I’m Losing Blog Readers, But That’s OK
By
Leonard Zwelling
On Sunday May 5, Maureen Dowd published this column about the difference between fair and fair. Huh? No wonder you’re losing readers, Len.
What she means is that sometimes, people in positions of great power wield that power ineffectively by leaning over backwards trying to play “fair.”
One of the examples she sites is that of Joe Biden when he led the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Biden did everything in his power to give Thomas the benefit of the doubt and, in the process, to belittle and severely disadvantage Anita Hill and the other witnesses who were trying to get the story of Justice Thomas’ bad behavior out before the American people. Just as the Republicans did during the Kavanaugh hearings. As Hill herself said in a recent NY Times op-ed piece, #MeToo could have started in 1991 if Mr. Biden had let it.
Mr. Obama did it too when he was ineffectively supportive of Hillary Clinton and never came clean about his administration’s investigation of Russian meddling in our elections in 2016. He wanted to be fair, after all. Jim Comey too with his last minute reopening of the FBI’s investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s emails was just trying to be fair.
The latest example is, of course, William Barr, the Attorney General of the United States who essentially lied about what was in the Mueller Report to be “fair” to President Trump who would have no forum to defend himself because he could not be indicted according to Barr’s interpretation of Justice Department policy.
Give me a break. That’s not being fair. That’s being biased.
I have lately been criticized for a number of indiscretions that have been attributed to me in the writing of this blog. One long-time reader has asked me to stop sending him the blog all together. He cancelled his free subscription! I am not sure why. Was it something I said?
Another tells me I need to be fairer to President Trump who may be behaving badly, but whose policies are better than those coming from the Democratic left. I have been castigated for reversing myself about certain support or lack thereof for the ACA. These are all fair criticisms I believe. But I ain’t gonna stop callin’ them the way I see ‘em.
I know that if the leadership of Anderson is even aware of what I write (and it may not be), it cannot be happy with my latest refusal to buy their explanation for the behavior of the leadership with regard to the Chinese “threat” that the leadership perceives is real at Anderson. Perhaps it is. If so, why has no one been arrested for breaking federal laws?
I think that there are other factors at play in a series of unfortunate events at MD Anderson that date back almost 20 years. Many of the actions of the administration going back three presidents at Anderson may be pretense. The dismissal or leaving of groups of faculty of specific ethnicities is not random and is not simply a response to governmental pressure on this issue.
I don’t know what fair is any more after that Kentucky Derby thing and the fact that the duly elected mayor of Istanbul was turned out of office before he could get started so an electoral redo could occur is troublesome. This is fair? I think not.
The only fairness we are likely to get around the question of whether or not the President of the United States obstructed justice is if the principals identified in the Mueller Report testify in open session before a House Committee and the American people. The Trump Administration opposes this and is looking to run out the clock on the Democrats figuring the Mueller Report is the last thing the Dems want to debate during an election year.
I have no idea how fairness is assessed on Holcombe. There’s not even the pretense of balance of power. There are no refs.
If asking these questions costs me readers, so be it. If there is too much about MD Anderson in this blog, I am sorry. I am very concerned about what is happening there as it reflects a lack of trust in our most important institutions in Houston and in Washington.
I understand there is no standard for fair. The rules take you only so far. Then judgment needs to take over. Goodness, I wish it would.
