Items by Vatz

• President Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech: Conflictedness from The Conflicted Presidency

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  It’s one of those moments that is devastatingly embarrassing to those of us who are neurotic: on the heels of someone’s oleaginous public compliment regarding your profound perspicacity and wisdom, your honest judgment requires you to publicly disagree with that person’s values or policies.
  
  [...]
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  Posted: December 13, 2009, 10:09am EST
  by Vatz

• It’s the Iranian Acquisition of Nuclear Weapons, Stupid: the Centerpiece of President Obama’s Dithering Foreign Policy Failures

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Former Vice President Dick Cheney has used the felicitous phrase “dithering” to characterize President Barack Obama’s lengthy lead-up to his articulating United States foreign policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
  
  I disagree with Vice President Cheney: it is more than a policy-specific Obama weakness; [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 11:15am EST
  by Vatz

• The Parkland Washington Murderous Executions: Mike Huckabee and Rehabilitation Experiments

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  In a genuinely horrific execution-style murder, four Tacoma, Washington police officers -- Tina Griswold, Mark Renninger, Greg Richards and Ronald Owens --were cowardly murdered while completing paperwork on laptop computers in a coffee shop.
  
  The suspected murderer was a man who had had [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 2:49pm EST
  by Vatz

• Three Related General Lessons for Long-term Presidential Governing: Please Take Note, President Obama

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  As a rhetorician who has been around for quite a while, I offer a few related observations on governing, some of which my more youthful compatriots, including President Barack Obama, are seemingly unaware. If some of the following points seem obvious to you, it [...]
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  Posted: November 26, 2009, 1:17pm EST
  by Vatz

• One Conservative’s Take on Sarah Palin: Her Political Significance and the Insincerity of her Supporters and Detractors

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz, Ph.D.
  
  Governor Sarah Palin, as you non-cave-dwellers know, is publicizing her new book, Going Rogue: An American Life. The title is reminiscent of -- and consistent with -- the self-obsessed “maverick” self-anointing of which Sen. John McCain and she were so embarrassingly proud. Could you [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 6:13pm EST
  by Vatz

• Evil Exists and Must Be Presumed in Time of War: The Case of Terrorist Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan

  —Red Maryland

  The case of terrorist Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who on November 5 murdered 13 people and wounded 33 more as he fired upon mostly weaponless victims at Fort Hood, is reflective of the perfect storm of the undeserved and unpatriotic sympathy dictated by the precepts of political correctness.
  [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 10:45am EST
  by Vatz

• Fort Hood Shootings: Fraudulent Psychiatric Analysis and Political Correctness in Dealing with an Evil, Cowardly Killer

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Is Fort Hood mass murderer Maj. Nidal M. Hasan a sociopath, a person who has a personality disorder marked by anti-social thoughts and behavior, a man who may have acted out of "madness," as The Washington Post wonders? Was he motivated by “stress,” as two [...]
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  Posted: November 07, 2009, 9:30am EST
  by Vatz

• The Obama Administration War on Fox News: Reaction of the Liberal Press in General and THE BALTIMORE SUN in Particular

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  Journalistic reactions to the fight between the Obama Administration and Fox News will not go away, and they shouldn’t. No presidential administration in Washington in my lifetime has ever tried to censor a network because that administration disagreed with the alleged politics of that [...]
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  Posted: October 30, 2009, 9:10pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Most Politically Evenhanded Show on National Television, CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” Scores on President Barack Obama-Fox News Controversy

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  As the media continue to be ideologically polarized in their reportage, one major network’s show comes about as close to fair, comprehensive and disinterested analysis as can be found: CNN’s "Reliable Sources" with The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz as moderator.
  
  The issue of [...]
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  Posted: October 20, 2009, 1:18pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Unspeakable Castillo Murders: All’s Not Well That Ends Not as Badly as It Could Have

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Amy Castillo makes a fair argument when she says that she must forgive her ex-spouse for his horrible murdering in a Baltimore hotel bathtub of their 3 children, Athena, 2, Austin, 4 and Anthony, 6. She says that otherwise the “bitterness” and “resentment” would consume [...]
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  Posted: October 15, 2009, 1:22pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Nobel Peace Prize Winner President Barack Obama: A Modest Defense

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  If you’re like me, you woke up to the stunning news that President Barack Obama did not win the 2009 Nobel Prize for literature. The award went instead to Herta Mueller, the Romanian writer who wrote of atrocities she suffered under Communist rule in [...]
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  Posted: October 09, 2009, 9:40am EDT
  by Vatz

• The Charming, Feckless President Barack Obama and the Pending Catastrophe of Iran (Part III): The Final Outcome

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  This is the third blog I have written regarding the efforts (or lack thereof ) evident in President Barack Obama’s strategy to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
  
  Today’s Washington Post’s top headline: “Iran, Major Powers Reach Agreement on Series of [...]
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  Posted: October 02, 2009, 4:04pm EDT
  by Vatz

• THE BALTIMORE SUN and THE WASHINGTON POST: A Little Ideological Fairness Credit Where Credit is Due

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  [Bulletin, if I may...I just learned of the death of William Safire, exquisite speechwriter, columnist and rhetorician. I cannot think of a better conservative than he. We shall all miss his erudition tremendously, as well as his brilliance and decency. -- REV]
  
  I [...]
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  Posted: September 26, 2009, 10:07am EDT
  by Vatz

• Credibility and President Barack Obama

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  It is widely agreed in my field of rhetoric and communication that few qualities of political speakers are more important than their credibility, but as common an evaluational criterion as credibility is, it is used almost interchangeably in two senses: 1. whether one should be [...]
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  Posted: September 18, 2009, 4:32pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” and President Obama’s Errant Depiction of Healthcare and Its Application to Illegal Immigrants: a Suggested Alternative

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  “Rep. Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Republican who rudely and indefensibly yelled out ‘you lie!’ when President Barack Obama addressed immigration, apologized. He should apologize again...it was just appalling, and, rhetorically speaking, such childish rhetoric helps the president.”
  
  In a recent [...]
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  Posted: September 12, 2009, 5:04pm EDT
  by Vatz

• President Barack Obama’s Healthcare Speech: “A” on Delivery; C+ on Substance

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  
  President Obama’s speech tonight was a tour de force if you admire exquisite rhetoric. If your criteria for evaluation include fair and comprehensive addressing of contentious issues, the speech was somewhat less than that.
  
  The president’s clarity and emphasis are simply [...]
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  Posted: September 09, 2009, 10:41pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Wrong Place, Wrong Motives: President Barack Obama’s Nationally Publicized Political Address to Public School Children

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  There is a major brouhaha surrounding Tuesday’s presidential speech to the nation’s schoolchildren. Democrats and liberals claim that the speech is innocuous rhetoric, urging students, in the words of presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs, “to study hard and stay in school,” which is what comedy actor [...]
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  Posted: September 05, 2009, 5:04pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Piling on Mary Jo Kopechne at The Huffington Post: Utterly Irresponsible at Best; Repellent and Obscene at Worst

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  One of the consistent weaknesses of increasingly progressive America is the creation of false victims and the relative unconcern for authentic victims.
  
  The former phenomenon manifests itself in the current iterations of health reform bills which allow for any of the 300+ mental [...]
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  Posted: September 01, 2009, 10:47am EDT
  by Vatz

• Ted Kennedy Jr. ‘s Most Memorable Eulogy for a Most Memorable Father, Senator Edward M. Kennedy

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  The late Senator Edward M. Kennedy was no piker in world-class eulogy competition.
  
  I have remarked on these pages and elsewhere before his death on what should be the most remembered phrase in Sen. Kennedy’s wonderful eulogy of his brother, Sen. Robert [...]
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  Posted: August 30, 2009, 10:57am EDT
  by Vatz

• The Death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy: What Should One Emphasize in Eulogizing Him?

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  When newspapers have significant warning of an icon’s death, you can bet that the next day the obituaries will be of a small book’s length, and so it was in The Washington Post and The New York Times today, pursuant to the death of Senator [...]
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  Posted: August 26, 2009, 4:47pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Follow-Up to the Despicable Freeing of the Despicable Lockerbie Mass Murderer

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  
  I would not normally follow up a Red Maryland posting with an update. This update below, however, is quite pertinent to that posting of mine on the indefensible and terrifyingly irresponsible Scottish caving to terrorists in which, as I described in the earlier [...]
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  Posted: August 22, 2009, 3:37pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Freeing of the Despicable Lockerbie Mass Murderer; Inexplicable, Contemptible Scottish "Compassion" and Feckless Disapproval from President Obama

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  It is the second most horrible nightmare – just after the obscenity of mass murder itself -- of everyone who distrusts weak and flabby criminal justice systems: the unqualified releasing of a mass murderer. That murderer was Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of [...]
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  Posted: August 21, 2009, 11:03am EDT
  by Vatz

• The Washington Post's Excellent Foray into Intensity of Public Opinion: Will All Serious Media Follow Suit?

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  For years I have been writing about the invalid media public opinion polls which preponderantly inhabit our political landscape. People wonder why so many polls are wrong beyond their margins of error. Neil Newhouse of the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll stated after the 2008 New [...]
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  Posted: August 16, 2009, 4:57pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Senator Ben Cardin’s Health-Care Town Meeting at Towson University: A democratic Democrat with Guts, but Substantively Unsatisfying

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  I attended Senator Ben Cardin’s Towson University town meeting yesterday, and I can provide some first-hand observations of the meeting and the discussed issues.
  
  First, there was much anger in the crowd from people worried that health care reform threatens the health care [...]
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  Posted: August 11, 2009, 12:10pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Aysha Ring Verdict Outrage: A Broken System Overseen by Supercilious Mental Health Professionals

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  The legal case of the savage slitting of Aysha Ring’s throat by a vicious killer has ended in an outrageously invalid verdict: the perpetrator was found “Not Criminally Responsible.” I have written about the particulars of the case in The Baltimore Sun [...]
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  Posted: August 07, 2009, 11:06am EDT
  by Vatz

• Sgt. James Crowley, Professor Henry Gates, Jr. and President Barack Obama: (With Apologies to Lewis Carroll) The Stupidest Beer Party That Ever Was

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  This is the third and last blog I shall write on the Crowley-Gates-Obama drama. A significant drama will have a moral, but this one, as Shakespeare might have said, was a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It was not told by [...]
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  Posted: July 31, 2009, 3:58pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Sgt. James Crowley Should Reject President Barack Obama’s Offer Unless He (Crowley) Acted Improperly

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  I have blogged on the publicly available and relevant issues raised in the Sgt. James Crowley-Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. confrontation and President Barack Obama’s reaction. As that blog indicated, when one examines the indisputable components of the evidence, “this was no example of [...]
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  Posted: July 25, 2009, 5:18pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Sgt. James Crowley-Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Confrontation and President Barack Obama’s Reaction: Reasonable Observer Inferences

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Let me begin by saying that in all complicated, dramatic confrontations there are relevant nuances that make impossible some certain conclusions.
  
  The dispute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, between Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is one of those. Still, let [...]
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  Posted: July 24, 2009, 5:12pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Walter Cronkite Eulogies: That’s Not Quite the Way It Was

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  When an iconic journalist is better than all of his peers but is still flawed, should he be eulogized as flawless? The eulogies to CBS’s anchor of anchor’s, Walter Cronkite, are nostalgically worshipping, over-the-top, and in many cases partly inaccurate.
  
  One of the best, [...]
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  Posted: July 19, 2009, 3:23pm EDT
  by Vatz

• President Barack Obama at the NAACP Centennial: Moving, Charming, but a Profile in Lack of Courage

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  I have written regarding President Barack Obama’s expropriation of the conservative god term “responsibility” and have questioned his consistency and sincerity in his support of that value, with the caveat that I didn’t know whether he was “intentionally deceiving the American People.”
  
  I still [...]
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  Posted: July 17, 2009, 5:14pm EDT
  by Vatz

• President Barack Obama and the Pending Catastrophe of Iran (Part II): When Does Iran Pass the Rubicon?

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  Many citizens, cognizant of the catastrophic consequence of Iran’s acquiring nuclear weapons, are observing subtle rhetorical changes in President Barack Obama’s addressing of the issue.
  
  Today (Friday, July 10, 2009), according to a report in Reuters, the president warned Iran that [...]
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  Posted: July 10, 2009, 5:12pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Egregiously Irresponsible Media: Iran Careers Toward Apocalyptic International Crisis While Michael Jackson Reported as Still Dead

  —Red Maryland

  "It happened during baseball season, so the [San Francisco] Chronicle didn't cover it." – Tom Lehrer on a perennial media shortcoming
  
  
  It is the worst of times, and most major media – especially electronic media -- think that the specter of international crisis is less important to' [...]
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  Posted: July 03, 2009, 9:45pm EDT
  by Vatz

• President Barack Obama and President Ronald Reagan: “The Great Placater” vs. “The Great Communicator”

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  President Barack Obama and former President Ronald Reagan have a lot in common, personality-wise. They respectively are and were eminently likable, generally unthreatened personalities who can and could articulate their agenda with understandable, passionate prose. They both understand and understood how to marshal public [...]
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  Posted: June 27, 2009, 5:06pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Pending Catastrophe: The Incipient Failure of the Barack Obama Anti-Nuclear Proliferation Policy

  —Red Maryland

  
  
  “The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish…all forms of human life.” John F. Kennedy Inaugural, 1961
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This was not the only [...]
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  Posted: June 21, 2009, 10:25pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Apologies: How to Say You’re Sorry for an Obscenity: Erik von Brunn’s Apology for His Father’s Attack at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  I have always been fascinated by the never-ending rhetorical debate over what makes for a sincere apology. Apologies take many forms, from an ingenuous appeal for forgiveness (i.e. the apologizing principal really regrets what he/she or someone related or in his or her [...]
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  Posted: June 14, 2009, 3:20pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Formerly Hilarious David Letterman: Now Beyond the Palin

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  The adjudication of the public clash between the once-brilliant and now ugly CBS comic David Letterman and Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin is not a close call. David Letterman’s comments are indefensible -- and this writer is one who thought Palin should not have been [...]
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  Posted: June 12, 2009, 11:38am EDT
  by Vatz

• Liberal Media Watch: June 7, 2009, An Unusually Good Day for THE WASHINGTON POST and THE BALTIMORE SUN

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  On local radio and television periodically and in a class I run consistently, I respectively engage in and teach Media Criticism.
  
  The fact that liberal biases inhere in most newspapers doesn’t mean: 1. that all newspapers are liberal; 2. that generally liberal newspapers [...]
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  Posted: June 07, 2009, 3:57pm EDT
  by Vatz

• President Barack Obama in Egypt: “A New Beginning” Through a Channeling of JFK

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo, Egypt, was tentatively titled (and called for) “A New Beginning” in American-Muslim relations. His plea echoed his rhetorical hero John F. Kennedy’s call for such generally for America in the latter’s Inaugural forty-eight plus years ago. In addition President [...]
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  Posted: June 04, 2009, 3:01pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Charge: Judge Sonia Sotomayor Made a Racist Comment in a 2001 Speech; One Conservative Blogger’s Verdict: Not Guilty Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

  —Red Maryland

  -- Richard E. Vatz
  
  As one often involved in discussion of politics and public policy, I have some familiarity with the claim that a quote is taken out of context.
  
  Sometimes a quote is strategically taken so dishonestly out of context that it bears no genuine [...]
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  Posted: May 29, 2009, 10:44pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Howard Kurtz and Reliable Sources (Part Two)

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  I continue to be fascinated by WASHINGTON POST scribe Howard Kurtz and his CNN show, “Reliable Sources” (RS).
  
  The show is about media criticism, and I have taught a course entitled “Media Criticism” for over 15 years at Towson University.
  
  [...]
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  Posted: May 24, 2009, 5:55pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Smooth Barack Obama vs. the Rough-Around-the-Edges Dick Cheney: The False Dilemma of Principle vs. No Principle

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  The speeches were as contrasting as 2 speeches could be.
  
  President Barack Obama emphasized his concept of American values as not only intrinsically better than the concept of those who he claims ignore legal restrictions on torture, for example, but also instrumentally better [...]
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  Posted: May 21, 2009, 3:22pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Establishment War Values Thus Far of President Barack Obama

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  THE WASHINGTON POST on May 16, 2009 sports a cartoon from my hometown newspaper, THE PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, in which President Obama says, while reading from a teleprompter, “Warrantless Wiretaps are needed to fight terror…I’ve ordered a troop surge in Afghanistan …releasing the torture photos would [...]
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  Posted: May 16, 2009, 4:06pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Journalistically Irresponsible Brian Williams and the NBC Sanitized News

  —Red Maryland

  -- Richard E. Vatz
  
  I think I have rarely seen such a sanitized news report as Brian Williams' in the May 11, 2009 NBC Nightly News segment on The White House Correspondents Association Dinner held over the weekend.
  
  The critical facts were these: Comedian Wanda' [...]
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  Posted: May 11, 2009, 10:44pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Newspaper Political Bias and former and current Washington Post Ombudsmen, Deborah Howell and Andrew Alexander

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  If there is a serious and convincing argument that there is little or no left-wing political bias in most of the major mainstream U.S. newspaper news and op-ed pages, I have yet to hear it. The best counter argument is that there are some print [...]
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  Posted: May 03, 2009, 2:18pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Barack Obama’s 4/29/09 Press Conference: Speaker Extraordinaire; Policy Wonk; But Quality as Commander-in-Chief Unknown

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Last night’s presidential press conference, held on Barack Obama’s 100th day in office, was representative of what we already knew about the Chief Executive: he’s rhetorically brilliant (by which I mean persuasively efficacious) – perhaps, if too early to say with certainty, the most brilliant [...]
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  Posted: April 30, 2009, 10:22am EDT
  by Vatz

• Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania: a Profile in Political Expediency and Lack of Integrity

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter has announced that he will switch parties today to become a Democratic Senator. The switch is politically significant, as it will provide the Democrats with their filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority, despite the Senator’s claim in his statement announcing his intention that he [...]
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  Posted: April 28, 2009, 1:41pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Rhetoric of "Torture," President Barack Obama, and the Banana Republic Laureates

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  
  First off, let's be clear that the issue is Bush Administration legal opinions regarding interrogations and what to do about claims of legal errors, not what to do about soldiers' committing war crimes.
  
  As THE WASHINGTON POST tells the story, “President [...]
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  Posted: April 24, 2009, 3:10pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Maryland General Assembly’s Death Penalty Folly: An IIlustrative Application of Reckless Legislation

  —Red Maryland

  Patrick Albert Byers Jr. has been convicted by a federal jury in the contract killing of Carl Stanley Lackl, an innocent and brave witness to Byers’ running with a gun from a killing.
  
  After Byers’ arrest and about a week before his trial, Mr. Lackl was prepared to [...]
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  Posted: April 18, 2009, 3:17pm EDT
  by Vatz

• President Barack Obama's Foreign Policy à la Carter: the Embarrassment of Power and Blame America First

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Jeane Kirkpatrick, the first woman U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and preeminent Reaganophile, must be turning over in her grave. Scratch that: she would regard such a reaction as non-productive; she must be trying to warn us from the grave.
  
  [...]
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  Posted: April 11, 2009, 4:27pm EDT
  by Vatz

• U.S. Corporations’ Few Bad Men: The Washington Post’s Lisa de Moraes’ Heads-up on a Fox Abomination

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  When in 1962 the steel industry raised prices, constituting what President John F. Kennedy thought was an unjustifiable increase, he famously said, “My father always told me that all businessmen were sons-of-bitches, but I never believed him until now.”
  
  I must make my [...]
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  Posted: April 08, 2009, 9:31pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Pornographic Movies at the University of Maryland: Freedom of Speech and Other Issues

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  The bare facts of the University of Maryland (UMd) porn kerfuffle are as follows: the university had ratified a student programming committee’s decision to show a porn flick, “Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge, “ in College Park’s student union. Maryland Sen. Andy Harris threatened -- and [...]
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  Posted: April 06, 2009, 12:05am EDT
  by Vatz

• The Maryland General Assembly Restriction of the Death Penalty: the Prospect of Blood on Their Hands

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  Gov. Martin O’Malley has indicated he is going to sign into law in the next few weeks new restrictions on Maryland’s death penalty. The limits will allow the state’s prosecutors to seek the ultimate penalty in qualified cases only wherein the evidence against the [...]
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  Posted: March 29, 2009, 12:14am EDT
  by Vatz

• Barack Obama’s Beloved “Hail Fellow Well Met” Presidency: Diminishing Returns?

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  We tend to get presidents who lack the most offensive personal qualities of their predecessors. It is similar to the hiring of executives. At Towson we had a terrible provost years ago, and when we chose the new one (who has already been hired to [...]
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  Posted: March 25, 2009, 10:51am EDT
  by Vatz

• 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft Interviews Barack Obama and Avoids Follow-up Questions: Grade of C-

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  In the plethora of interviews and public appearances by President Barack Obama of late, one expects the most serious and informative exchanges to come from the gold standard of interview shows: "60 Minutes."
  
  Regarding the “60 Minutes” interview by Steve Kroft of President Obama [...]
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  Posted: March 22, 2009, 9:35pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Non-homophobic, Righteous Duke Hatred and University of North Carolina Reverence: The New Republic’s Libel of UNC Fans

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  For a long time I have had a love/hate relationship with the liberal, centrist opinion journal, The New Republic (TNR). Some of the best writing on domestic issues and foreign policy, especially on the former for the non-Kucinichian left and on the latter for [...]
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  Posted: March 20, 2009, 12:19pm EDT
  by Vatz

• President Barack Obama’s Disingenuous Expropriation of “Responsibility”

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Expropriation of a political opponent’s issues and primary values is both a time-honored and time-dishonored practice. It is a method of weakening one’s opponents’ constituency by taking away their causes célèbres and claiming them as one’s own. Thus, in Maryland, we have seen serial attempts [...]
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  Posted: March 10, 2009, 11:51am EDT
  by Vatz

• Democratic Fatuities in Attacks on Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  Matt Lauer asked Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, the umpteenth variation of the question liberal Democrats and liberal Democratic supporters have been asking all week: do you support Rush Limbaugh when he says he “wants the policies of Barack Obama [...]
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  Posted: March 04, 2009, 5:44pm EST
  by Vatz

• Howard Kurtz and Relatively Reliable Sources

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  For those of us interested in media criticism (and for those of us who have taught a course \called\ “Media Criticism,” for, say, about 15 years), there is no better a consistent source than CNN’s “Reliable Sources” every Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. [...]
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  Posted: March 01, 2009, 5:56pm EST
  by Vatz

• President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Non-State of the Union Address: Feel-Good Fantasy

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  About President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Non-State of the Union Address, a few observations:
  
  1. There are some certain verities which will last throughout the Obama presidency: this is one of the fine presidential speakers of the last 50 years, a list [...]
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  Posted: February 24, 2009, 11:13pm EST
  by Vatz

• Papal Fallibility: Say it ain't so, Pope Benedict XVI

  —Red Maryland

  -- Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  No doubt you are aware of the controversy surrounding the Pope's reinstating of the execrable Bishop Richard Williamson. [A good reader claims the "reinstatement" description is imprecise, and that "de-excommunicated" is correct. Perhaps. I do not see, however, that such imprecision, if he' [...]
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  Posted: February 15, 2009, 1:27pm EST
  by Vatz

• Obama’s Mini-Me: E.J. Dionne, a Once Must-Read Columnist

  —Red Maryland

  -- Richard E. Vatz
  
  In the ignominious history of politicians who used regular newspaper columnists as mouthpieces, sometimes in return for access, now comes Barack Obama and E.J. Dionne, Obama’s Mini-Me. Other presidents have had similar arrangements, including Walter Winchell and, in perhaps his only near-scandal, columnist George [...]
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  Posted: February 09, 2009, 5:00pm EST
  by Vatz

• The “Liberal Mainstream Media:” Too Broad a Brush (The Dana Milbank Example)

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  I hear the phrases “the liberal media” and “the liberal mainstream media” all the time, and I may have inadvertently used the phrases myself. Still, I shouldn’t do so without a qualifier, and neither should you. It oversimplifies the phenomenon of print and electronic media [...]
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  Posted: February 03, 2009, 1:05pm EST
  by Vatz

• Congratulations to Michael Steele on Becoming RNC Chair! Comeuppance is Sweet, but Successful Leadership and Politicking Are the Best Revenge

  —Red Maryland

  -- Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  Weeks following the zenith of the outcry over the contemptible “Barack the Magic Negro” CD, first aired in 2007 on Rush Limbaugh’s show, which was sent by one of his opponents to the Republican National Committee and others, Michael Steele has won [...]
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  Posted: January 31, 2009, 11:14am EST
  by Vatz

• President Barack Obama's Inaugural: a Few Not Overly Critical Thoughts

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  It was, I believe, Sen. J. William Fulbright who said that a presidential honeymoon period -- during which a newly elected president is given significant latitude before negative political judgment is made – should be about nine months. If that period of time is enough [...]
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  Posted: January 20, 2009, 8:03pm EST
  by Vatz

• Raven Ecstasy

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Fellow Conservatives, there is something presumptuous about an academic's opining on football, but what a game!
  
  Some reactions, if I may:
  
  Incredible 13-10 victory (one conservative fan -- ahem -- had predicted a 16-13 victory by the Ravens).
  
  So exciting a [...]
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  Posted: January 10, 2009, 8:56pm EST
  by Vatz

• Baltimore City Scandal Prospects

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Just a few quick initial reactions to the indictments this week of Mayor Sheila Dixon and Baltimore City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton.
  
  Intuitively, there is some incredulity for the casual observer because the political agents charged do not have the public arrogance usually [...]
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  Posted: January 09, 2009, 2:42pm EST
  by Vatz

• One Sick Prognosis

  —Red Maryland

  Richard E. Vatz, Ph.D.
  
  
  From Today's WASHINGTON TIMES (January 7, 2009)
  
  ------------------------------------------
  
  "Almost half of college-aged individuals had a psychiatric disorder in the past year."
  
  
  
  That is the main result of a widely publicized, allegedly scientific study just printed in the [...]
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  Posted: January 07, 2009, 6:57am EST
  by Vatz

• Despicable Racial Slurs: President-elect Obama and Right Wing Racial Malice

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Despicable racial slurs are being made against President-elect Barack Obama, and they are being aided and abetted (or at least not opposed) by some mainstream conservatives and Republicans.
  
  For almost four decades there has been a compelling conservative case made that accusations of [...]
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  Posted: December 28, 2008, 9:53am EST
  by Vatz

• Good Marks*

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  Well, Mark, notwithstanding your gratuitous attack on my erstwhile, middle-aged intellectual brunette predilections, I have been listening for over an hour, and it is a wonderfully interesting show.
  
  So I can communicate firmly that Mark and I are not turning Red Maryland into personal [...]
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  Posted: December 26, 2008, 5:39pm EST
  by Vatz

• Non-incumbent Politicians on Television and Radio: Problematic Only to Single Party Advocates

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  My friend at The Baltimore Sun (no, discerning readers, that is not an oxymoron), David Zurawik, last week wrote on his "Z on TV" blog that former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and a variety of politicians' regular appearances on radio and [...]
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  Posted: December 19, 2008, 11:41am EST
  by Vatz

• Mayor Sheila Dixon et al. and the Baltimore City Stealth Raise: Rhetorical NotaClueism -- Part II

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Following cascading criticism born from her defending a decision to take a raise in this economically disastrous time (see post below), Mayor Dixon reversed her decision (for this year's raise money -- the raise accrues to her base) and said, "You sleep on things; you [...]
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  Posted: December 12, 2008, 11:12am EST
  by Vatz

• Mayor Sheila Dixon: Rhetorical NotaClueism

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  There is little a rhetorician can add to the excellent extant political analysis on WBAL and in The Baltimore Sun regarding Mayor Sheila Dixon's decision to keep her $3,700 pay raise at a time of many of her constituents' recession-induced penury. Rhetorically, however, there are [...]
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  Posted: December 11, 2008, 9:19am EST
  by Vatz

• The Horrible Murder of Aysha D. Ring and the Insanity of the Insanity Plea

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Last week I was on Ron Smith's WBAL radio show for about 40 minutes talking about the invalid mental health survey findings discussed in the American Medical Association journal, The Archives of General Psychiatry, which were the basis for estimations that nearly half of all [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2008, 4:37pm EST
  by Vatz

• Academic Politics as a Fluid Concern

  —Red Maryland

  -- Richard E. Vatz
  
  I just returned from my annual convention of the National Communication Association (NCA), my main academic organization. I went with concern, because not only does my national professional organization have a history of being liberal, it also has a history of a prevailing bias [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2008, 9:38pm EST
  by Vatz

• Presidential Election 2008: Post-Mortems

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  First and foremost, congratulations, President-elect Barack Obama. You deserve and will surely have the country’s full support on matters regarding non-controversial and even quasi-controversial initiatives for your first, say, 9 months in office. Regarding the rest of your agenda, there will still be the loyal [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2008, 10:28am EST
  by Vatz

• Saturday Night Live's Partially Redemptive Pre-Election Show

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  I have on these pages over the last bunch of weeks been cataloguing the Saturday Night Live (SNL) humor respecting the 2008 presidential election. It has been unmistakably clear that generally SNL has sacrificed its impartiality and comedic integrity en route to providing otherwise funny satire [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2008, 1:37am EST
  by Vatz

• The Charismatic Senator Obama Presents an Infomercial: Information Lacking and Criticisms Unaddressed

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  Watching Barack Obama tonight was like witnessing a microcosm of his entire campaign – slickly produced; speciously argued; and revelatory of the least grating successful national politician I have seen since Ronald Reagan.
  
  He presented a handful of middle class Americans who [...]
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  Posted: October 29, 2008, 9:20pm EDT
  by Vatz

• Guilt Saturday Night Live-style

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  Saturday Night Live (SNL) historically has been pro-liberal and pro-Democratic in its humor –albeit with shots at both sides -- but has from time to time indicated an effort to reverse one-sidedness. When, earlier this year, the show heavy-handedly supported Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama and [...]
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  Posted: October 26, 2008, 10:44am EDT
  by Vatz

• Baltimore Sun Op-Ed: 'Parity' Through Back Door

  —Red Maryland

  'Parity' through back door
  
  Controversial and costly mental health coverage mandate is slipped through on back of bailout bill
  
  By Richard E. Vatz and Jeffrey A. Schaler
  October 23, 2008
  
  Psychiatric self-interest groups have tried for years to force insurance companies to cover the treatment [...]
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  Posted: October 23, 2008, 8:17am EDT
  by Vatz

• Tenured Radicals -- Prototypical Judgment Quality

  —Red Maryland

  Ever wonder if the craziness and anti-patriotism of some in my profession are exaggerated? Mark Newgent informs me that "The American Educational Research Association [AERA]...members recently elected [William] Ayers the head of its curriculum studies division. That means his radical brand of education philosophy has further entrenched itself into the [...]
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  Posted: October 22, 2008, 10:23pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Ron Smith Show Fans Monthly Meeting

  —Red Maryland

  Red Maryland devotees...not to take your attention away from the important posts below, but you should be aware of the following Ron Smith Show Fans Monthly Meeting on Friday...
  
  Richard E. Vatz
  
  
  
  Event: The Ron Smith Show Fans Monthly Meeting
  Date: October 24, 2008
  Time: 5:00 [...]
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  Posted: October 20, 2008, 12:13pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Third Presidential Debate: Good Night for McCain

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  I am aware of the two possible interpretations of my title – do I mean Sen. McCain had a “good night,” or do I mean that I think it is all over for his presidential chances? I believe both.
  
  Let me start at [...]
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  Posted: October 15, 2008, 11:43pm EDT
  by Vatz

• The Second Presidential Debate: McCain Plays Singles Hitter When Grand Slam is Needed

  —Red Maryland

  --Richard E. Vatz
  
  It’s two outs, bottom of the ninth; home team trailing by 3; bases are loaded; and the losing team lines up singles hitters.
  
  To add to this and produce a mixed metaphor, the visiting team plays prevent defense and secures the victory.
  
  [...]
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  Posted: October 07, 2008, 11:38pm EDT
  by Vatz