The Weekly Sift

I ignored the buzz surrounding Diane Sawyer’s interview with Bruce Jenner back in April. It wasn’t a well-thought-out decision, I just didn’t have much I wanted to say.

Then this week, when social media was dominated by Jenner’s re-emergence as Caitlyn on the cover of Vanity Fair, I realized the reaction against Jenner gave me a news hook on which to hang some thoughts I’ve been mulling about the mindset of social conservatism. That turned into “What’s So Scary About Caitlyn Jenner?”, which still needs a lot of polishing, but will be out sometime this morning.

The weekly summary will discuss the changes in the Patriot Act, more on the Duggars, the bizarre turn in the Christian persecution complex as the Supremes get ready to rule on marriage equality, why a hopeless presidential campaign can be a good career move (if you’re a Republican), and two dueling videos about the food industry. That post also still needs a lot of work, so I’m not predicting when it will appear.

This week my 2016 Speech series covers its first Democrat: Bernie Sanders. As you can probably predict, I like what Bernie is saying. But liberals like me still have questions to consider: Is his candidacy just a little too quixotic? And if Hillary is going to be the nominee anyway — and if nobody remotely reasonable is going to win the Republican nomination — should we already be worrying about the fall campaign instead? Or is it important that somebody plant the progressive flag, whether he wins or not?

A second featured article arose when a section of the weekly summary got out of hand. An explanation of Michael Newdow’s new strategy to use the RFRA in getting “In God we trust” off our money became a more general “Turning the Theocracy Against Itself”.

The weekly summary has a lot of parts that nearly turned into articles: the Irish marriage equality referendum, the Santa Barbara oil spill (which is partly my fault), the political fault line between big business and small business, and the bizarre opinions of the woman who is now Israel’s top diplomat. Since the weekly word limit was already blown away, I figured I might as well have a double closing: a great cartoon about the power of unions, and Coldplay’s attempt to turn Game of Thrones into a musical.

The theocracy article should post shortly, and the Sanders article around ten or so (EDT). Expect the weekly summary before noon.

I’m back from my break to go on a one-stop speaking tour, and it’s been an eventful couple of weeks. Unfortunately, a lot of what has been buzzing around the media has been articles that usually get bookmarked in my Crazy folder, the kind of stories where my first reaction isn’t “What happened?” but “Somebody really did that?”

So yes, residents of Bastrop, Texas (pop. 7,218) really did grill a U.S.  lieutenant colonel about whether he was planning a military takeover of their town, complete with gun confiscation. (When he said no, they didn’t believe him.) Kids on their way to a prom in Colorado really did stop to pose for pictures with guns and a Confederate flag. Anti-Muslim extremists in the U.S. really did hold a Muhammad cartoon contest, and two gun-wielding Muslims really did fall for that bait and get themselves killed.

I’ve often puzzled over how the Sift should respond to such stuff — sometimes the incident or rumor has already gotten too much attention, so covering it just makes it worse — and so this week I’m trying something new: I’m introducing my Crazy Scale, based on the color-coded fire-danger scale you see in the national parks. It’s for stories where the question you really need answered is: “How concerned should I be?” In other words: Can you safely ignore this bit of craziness? Can you laugh and move on? Or does it deserve more of your attention than that?

That’s the featured article this week. It’s almost done, and should be out before 8 EDT. In the weekly summary, we’ve got a bunch of new presidential candidates, including Bernie Sanders, who will get a longer article next week. (In general, I’m trying not to make the Sift all-2016, all-the-time. So I’ll get around to Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina in my own good time, and Mike Huckabee already shows up in the crazy-scale article.) A lot of interesting discussion came out of the Baltimore riot. There’s more about the complexity of public opinion on abortion. And we’ll close with a musical trip to Negrotown, guided by Key & Peele. I’m aiming to have that out around 11.

I was only going to do a short weekly-summary note on the House passing a repeal of the estate tax. But then I started reading conservative blogs arguing against the “death tax”, and remembering what I learned from being executor of my father’s estate. It got too long for the summary, so it turned into one of this week’s featured articles: “Death, Taxes, and the American Dream”.  That should be out sometime around 8 EDT. (I’m back home in the East.)

The other featured article continues the 2016 speech series by looking at Marco Rubio’s announcement speech. Short version: If your campaign is about being the new face with new ideas for a new century, you really ought to include one of those new ideas in your speech. Because “we need new ideas” is not a new idea. Gary Hart tried it in 1984, and his campaign started going south when Walter Mondale asked: “Where’s the beef?”

The weekly summary includes the debate about Social Security that Chris Christie started. And attending a Christie town hall meeting in New Hampshire Wednesday — I’ll get to the content of it some other week — caused me to make some observations about the importance of town hall meetings. (Christie is really good at them.) Also: a medical ethics professor live-tweeted from the abstinence-sex-education presentation the public schools inflicted on her son, and the North Carolina legislature is debating a proposal that would pretty much wreck the Research Triangle.

I’ll close the summary with a new sports craze from Germany. It involves a ping-pong table, a miniature soccer ball, and your head. My neck aches just from watching it.

Expect the Rubio article around 9 and the weekly summary by 11.

Last week I finally had to recognize that the 2016 campaign had started. This week I begin covering it. I plan to do a series where I look at the stump speeches of all the major candidates, because I’ve learned in past campaigns that often they’re saying something different from what is being covered in the mainstream press.

So this week I need two featured posts: one to explain what the series is and the other to get it started by examining Ted Cruz announcement speech at Liberty University. They’re both more-or-less done, so they should be out shortly.

In the weekly summary, there’s still the “religious freedom” controversy, which I’ll catch up on and explain how I think the law ought to balance the competing values involved (as it seems to be doing in Colorado). But the more important development of the week was the announcement of the framework of a nuclear deal with Iran. And there was a massacre in Africa. I’ll close with a stand-up routine by Trevor Noah, who has been named as the next host of The Daily Show.

I’m writing from Arizona rather than my usual New Hampshire, so the usual schedule may slip a little. In the Eastern time zone, the weekly summary may not appear until afternoon.