NPR, 2009; Le Monde, 1956

So, having refused to be interviewed by Glenn Greenwald about her defense of NPR's avoidance of the use of the word "torture," NPR ombudsman Alicia C. Shepard did agree to go on an NPR show immediately before him. That way, it could be almost like an actual adult conversation but without, you know, any pesky conversing involved.

Shepard's defense of NPR's practices in her segment here is just mind-boggling -- so much so, in fact, that Kevin Drum assumed Glenn Greenwald was exaggerating when he paraphrased it. He was not. Here are Shepard's actual words, when pressed on why NPR had no problem referring to a journalist in Gambia being tortured:

...these were strictly tactics to torture him, to punish him, versus these in the United States in the way that it's used these are tactics used to get information.

Um, excuse me? It's not torture if it's used to "get information"? As Greenwald points out, even laying aside the glaring falsehood here re. the pristine purity of US motives for the use of torture, this is wrong, wrong, wrong. Torture is torture, regardless of motive. Does Shepard think the Gestapo wasn't torturing French Resistance members when they put them through excruciating pain -- beatings, kickings, whippings, electrical shock, burning, needles, etc., often ending in death -- in an attempt to glean information about their networks of fellow resisters? How about French use of torture during the Battle of Algiers, as part of a systematic effort to locate and destroy the Algerian National Liberation Front in the city? Hey, they were just using some "tactics" to "get information"!

I don't believe Shepard thinks that -- because it's just too absurd to countenance. What she really means, of course, is that it's not torture when we do it. This kind of blind, my-country-right-or-wrong "patriotism" was also present in France during the Algerian War, and it helped lead plenty of people -- including people who actually understood perfectly well what France was up to in Algeria -- to publicly deny that any torture was going on.

In my mind today, I've been putting that kind of logic, the logic that seeks by any means possible to deny wrongdoing by one's own country, next to that of the French historian of early Christianity Henri-Irénée Marrou, writing in Le Monde in 1956, before many people in France were talking about torture. Marrou's op-ed contribution was called "France, ma patrie" ("patrie" is a little tricky to translate -- it means homeland, fatherland, or simply country) and, in the name of his love of France, Marrou denounced the French use of torture in Algeria. Here's a rough translation of some of the piece:

I am neither a professional journalist nor a politician; I testify here as a simple citizen whose conscience torments him, and who notices that he is not the only one to feel this heavy discomfort, this worry, this anguish...

...[E]verywhere in Algeria -- it is denied by no one -- veritable laboratories of torture have been installed, with electric bathtubs and everything that is required, and this is a disgrace for the country of the French Revolution, and of the Dreyfus Affair: I cannot, without shuddering, think about the day when I was charged with representing the government of the Republic at an exposition organized by UNESCO at the Galliera museum, in honor of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. There was a whole display panel devoted to the abolition -- not, oh hypocrisy, the renewal -- of judicial torture.

....Yes, French grandeur is in peril. I speak to all those who like me, a professor, are educators; who, like me, have children and grandchildren: we must be able to speak to them without shame about Oradour [site of a WWII massacre] and about the Nuremberg trials. We must be able to reread in front of them the beautiful pages of our classics about love of country, about our France, 'patron and witness (and often martyr) for freedom in the world.' Yes, before we become further engaged in the infernal cycle of terrorism and reprisals, each one of us must hear from the deepest, most profound part of his heart the cry of our fathers: 'La patrie is in danger!'

And, by the way, when readers wrote in to protest publication of Marrou's piece, Le Monde editor-in-chief Hubert Beuve-Méry (whose son was actually fighting for the French in Algeria at that moment, and who was no great fan of the Algerian independence fighters) responded that patriotism "does not consist of imitating or adopting, even as reprisals, the practices that we condemn on the part of the adversary. And no more does it consist of carefully dissimulating that which, chez nous, might be blameworthy."

I think they say it pretty well. The America that I want to live in doesn't use torture. And that means it doesn't use torture, not "it calls torture by some other name."

In which I destroy the "democratic ideal"

Okay, I guess I'm one of the snobby, hate-filled liberal elite that Ross Douthat slams in his NYT column "Palin and Her Enemies" today. Yep, my belief that this particular woman was wildly incompetent to be vice president (and possibly president) of the United States puts me on the side of the privilege-defending destroyers of the "democratic ideal," the American Dream "about how anyone can grow up to be president." Wow, I am evil. I thought I was critical of Palin in large part because her ideological positions and concrete policies in Alaska were harmful to ordinary families, and in particular to struggling women and children. But, no, it turns out: if I really cared about those people, I would have loved Palin.


So, just to double down on my snarky elitist ways: Palin and whoever helped her write stuff this weekend are providing me with lots of hilarity concerning the use and abuse of the English language. (Is anyone helping her? If so, memo to Palin: fire him/her immediately.) This isn't just a matter of things said aloud, off the cuff -- the written texts are just as mangled and full of weird constructions and outright errors.* The 4th of July Facebook posting contains several gems such as "I’ve never thought I needed a title before one’s name to forge progress in America." Now, okay, I know no one who still loves Sarah Palin at this point is going to turn on her because she can't make her pronouns agree. And I know Facebook is not the most formal writing context in the world. (Didn't she understand, though, that in the absence of any other info coming out of her camp, this post was going to get quoted extensively in every news outlet in the country? And by the way SarahPAC has still not updated its website, and Palin's own twitters are also still reading like they're being written in some alternate reality where the only decision made was "to not run again." ) Nevertheless -- and maybe I'm just hyper-attuned to this sort of thing because I earn my keep by being picky with freshman prose -- this there-is-no-proofreader-on-the-premises sloppiness gives the impression that things are a bit out of control behind the scenes in Palinland. In the absence of any real information, it's hard to resist looking for meaning in details like this.

Also, can she please stop claiming that she's being "candid"?

I really will shut up about this whole Palin brouhaha soon. I promise. Maybe.

* Yes, the single funniest thing so far has been Meg Stapleton telling Anderson Cooper that "the world is literally her oyster." But despite the jaw-dropping awesomeness of the image this conjures up, it's a mistake pretty much anyone could make speaking aloud.

More "vivid writing" from NPR ombudsman

(Sorry for the extended lapse between posts -- I was completely off the grid for a few days and I'm still scrambling to catch up with everything I missed.)

So -- NPR Ombudsman Alicia C. Shepard continues on her merry way defending NPR's practice of refusing to call torture "torture." Glenn Greenwald (with whom Shepard has refused to have an interview) continues to be all over this, and Shepard's stance has been widely criticized. She's now done a couple of radio interviews with NPR affiliates and will do another on Talk of the Nation today; she also has up a new posting on the NPR website assuring readers/listeners that "Your Voices Have Been Heard."

This post is so outrageous to anyone who cares about (a) the integrity of the English language or (b) the integrity of journalism that I don't even know where to begin. Let's start here:

"I believe that it is not the role of journalists to take sides or to characterize things."

To set aside for a moment the absurdity of the idea that calling clear acts of torture by their proper name is to "take sides,"... um, she believes it is not the role of journalists to "characterize things"? Really? What on earth are they supposed to do instead? What would practicing journalism even mean if it were forbidden to "characterize things"? And anyway, terms like "enhanced interrogation techniques" are also a "characterization" of "things" -- albeit a euphemistic mischaracterization.

Shepard goes on to insist that

"instead of using loaded language -- and the word "torture" is loaded -- I advocate that NPR describe interrogation techniques in detail."

Okay, now I happen to agree that the word "torture" is loaded -- but that is because the act of torture is loaded, and loathsome. It is indeed "loaded" to call torture by its proper name because it requires owning up, head-on, to the sorts of abuses Americans have been responsible for. Calling it something else may duck out of that act of acknowledgement and responsibility-taking, but it does not make the truth go away, any more than it would make the historical fact of slavery in America go away if NPR chose to avoid the "loaded" word "slavery" and refer to the practice as "enhanced labor ownership techniques." (Later in the piece Shepard continues to insist, as she did in her last piece, that "torture" is a "coded" term for acts of torture. It's hard to even coherently criticize the logic here -- like trying to explain why someone is wrong when they claim that black is white. "Torture" is not a coded term for torture. It is its proper name.)

Shepard's main argument for continuing to insist that there's some sort of "debate" about what torture "is" seems to come in this section:

"But no matter how many distinguished groups -- the International Red Cross, the U.N. High Commissioners -- say waterboarding is torture, there are responsible people who say it is not. Former President Bush, former Vice President Cheney, their staff and their supporters obviously believed that waterboarding terrorism suspects was necessary to protect the nation's security. One can disagree strongly with those beliefs and their actions. But they are due some respect for their views, which are shared by a portion of the American public."

By "responsible people" here, I can only assume she means "the very people responsible for instituting policies that systematized torture."

Seriously -- can she not even manage to cite anyone here who was not an architect of the torture regime as the other "side" in this debate? And why are they due some respect for their obviously self-serving and nakedly reality-contradicting "views"? What is respectable about them? What new insight about the nature of the concept of "torture" have Dick Cheney & co. arrived at, thus upending hundreds of years of historical precedent for what constitutes "torture," that demands we treat this as a two-sided "debate" between serious people?

On a related note, for those who still have doubts about whether US agents "tortured," there have been some amazingly rich and detailed posts in the last few days from Greenwald, Marcy Wheeler, and Andy Worthington on deaths resulting from torture. I should have mentioned Wheeler by name in my last post on the different roles of images and documents in anti-torture campaigns -- someone give that woman a medal (or at least contribute to the fundraiser on her website). The ACLU Accountability Project is also incredible.

NPR and the glories of "vivid writing"

There's no improving on Glenn Greenwald's fabulous point-by-point takedown of NPR Ombudsman Alicia C. Shepard's defense of NPR's refusal to call torture "torture." I'm also really happy he linked to this blog I wasn't aware of until now, NPR Check , which has also been writing stellar stuff about this. The blog's creator says he started it up because "it made more sense than yelling at the radio;" as someone who spends an inordinate amount of time doing just that (also throwing pillows at it) I am overjoyed to find it.

So just one thing to add re. my favorite infuriating bit of Shepard's piece:

A basic rule of vivid writing is: "Show, Don't Tell." An excellent example of using facts rather than coded language was a 2005 piece by former NPR reporter John McChesney. It gave meticulous details of tactics used against an Iraqi detainee at Abu Graib who later died.

Ah yes, "Show, Don't Tell." I have lovely memories of my freshman creative writing instructor pressing that advice on us all. Here's the kind of sentence that "rule" is designed to deal with: "John is a big jerk." ("Can you show us John is a jerk instead? What might be some jerky acts readers could see John undertaking?") That doesn't mean that readers' experience will then be somehow damaged if the story also uses the word "jerk." Is Shepard actually, seriously arguing that a piece on torture (one that involves the detainee dying) becomes more "vivid" if it studiously avoids the use of the word "torture"? Is that true for stories on rape, too? Terrorism? Murder? I'm pretty sure that when the writing instructors say "show, don't tell," they don't mean "use smarmy circumlocution tactics to avoid calling things by their proper names," or "employ obfuscating and euphemistic language whenever possible." Good writing -- and we're talking about journalistic writing here, not mystical verse or something -- usually involves using plain English. To stick with our friend John the big jerk, would Shepard think it constituted more "vivid" writing for us to refer to him as "John the tempermentally challenged individual"? Come on. This is proposterous. And for God's sake, "torture" is not "coded language" for torture. "Enhanced interrogation techniques" is.

**Update**

Greenwald is continuing to update on this issue, and check out Digby's post on the abuse-of-the-English-language aspect of all of this called "Examining the Runes."

Toughness

As I mentioned, I'm not going to be able to say much about Iran -- what's going on there now involves historical and political dynamics about which I understand just enough to grasp that I actually understand nothing. I simply don't have any expertise in this area of the world. So I've been following avidly but keeping mum.

The unfolding "debate" about the US response is a different issue -- although here, too, I don't know enough about Iran to presume to offer definitive advice to the Obama administration on how they should be reacting to events there, I feel awfully suspicious of all this posturing going on about how Obama isn't being "tough" enough. First of all, I've now seen lots of convincing arguments (from folks that know much more than I do about Iran) that the approach Obama is taking is smart and sound, given that he has to exercise caution about conflating the protestors' cause with "American interference." Second of all, as hilzoy keeps on helpfully reminding us all, even a very basic understanding of the unsavory history of US intervention in Iran ought to preclude some of this absurd fantasy about how the US taking a forceful rhetorical stance might save the day (ahem, John McCain: "We do what we have done throughout the Cold War and afterwards, we speak up for the people of Tehran and Iran and all the cities all over that country who have been deprived of one of their fundamental rights." Right, our excellent Cold War track record in Iran.) And third, to me all this bluster does not sound like it actually has anything to do with Iran per se: it's just the same old schoolyard stuff we've been hearing thrown at Democrats for decades about not being "tough" enough (on crime, welfare queens, defense, terror...), about being girly-men, about speaking French, etc. It's just wrapped around the headline of the week, which happens to be Iran.

Now, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to some of the genuine criticism coming Obama's way, like this piece from Roger Cohen, arguing that Obama needs to be doing/saying more. And I get that lots and lots of Democrats are upset with Obama's caution, too. But, especially because of point #3, I really don't see why the NYT has just chosen to post as the lead article on the website (as of around 10pm tonight) a piece titled "Obama Reluctant to Toughen Stance on Iran." The piece itself, by Mark Lander, is okay, I guess, and informative in a general way about various responses (from Congress, European leaders, etc.) to the situation in Iran. But although it refers to "criticism that Mr. Obama’s refusal to speak out more had broken faith with democracy advocates in Tehran" and "pressure on the White House" from "Congressional Republicans and conservative foreign-policy experts," and although it gives lots of examples of the "tougher line" other people besides Obama are taking, it doesn't actually name one person explicitly criticizing Obama himself for not being "tough" enough, nor give any articulation of what the foreign-policy basis for such criticism would be. (It does, on the other hand quote a number of people, including Henry Kissinger and Karim Sadgadpour, "an Iranian expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace," explicitly supporting the administration's approach and explaining why in policy-outcome terms, not John McCain-speak.) The people Lander does quote may be reacting differently from Obama, but they're not criticizing him. (Yes, I understand that plenty of people are. But aside from the references to "criticism" and one quote from an Iran expert that seems to be connected to the uncontroversial idea that Obama may have to shift his stance in the event that a Tiananmen-style crackdown occurs, they're not present in this particular article.) There was also apparently no one from the administration willing to go on the record here, so it's all "officials said," etc.

Anyway, regardless, my real beef here is with the title, which to my ear seems to use this super-charged language of "toughness" to imply that Obama is somehow simply wimping out about Iran when the right thing to do is obviously to be "tough." In American political discourse, the antonym for tough is wimpy, and someone who is "reluctant" to take a "tough stance" is cowering. I'm not saying Lander's piece or the NYT is delibrately arguing this -- just that this seems like a really poor choice of language for the header. And that this is the case regardless of the valid arguments that might be made for/against the approach Obama has been taking so far.

Now I will be mum again.


**Update: The headline has now become "Obama Resists Calls for a Tougher Stance on Iran." This is slightly less objectionable, I suppose -- it implies a debate over the correct policy rather than a wimpy "reluctance" to do the manly thing. But I still think that there's no need to characterize the use of more bellicose language as a "tougher stance." Also, this version of the header reflects the actual content of the article even less than the previous version did -- again, there are no actual people quoted here "calling" on Obama to do anything differently, and explaining why, just general references to "criticism" of him.

Bananagrams

This game is the greatest thing that ever happened. I'm totally addicted. (This is not because I'm any good at it yet -- I still suck. Scrabble-based instincts actually don't work out that well when you have to play this fast. But seeing as I'm planning on playing 24/7 from now on, I'm hoping I'll improve.)