This is pretty interesting. A Washington Post reporter wrote a post that criticized DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee’s cozy relationship with the Washington Post editorial board. The post was taken off the site and the reporter was called on the carpet.
So much for those Chinese walls between the editorial board and the news staff.
Sorry to inflict my Kaplan fixation on you so long after the cocktail hour, but I find this kind of thing fascinating.
Violet
This statement later on pretty much sums up the issue:
Yep. It’s stupid to pretend otherwise.
trollhattan
Did my mayor threaten them in any way? Jess axin’. Michelle seems cozy with quite a few folks.
28 Percent
No one understands my art.
Incidentally, Kaplan’s test prep is really quite good. It almost completely invalidates the purpose of the test, but their course does get results.
Ash Can
I don’t think “fascinating” is quite the word for it.
Notorious P.A.T.
Now that’s integrity!
Karen
Looks like a reporter has been punished for not getting with the program. You think that Post reporters are like the Stepford Wives where any time something goes against the Post the reporters are replaced by robot reporters?
demo woman
Rhee thought that she could strong arm a failing school system by threats, and firings and that would make them successful. The Post supports her whether the decisions are good or bad. The only support she has at this point is Fred and his editorial board.
Must admit, I know someone who has been teaching in the DC school district for the last four years. She’s ready to call it quits and move to the schools in VA because of Rhee.
Ailuridae
I wonder how many weeks Bob Somerby is going to dedicate to this…
Brachiator
@Violet:
RE: They can’t be truly separate as long as they report to the same people—and, ultimately, they do.
BS. When newspapers were making more money than they knew what to do with, the best of them could shrug off much petty influence peddling. A few, and it’s always been a few, editors and publishers believed in something more than simply representing the status quo and kissing up to the powers that be.
It ain’t about who reports to who. It’s about courage, which is always rare, and easily pushed aside by the crazen motives of newspeople desperately trying to stay relevant and afloat.
Ailuridae
To pre-empt any claims that DougJ is being racist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall
DougJ
I wonder how many weeks Bob Somerby is going to dedicate to this…
By the end, he’ll have me on the Post’s side on this.
Beating a dead horse doesn’t begin to describe what he does.
I loved him for a long time but it’s the same damned thing, in 800 word chunks day after day.
Martin
Just finished reading Fallows annotated SOTU, flipped over and saw that not one Republican voted to restore paygo. Nice to see they’re thorougly immune to popular outrage channeled through the SOTU – including the so-called GOP moderates.
Ailuridae
Beating a dead horse doesn’t begin to describe what he does.
I loved him for a long time but it’s the same damned thing, in 800 word chunks day after day.
I agree. He’s the first independently produced internet writer I read but reading him now is painful. This is especially true since his proto-feminism has moved its source of perpetual outrage from the treatment of Hillary Clinton to the treatment of Sarah Palin by the press. I used to realize once or twice a year that he was clearly a little nuts when he would write about sports (always, without fail a stupid anecdotal defense of Big 10 football or basketball that flew in the face of all actual empirical analysis) but early in 2008 he revealed himself to be more than a little spiteful and to have some really, really problematic attitudes towards race.
danimal
@Ailuridae: Speaking of Somerby, did you know that the media totally got the “Al Gore invented the internet” meme wrong? And the Love Story meme as well? It’s in his archives.
gwangung
@Ailuridae: Dude, I’m the one who should have pointed that out. Or asianMNgrrl.
I mean, really.
danimal
@Martin: Why is Paygo a problem for Republicans? Shouldn’t they be pretending to care about fiscal responsibility, especially when the Dems have to act like adults and take the more painful votes?
demo woman
@DougJ: Read some of the teachers comments and you won’t be on the Posts side. DC had a problem but not all the the hundreds of teachers that were fired molested the children. I know that Rhee’s tactics are discouraging the new teachers who want to make a difference.
DougJ
This is especially true since his proto-feminism has moved its source of perpetual outrage from the treatment of Hillary Clinton to the treatment of Sarah Palin by the press.
Then he says weirdly out-of-date things like essentially calling Ana Marie Cox a slut. The MoDo stuff he writes (which is more justified) goes places it probably shouldn’t go either.
The guy is nuts. Periodically brilliant, but nuts.
He opened my eyes to the way Washington works more than anyone else. But…I don’t even know where to start.
Ailuridae
@gwangung:
Progress is having a man that’s a doppleganger for the most famous skinhead in cinema pointing out that Chinese Walls in relation to a Chinese American isn’t racist. Woot! Progess!
Ailuridae +4
Yutsano
@gwangung: Heh. This thread is so wifey bait it ain’t even funny. Plus he ran with an Asian joke with me a few days back. But yeah she’d be laughing her tail off.
Capn America
A bit O/T, but on his show Wed. night Jon Stewart talked about the O’Keefe story and seemed to call himself out for falling for the ACORN tapes the first time around. He ended the segment by saying that O’Keefe should seek out an organization that helps people down on their luck, one that does “God’s work”… ACORN.
Ailuridae
@Capn America:
Sorry, that was mealy-mouthed piss on his part. If Stewart had conviction or courage he could have pointed out what was plainly true at the time the “story” about ACORN broke – that it was full of shit. Instead he was lazy and stupid and furthered a racist and classist line against an organization that is one of the few advocates the poor and disenfranchised has.
But I guess if Fox News interviews him that next time his writers write some goofy book he can defend their criticisms that he’s a Democratic operative that he really stuck it to that advocacy group for the most vulnerable members of society.
Ailuridae +5
DougJ
I agree obviously, Ailuridae.
Maybe I’m getting carried away, but I’d like to see him say “I’m sorry I got carried with the idea of an organization that works with inner-city black people doing things with pimps and hos.”
Warren Terra
I’m sure that the Post did nothing wrong here, and that they will be very happy to explain to their paying guests exactly why their behavior was perfectly acceptable at their next Salon.
Martin
@danimal: Well, apparently the GOP is still trying to drive the point home that once Scott Brown is seated that the Dems won’t be able to pass a goddamn thing, even a bill that the GOP should love.
We’ll see if Democrats are competent enough to take a slam dunk electoral situation for them and use it in November. I know it’s a long shot… I think the GOP is counting on that.
Martin
@DougJ: Christ guys, you’re asking Stewart to be more of a principled journalist than you would EVER expect out of an actual journalist.
Seriously guys. I agree it was a low point for Stewart, but let’s not lose perspective here.
Yutsano
@Martin: Well FWIW there was a Dem who said that they plan on making commercials from all the Republicans sitting when Obama mentioned cutting taxes and taking on Wall Street. Maybe they’re starting to realize this is indeed a gun fight and they need more than pea shooters.
Ailuridae
@DougJ:
I think we agree its ugly regardless. I think the insidious racism of the use of pimps and hos bothers both of us but to me that’s largely iconography. To me its an issue of “Will ACORN ever recover?” and if not what happens to the voting rights of the poorest and most disenfranchised Americans? Or, at least the poorest and most disenfranchised Americans who aren’t rural whites? And I know the answer. In future elections there will be less advocacy for those people; in future censuses there will be less of a push to count them (they are certainly undercounted) and without that advocacy it’ll be easier to represent the poor, the disenfranchised and the oppressed as a threat the democracy.
And, franjly, fuck Jon Stewart’s overprivileged and underaccomplished ass for contributing to that. I just think that for Stewart to fill his 28 minutes a week in the week’s he works there are better targets that ACORN. But hey its OK. He has a troubled relationship with his dad who left his mom so it mitigates everything, right? And I like him in the Sandler movies?
Ailuridae
@Martin:
I like that clip. What does it show? I look at it and it shows false equivalence – that the positions that Begala and Carlson were representing were equally of worth but it was the format that was the problem. It was never them shouting past each other that was the problem. Jon Stewart isn’t an enemy of democracy in America and I like him more than DougJ but ..
But his initial coverage of the FakeCORN scandal was unspeakably, mendaciously cruel. And misinformed. He has a massive staff that elected to not look into if there was a there ‘there’but to attack the only advocacy the poorest amongst us have. And fuck his overprivileged prep school ass for that. Those people he fucks if ACORN goes away? There isn’t a fucking second chance for them.
And he did that knowing he informs a huge portion of Americans under 30 on the news of the day.
Martin
@Yutsano: I’ll believe it when I see the DNC dropping such an ad into every competitive market in Nov. It seems like a no-brainer, yet it rarely comes to pass.
eemom
oh fer chrissake, let’s not beat on Stewart again.
Let’s stick with Somerby; he’s a better target.
I’m relatively new to him, so I still check him out most days…….still sorta fascinated by that genius/obsessive maniac thing he’s got going. His takedowns of MoDo are priceless, and she deserves every word. I’m intrigued by his contempt for Frank Rich, who is generally spared from the derision we blogobots lavish upon his cohorts.
I also think it’s hilarious that Somerby’s obsession with the Clinton years finally became so intense that he had to set up a whole nuther site for it.
Anyway, to return to topic, it’s called an “Ethics Wall” now, not a “Chinese Wall.” Also too.
Yutsano
@Martin: Oh my suspicion is it will just get let go. They have a chance to either run from the bully or stand up. I pretty much know what will happen given past history but just once PLEASE get some of Obama’s fight?
Martin
@Ailuridae: I think you give Stewart’s audience too little credit. Seriously, they watch because he’s entertaining and he’ll reveal the truth when others won’t. But I think his viewers have pretty good filters on their own, and they walk into the show pretty well informed. Most of his audience called bullshit on Stewart that day, just like they routinely did when McCain would come on.
So yeah, Stewart fucked up, he’s made clear he fucked up, which is a good sight more than almost anyone else out there will do, and it’s still not good enough? Come on…
Martin
@Yutsano: I’m a little discouraged by the reactions from Senate and House Dems to the SOTU. I’m not seeing that Obama reached them as much as he reached us.
Ailuridae
@Martin:
So yeah, Stewart fucked up, he’s made clear he fucked up, which is a good sight more than almost anyone else out there will do, and it’s still not good enough? Come on…
I watched the clip in question. It was all about being duped, being made to look a fool. That’s not, remotely, what happened with Stewart’s coverage of the ACORN scandal. Sorry
hamletta
@danimal: No, dear, those are his “incomparable archives.”
God love ‘im, Somerby was so right back in the day, and he probably gets it right on education, since that his real passion, but I haven’t been able to read him for years.
JGabriel
Jamison Foser:
Okay, admit it Doug, that question was yours, right?
.
hamletta
@Ailuridae: You’re right! He’s a witch! Burn him!
williamc
@Ailuridae:
I said my piece about JS and the show disrepecting non-profit advocacy organizations (which ACORN is) last night in the Democracy Corps thread and don’t want to get back into it, but speaking of the Show, tonight Jon had on Doris Kearns Goodwin, and I swear, the woman did not know that the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington filibuster hasn’t existed since the 70s. She just kept saying, “let them read recipes and the phonebook” totally unaware that that’s not how the filibuster works anymore.
On Colbert, the rot of CNN was laid bare by David “Why do people pay me for saying the stuff that every 80 year old believes” Gergen. He doesn’t think the President can win back “white blue-collar voters”, but also concerned-trolled the President that the SOTU is “Just Words, Not Actions”, while exhorting him to move to the center or somesuch nonsense. Do these pundits know what words mean? If the President isn’t in the center right now, who is? The Republicans obviously aren’t, they talk about how they hate moderates constantly. The rank and file Democrats can’t be or that would ruin the punch-the-hippies narrative that the MSM loves, so if he’s not in the center as he spouts right-wing sounding policy prescriptions (clean coal! nuclear power! tax cuts!) during his SOTU (which I liked), where is the center? Though I will give Gergen the point that he made about this country being ungovernable.
@DougJ, this might be of interest to you being a WaPo fan; apparently Digby dug up some Sally Quinn dirt from the past that ties her stink to MoDo’s stink…enjoy…
Ailuridae
@williamc:
I couldn’t think of your screen name when I “wrote” my responses but your posts were primarily on my mind.
Now I am going to read your response to me and if you really disagree with me, look stupid.
williamc
@Ailuridae:
Its cool dude (or dudette), I totally agree with everything you wrote about JS, but I saw the Show tonight, and before Doris got there, Jon did a great job with the state of the onion and the republican response. I think you get to the issue lots of people have with him: when he’s on, he’s on fire and when he’s not, you want to throw rocks.
But isn’t it like that with everyone and everything that we like a lot? We go from happy to have it to blind rage that it got screwed up in the blink of eye.
Now I must off to bed, I’m full of Vicodin and my bed calls…rock on people…
Yutsano
@williamc:
Oh sure rub it in dude.
handy
Re: Somerby. Rumproast has some pretty good take downs of Righteous Bob. Especially in his “In Defense of the Teabaggers” bullcrap.
theory
Yeah, let’s stick with Somerby. I used to read him religiously, but then I got a weird vibe from his series of posts about movies starring young girls/women, specifically the Bolgers in In America and then the (not so young) actresses in Blue Crush. Then I started to think about why he had taught in inner city schools despite his evident brilliance and pedigree. I wondered why he spent hours and hours a day with no apparent financial motive trying to expunge the rot from our political system. Add to that the out of kilter sexism that sometimes emerged toward fully mature women (e.g. Cox), and a completely baseless, libelous and yet totally compelling theory of the Somerby psyche coalesced. Complicated man.
Anne Laurie
@eemom:
You haven’t seen the approximately 10,000 techie barbs about Google and the PRC, have you?
Yutsano
@Anne Laurie: Heh. To be honest when I first saw the title I thought that’s what this post wa going to be about. Then I saw Michelle Rhee and figured it could only get better from here.
eemom
@Anne Laurie:
no. Just trying to uphold the standards of political correctness in accordance with the dictates of my profession.
burnspbesq
I’m sure I’m going to get flamed for this, but here goes.
I don’t understand the hatred for Michelle Rhee among progressives.
The DC schools have been a disaster since before any of us were born. Rhee was brought in to try and shake things up, try new things, fix the un-fixable. She appears to be failing. OK, if she fails, she should go.
But are the haters saying that it shouldn’t have been tried? That the status quo was just ducky, thank you very much? That’s hard to comprehend, because the status quo was not ducky. It wasn’t even in the same galaxy as ducky. And the children who live east of 16th Street deserve better than what they are getting, and their parents got, and their grandparents got.
Uriel
You say this as though “cocktail hour” has some sort of weird end that isn’t related to finally surrendering to the inevitable admission that you are no longer capable of doing anything else beside retreating into the warm arms of sleep. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about this. I believe Hunter Thompson and Tom Waits would back me up.
BTW: you do know that the ‘hour’ part of that is an euphemism, right?
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: It’s more along the lines of she alienated a lot of constituencies who are more or less conspiring to make her fail. Plus she came from outside the system and was viewed by a lot of the DC insiders as an interloper in their little fiefdoms. The really interesting part is not all her ideas are bad. She just chose to piss off and piss on the very people who could have made these ideas successes.
MikeJ
@eemom:
I refuse to denigrate the nation and people of China by not acknowledging the strength and size of the largest cultural achievement on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites.
Of course I can understand why it pisses of the mongols.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: Not to mention the only man-made object visible from space. I think the Mongols got over it though, Khubilai did sit on the Middle Kingdom throne.
arguingwithsignposts
I read your post and for a few minutes, I forgot that you were white. /tweety.
arguingwithsignposts
@Uriel:
It’s after 5 p.m. somewhere in the world, right?
Are we really debating the “Chinese Wall”? I’ve always preferred firewall, but whatever. And *never* heard it called an “ethics wall.”
Warren Terra
@burnspbesq: I don’t know much about Rhee, or about education policy. Maybe she’s great. But she sure has all the wrong friends, and at least some of the wrong enemies.
pablo
Isn’t that the definition of “propaganda”?
hmmm, I think I may start reading Bill Turque’s reportage, after he gets his next job, with a real newspaper.
arguingwithsignposts
BTW, I have walked through the WaPo newsroom. it feels like stepping back into the ’70s, or like stepping into an episode of the BBC “The Office.” wapo.com is much more up to date.
Napoleon
Well I think we all can guess who is going to be Atrios’ wanker of the day today.
dr. bloor
@Napoleon:
Jon Stewart?
Napoleon
@dr. bloor:
The WaPo
The Ace Tomato Company
Just because Rhee and the Post may be dead wrong, doesn’t make DC teachers (and DCPS as a whole) correct and worth defending.
DCPS, despite being very generously funded (as recently as a few years ago, DC had the highest per capita rate of education spending in the country), is an absolute embarrassment. Corrupt administrators see to it that most of the money is wasted on handing out VERY generous contracts (if it’s not outright embezzled), while a whole slew of incompetent/apathetic teachers (to be sure, there are plenty of good teachers in DCPS) carry on with absolutely no accountability. Don’t even get me started about the DC School Board, City Council and all the corruption and god awful identity politics they use to mask corruption and keep the money flowing to their well-connected buddies (children be damned).
In many ways, DCPS is a super massive black hole from which no knowledge can ever escape from.
It’s so sad too given that so many DC students start out life at an immense disadvantage. Without any hope for a decent education, so many of them are fucked for life because they were unfortunate enough to be born in the District.
Again, I am not defending Rhee or the Post (not even one bit), but rather, I am taking issue with the tendency of some to use this criticism as a way of making excuses or defending the other parts of DCPS. They’re all culpable if you ask me. In many ways, it’s like the Senate where even the (cough, cough) “good guys” are in it to protect their own interests and the few genuinely committed reformers are hopelessly outnumbered. In other words, like the Senate, they’re also close to useless.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to fix this. The best I can come up with is a fantasy whereby I suddenly come into possession of a few billion dollars I could use to generously fund a second school system and start over from scratch.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@DougJ:
She’s not. Been happily married for a good while.
But…
When she was essentially doing nothing as Wonkette and carving out a role as the “spokesperson for the newly formed Lefty Blogosphere” back in 05 (at least that’s what was in the rolodexes of the lazy shit traditional media drones in DC no matter how untrue it was), in public she had this boozy, well, slutty persona. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.
And how a person of her marginal talents and outright laziness managed to use something like that to portray jobs further up the corporate media ladder is well, mystifying. Actually on second thought, no it isn’t, it’s a reflection of how far the traditional media has fallen.
But that assumes she hasn’t slept her way to where she is. Maybe whacko Somerby knows something the rest of us don’t but I kinda doubt it. I’ve talked to a few people who run in social circles once removed from hers and all say she’s in a happy, committed relationship. I’d posit that Somerby is stuck in 2005 when it comes to Cox, I mean one of her many nicknames back then was Slutette.
Fuck, my head hurts. And that after not reading Somerby since around 2008. Tried once or twice last year, it was too painful. Brilliant guy at deconstructing the corporate media but yeah, he’s gone over some edge.
Svensker
@28 Percent:
Spoof troll art? Purdy!
jibeaux
@The Ace Tomato Company:
I absolutely agree with that. And the system is so rotten, and the interests against change so entrenched, that I thought she should have been given a pretty long lead. This isn’t some run-of-the-mill school district. I also think that the basic idea of paying teachers you wanted a hundred grand a year in exchange for the flexibility in firing the ones you didn’t want was an interesting one that deserved a try. It seems like she burned too many bridges to really be successful, but it’s not like it’s some kind of victory for the DCPS that they avoided a shake-up.
Pat
Doug – No need to apologize for the Kaplan fixation.
Another peek at the wonderful wizard.
Svensker
@The Ace Tomato Company:
We lived in a Hudson Co. NJ school district for a while that had one of the highest per capita spending and was 3rd from the bottom in performance in the state. A friend was a substitute teacher at one of the elementary schools and when she was called in to a 3rd grade class once, one of the regular teachers was in the class with his feet up on the teacher’s desk. She asked about the lesson plan and he said, in front of the kids: “You don’t need a lesson plan. They’re too stupid to learn anything. Just keep them quiet and out of trouble.” None of the school administrators or teachers and their families had their kids in the public schools — they all went to private schools.
One of the things that’s always bothered me about the discussion about education problems in this country is the idea that all we need to do is spend more money and everything will be fixed. Not if the money goes to corruption, it won’t.
daveNYC
I just love the chutzpa of the move. It’s like a two year old lieing about eating cookies when you’re looking at him elbows deep in the cookie jar.
jh
As a product (partially) of DC public schools and as someone who has two relatives and several friends who work in the system, allow me to let you in on a few things.
You know what sucks up all that money in the DCPS and why the system is so dysfunctional?
1. Special Ed. This is hugely expensive and is made worse by the fact that administrators that are very eager to offload any kid from a troubled household or with the slightest hint of behavioral problems or learning disability (i.e. dyslexia) into the Special Education track and get them out of regular classrooms. Special Ed costs can include anything from funding transportation to a school outside your precinct to fully covering the cost of private school education at schools able to meet the requirements for teaching kids with special needs. I’ve seen the spreadsheets and the costs are in the tens of millions.
2. Decaying physical plant. DCPSs physical plant was set up to accomodate far more children than it currently serves and most of the schools in the system are more than 50 years old with some dating back to the 19th century (my elementary school was built in 1890) Needless to say, they aren’t the last word in energy efficiency or low cost maintenance. This is a recipe for big $$. In fact, there is currently a $2Billion contract out to repair and modernize those schools which would be too cost prohibitive to replace.
3. DC has the highest average household income in the US and the highest pecentage of people below the poverty line (19% at last count) which puts it on par with Mississippi and below several developing nations in terms of wealth disparity. It cannot be overstated how difficult it is to teach in an environment where students struggle with access to basic things like clothing, food, and simple hygiene. Complicating matters is the fact that many of the teachers and support staff in the system are DC natives who are recruited; as a form of well intentioned patronage, from similarly debilitating backgrounds and let’s just say…..are not always be inclined to embrace changes.
My cousin, who is a special ed teacher, is of the opinion that most teachers and administrators in the system should be fired and forced to reapply for their jobs. She also acknowledges that while doing so would get rid of a lot dead weight in the system, it would also cripple the system to the point that it would cease to function.
The solutions to the DCPS problem (and most urban school systems for that matter) IS in fact to throw money at not only the schools, but at the dickensian squalor that the students come from, while getting rid of the worse than useless adminstrative class that is stinking up the place.
How do you do that when shutting down the system for any period of time is simply not an option?
I have no idea, and it’s why I suppose they throw hail mary pass, after hail mary pass in the form of Michelle Rhee and any other ill fated soul who gets hired to reform this mess.
DougJ
Okay, admit it Doug, that question was yours, right?
It might have been, I can’t remember anymore.
Yossarian
I’m really torn on Rhee (as referenced upthread, some good ideas matched to terrible execution), but allow me to make a larger point that Adrian Fenty sucks.
Chad N Freude
@williamc: In defense of Goodwin on Jon Stewart’s show, what she says in the clip is make the filibusterers actually filibuster and don’t just yield to the threat of a filibuster. She’s not saying this is the way it works, she’s saying this is the way it’s supposed to work, make ’em do it.
Persia
@28 Percent: The purpose of the test is that people with money and status continue to have money and status. Works pretty well if you use that metric.
Hob
@arguingwithsignposts: Shouldn’t the term be “freedom wall”? As in freedom fries, freedom measles, freedom fly and freedom wax.
policomic
Sorry to bring up Stewart once more–but it’s the most current DougJ thread, and I was wondering if anyone else noticed his mention (during last night’s interview with Doris K. Goodwin) of “tort reform” as one of the three or four bullet point features of HCR he thought Obama should have presented in the SOTU.
I don’t bring this up because I think Stewart is obligated to follow any kind of liberal party line, but I think it’s further evidence of his worldview–which I think pretty heavily infected with the kind of “balance” for the sake of “balance” and High Broderish “common sense” that drives a lot of us crazy if it’s coming from members of the MSM, congressional Dems, or even Obama.
And, as with the others, it’s more of a stupid habit, or unconscious tic, than a well-thought-out point of view.
Brachiator
@policomic:
The weird thing is that Stewart is a comedian, not a journalist or pundit. Dissecting his “world view” unfortunately says a lot — none of it good — about the state of news reporting today.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Yutsano:
This is an urban legend. You can’t see the GWofC from space with the naked eye (i.e. an astronaut looking out the window), it is far too skinny for that.
Most people have seen pictures of just the most famous and easily visited segment of the wall at Badaling near Beijing (which was rebuilt in brick and stone during the Ming dy.), and think that is the whole wall. Not so. It is a fascinating “object” which whose cultural construction has overwhelmed the reality of the actual physical set of artifacts – not one wall but actually a whole series of distinct walls, berms, moats, detached forts and fortified towns, and some extremely odd scratches in the desert which may have been roads or simply boundary markers, constructed at different times spanning from the Qin thru Ming and Qing dynasties out of different materials, and for a variety of purposes as a function of the extremely complex and frequently changing cultural and geopolitical relationships between the Han and other less settled peoples in the region, which involved more trade than war (many of the sites on the “wall” functioned for most of their history as trade hubs and entreports as much as or more than as military fortifications). There are some really cool books out and readily available if you are into the details of this sort of thing.