Teahadist and now head honcho at Heritage, Jim DeMint, has had a fine week:
The Heritage Foundation has gone into damage-control mode in the last few days, after coming under fire from Republicans and conservative outside groups over a report it published that puts the price tag of immigration reform at $6.3 trillion.
The conservative think tank is considering hiring a high-profile public relations firm to help deal with the fallout of the report that was supposed to be their big play in the immigration debate, according to two sources familiar with Heritage.
The group has also come under scrutiny after it was reported that one of the authors of the report asserted previously that white Americans have higher IQs than immigrants.
Michael Gonzalez, vice president of communications for the think tank, declined to comment on whether the think tank is weighing the move, but he said it has not hired any outside firms.
The rollout was supposed to be a coming out party of sorts for Jim DeMint, who took the helm of the organization last month, after giving up his Senate seat to take the job. While DeMint was expected to give the group a higher profile, the backlash and controversy are not the kind of attention the group was hoping to garner.
And the fuzzy math of the ridiculous “study” is not all:
The Heritage Foundation’s Jason Richwine, who co-authored the think tank’s study claiming immigration reform will cost trillions of dollars, contributed two articles to a “nationalist” website about Hispanic incarceration rates, Yahoo News reported Thursday.
Richwine came under fire after the Washington Post reported Wednesday that his Harvard dissertation argued Hispanics have lower IQs than Caucasians and that the United States should screen immigrants based on their IQ scores.
According to Yahoo News, Richwine wrote two articles on “crime rates among Hispanics in the United States” for the site AlternativeRight.com, a website run by Richard Spencer, “a self-described ‘nationalist’ who writes frequently about race and against ‘the abstract notion of human equality.'”
These guys have the reverse Midas touch- everything they touch turns to shit. And it is awesome. Basically, Jim DeMint is doing to Heritage what Jonah Goldberg and John Derbyshire did to the National Review, and we should cheer it, even though it is racist filth, because the more they discredit themselves, the better we all are. The sociopaths on Morning Joe would love to promote this garbage, but when shit gets all tainted with Klan and Stormfront, they run for cover.
I’m sure David Gregory will still find an excuse to have DeMint on this Sunday morning, though.
reflectionephemeral
Yeah, that’s the thing– the National Review is not taken seriously by anyone who bothers to learn anything about anything. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re losing influence in our national political discourse.
ETA: I posted on Heritage going all-in with Hannity & Limbaugh, and being proven totally wrong about everything, awhile back. Yet despite my blog post, Rich Lowry still shows up as the personification of respectable conservatism. Being objectively discredited just doesn’t go too far in affecting how you’re perceived by policymakers.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
Apparently, Richwine gave huge props to Charles Murray and a gaggle of other race-baiters in the dissertation, as well.
Violet
Bets on how many Sunday shows he’ll be on this week?
Justin
The buried lede in all these stories about Richwine is this: Harvard accepts racist dissertations and hands out degrees for them?
Comrade Dread
It is fun to watch the train wreck, but I doubt it will discredit them.
Truth these days is less about observable facts and reality and more about who can yell the loudest, the longest. And conservative media is great at screaming at clouds.
David Koch
they should ask every winger if they agree with Richwine that Rafael “Ted” Cruz and Marco Rubio have genetically low IQs
Baud
@Comrade Dread:
Agree. One of the Village’s rules is that it is uncivil to discredit conservatives.
dedc79
It’s not just that his dissertation claimed that immigrants had lower IQs then white americans – it’s that he claimed this inferiority was at least partially genetically based and would be persistent.
Mike in NC
That Richwine creep probably is workout buddy with Paul Ryan, where they compare how much they can bench press and discuss their favorite characters from Any Rand’s novels.
Another Halocene Human
Popcorn. Yum.
kc
At least DeMint’s not doing it to SC anymore.
Corner Stone
Hmmm. Wonder if DeMint or his family has any ties to this PR group?
It’s the ultimate grift.
Corner Stone
@Mike in NC:
Aren’t there only two of them to choose from?
Waldo
Moral of the story: It’s OK to have a nut job run your think tank, or a high-profile politician — but not a high-profile politician who’s also a nut job.
MattF
I was thinking that we are seeing the hand of ex-Senator DeMint in this fiasco. The powers-that-be at Heritage are getting what they asked for, good and hard.
Mike in NC
@Violet: All of them, Katie!
jl
@dedc79: I wonder how the race/bloodlines genetic basis for everything will explain their opinions on Hispanics. Ancestrally, and population genetics wise, Hispanics are mainly white and Native American. And the population genetics of Native Americans is very similar to East Asians.
So, by good old fashioned racist, bloodline analysis, Hispanics are white and East Asian, essentially, and should be smarter?
Crazy theories get into crazy territory, sooner or later.
Edit: should have said ‘False theories get into crazy territory sooner or later’, but maybe should let it stand, sounds better.
JPL
@Justin: That was my thought also.
Mike in NC
@kc: I’d love to see the freak who primaries Lindsey Graham from the right to be Congressman-elect Mark Sanford.
NotMax
The empty pot makes the most noise.
gbear
Let me go off topic to be the 258th person to say that gay marriage will be the law in MN by early next week. It passed in the legislature a couple hours ago. I think the senate is going to pass it tomorrow, and Governor Dayton will sign it next week.
Last November we were worrying if a constitutional ban on gay marriage was going to pass. This is just the most fucking amazing turnaround. Unreal that our legislators would be so damned brave to move this forward so quickly. Words fail.
Corner Stone
Beyond the other concerns, what scares me to fucking death about DeMint is how (relatively) poor he is for a US Senator.
Either he’s beyond incompetent. Or he really believes the absolutely hateful shit he spouts.
His term at Heritage is unclear so far. But he really looks like the most dangerous mix of both. An incompetent and hateful true believer.
Petorado
Harvard is really becoming a font of anti-intellectualism these days. So much for their reputation for academic excellence. More than ever, it’s about who you know and not about what you know.
Oh, the irony of being a spokesman with the surname Gonzales having to put up a brave front and defend some jackass for insulting Hispanics.
kc
@Mike in NC:
Whoever it is will make DeMint look like FDR.
JPL
@Mike in NC: Since the next Senator is going to be a repub, why not have Jenny Sanford run against Graham. That would be more entertaining in my view.
Redshirt
I have an idea!
The ONLY way to fix our current crazy political system is to reform the media. The ONLY way to do that is to force divestment – once again re-impose ownership rules about multiple outlets in major cities, limit the amount of outside corporate ownership, and maybe even ensure no media outlet is run as a public company with shareholders and the like.
Without media reform, there will be no end to the madness.
C.S.
and
Are you kidding me? Are you effin’ kidding me? Forget Richwine — what’s up with anyone named “Gonzalez” being associated with this filth?
SamR
They didn’t want controversy and they hired Jim DeMint?
“When I ordered this Kung Pao chicken, I didn’t expect it to be spicy!”
NotMax
Never quote understood the common consensus of Harvard being some wellspring of liberalism.
When I was growing up (still a work in progress) Harvard was generally regarded as a bastion of strait-laced, button-down traditionalism and, yes, old-school conservatism.
scav
@NotMax: Never expected them to be liberals but I did manage to maintain the illusion they subscribed to the tattered shreds of academic standards, more fool I.
Corner Stone
@Redshirt: Great idea! Now if only we can get Obama to nominate a decent sort to head the FCC…
Sad_Dem
So, Jim DeMint is Ted Cruz without the charm? These boys need some finishing school.
RSA
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): From the Acknowledgments (I’m a masochist):
And in the references we find some familiar names: at least nine references to Charles Murray, three to Arthur Jensen, six to J. Philippe Rushton.
? Martin
They’re losing steadily on all fronts:
Lurking Canadian
Never expected to say this, but this incident is making me miss Matako Atreides. She would have been fourteen kinds of crazy on this story.
maya
Well, Hahvahd is renowned for it’s stellar MBA program. Just ask Dubya.
Omnes Omnibus
@Lurking Canadian: Only fourteen?
PeakVT
@C.S.: Selling one’s soul for filthy lucre is a human universal.
Calouste
@Justin:
Well, one of Harvard’s professors’ dismissal of Keynes the other week boiled down to “he’s a poof”. Actually writing a thesis, however misguided, is an improvement on that particular standard.
Calouste
@C.S.:
There’s good money to be made as the house-minority person for right wing think tanks, specially if you explicitly go against your own cultural background. Just ask Niall Ferguson’s wife, Ayaan Hirsch-Ali.
West of the Rockies
Have you no sense of decency, Republican Party? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
scav
@Calouste: Well, it’s longer but I’ve seen nothing about it being more closely reasoned or logically fleshed out.
different-church-lady
The news here is not that they’ve hired a PR firm to mop up this mess.
The news here is that they’ve even realized there’s a mess to mop up.
maya
Who does the Heritage Foundation have heading up their phrenology research?
Calouste
@scav:
I didn’t say it was much of an improvement :)
wmd
Did Cole have this Hollies song in mind?
NotMax
@scav
It’s more the shocked surprise and tut-tutting evinced when some spotlighted conservative (virulent or not) is revealed to have gone there that does not compute.
“But X is a Harvard graduate.”
As if that is some automatic guarantor of a particular strain of viewpoint.
Suffern ACE
Have we yet figured out why Hispanics will cost 6.3 trillion?
scav
@Calouste: :) back, but the trees would like a word, and even some of the bytes are a little miffed. Externalities.
Scamp Dog
@West of the Rockies: No. This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.
Randy P
@maya:
Who does the Heritage Foundation have heading up their phrenology research?
That kind of thing (“didn’t we hear this story already in the 19th century?”) keeps occurring to me. Has ever since I first heard about The Bell Curve.
I guess that’s what comes from an anti-science platform. All the discredited theories from the last couple centuries start floating up.
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
I’m pretty sure the Republicans in the Senate would filibuster anyone decent who was appointed.
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
Hate to tell you, but there are four:
Anthem
We the Living
The Fountainhead
Atlas Shrugged
You do not want to know how I come by this knowledge.
Roger Moore
@Lurking Canadian:
There’s a vocal minority (of which I am a charter member) who wish m_c would show up again. She didn’t always make a positive contribution to the discussion around here, but I never got the impression that she was deliberately trolling. And when she was right, she was right.
ETA: @Omnes Omnibus:
Fourteen more than usual.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
The use of “they” as a single, gender-neutral pronoun is very old. It may not be taught in Middle School English, but that doesn’t make it unacceptable or invalid.
scav
@efgoldman: I think the point is researchers there now may have to prove their worth on a case by case basis, rather than benefiting any from an assumed collegial ethos. It was probably a mistaken heuristic in the first place. As an overall brand, they’ve taken a bit of a PR hit after the sheer recent spate of distinct cases — individuals and departments will likely cope more or less well on their lonesome and merits.
Roger Moore
@scav:
I doubt that this will cause the people in Harvard’s hard sciences much trouble, at least not with other sciences. Their research is sufficiently separate from this kind of nonsense that they might as well be in different institutions. It might knock them down a peg or two in public perception, but that’s probably just bringing them back down to a reasonable level; Harvard is at least mildly overrated.
Hal
That figure is just so damn laughable, all the Heritage Foundation is missing is Dr. Evil to announce it.
Kay
Is anyone else just bored to death by IQ discussion?
I couldn’t even get mad at Andrew Sullivan about it because I was nodding off after the first sentence.
I think less of people who obsess on it in ANY fashion. I don’t know where you go with it. I mean, what’s the response to “X has lower/higher IQ”?
What am I supposed to do with that?
It’s the world’s most boring “debate.”
Joel
@efgoldman: HMS is its own beast. By my recollection, the second largest research institution after the NIH.
Origuy
@C.S.: Richwine’s Harvard advisor was George J. Borjas, born Jorge Jesus Borjas in Cuba.
Edit: I spelled it “Ricewine” the first time. I was combining it with Rincewind. He looks a little like a Pratchett character.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
I recall her gloating at the murder of Christian missionaries, dancing on the graves of American soldiers, and if my memory doesn’t fail me gleefully anticipating the day when demographics would force the Israelis into the sea. That’s not even touching on the regular trolling, just the things that went well beyond garden variety trolling into full-blown Westboro Baptist Church level sociopathy.
When did she ever have a “she was right” moment that even came close to making up for that? Her brilliant insights that American soldiers and imposed forms of government weren’t wanted in the Middle East, which most of the people here already know perfectly well?
Sorry, nothing personal, but I’m an equally vocal charter member of the school of thought that this blog is immeasurably better for her absence, and am genuinely curious what anyone ever saw in her other than a fucking sociopath and a bigot to boot.
Redshirt
@efgoldman: That’s the rub, right? Congress.
If Dems ever take back full control, media reform should be fast in the docket of new legislation.
Dolly Lllama
@SiubhanDuinne: I think the point was that there were, essentially, just two characters in all those novels. And I probably came by that knowledge the same shameful way you came by yours.
Patricia Kayden
@jl: True. Most Latinos consider themselves to be White. So I’m not sure if Richwine’s argument makes sense.
Dolly Lllama
@Chris: Cudlip. :)
Patricia Kayden
@Suffern ACE: Welfare, government assistance, etc.
El Cid
@Chris: She nearly continually assumed that my pseudonym meant that I backed anti-Muslim wars, only abandoning that after repeated emphasis that the actual El Cid had a largely Moorish army. But it took awhile to get over being accused of backing the crusades.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: At bottom, what these folks are driving toward is the just-world fallacy. The claim is that the racial and ethnic and socioeconomic groups that are currently disadvantaged are disadvantaged because of their ineradicable biological defects, in such a way that any attempt to help them will just make things worse, so they should just accept their lot at the bottom of the heap, and it’s OK if we do nothing to change the situation.
That’s what all the race/IQ stuff is about. And the thing that drives academics particularly nutty about it is that the people insisting that social differences come from ineradicable biological IQ differences between races are pretty good at claiming to possess the real scientific consensus, and insisting that their skeptics are just anti-intellectual denialists, like creationists or global-warming deniers. As far as I can tell, it’s far from true, but the arguments have a tendency to just circle around and around and around and around, which is where attrition by boredom comes in.
Wag
@kc:
But he is doing to the nationals a whole.
qwerty42
@NotMax:
Yeah. There are stories of Professor (Admiral) Samuel Eliot Morrison searching for items in the library’s card catalog (hey, I remember those) in his riding boots and breeches. I’d say a fairly staid part of the New England establishment. I think Frederick Jackson Turner went there when he felt U Wisconsin was becoming too obsessed with football.
Barry
@Justin:
“The buried lede in all these stories about Richwine is this: Harvard accepts racist dissertations and hands out degrees for them? ”
There is no ceiling at Harvard (there are some seriously high-level people there), and no floor (it’s full of liars, wh*res and cranks).