016 can be won in different ways, but one path opens up if Obama loses in 2012. If he loses, why will he have lost? And how would Bill Clinton frame that loss as he plays Hillary 2016?

Bill Clinton might think in terms of Bill Clinton: I won in 1996, because I leveraged myself off the Republican victory in 1994, which is exactly what Obama has failed to do in response to the Republican victory in 2010. Can't you see that potential in Clinton's remarks at the "Tom Barrett" rally?

“This divide-and-conquer, no compromise crowd, if they’d been in control, there never would have been a United States Constitution....

“Cooperation works. Constant conflict is a dead-bang loser and you need to get rid of it,” said Clinton, rattling off incidences of Republicans and Democrats cooperating...

Obama hasn't been cooperating with Republicans. He certainly hasn't used Republican power in Congress as a way to rack up credit for some conservative reform the way Bill Clinton did welfare reform. Here's Bill Clinton basking in self-admiration in a NYT op-ed "How We Ended Welfare, Together":

Regarding the politics of welfare reform, there is a great lesson to be learned, particularly in today’s hyper-partisan environment, where the Republican leadership forces bills through Congress without even a hint of bipartisanship. Simply put, welfare reform worked because we all worked together. The 1996 Welfare Act shows us how much we can achieve when both parties bring their best ideas to the negotiating table and focus on doing what is best for the country....

Ten years ago, neither side got exactly what it had hoped for. While we compromised to reach an agreement, we never betrayed our principles and we passed a bill that worked and stood the test of time. This style of cooperative governing is anything but a sign of weakness. It is a measure of strength, deeply rooted in our Constitution and history, and essential to the better future that all Americans deserve, Republicans and Democrats alike.

The date on that op-ed was 2006. What was Bill Clinton doing in 2006? He was playing a little game called Hillary 2008.

"The Five Stages Of GOP Reaction To Osama Bin Laden’s Death — And What’s Next."

The top post at Talking Points Memo, which I visited after I noticed it on my Blogroll and thought hey, I haven't gone there in a long time and then I wonder why I never go there anymore and then oh, I see.

ADDED: ... and then I'm going to blog about this and then hey, I need 5 stages.

"The Democratic Party has actively encouraged the GOP’s descent into antifeminism."

"And though Democrats have reaped considerable gains from the fallout, their efforts have often ultimately been to the detriment of the country’s women."

Presented for discussion. Read the whole article before reacting to the quote I extracted to get your attention.

A public school teacher told her students "Republicans are stupid."

What's the worst part of that?

The worst part about a teacher saying "Republicans are stupid" is...
	She should not take a partisan position in class.
	As a model of how to speak, she should never call anyone "stupid."
	She should model high-level critical thinking, not simplistic conclusions.
	She made it seem acceptable to impose a stereotype on a societal group.
	She disrespected persons of below-average intelligence, some of whom may be in the class.
	She made students feel cowed about expressing opinions, lest they be regarded as dumb.
	She should be teaching something substantive, not wasting class time on politics.
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