Moral panic: Gratuitious argumentum ad Nazium (creative synergies with Buddhist visions of Hell). A Sondhi-powered anti-Thaksin rally, March 2006.
A reader of Luis Nassif notes, regarding media coverage of the Bolsa-Familia income subsidy and a related social program, the ProUni higher education subsidy, here in Brazil:
Reinventaram aquela história dos “bolsa-família” que compraram geladeira ou máquina de lavar.
They have recycled that whole spiel about Bolsa-Familia recipients who bought refrigerators or washing machines.
Ali Kamel, journalism director of the Globo organizations and one of the most intellectually dishonest persons in the Southern Hemisphere, orchestrated a media campaign along those lines last year that was astonishing similar to Ronald Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” campaign meme in 1976.
The neocon playbook tends to migrate discretely to South America like Dr. Mengele to Bertioga (the infamous Nazi medical experimenter died in the São Paulo seaside town on February 7, 1979, under the protection of the generalissimos who ran Brazil at the time.)
As denúncias do TCU, via José Jorge ex-vice na chapa psdb/plf, dão conta de irregularidades num programa que levou 400 mil jovens ao ensino universitário. Qual o teor das denúncias: 39 trinta e nove teriam forjado renda e seriam possuidores de carros zeroKM. Um deles, dono de veículo com valor acima de R$ 90 mil reais.Com estes dados, veio a manchete: ProUni dá vagas a donos de carros 0km.
The federal accounting tribunal (TCU), through Minister José Jorge, a former vice presidential candidate on the PSDB/PFL slate, claims there are irregularities in a program that has provided 400,000 young persons with a university education. And what is the substance of his accusations? That 39 supposedly misstated their income and own brand new cars. One of them owns a car worth more than R$90,000. Using this data, you get the headline: ProUni admits the owners of brand new cars.
The TCU is a weird institution that is, in fact, packed with partisans of the political opposition.
The federal executive has founded a parallel federal auditor, the CGU, which is active in cases of tax evasion, money laundering and official corruption. As a result, you sometimes have this climate of dueling audits, tainted with political partisanship.
Há 22 anos, estudei em universidade federal. E lembro-me de que as manchetes fotografavam carros nos estacionamentos, pra confirmar que as Federais abrigavam aqueles q podiam pagar. Eu não tinha carro, mas poderia pagar. E acho que assim foi com vc, e com tantos outros que nos leem.
22 years ago I studied at a federal university, and I remember the headlines with photos of cars in the parking lot, used to prove that free the federal universities were taking in those who could afford to pay. I didn’t have a car, but I could have paid. I suspect the same is true of you and many of our readers.
I attended a small, breathtakingly expensive private liberal arts college on a foundation scholarship. Got out with zero student loan debt. Those folks were very, very good to me. I am leaving them my cadaver for anatomy classes when I die.
Agora, criar uma crise no ProUni, que levou 400 mil estudantes sem acesso ao ensino superior e salvou escolas particulares da falência é querer o quê? Quem deu destaque à resposta do Ministério da Educação, muito plausível, por sinal?
And now, to what end, creating a crisis in the ProUni program, which educated 400,000 students with no other access to higher education and saved private schools from bankruptcy? What news outlets gave prominent play to the Ministry of Education’s response, which was quite plausible, it seems?
Quem é branco, quem é preto? Os editoriais preferiram destacar o “cala-boca” do ministro Barbosa ao presidente Gilmar. E recriminaram a postura do primeiro. Mas a pergunta que não quer calar: fosse o ministro Barbosa “branco”, teria levado tal reprimenda editorial? Ou nossos jornalões tbém não vão às ruas?
Who is black and who is white? The editorialists prefer to spend their energy on the sharp exchange between Supreme Court justice Barbosa and Chief Justice Mendes, criticizing Barbosa. But the question that must be asked is: If Barbosa were a white man, would he have been reprimanded in the editorial pages? …
The Antonin Scalia-like behavior of Brazil’s Chief Justice — the guy behaves the way Scalia would if he were the drunken king of the universe, but is restrained from behaving by the vestiges of a tradition of decorum, which he clearly despises, at the high court — is a hot topic these days, but a topic for another blogging time.
Hasty generalization from a “poster-child” case is the essence of a moral panic campaign, of course. On “moral panic”:
Moral crusades advance claims about both the gravity and incidence of a particular problem. They typically rely on horror stories and “atrocity tales” about victims in which the most shocking exemplars of victimization are described and typified. Casting the problem in highly dramatic terms by recounting the plight of highly traumatized victims is intended to alarm the public and policy makers and justify draconian solutions. At the same time, inflated claims are made about the magnitude of the problem. A key feature of many moral crusades is that the imputed scale of a problem … far exceeds what is warranted by the available evidence. — Ronald Weitzer, “The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking: Ideology and Institutionalization of a Moral Crusade,” Politics Society 2007; 35; 447
The Wikipedia article on the myth of the Welfare Queen is well-written. Just as a reminder:
Ronald Reagan was opposed to welfare and the philosophy thereof, which he believed to be detrimental to the health of the United States. During his terms as California Governor, Mr. Reagan had proposed and implemented numerous state budget cuts for medical care and social welfare in the late 60’s and the 70’s. His welfare reform program succeeded in saving the state US$740 million of taxpayer money that it would have paid in public assistance and Medicaid. His firing of Clark Kerr, the president of the University of California, and his announcement that the State had to stop “subsidizing intellectual curiosity” was controversial. His 1971 New York Times editorial “Welfare is a Cancer” argued that “Welfare is a national moral and administrative disaster — a cancer that is destroying those it should succor and threatening society itself. It has tragically failed those who, through no fault of their own, must rely on it for the minimum needs of life. It has failed those who want to find their way into productive lives as people — individuals with a purpose and a goal — not a faceless mass whose destiny is the dole.”
Studies show that the welfare queen idea has roots in both race and gender. Franklin Gilliam, the author of a public perception experiment on welfare, concludes that:
“While poor women of all races get blamed for their impoverished condition, African-American women commit the most egregious violations of American values. This story line taps into stereotypes about both women (uncontrolled sexuality) and African-Americans (laziness).”
Studies show that the public dramatically overestimates the number of African-Americans in poverty, with the cause of this attributed to media trends and its portrayal of poverty. Political scientist Martin Gilens found that the media shifted its focus on poverty from white Appalachian farmers and factory closings during the 1960s, to a very darker image following civil unrest in major US cities. By 1973, 75% of magazine pictures featured African Americans as the face of welfare, despite African Americans making up only 35% of welfare recipients.[10] This darkening of welfare recipients was accompanied by a feminization of poverty during the same time, where from the 1970s onwards, women became the predominant face of poverty.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: ali kamel, Brazil, education, moral panic, neocons, Ronald Reagan, Welfare
