| Show: |
Leonard Lopate Show
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| Air Date: |
2006.10.20 |
| Issue: |
Flags of our fathers |
| Guest(s): |
James Bradley |
Show Info  |
While interviewing James Bradley, co-author of the book Flags of Our Fathers Lopate missed multiple opportunities to discuss the issue of the absence of black soldiers in the film version of the book, directed by conservative/libertarian actor Clint Eastwood. During the second half of his interview, Lopate spent a considerable amount of time on the movie, the discussion often including issues of relevance, where the missing black soldiers could have been address, for example: Bradley’s description of the diversity of the men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima.
Note: Roger Friedman pointed out this issue back on 12, Oct 2006, on Fox News (of all places!):
There are some caveats about “Flags of our Fathers” that can’t be overlooked, and again I think they have more to do with Broyles’ script than anything else.
First, there don’t seem to be any black soldiers at Iwo Jima. Outside of Beach’s character, it’s an all-white American army. This is historically inaccurate.
Writer Christopher Paul Moore talks about the Army’s 471st, 473rd and 476th amphibious truck companies in his excellent book, “Fighting for America: Black Soldiers — The Unsung Heroes of World War II,” and includes many pictures of black Marines and soldiers from the month-long battle of Iwo Jima. Certainly, at least one of them could have been represented (to be fair, black soldiers were also omitted from Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” as Moore notes).
No black characters, but more than 30 actors from Iceland, where a big chunk of the movie was filmed, are credited as soldiers.
Categories: Leonard Lopate · Omission
| Show: |
Leonard Lopate Show
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| Air Date: |
2006.09.15 |
| Topic: |
Earth-Shaking Subjects |
| Guest(s): |
E.O.Wilson |
| Show Info |
Towards the end of his interview with a meandering E.O.Wilson, Leonard Lopate brought up the issue of the controversial nature of Wilson’s [early] work, giving Wilson an opportunity to take some potshots (including implicitly at critics who are dead and gone). Rough transcript:
Wilson: What was thirty years ago a controversy about whether there is any biological basis for human social behaviour, whether there is any such thing as human nature, those things now seem very archaic…
Lopate: Have any of your critics from that time apologised to you?
Wilson: There were surprisingly few of them … concentrated at Harvard … They found other things to talk about.
This is utter rot and no apology is due to Wilson, for he is deceitful in his characterisation of his critics as denying the existence of a biological basis for behaviour, or even such a thing as human nature. Gould, Lewontin et al do not deny the influence of selection pressure on the evolution of behavioural traits. What they disagreed with was the idea of biological determinism i.e., you are what you are because of what is encoded in you (and these critics are indeed continuing to demonstrate how Wilson’s theory is fundamentally incomplete — especially in the light of recent findings of the Genome project regarding the number and function of human genes). Here for example is Lewontin writing in Monthly Review about Gould:
He was one of the authors of the original manifesto challenging the claim of sociobiology that there is an evolutionarily derived and hard-wired human nature that guarantees the perpetuation of war, racism, the inequality of the sexes, and entrepreneurial capitalism.
Other academics like Cosmides, et al, miss the point with their reference to “universal human nature”. Such a nature can be universal and still susceptible to change and environmental pressures. Hence the title of Lewontin’s book The Triple Helix. Also Ehrlich’s Human Natures.
Speaking of Ehrlich, it is worth noting that he is at Stanford, not Harvard. Nor is Leon Kamin, or Steven Rose, and most important of all Philip Kitcher or David Sloan Wilson. The last two are important because the former offered a complete, analytical and thorough-going criticism (Vaulting Ambition) of the sociobiology and evolutionary psychology claims and programme(s), and the latter is a working biologist with a broader viewpoint that E.O.Wilson and his followers have to offer. What the EP/SB/reductionists have to offer, as cautioned by their critics, can now be enjoyed in such works as the claims on the adaptive advantages of rape.
This method of constructing a strawman is not new to this crowd. Steven Pinker performs the same with his melodramatic book titled “Blank Slate” bemoaning the denial of human nature. Little does it matter that behavioural psychologists do not deny human nature but have, on the other hand, consistently (and technically) demonstrated the [scientific] emptiness of such concepts as “instinct” as used by Pinker and Co.
Categories: Bad Logic · Guest Watch · Leonard Lopate
| Show: |
Brian Lehrer Show
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| Air Date: |
2006.09.22 |
| Issue: |
Pope remarks |
| Guest(s): |
Multiple |
| Show Info |
On the 22nd, Brian Lehrer revisited the controversial remarks of Pope Benedict, in the format of a roundtable discussion. The guests:
- John L Allen Jr (Vatican correspondent for National Catholic Reporter)
- Irshad Manji (author of The Trouble with Islam)
- Fawaz Gerges (author of Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy)
- Reza Aslan (author of No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam)
Notice anything strange about the guest list? Well two things really: not only do you see few who have written critically(*) about Christianity and the Pope in particular (this is a discussion about his mutterings, after all, isn’t it?), but the table is packed with authors hostile or critical of Islam. If you used this glaring detail to guess the obvious about how the conversation went, you would have got it quite right. Here are some opening remarks:
Allen: I think in his own mind it was quite accidental [that Benedict used a quote about Islam rather than Zoroastrianism or even Christianity] …
Aslan: I think there is no question that the Pope’s comment has been taken out of context …
Manji: I think he has been making the point that I have been trying to make but making it in a much more sensitive way … much more nuanced and much more sophisticated … I am going to put that feather in his cap now…
All three went on in their introductory statements to lavish praise further on Benedict (e.g: a fine theologian). The bottom line is that this was not a roundtable on the Papal Controversy but yet another rehash of “What is particularly wrong with Islam?”.
Also, I think someone needs to challenge the “out of context” excuse. I would like to know what context justifies a quote that whatever Muhammad has contributed that is new is evil.
Later in the show Lehrer refers to the incident as one that enraged Muslims. I hope it is just an oversight that he forgot that it is not only Muslims who are outraged by this sort of rhetoric.
(*) Allen has written a book on Pope Benedict.
Categories: Bias · Brian Lehrer
