Convoluted Brian

I picked up a bit of nonsense in a Reuters web news item. The headline was “Turk govt denies alcohol ban, tourism impact feared.”

In the first sentence of this article, a bit of parenthetical nonsense appeared. “Turkey’s government, which has Islamist roots,…” (emphasis added). Anyone with even a smidgin of knowledge about Turkey knows that it has a very secular government.

This is the problem with parenthetical phrases, which don’t need to be enclosed in parenthesis, that are used to clarify a statement. In this case, the clarification was at best misleading. Too often, the clarification is repeated gossip, or a reinforcement of common stereotypes and prejudgments.

Nonsense can be contained in adjectives or other modifiers as well. And just as in parenthetical phrases, the presumed clarifications are often the products of commonly believed fallacies are added and repeated without thought. The parenthetical is often a reflection of community thinking. Members of a community respond the same to like events without thinking.

If we look at recent Turkish history, we can see the mosque-state relationship between the Ottoman government and the Caliphate. After Turkey’s defeat, along with the other Central powers, a new leader began to work toward the foundation of Turkey as a modern European style republic. Kemal Atatürk’s efforts took time, but he converted the government of Turkey from a mosque-state symbiosis to a secular republic. Right along with that, the country changed. Women and men had equal rights and responsibilities. The traditional religious schools were banned and replaced with state run schools. Even the head scarf is forbidden in public schools because of religious connotations. The legal system is based upon the Swiss method.

So, the parenthetical claim in the Reuters article was both false and misleading. But, Americans and Europeans are so full of themselves that they prefer to believe falsehoods rather than get honest with themselves.

Modern Spain during the Franco regime was a model of church-statism. The Dictator relied upon the Catholic Church to legitimize his dictatorship. The Church relied on Franco to ensure an absolute religious power. This included closing Protestant parochial schools and banning public Protestant worship.

There was a time when almost any columnist writing about Apple Computer had to stick the word beleaguered in somewhere. The company did have assets that allowed it to weather the beleaguered statements, although the management at the time did not seem to appreciate the damage of the word. Packard Bell was heading toward bankruptcy, yet the wags and pundits did not add beleaguered to their description of this company nor to NEC, the purchaser of Packard Bell. Compaq also was not considered beleaguered even during its sellout to Hewlitt Packard.

During a religious pilgrimage, On 31 August, 2005, a stampede occurred on the Baghdad Al-A’imma bridge over the Tigris killing at least 965 persons. Immediately, the parenthetical addition was the victims were mostly women and children with an occasional elderly added. Later news reports removed this parenthetical, although columnists and bloggers continued to add it. And if women and children are allowed to be in public and take part in public celebrations, why is it such a surprise that the victims would include women and children. Or is that in an ideal world only men would die tragic deaths.

A newscaster giving an account of a missile attack gave a casualty number and added “including women and children.” Here’s a news flash, missiles don’t care about age and sex. Neither does bombs, bullets, or other items of human destruction. This is how the world works. And quite; frankly, when innocent men are killed by the weaponry of modern communities that is just as much a tragedy as innocent women being killed.

During the Andrea Yates case, CBS’s Dan Rather always had to add to the murder of the children “by their own mother.” It was as if the expectation were that children were better off being killed by someone else. And, the additional premise was that mother’s are somehow magically protected against any kind of disease or defect. Rather is apparently a believer in the rather bizarre myth of motherhood.

These parentheticals and other modifiers illuminate society’s prejudices as well, often by what is left out. So single mother is added as a kind of honorific while single fathers are ignored since it is our social practice to undermine fathers. Fathers who kill their children are given short shrift and are seen as incapable of being mentally ill. All Moslems are seen as backward, fanatic, and unenlightened. Christians who wish to impose Old Testament laws penalties, and medicine, along with teachings of a five-thousand year-old earth, are seen as faith based.

I add parentheticals in the heat of writing that reflects my own preconceived notions. Often, the notions are correct but I still need to take care. In an earlier post, I used a parenthetical that stated my opinion that modern American legal practice was an extension of the earlier practices of sterilizing the poor. This may be true, but I will be better off doing the research first and then making the statement. One thing that I have come to terms with is the realization that I am a human who is very capable of stereotyping and prejudging. And that helps a great deal with my approach to research and even my writing.

I can in writing an essay about mothers murdering their children do something like: “When mothers murder their children, mostly boys, …” and set up a misleading parenthetical. If it is the fact that for every 100 daughters killed by their mother, 106 sons are murdered that would simply reflect the secondary sex ratio in the United States. If I were to show variations such as 110 sons per 100 daughters or 100 sons per 100 daughters, I still could not extrapolate a bias without knowing the secondary birth ratio for that age cohort and in that locality. If I were to take this fact and then claim that mothers preferentially murder sons, I would do so in either ignorance or dishonesty. Ignorance cannot be a justification.

It is unfortunate that a writer for such an organization as Reuters would publish an ignorant statement. It was added parenthetically as a thoughtless prejudgment. We could all use less of that. We as readers must be aware that much of writing is opinion and thus be prepared to challenge the factual basis of statements and be wary of the parenthetical.

Reference

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2005-12-09T175832Z_01_DIT964687_RTRUKOC_0_US-TURKEY-ALCOHOL.xml&rpc=22
dated Fri Dec 9, 2005 12:58 PM ET

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