Let Us Remember the True Meaning of Thanksgiving Before It’s Abolished

This year as President Bush pardoned two turkeys, who surprisingly had nothing to do with the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980s, he remarked that it was his “last Thanksgiving as President.” But it might be the last Thanksgiving any of us celebrate since there is a good chance that when Barack Obama takes over, he will abolish Thanksgiving along with other holidays liberals hate such as Columbus Day, Christmas and the Fourth of July.

Unfortunately, liberals have distorted the history and meaning of Thanksgiving because they see everything through the ideology of victimhood, which is a glass-half-empty view of history. Thanksgiving to liberals is a celebration of purported genocide against the Indians perpetrated by the Christian pilgrims. But in fact this is not what Thanksgiving is about at all. As usual liberals are ignoring the real victims here.

Thanksgiving celebrates the day that Pilgrims and Indians sat down to eat together before the gay secularist Indians divided this country and tried to foist their atheism and savage decadent culture on the God-fearing pilgrims. The pilgrims were rightly appalled by Native American culture where transgendered “two-spirit” people or “berdache” were accepted as normal members of the tribe. To Native Americans, who were ignorant of the Bible’s proscriptions against homosexuality and running around practically naked, there was nothing wrong with squaws marrying squaws and braves marrying braves. The pilgrims did not care what Indians did in the privacy of their own teepees, but they did not want their children exposed to this immorality. So the pilgrims were forced to defend themselves, just as Proposition 8 supporters, under assault from gay activists, must defend themselves now.

The idea that pilgrims defending their way of life committed genocide is a gross distortion of history, as Mona Charen and Michael Medved point out. “In the clash of civilizations between European settlers and Native Americans, millions died,” Charen writes. “But the overwhelming majority of those deaths were attributable to diseases carried involuntarily by Europeans and spread to natives who had no natural immunities to these pathogens. That is a tragedy, but not a crime.” Medved's new book The 10 Big Lies About America reveals the truth behind the "smears" that slavery was such a big deal or that genocide was committed against the Indians, which has ruined Thanksgiving for so many people. For example, he points out that the idea that Europeans had anything to do with willfully spreading disease through small pox-infected blankets is a myth. “The endlessly recycled charges of biological warfare rest solely on controversial interpretations of two unconnected and inconclusive incidents 74 years apart,” says the film critic, who screened hours of John Ford westerns to verify his findings. Sure, there may have been a few little massacres, such as the Trail of Tears, the Sand Creek Massacre and Wounded Knee but most Indians died of diseases whose spread was no doubt hastened by their decadence and promiscuity.

Of course, it didn’t have to be that way. If the Native Americans had left the Europeans alone and stopped trying to foist their way of life on them there would be more Indian-operated casinos in America today. When we celebrate Thanksgiving, we are celebrating what America might have been if Indians hadn’t started the culture war that divides us to this day. Just as the Indians tried to foist their culture on the pilgrims, gays today are trying to force gay marriage on Christians and they seem surprised when Christians fight back to preserve their culture. If gays want to say they’re married that’s fine with me, just don’t force us to recognize it or give it legal standing. Then you are impinging on my rights.

Some gay conservatives, such as GayPatriotWest, understand that they should just be thankful for what they have. They have the freedom to practice whatever vile acts they want to practice behind closed, double-locked doors and we have the freedom not to have to know about it. As long as they don’t make the same mistake the Indians made, we can all live together in peace and harmony.

It’s no wonder that liberals hate Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a celebration of freedom. As GayPatriotWest points out “in practical, definable terms, the daily threats to my liberty are not being pushed by religious conservatives.” Our freedom is under assault in more important ways than whether the Mr. and Mr. GayPatriotWests of the world can register at Bloomingdale’s and visit each other in the hospital and file joint tax returns and not get evicted from their home or inherit money or property if one of them dies or be separated by deportation if one of them is an illegal alien. Liberals are trying to take away more important freedoms like the right to smoke in bars or eat trans fats or buy political influence or own assault rifles (which would have come in quite handy if settlers had had them to ward off Indian attacks).

So this Thanksgiving let us remember and celebrate a time when there was no culture war and gay secularist Indians and religious conservative pilgrims could sit down together and smoke a peace pipe without having to worry about anti-smoking laws and consume all the trans-fat-laden delicacies they wanted, with their guns and bows and arrows stashed under their seats just within reach.

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The Obama New Yorker Cover

This week's New Yorker has a cover by artist Barry Blitt of Michelle and Barack Obama dressed in their native garb, which has apparently offended many in the liberal blogosphere. My first impression on seeing this cover was that the New Yorker had written an exposé revealing that Barack Obama is indeed a Muslim, Michelle Obama was a member of the Black Panthers (or the Mod Squad) and that the Obamas hate America and burn American flags in their fireplace. Then David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, issued a statement saying that the illustration is actually intended to be satire, a decadent form of humor invented by the Romans shortly before their civilization was overrun by barbarians.

I loved the illustration, which I thought was a very powerful statement about how Barack Obama should not be elected President, and as Jonah Goldberg noted, it could have been a cover illustration for the National Review, which used to be called the Harvard Lampoon before it went national and changed its name. But I must say I also agree with many in the liberal blogosphere who believe that satire and most other kinds of humor should be avoided at all costs. I have long been opposed to satire, which just causes unhealthy confusion and, like fluoridated water, weakens our body politic. How can we fight an enemy that doesn't have any sense of humor at all if our media is distracting us with such esoteric and ill-advised attempts at comedy?

I don't even understand the point of satire. If the editors of the New Yorker actually believe that Barack Obama is not a Muslim, Michelle Obama is not a dangerous revolutionary and that they do not actually burn American flags, as Remnick now claims, couldn't they have just said that? Wouldn't it have been simpler and clearer to run the illustration with a big X over it so that we knew what they were trying to say? We are not mind readers. It doesn't make much sense to say the opposite of what you mean and then attack people for being unsophisticated because they thought you were sincere. Do New Yorkers always say the opposite of what they mean and then expect you to understand? Real Americans, I think, prefer straight talkers, like John McCain, who means what he says when he tells us that he doesn't know very much about economics, can't figure out how to use a computer and believes that we will be in Iraq for 100 years.

Satire, I believe, is supposed to be funny, though I don't see how being dishonest is humorous. I think it's just sad. If the New Yorker wanted to run a humorous cover that showed Obama is not a Muslim, they could have accomplished that goal by depicting him slipping on a banana peel on the way to church. That would have made the same point and it would also have had the virtue of being funny.

Although this modest blog has twice been nominated for a Weblog Award for Funniest Blog and I have sometimes been unfairly accused of being satiric by my enemies, as I have said many times I am no expert on comedy and any humor in this blog is purely unintentional and deeply regretted. So I must defer to the liberal blogosphere, many of whose members are indeed experts at comedy. Although liberals are often unfairly accused of being humorless, the truth is that they are so knowledgable about what makes something funny that they rarely find humor that meets their very tough standards. They are like connoisseurs of fine wine who are unable to drink anything that is not the finest vintage. When a liberal says, "That's not funny!" it is a cry from the heart from someone who longs to see something that really is funny. It's too bad the editors of the New Yorker did not consult them first before they made their ill-fated attempt at comedy.

Atrios, for example, whom many consider to be the Benny Hill of the blogosphere, but pithier, points out that for satire to be effective, it must exaggerated beyond all reason so that even a moron will know it is supposed to be funny. Only satire that is way, way over the top has even a chance of making people laugh. Subtlety has no place in satire because it could easily be taken at face value. If someone like Atrios is fooled into believing that something intended to be satire is real doesn't that just defeat the whole purpose? It would be like an episode of MASH without the laugh track, which wouldn't be funny at all because you wouldn't know when to laugh. Many liberals believe that if they don't get a joke, it stands to reason that it would probably go over the heads of most people, who are not as smart as they are. Just to be on the safe side, it would probably be better if humor were avoided altogether.

If a magazine decides, however, that it does want to take the risk of publishing satire, in order to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings, satire should always be clearly labeled. As a reader of Andrew Sullivan pointed out, one of our greatest African-American clowns, Spike Lee, opened his film Bamboozled, with a definition of satire, so that no one would think he was being racist -- against black people, that is. If he had not put up this warning before the movie, many people in Hollywood (who might not have realized that Spike Lee is himself black -- yes, it's true! -- because most of them are completely color blind) would have thought that Bamboozled was a racist film and he would have had to go to rehab for alcoholism to save his career. The next time the New Yorker tries to run a satiric cover, they should include a label that says "Satire" in very big letters just as they label all of their advertisements. Although I am not generally in favor of solving problems with legislation, the time may have come when the government needs to mandate warning labels for satire like they do for cigarettes.

The illustration might also have been acceptable if the New Yorker ran it on the inside of the magazine where people who are sensitive to mockery would not have run across it casually on a newsstand. Or they might also have enclosed this issue in a brown paper bag the way pornographic magazines sometimes are to keep it away from the eyes of children and people with heart trouble (how many children have been traumatized for life and how many deaths this cover has caused will only be known in the coming weeks). While the cover may have met the community standards of a place like New York where people apparently don't mean what they say, there are some parts of the country where satire is just not acceptable in public.

Kevin Drum, whose expertise in comedy is rivaled only by his knowledge of politics, helpfully suggested that the illustration should have been in a thought balloon emanating from the head of John McCain. Of course, thought balloons are in and of themselves funny because the whole notion of a person having a balloon coming out of his head is very comedic. Just thinking about it makes me laugh as I type this. I think his main point, however, is that if you are going to use satire, you must make it very clear that you are distancing yourself from the ideas you are expressing. It is much easier to do this in person because you can express the ideas in a funny voice or contort your face or body in a bizarre way so that the listener knows that you are pretending to be someone else, but in print a device like a thought balloon can have the same effect. You would think the editors of the New Yorker would know that. If they need a crash course in what makes something funny, I suggest they take a look at Interiors, one of Woody Allen's earlier, funnier films. The entire film is like a thought balloon coming out of Ingmar Bergman's head.

There is not much the members of the liberal blogosphere and I agree on but I salute them on their efforts to stamp out humor and especially satire and bring more earnestness to our political discourse. The readers of The Daily Kos have been especially vigilant in their War Against Comedy and I commend them for it. I hope that the conservative blogosphere, which sometimes succumbs to very awkward and embarrassing attempts at humor, but fortunately is usually not funny at all, will join with liberals in this crusade. This past week, in fact, both campaigns learned that comedy and presidential politics don't mix. I hope that we can spend the rest of the campaign with the candidates and their surrogates not trying to be funny especially since we are living in very unfunny times. Elections are serious things and there is no room for levity in such a process unless that levity has been carefully scripted by a campaign speechwriter and sometimes not even then.

Update: Kevin Drum wrote me a very nice note: "Ann Althouse misunderstood my point too, so you're in good company......" It is indeed an honor to be in Ms. Althouse's company even if only metaphorically and not literally, which is what I think Mr. Drum meant.

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Carnival of the Insanities

Swift Reactions 8

Drinking Liberally in New Milford and Mike the Mad Biologist have reminded me that this February 3 is the first anniversary of one of the darkest days in the blogosphere, Blogroll Amnesty Day, the day that Atrios of Eschaton intitiated his bloody blogroll massacre, cutting a number of fine smaller blogs from his blogroll, including my good friend skippy, and a number of other big bloggers followed his lead. But a funny thing happened on the way to the bloodletting. A number of smaller bloggers decided they were tired of being pushed around by the A-Listers and decided to fight back by banding together and making their own blogrolls more inclusive instead of more exclusive. So I hope you will all join me, skippy, Barefoot Bum and anyone else who wants to get on board in remembering this great and terrible day and turn the weekend of February 1-3 into a celebration of the power of all the little blogs out there who deserve our support.

I am always eager to help smaller blogs so when I was asked by Pamela Leavey at The Democratic Daily to run an ad whose purpose was to generate some traffic to smaller liberal blogs, I agreed whole-heartedly, despite these bloggers' very misguided politics. (You can see the ad on my sidebar this month. Be sure to click on the links to some of the blogs listed there. And while you're at it, take a look at some of my other sponsors, who have the good taste to advertise here.) Originally, the ad had no picture and I knew that an ad with a picture would attract more attention and get more people to click on it, especially if the picture was eye-catching and even a little provocative, so I added a picture of one of the adorable LOLcats I created for my piece on Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. Ms. Leavey liked the picture and asked for my permission to incorporate it into all of the ads that were running, which I happily granted.

Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos, to his great credit, generously agreed to run the ad as well. I can't tell you how proud I was to see my depiction of a liberal fascist cat in full Nazi regalia captioned with the words "I is a librul" running on the world's biggest liberal blog. I was sure it would be very popular with the readers of the Daily Kos, who are renowned for their great senses of humor and their remarkable ability to laugh at themselves. Unfortunately, I was mistaken.

Almost as soon as the ad began running a Kossack named CMFoster began a campaign to have the ad removed entirely. "All I am asking is that for once we get rid of the offensive material and make the advertiser realize they need to be more responsible for the content they place on this or any other site. To make a cat look like Hitler just make Liberals look worse than we are sometimes already portrayed to be," wrote CMFoster. He was soon joined by a Kossack named Man is 5, who wrote, " Ummm -- what the hell is that "Support Liberal Blogs" ad on the front page? Did you just not notice that the cat looks like Hitler? Am I missing something here? Seems to me Hitler was a fairly conservative individual. And I'm not so sure that promoting liberal blogs with his image, even in adorable kitty form, is such a good idea. What concepts did the client reject?" You might think that they would be in favor of supporting small liberal blogs or that they might have had better causes to put their energy into but instead they decided to hound poor Ms. Leavey, who put a lot of very hard work into this campaign, until she decided that she had no other recourse than to remove the offending graphic. Eventually, she replaced it with another, less provocative picture, my "Librul Treehugger" LOLcat and the Kossacks turned their attention to more pressing matters like whether the New Hampshire primary was rigged by Hillary Clinton and Diebold.

I had heard that Markos was angry about the controversy and so I wrote him to explain the point behind the ad and ask him to express some appreciation for Ms. Leavey's efforts, but it turned out those rumors were false. "Did someone say I was angry? I'm not," he wrote to me in an email. "I'm too swamped with election-related work to feel very strongly one way or another about this." I understand he also wrote a very nice note to Ms. Leavey. Perhaps not all the terrible things they say about Markos are true after all.

But Daily Kos readers are fairly laid back compared with "Ron Paul" supporters, who were not very happy when I wrote that I had never heard of "Ron Paul" and doubted that he even existed since the media never mentioned him. Although someone named Davecore (who may not be a real person either) insisted that "Ron Paul" exists, many of my commenters were skeptical. "I think if Ron Paul was a real person, we would have heard about him by now," said Autumnal Harvest. Yojimbo thought it was suspicious that anyone would have two first names. But new day, who is one of my more informed commenters, said that "Ron Paul" did in fact exist and had a "plan to have the whole country move towards a Wyoming style of government. That is, the law stays out of the way and people settle things by running over one another with their pick-up trucks." Dave Latchaw also believes that "Ron Paul" exists, claiming quite improbably that while "Ron Paul" does not have a website, he does have a blimp, but I'm not quite so gullible as to believe something as ridiculous as that.

I soon attracted the attention of a "Ron Paul" message board and not only did they insult me, calling me an "idiot," they attacked my readers as well. "Read the comments, they are clueless!" wrote Dave Wood. But others took my post and the comments more seriously, believing that they were cause for concern. "Damn... that is not good... What part of the internet we are missing?" wondered frasu haplessly. Pinkmandy, who perhaps was giving us a little too much information when she recounted that she "converted" her gynecologist to "Ron Paul" during a pap smear, answered, "We are missing A LOT of people. We need to organize online and start patrolling the net where "others" are because they obviously aren't finding us. We must find them!" I am not sure what tactics they might come up with to to "find" us "others," but my advice is that if you get a mysterious package in the mail containing a strange pod, whatever you do, don't fall asleep next to it.

Unfortunately, because of the holidays and all of the work I did on my end-of-the-year piece of what bloggers thought were their best posts of 2007, I did not get a chance to write about the response to my Jamie Leigh Jones post, which produced some of the most heated discussion this blog has ever seen. I urge you to take a look at the discussion in its entirety, but I will highlight one interesting exchange. Autumn Harvest (not to be confused with "Autumnal Harvest" mentioned above) had mixed feelings about my post, beginning his comment with an "Ugh," which is never a good sign. "It's a little too much making light of a gang rape," he wrote. "I know this criticism can be leveled at half your posts---making light of torture, making light of the Kafkaesque legal black hole at Guantanamo, etc. . . So I'm not sure I have a good rationale for my dislike, but this post really just doesn't sit with me right somehow." I must say that I am not sure what Mr. Harvest meant by the phrase "making light." Did he mean making something heavy easier to pick up or illuminating something dark?

Mr. Harvest's comment elicited a long response from someone named kulkinator, who wrote, "How DARE we question a rape-accuser???? A FEMALE New York City prosecutor stated that 40% of rape accusations are PROVEN false. A study by Purdue University showed that 40% of rape accusations are later recanted. Now, with those two statistics in mind, depending on what the overlap is between proven-false accusations, and recanted accusations, the false accusation rate for rape is somewhere between 40% and 80%." Ferd applauded kulkinator's skill with arithmetic, writing, "The additive function of your numbers (40% of A + 40% of B = 80% of AB) demonstrates skills that bode well for your ability to carefully analyse the data, evidence and proof in this case" though he took issue with the accuracy of his statistics. L-girl from We Move to Canada was even more pointed in her criticism: "This is a lie," wrote L-girl, who is not one to mince words. "I've worked with Linda Fairstein, the female prosecutor to whom this refers. 40% of the rape charges in her office had to be downgraded to things like 'aggravated sexual assault' and 'sexual misconduct with assault and battery' in order to ensure conviction…. The charges in these 40% of cases were NOT proven false." But my most frequent commenter, Anonymous, offered another statistic based on his very scientific "gut feeling": "The probability of this being a well-planned hoax is over 98%."

I must say that while I appreciate the attempt to bring scientifically rigorous statistical analysis to the subject, all this mathematics makes my head spin and I believe that is true for many of my commenters as well. In fact, I would estimate conservatively that 50% of liberal commenters are bad at mathematics and 50% of my conservative commenters are bad at mathematics, which means that the percentage of commenters here that are bad at mathematics is potentially 100%. So it is possible that none of us is capable of understanding what kulkinator or Anonymous are talking about, including themselves.

Kulkinator was not able to provide an exact statistic for his next claim. "I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a woman say, "I'll scream rape" as a threat to opposing her," he wrote. Though kamakula was able to imagine some scenarios where kulkinator might have heard those words, other commenters found this statement puzzling. "What kind of life you would have to have led to have heard it so many times you have 'lost count' is beyond my imagination," wrote Splendid One, a 60-year-old Vietnam Vet. "There's probably a reason that commenter has heard it over and over again," speculated Carl of Simply Left Behind.

But the attacks leveled at kulkinator were mild compared with some of the criticism directed toward this modest blogger, which often included characterizations of my mental health. "You describe yourself as reasonable. This post, however, proves you're insane," said Anonymous. "You are an ass, and a perfect example of what is wrong with this country. You make me sick," said Patrick. Someone calling himself "You are a brainwashed schill" wrote, "Do you realize how insane you sound?" Proud Vet said, "You got to be the biggest ass I've ever heard. You make me sick thinking you and I are of the same gender."

If commenters are not attacking me for new posts, they are delving deep into my archives to add new attacks to my old ones. Jellsbury recently left a new comment on my post "50 More Conservative Rock Songs" that was not at all complimentary: "Is this a joke?" he wrote. "'Imagine no religion...' quoth John Lennon. As for Randy Newman, "Lord, if you won't take care of us, won't you please just let us be?" His song "Political Science" is SATIRE. And "Born in the USA" is an anti-Vietnam song. Listen to the songs carefully next time before you make a fool of yourself."

Finally, while it is indeed hurtful to receive such criticism from strangers, you cannot imagine the pain I feel when one of my friends launches an unprovoked and scurrilous attack on me. The only explanation I can come up with is that he resorted to such a tactic out of desperation for traffic. Perhaps if I link to his post, and give him the attention he clearly craves, it will shame him into not engaging in such blatant blogwhoring again. But I will forgive him because ultimately, I just want to give peace a chance in the blogosphere, to quote that famous conservative musician John Lennon.

Carnivals: Carnival of the Insanities, Bringing More Traffic to Your Blog Carnival

Journalism 101

Glenn Greenwald and other liberals in the blogosphere have been criticizing respected Time reporter Joe Klein for writing a piece about attempts to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that had a few minor factual errors and accused the Democrats of giving "terrorists the same legal protections as Americans." Time's Managing Editor Rick Stengel eventually responded to the criticism by appending a "correction" to the piece that said, "In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't." That should have ended the controversy right there, but Greenwald persisted, writing, "All Time can say about this matter is that Republicans say one thing and Democrats claim another. Who is right? Is one side lying? What does the bill actually say, in reality? That's not for Time to say. After all, they're journalists, not partisans." Now, like Joe Klein, I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right, but I do know a little something about journalism since I once saw All the President's Men and I worked on my high school newspaper, so I think it would be helpful if bloggers knew the 20 basic "Rules of Journalism" so that they won't pester Joe Klein and other professional journalists too much about journalistic ethics in the future. If any real journalists think I've written something that is inaccurate, let me know and I'll just append a correction way down at the end of the post or delete the inaccuracy altogether and hopefully no one will notice.

The Rules of Journalism

1. Journalists must be completely objective. This is the most important rule of journalism. Objectivity means not having any opinion or feelings whatsoever no matter what the circumstances. This rule was best expressed in a line I recently quoted from Washington Post columnist David Broder, the dean of American journalism, about his response President Kennedy's assassination: "As an ordinary man, I wanted leave the scene, hide somewhere, and weep," Broder said. "But I managed to calm myself and to report the event in the most objective way." As I explained in my earlier piece, "Broder refused to take sides after the President was killed. Was he for the assassination or against it? It was impossible to tell from his reporting. No matter what his personal feelings might have been, as a reporter he had to be objective when it came to whether killing Kennedy was a good thing or a bad thing."

2. There are two sides to every story and a journalist must give both sides equal weight even if he or she knows one side is completely false. Weighing one side against the other violates a journalist's objectivity. (See Rule No. 1.)

3. The only exception to Rules 1 and 2 is that during wartime journalists must be patriotic and not write anything that might undermine the government or the war effort or lower morale. Wearing a flag pin on one's lapel is a good way to demonstrate you are adhering to this rule. Reporters should always remember that they are Americans first, journalists second and human beings third.

4. Because most journalists are liberals, they have to bend over backwards to consider the conservative viewpoint in their articles so that it all evens out in the end. (See Rule No. 1.)

5. If you criticize a Republican you must also criticize a Democrat. If you criticize President Bush, you must also criticize President Clinton.

6. If both liberals and conservatives criticize you, that must mean you are doing something right. If moderates criticize you, too, it probably means that they are leaning one way or the other and aren't really moderate at all. The more people who say you are wrong, the more objective, and hence right, you are. (See Rule No. 1.)

7. Journalists should avoid using anonymous sources unless those sources have a reasonable fear of retribution or have political agendas that would be compromised if their identities were revealed or if refusing to grant them anonymity would limit the journalist's access and give his or her competitors an unfair advantage, which could damage the journalist's career.

8. Journalists must always protect their anonymous sources no matter what those sources' agendas might be and even if those sources misled them or were using them to get back at a political opponent. As Richard Cohen has pointed out, using journalists to publish leaks to assassinate the character of an anonymous source's political opponents is a time-honored tradition and the life-blood of Washington journalism. A journalist's job is to facilitate what Cohen calls "the dark art of Washington politics" not pass judgment on it, which would compromise his or her objectivity. (See Rule No. 1.)

9. Rule No. 8 is so important that journalists should be willing to go to jail to protect anonymous sources, unless someone pressures those sources to sign a waiver or the reporter thinks going to jail would just be too much of a hardship to endure. Besides, you can't do any reporting when you are in jail.

10. Journalists should be as accurate as possible, but sometimes there is not enough time to dot every i and cross every t. Getting the story first is more important than getting it completely right because mistakes can always be fixed with "Corrections" in very small print in another edition, in online "updates" or buried in the "Letters to the Editor" section, which no one ever reads.

11. Journalists should not give money to any political campaigns, participate in any political activities or even vote. Former ABC political director Mark Halperin and Washington Post editor Len Downie don't vote, which is why they are so trustworthy and so respected by other journalists. Just as Catholic priests give up sex, journalists should give up their right to participate in the political process so that they will not have to think too much about whether one side or another is correct. Thinking too hard threatens their objectivity. (See Rule No. 1.)

12. Journalists should not censor a story unless the government or a big advertiser asks them to.

13. Because space in newspapers and magazines is limited there is no room for ideas that are too far out of the mainstream or that challenge the conventional wisdom unless the ensuing controversy would sell more papers or magazines.

14. Plagiarism is strongly discouraged and anyone caught plagiarizing should be fired immediately and never be allowed to work as a journalist again, unless they are prominent or distinguished or a close personal friend of the editor and have a really good explanation, in which case they should be given a second chance or even a third.

15. What someone says is not so important as how they said it, what they were wearing when they said it, or their body language. As long as the details are accurate, it makes no difference how trivial those details are. Journalists should just report the facts, especially facts that give their story "color," and not worry about how important those facts are. (See Rule No. 1.)

16. Reporting on people's personal lives should be avoided unless the Drudge Report or the National Enquirer has already written about it, in which case you can report that they reported on it, which is not the same as reporting on it yourself.

17. Every prominent person should be assumed to be not gay unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary or they are dead, and usually not even then.

18. Victims of sexual crimes should never be named, but those accused of sexual crimes should be named even if their reputations are ruined because they probably wouldn't have been arrested if they weren't guilty of something. Shaming people accused of sexual crimes on television is a good way to discourage other people from committing such crimes, even if it leads to unfortunate consequences.

19. Ruining people's lives is generally frowned upon and should be avoided if at all possible unless the public has a right to know. A journalist must be completely dispassionate and not worry too much about the impact of the story they are writing on the people they are writing about or on the world in general as that would compromise their objectivity. (See Rule No. 1.)

20. If someone criticizes a journalist's reporting, especially if it is a blogger, the best response is to dig in one's heels and deny there is a problem, attack the critic as biased, concede a minor point or claim the criticism itself is trivial. A journalist must defend his or her credibility at all costs because without credibility, a journalist is no journalist at all.
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Update: Go here for some reaction to this piece.

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