Here is the news about the News Guy that was originally going to be made public last week, but got delayed because…well, you know how these things are.

As the perspicacious among you have no doubt already noticed (and the rest of you-you know who you are!-get sharp) a new icon has appeared on the Newsguy page.

Look up and over to the right, just to the right of the fedora with the press pass. It’s a link to the News Guy’s new partner, the Stowe Reporter, the weekly that covers Stowe and its Lamoille County environs.

If you live around there, give it a click.

Or if you just want to know what’s happening in and around Stowe. And maybe even if you’re not that interested in Stowe. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, the Reporter had a story that should have been (but, we will not be shocked to learn, was not) picked up by the state’s daily newspapers. It turns out that, at least in the Morrisville Office of the Department of Children and Families, the number of children in foster care has gone up 57 percent in  five years. That ought to be statewide news.

So the News Guy is pleased to be entering into a partnership with the Stowe Reporter. We’re linking to its online version, which in turn is linking to us.

Here’s what’s in it for us (Who knows what’s in it for them? The folks there will have to speak for themselves): The arrangement gives the News Guy more exposure in the Stowe area, and in fact several new subscribers from that part of the state have recently signed on. The Reporter has skills that the News Guy lacks. It knows how to promote itself, and therefore presumably its partners. It knows how to sell advertising, from which the News Guy might someday benefit.

(But not yet, and, in all likelihood, minimally. Meaning donations are still welcome, the News Guy having not attained the long-sought financial Nirvana known as breaking even. Look below the “Stowe Reporter” link, under “pages,” and find “donate.” Just click. It’s easy).

Whatever happens financially, journalistically this is an exciting and positive development for this web site, which will nonetheless strive to avoid whatever dangers might arise from becoming respectable.

Any doubts that the News Guy needs help should have been extinguished by careful readers of last Friday’s post (just below), which mentioned “the spruce and fur forests so important to northern New England,” and noted that they mightbe replaced by maple and “beach” trees.

Interesting concept, the “fur forest.” It would, presumably, be made up of trees from which one could harvest the kind of material now found only on  mink, otter, beaver, and similar beasts. Great! Then we wouldn’t have to kill these creatures for their pelts. The development of fur forests would please the animal rights crowd.

For the nonce, however, those who want these furs will have to get them from the skins of dead animals, while the rest of us continue to live among spruce and fir trees.

There are beach trees. They are trees that grow along the beach. The trees that threaten to replace the firs and spruce, though, are beech trees.

That same post began by talking about the kind of world we would all leave to our “descendents.” To the purists among us, you are descendent when you are walking down the stairs. You are your grandmother’s descendant, even when you are walking up the stairs.

The dictionary (American Heritage Second College edition) is less finicky, regarding either spelling as a correct variant of either word. So this was not, strictly speaking, an error.

But you know what? The dictionary is insufficiently finicky here. Distinctions should be maintained. From now on in this space, progeny will be known as descendants, not descendents.

Any discussion of journalistic errors in this state this day is compelled to deal with the really bad story that lead the Burlington Free Press Saturday.

This story was B-A-D Bad, with a capital B. And a capital A-D, too. It was not good. It was…well, you’d have to call it…the right word would be bad. It wasn’t good. It was a bad story.

Many of you no doubt read it. The story explained that many Vermonters were buying carbolic acid (phenol) because it was considered the most effective weapon to use against invaders from the planet Zelfugghhia, hordes of whom were expected any day now.

Oh, no, wait a minute. That wasn’t it. Sometimes we get confused.

Actually, the story was about how Vermonters, like Americans elsewhere, were buying more guns and ammunition because they think President Barack Obama plans to make it more difficult, if not impossible, for them to buy guns and ammunition.

True, and it wasn’t as though reporter Matt Ryan got anything wrong. He accurately quoted gun shop owners and he cited the statistics on background checks indicating that gun and purchases have been rising.

Fine. But here is what else belonged in the story: The plain fact that the likelihood that Obama (or anyone else) is about to outlaw guns is roughly comparable to an invasion by creatures from the planet Zelfugghhia.

In fact, the story presented a wonderful (but ignored) opportunity for the Free Press to convey a civics lesson, explaining to these gun-buyers how America works.

Obama, you see, is merely the president. He can propose laws. He can not promulgate them. Only Congress can pass laws, and it can not do so secretly. Nor can Obama propose them secretly. He can’t file legislation. Only members of Congress can do that. So Obama or someone on his staff would have to urge one of those members to introduce a bill. If he did, we would all know about it. He has not.

Right now, there  are 11 bills in Congress relating to guns. Only four (three sponsored by Democrats, one by a Republican)  tighten restrictions on gun ownership. None of those four has gotten out of committee.

That means they ain’t goin’ nowhere.

Nor has the Obama Administration endorsed any of them.

Absent this information, the story fails to be truthful. It is, then, dishonest.

Were it actually honest (as opposed to merely being not dishonest), it would also have dealt with the political efforts designed to make some people think that Obama is trying to take away their guns, and the serious (in some cases fatal) consequences of these efforts.

In what is obviously a step to keep their members riled up and contributing, organizations such as the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America have been – to put it mildly – exaggerating Obama’s hostility to gun ownership and owners.

The NRA screed is excessive but not totally irrational. A an Illinois State Senator, Obama was a stronger advocate of gun control than he is now. With no political considerations, he might revert to that viewpoint. But of course there are political considerations, and at any rate he never supported banning guns altogether.

The Gun Owners of America, on the other hand, are so irrational that they might be worrying about that invasion from the planet Zelfugghhia. At one point their web site charges that the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials, designed to prevent drug smugglers from transporting weapons across national boundaries in the hemisphere, would somehow outlaw gun clubs.

Of course the folks on the other side of this debate, the pro-gun control set,  also like to rile up its members to keep the contributions coming. So far, though, their efforts have not had any spillover effect. But the gun lobby’s excesses may  have contributed, if indirectly, to the murder in Pittsburgh in April of three police officers, allegedly by someone who feared a government plot to take away his guns,

All that should have been in the story.

For the record, because people get so intense about the gun issue and are so quick to pigeon-hole anyone who comments on it, the News Guy has always held that law-abiding citizens have a right to own guns, and that hunting is a socially and environmentally healthy pursuit, which ought to be encouraged.

He just doesn’t like bad journalism.

If you live in Vermont you should be forgiven if you are unaware that the United States Government just released a major report about how the world is getting warmer, will continue to do so, and in the process leave our descendents a hotter, wetter, and very different part of the country.

Such absolution is called for because the state’s news media paid scant attention. Not that they ignored the report completely. The Montpelier Times Argus did run the Associated Press story out of Washington when the report was issued last week.

And Vermont Public Radio aired a good story by reporter John Dillon about the report’s projection that higher temperatures could endanger two of the state’s iconic industries – skiing and sugaring

The VPR story quoted one of the lead authors of the report, Jerry Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, saying that according to some forecasts, “maple trees are expected to decline rapidly in the Northeast, perhaps spelling the end of maple sugaring all together in this part of the U.S.”

But that was about it.

Let’s not be too hard on our journalistic colleagues. One could argue that the report was not “Big News,” as conventionally defined; it didn’t tell folks what they didn’t already know. Aside from the few who, for whatever reason, refuse to accept the overwhelming weight of the evidence, people know that fossil fuel emissions are making the world warmer. Furthermore, the report was not based on original research.

But the “authoritative scientific report “(in its own words) – 196 pages supported by 563 footnotes – did  aggregate an extraordinary amount of existing research as reviewed by scientists from 13 government agencies.

For at least three other reasons, the report deserved more attention. There was the political reason. As the AP story noted, the report contained “the most urgent language on climate change ever to come out of any White House,” a polite way of noting that the Bush Administration, even after it abandoned its climate change denial shtick, tried to act as if it were a minor annoyance rather than a cosmic crisis.

(And, as we learned Thursday, shamelessly hid evidence that water contaminated with coal ash posed a serious health threat to thousands of people).

The second reason is that, unlike some “studies” from both government agencies and private advocacy groups, this one backs up it claims. All those footnotes are not just there for show. So when the report says “the climate of the Northeastern U.S.” has already begun changing in noticeable ways,” it gives readers the source of that statement (in this case, an article called Past and future changes in climate and hydrological indicators in the U.S. Northeast, by Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech university and nine other scientists in the journal. Climate Dynamics, Journal Number 28(4), pages 381-407).

The third reason  is the report’s regional specificity. Though it is  about”global climate change,” it is explicitly about its “impacts in the United States,” and it explained in some detail what those impacts would be in different regions, including this one. It all but laid out a road map so editors and news directors could find the “local angle” they so love.

Since they missed the ball, we’ll kick it around here.

Since 1970, the report said, the annual average temperature in the Northeast has increased by 2°F, with winter temperatures rising twice this much.”  For those seeking a silver lining in the cloud, there is one: longer growing seasons.

But also more “heavy downpours,” dirtier air leading to “increasing problems for human health,” and “severe flooding.”

Oh, and less snow. Perhaps a lot less snow.

Over the next several decades, those winter temperatures could rise at least another 2.5 degrees, perhaps as much as 4 degrees.

“The projected reduction in snow cover will adversely affect winter recreation and the industries that rely upon it,” the report says. “The length of the winter snow season would be cut in half across northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine…Winter snow and ice sports, which contribute $7.6 billion annually to the region’s economy, will be particularly affected by warming.”

In the woods, the report noted, the spruce and fur forests so important to northern New England are “declining already,” and are likely to continue doing so, replaced by maple and beach trees under the “lower possibility” of climate change, by oak and hickory under the “higher possibility.”

In addition, “large portions of the Northeast are likely to become unsuitable for growing popular varieties of apples, blueberries, and cranberries under a higheremissions scenario.”  As for maple trees and their prized sap, conditions suitable for maple forests “are expected to shift dramatically northward…eventually leaving only a small portion of the Northeast with a major maple sugar business.”

And if the grandchildren of today’s sugarers have to look for alternative sources of income, they’d be wise not to count on producing milk or running ski lodges. “By late this century,” the report says, “all but the northern parts of Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont are projected to suffer declines in July milk production under the higher emissions scenario, (and) warmer winters will shorten the average ski and snowboard seasons, increase artificial snowmaking

requirements, and drive up operating costs.

“While snowmaking can enhance the prospects for ski resort success, it requires a great deal of water and energy, as well as very cold nights, which are becoming less frequent. Without the opportunity to benefit from snowmaking, the prospects for the snowmobiling industry are even worse. Most of the region is likely to have a marginal or non-existent snowmobile season by mid-century.”

OK, now here’s the good news. The report does not present a “worst case” scenario, but it is based on the present case, and it does not assume that new steps will be taken to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Congress is now considering such steps, and while no one can be certain that it will pass any bill, much less an effective bill, the bleak future projected in the report might never come to be.

“It’s not too late to act,” said Jane Lubchenco,  a marine biologist who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as she briefed the press about the report last week. “Decisions made now will determine whether we get big changes or small ones.”

The report itself noted that, “reducing emissions of carbon dioxide would lessen warming over this century and beyond. Sizable early cuts in emissions would significantly reduce the pace and the overall amount of climate change.”

Cutting emissions, though, is not easy, not even in Vermont, or maybe especially in Vermont. Interestingly, this assessment comes from an environmentalist, Ann Ingerson, an economist for the Wilderness Society who works from her Craftsbury Common home.

“Vermont’s in an odd position because we don’t use a lot of fossil fuel for our energy, except for transportation,” she said

The state gets most of its electricity from nuclear or hydro power, and many Vermonters heat their homes with wood,  not nearly as harmful a greenhouse gas as coal or oil.

But Vermonters drive a lot, Ingerson noted.

“We’re very rural, with people living all over the place,” she said. “It’s not very efficient to use public transportation because we’re scattered,”

There are steps Vermonters can take, she said, such as participating in the forest offset plans she’s working on, in which “forest land owners (are encouraged) to accumulate more carbon in their forests” (essentially by leaving them alone) in return for payments from people or companies that want to reduce their “carbon footprint.”

But perhaps the most effective step Vermonters could take, Ingerson said, is a step they rebuff – living in town or in a village center instead of out in the woods.

“Everyone says we should develop in compact villages,” she said, “but then everyone wants their own little place in the country.

Including, she acknowledged, herself.

Including, he is now shamed into acknowledging, the News Guy.

Remember what Walt Kelly said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

So, should a racist, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi tenured professor be allowed to teach at the University of Vermont?

And suppose he isn’t any of those things. Suppose he just studies, writes about, and (apparently) admires some racist, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazis while pursuing his own scholarly interest in “the status of European heritage, or white Americans, including the way they are educated.”  Should he be allowed on the UVM faculty?

Professor Griffin

The questions arise because of an excellent piece of reporting by Daniel Barlow in the Sunday, June 14, Barre-Montpelier Times Argus about Robert S. Griffin, who has been teaching education courses at the university since 1974, and who at the very least maintains close professional contacts with white supremacists, anti-Semites, and maybe even neo-Nazis.

The answer to the questions is: Yes.

Griffin is tenured faculty, meaning the university has confirmed his academic credentials and his competence as a teacher.  That means he can only be fired for cause-not showing up for class (or at least not showing up sober),  failing to grade papers, abusing students, inciting violence, or the like.

Not for whatever belief or opinion he expresses. That’s the whole purpose of tenure-to protect academics from being dismissed for their views, however unpopular, bizarre, offensive, outrageous, or even disgusting those views may be.

Come to think of it, that’s one of the purposes of a university or college to begin with – to serve as a forum for ideas and opinions, however….(see list above).

Since, as far as we know, there has never been a formal complaint by a student that Griffin has committed any of the above-named offenses, his job is and ought to be safe.

But wait a minute! Suppose he tries – whether openly or surreptitiously – to convert his impressionable young students to his (seemingly) revolting way of thinking? Shouldn’t that be grounds for dismissal?

Nope. Not unless he does so with threats, intimidation, or by giving low grades to students who voice their disagreement. Again, there seems to be no record of students officially suggesting he has behaved in this way. There is one unofficial suggestion. On the ‘ratemyprofessors.com‘ web site, one student complained, “If you don’t agree with his thoughts, you get a bad grade.”

But as almost any faculty member will attest, it’s the students who don’t like a professor who are more likely to contribute to these sites. This student apparently got a bad grade, and may have been seeking revenge. At any rate, that one complaint hardly qualifies as sufficient evidence even to start a disciplinary proceeding, much less to take any action.

Final objection. Suppose a non-white student had to take one of his classes but felt intimidated. Wouldn’t some disciplinary action, if not dismissal, be in order.

Not unless Griffin took some overt action to intimidate. In a free society, there is no guarantee against feeling intimidated, any more than there is a guarantee against being insulted.

So Griffin gets to keep his job, despite complaints from some letter-to-the-editor writers and at least one web site.  (UVM was lucky that the story came out during summer vacation; five will get you ten that had it appeared in October, there would have been at least one small “Griffin Must Go” rally on campus).

But job security is the simplest question this case provokes, and therefore the least interesting. Start, for instance, with the question of just what kind of guy Griffin really is. Here matters grow more complex.

The case against him – the case for him being a real bigot – is compelling if just short of conclusive. Barlow lays it out in detail. To state just one of the more obvious examples, among the links on Griffin’s web site, robertsgriffin.com, is one to the Vanguard News Network, whose slogan is “No Jews. Just Right.”

Nor does Griffin always help his own case. Writing two years ago in Vermont Commons (the journal of the Vermont secessionist movement, the racist associations of which were discussed in an earlier post, Secessionist Delusions, February 12), Griffin said, “I think it is fair to say that the victors in the competition to insert their perspective into school programs have been the egalitarians, collectivists, multiculturalists, feminists, gays, environmentalists, internationalists, secularists, and Holocaust promoters.”

Holocaust promoters? That’s pretty strong evidence that he is a Holocaust denier, the ultimate combination of bigotry and willful ignorance.

But then take a look at his web site, where he links, admiringly, to a quote by Philip Roth, the novelist whose Jewishness is central to his fiction.

In fact, the Robert Griffin of the web site seems to be less a raging bigot than an interesting guy.

“My writings have been vehicles for an investigation of the whole of American society and culture and the way we conduct our individual lives,” he writes. ”That has involved me in considerations related to history, philosophy, race, religion, the arts, the mass media, parenting, the process of growing up, gender, education, sports, and personal health and fulfillment.

As to his racial views, “while I have written often about race this last decade, I do not consider myself to be a racial writer… I write whatever is there to be written, and if it is about race, so be it, but I don’t consider myself linked to that subject.”

Though he responded neither to Barlow nor to the News Guy, Griffin did email the Inside Higher Ed web site, denying that he was a racist and insisting that “even the most cursory review of my writings would show that I deplore violence.”

Inside Higher Ed also reached UVM education professor David Shiman, the head of the faculty union at the university, who is Jewish. Shiman  said that in the 35 years he has known his colleague he has “never seen from him an anti-Semitic remark, never heard him make a racist remark.”

Shiman said he once assigned Griffin’s 2001 article “Rearing Honorable White Children” in some of his multicultural education classes, and invited Griffin to answer students’ questions.

“I think the students need to hear diverse perspectives, need to challenge themselves and be exposed to views that cause them to reflect on the views they think they hold — and maybe get stronger holding them, but at least challenge themselves,” Shiman said.

All this apparent civility though, can not completely offset the rest of Griffin’s profile. He is the author of what Barlow called “a fawning biography” of  William Pierce, the author of the white supremacist novel  ”The Turner Diaries,” which helped inspire Timothy McVeigh to blow up the federal office building in Oklahoma City.

“I found Pierce to be a person of remarkable capability, decency, integrity, courage, and dedication,” Griffin writes on his Web site.” And the Vanguard News Network is not the only white supremacist web site to which he links.

Perhaps the most interesting way to look at l’affaire Griffin is to take him at his word that he is not a bigot, but only someone who teaches and and advocates white culture. On the face of it, that should be no more objectionable than teaching and advocating black or Latino culture, which has attained a modicum of respect in academia.

But no less objectionable either. It isn’t that there aren’t racial and ethnic subcultures worthy of study. Black and Hispanic, obviously, but also Appalachian, Italian-American, French-Canadian, rural New England.

In the final analysis, though, culture is neither racial nor ethnic. If it were, then, for instance, Sarah Chang, whose biological ancestry is Korean, could not so brilliantly play Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, a work steeped in the German musical tradition (if, for that matter, Mendelssohn, who didn’t have a drop of Teutonic blood in his veins, could have composed a concerto). Culture is a product of  intellect and consciousness, internal qualities indifferent to the color of the outer layer.

No one has to be English to appreciate Shakespeare, Dutch to understand Rembrandt, or African-American to dig Charlie Parker. From a university’s perspective, the problem with Robert Griffin is not that his beliefs are abhorrent, but that they are ignorant.