Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Global Warming - 8/31/06

I’m not a scientist, just a middle-aged journalist with a bias in favor of common sense. What my own methodology tells me about global warming is this: If it walks like a duck, has feathers, a bill, and quacks violently when distressed, it is probably not Lindsay Lohan.

Which is to say – of course there is global warming, and of course it is changing our climate. Shovel a lot of snow in January, did you? The ten warmest years in history have all come since 1990.

We no longer have the luxury of listening to ignorant or corrupt politicians argue that global warming doesn’t exist. Well, I suppose I personally could afford that luxury; I don’t have any children and the climate will probably still be tolerable for the few decades I have left. However, I have the curious idea that we ought to try to leave this planet in good enough shape for future generations to mess up.

Consider this: I don’t think even the most hardened laissez-faire capitalist or devoted anarchist would argue that anyone has the right to spit in the city water supply. I wasn’t going to say spit, but you get the idea. We are fouling the earth’s climate. We have been doing this for decades, of course.

There are plenty of parcels of land in Detroit, or Novosibirsk, so polluted, that no one will put anything there, since it would cost more to clean up the ground than it is worth. They didn’t know better when they poured that old motor oil and those lead-based chemicals into the earth in 1926, but we certainly do know better in 2006.

For politicians, however, one thing hasn’t changed.

Future generations can’t vote yet, and they certainly can’t make campaign contributions. We could do like every other generation, and leave it to them to clean up our mess. But here’s the problem.

It will be too late. Dr. Henry Pollack is one of the nation’s most distinguished climatologists, and he tells us that the damage that will be changing our climate for the next half-century has already been done and is just cycling through the atmosphere. What we do now and in the future will damage the earth after that.

Years ago, I thought that if a tombstone were ever to be erected to the human race, it would read, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” Now, of course, I realize that it will say something very different. “We knew it was really stupid,” our epitaph may read. “But we went ahead and did it anyway.”

 

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Interview: Henry Pollack - 8/31/06

The period from January through July has been the warmest it has ever been since records have been kept.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also says the ten hottest years have all occurred since 1990. Dr. Henry Pollack studies the temperature of the earth; he taught geophysics at the University of Michigan for more than 40 years.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about global warming earlier this year.

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Essay: A Press Conference Fixture - 8/30/06

For years, Helen Thomas was a fixture at nationally televised White House news conferences. She was the short lady who always wore red to catch the eye of whomever was President, and who traditionally asked the first question.

These days, this President doesn’t call on her any more. She has gone from being a hard news reporter to being a columnist, and President Bush doesn’t like what she has to say.

There are those who see her as a peevish and partisan nag, a scowling old lady who asks irritating questions. Indeed, at one time or another, she has ticked off every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But to me, she is someone who deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award our nation can bestow. She also deserves far more recognition from the feminist community for what she has done for women in journalism.

Let’s talk first about what she has done for women. She became a reporter in an era when women didn’t go into journalism and when no woman could never have dreamed of covering politics in Washington – especially not women of her background.

Helen Thomas was the daughter of working-class Lebanese immigrants who settled in Detroit. She took off for Washington – she said to visit a friend – during World War II and never looked back.

She became White House bureau chief for UPI when United Press was still a very big deal. And she smashed through every glass ceiling they put in her way. Women couldn’t join the National Press Club or the Gridiron Club. Helen, of course, eventually did both.

Martha Mitchell confided in her and gave her scoops during Watergate. Helen competed hard against the AP’s White House bureau chief till he retired . . . and then she married him. She kept her opinions to herself those days, and deep down, even Richard Nixon knew she was fair.

These days, she lets her opinions hang out. She is a liberal, and a proud one. But she is prouder of being an American, and a journalist. “Democracy dies behind closed doors,” she likes to say, and that maxim is behind virtually every question she asks.

Long before almost everyone else, she was asking the White House why they were so sure there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and why they thought they had enough troops to secure the situation. She opposed the war, and openly thinks that this President has violated the law and abused his public trust.

But everyone who knows Helen Thomas knows that if she is still working when the next liberal president takes office, she will make him -- or her -- sweat too. Democracy does die behind closed doors.

Let’s wish Helen Thomas, good luck at kicking a few more of them open.

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Interview: Thomas Thomas - 8/30/06

Detroit native Helen Thomas has been asking U.S. Presidents tough questions since John F. Kennedy took office, and at 86, she is still at it.  After many years as United Press International’s White House correspondent, she now has a syndicated column that allows her to express her own views for the first time in her career. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with her earlier this year.

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Essay: On Maneuvers - 8/29/06

A couple years ago, some Army recruiters asked if they could come make a pitch to a large lecture class I was teaching. It was already clear that the war in Iraq wasn’t going according to script.

None of the students seemed tempted, though a couple later said they wouldn’t mind being in the army, if only there wasn’t a war. I spent some time talking to one of the recruiters, a captain with a wry sense of humor. I mentioned the recruiting slogan, “An Army of One.”

He said. “Do you want to know what we say that really means? An army of one is what’s left when you subtract all the men in Iraq, on their way to Iraq, or on their way back from Iraq.”

What would happen if the North Koreans pour across the 38th parallel, I asked?  That’s a very good question, he said grimly.

The military, especially the army, has had trouble recruiting enough soldiers lately. Some blame the war, others, the poor quality of the human specimens now of prime recruiting age.

But I think the real problem is something else. Specifically, we don’t know what we really want the military to be anymore.

Throughout most of our history, the United States was deeply suspicious of large standing armies. When we had wars, we hurriedly threw armies together, and afterwards disbanded them as rapidly as possible, leaving little more than an underfunded skeleton force.

In the 1930s, our army was smaller than Romania’s. But after World War II, that all changed. The cold war was a new kind of war – a war in which success depended on avoiding a full-blown conflict.

That meant we needed a large permanent standing army as a deterrent force. Since it was a national burden, we staffed this army mainly through the draft, in which young men were expected to give from two to four years of their life to protect their country.

There were conflicts during that time, but they were never all-consuming. After Vietnam, we went to an all-volunteer force, with the unspoken understanding that the days of the long war were over.

Then the world suddenly changed. The Soviet Union vanished. The Cold War ended. And we no longer knew what we wanted or needed our military to be.

Three years after we went into Iraq, I’m not sure we know yet. I do know this about wars. They tend to be easier to start than stop, and they seldom turn out the way everyone hoped in the beginning.

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Interview: David Segel - 8/29/06

Back during the Vietnam War, many young men facing the draft tried -- and usually failed -- to be classified as unfit to serve. Today, however, the Pentagon says up to three out of every four Americans in the eligible age range are ineligible for the armed services. Some can’t serve because they are too heavy, some are on legal or illegal drugs, and some have criminal records or gang tattoos. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with David Segel.  He is the Director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland.  Their conversation was recorded in March.

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Essay: Liberating the Jury - 8/28/06

I think whoever is behind the movement to allow jurors to ask questions, take notes, and discuss cases in progress should get the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I can say that because I used to cover trials as a reporter, and often talked to jurors after their verdicts.

Whenever Jack Kevorkian was on trial, both sides wheeled in phalanxes of expensive experts to discuss both the medical aspects and the ethics of his assisted suicides. The experts had vast credentials, and often totally contradicted each other.

“How did you sort that all out?” I asked later. “We didn’t even try,” one retired mechanic told me.  “We agreed we couldn’t understand any of it, and so we set it all aside.”

One of the most sobering experiences of my life was actually being on a jury. Normally, when I am called for jury duty, I get speedily dismissed from any case. Lawyers don’t want journalists on juries, especially if they are trying to hide something.

But once, to my astonishment, I actually was selected. This was a minor trial in district court involving a traffic accident. Essentially, it was one woman’s word against the other woman’s. There were no witnesses, and no way to figure out who was telling the truth.

The other jurors, who were mainly housewives and retirees, elected me foreman, because I had a college education.

To my surprise, they were all ready to convict the woman being accused. Her accuser was well-dressed, attractive, and spoke in an educated and professional way. The accused was kind of dumpy, poorly dressed, and badly needed advice on hair styling.

So I explained the whole concept of reasonable doubt.  To their credit, my fellow jurors got it, changed their minds and acquitted the woman.  I suppose the judge must have given us some instructions – I don’t remember – but it hadn’t penetrated. That was a very minor case.

However, it opened my eyes. Ever since, I have found it absolutely crazy that we require jurors to sit through long trials without taking notes, being able to ask questions or discuss what was going on.

No system is perfect.  A judge once told me he was afraid that  jurors might fancy themselves legal experts, or experts in intellectual property law, or something.

That is a risk. But what we doing now is asking them to do exactly that, without any tools to help them. We have a system where lawyers hire high-priced jury consultants to try and select jurors on the basis of  personality type. After that, the attorneys tailor the way they present their case in a way designed to appeal to jurors’ emotions.

What I think the court system sometimes forgets is that our concept of justice requires that it be dispensed by a jury of our peers. These days, the jury of our peers has been largely gagged and bound and manipulated by high-priced and high-powered lawyers.

We need to restore the balance. That’s nothing more, after all, than simple justice,       

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Interview: Thomas Munsterman - 8/28/06

In a courtroom there is one set of people who are usually not allowed to speak or ask questions. They are the people who decide the case -- the jury. Now, the Michigan Supreme Court has agreed to look at proposals that would allow jurors to participate more in the process.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with Tom Munsterman.  He’s director of the Center for Jury Studies at the National Center for State Courts.

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Essay: Conventional Wisdom - 8/25/06

Eight years ago, a young man named John Austin campaigned long and hard for the Democratic nomination for Secretary of State.

He was a public policy expert who had interesting ideas about how to make state government work better. There was little chance that he could have beaten Candice Miller, the popular incumbent. But he would have run an intellectually credible campaign.

Thanks to our flawed system, he never got the chance. Geoffrey Fieger, that year’s nominee for governor, and the rest of the party elders decided they needed a “balanced ticket.”

Fieger and his running mate were white men. The candidate for attorney general was a white woman. They needed an African-American, they felt, and the only one they could find was Mary Lou Parks, a state representative from Detroit.

However, once she was nominated, Parks showed no interest either in the job or campaigning for it. She virtually disappeared. On Election Day she got only 30 percent of the vote, and lost every county in the state. The real question was why anyone had voted for her at all. Her nomination was an insult to the Democratic process, and the party should have been embarrassed and ashamed.

However, what happened at the GOP convention the same year had far greater consequences. John Engler wanted the convention to nominated Scott Romney, son of the legendary governor, for attorney general. Had there been a primary, Romney would have won easily.

Had he been nominated by the convention, he would have won the general election by a solid margin.  But the delegates decided Romney wasn’t sufficiently right-wing. They nominated instead a man who had run and lost – badly – four years before. 

He wasn’t charismatic or a good speaker. Worse, he turned out to have child support problems, and lost a close election to an attractive and hitherto unknown lawyer who worked in Wayne County government. . . Jennifer Granholm.

Had Scott Romney been nominated, she would today be no more than a footnote, like Gary Peters, the losing candidate in 2002.

But the GOP convention inadvertently helped make her governor. You can make a credible argument for having your ticket chosen by the party leaders as opposed to having the winner determined in a primary.

Primary turnouts tend to be so terrible that a small, determined group of ideologically motivated voters can distort the process. But that’s a risk we take in a democracy, where we have the freedom to ignore our basic rights and civic responsibilities.

There is a place for the party leadership in the process. It would make no sense to nominate candidates for state education boards or for the Michigan Supreme Court in a partisan primary. And it makes sense for the party faithful to come together every few years to affirm what they stand for, and see what makes each other tick. But when it comes to choosing candidates for major offices, as flawed as our elections may be, we need to let the voters decide.       

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Interview: Craig Ruff - 8/25/06

This weekend Michigan’s Republicans and Democrats will both be gathering for their state conventions.  Republicans will meet today and Saturday in Novi; Democrats meet in Detroit Saturday and Sunday. The Republicans have settled the major part of their ticket but Democrats are preparing for big-time fireworks.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with Craig Ruff.  He is a senior fellow with public sector consultants.

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