What did the Leavitt Center get up to this last year? How did we become 2013′s Organization of the Year at Southern Utah University? Check out our latest video for a brief introduction.
Video credit to Jay Sorenson of the Executive Council. Jay is in the Master’s of Communication Program at Southern Utah University.
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“I must take complete responsibility for all my actions, both public and private.”
Have you ever considered all the gaffes, screw-ups, and one liners celebrities and politicians have committed over the past fifty years? From baseball players to American presidents, few are safe from the scrutiny of the public eye. Inevitably, somewhere along the line even the most polished professional will have an embarrassing incident or worse, a scandal.
Now public scandals are not always career ending, depending on the apology the public is very willing to forgive. However, give a poor apology and you’ll see just how truly vicious the media can become.
Apologies and excuses almost always follow mistakes and misdeeds. After all–it’s human nature to blame others or “unfair” circumstances. And like train wrecks, people love watching people say “I’m sorry”. Consider a few of the following public apologies:
In 2009, Michael Vick’s apology for his involvement with a dog fighting operation generated 1.6 million hits. R& B singer Chris Brown’s apology for domestic assault on his girlfriend Rihanna generated 1.2 million hits. And, Reverend Jesse Jackson’s apology for claiming he wanted to castrate Barack Obama yielded 378,000 hits.
Fortunately some of America’s more newsworthy events dwarf these numbers, with a video of the damage from the devastating 2011 tsunami in Japan generating 18 million hits, and Obama’s speech regarding the death of Osama Bin Laden generated 3.5 million hits. Although, not conclusive because of the many variables that contribute to the viral nature of certain YouTube videos, it does provide some evidence that public apologies are often consumed with the same level of enthusiasm as other more seemingly prominent events.
So if you find it such a joy to watch people squirm while apologizing on national television, imagine the fun you could be having if you knew the various strategies these same people use to deflect blame and justify their poor behavior. Interested? Well, welcome to the world of Apologia.
Academics utilize the term apologia as opposed to simply “apology” because the term better reflects the idea that there are a great many more strategies that can be utilized than simply to take responsibility for ones actions–i.e. to apologize. In a recent study by SUU’s Dr. Kevin Stein, it was found that the most frequently used strategies were mortification or taking responsibility (48%), bolstering or offsetting the damage through self praise (11%), and corrective action or repairing the damage (9%). Amazingly, there are twelve more strategies public figures use to explain their taboo behavior. Let’s briefly cover a couple of them.
Mortification occurs when the accused individual takes responsibility for his/her actions. For example, Harry Whittington offered this mortification after Vice-President Dick Cheney shot him (yes, you heard that correctly) while on a quail hunt in Texas:
“My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice-President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week. We send our love and respect to them as they deal with situations that are much more serious than what we’ve had this week. And, we hope that he will continue to come to Texas and seek the relaxation that he deserves.”
While the fact that Whittington apologized for being shot seems ridiculous, it is nevertheless an example of an individual taking responsibility for the harm that was caused.
Bolstering occurs when the accused individual attempts to counterbalance or offset the audience’s displeasure by associating him/herself with something positive. For example, former Major League pitcher Roger Clemens bolstered his image during a congressional hearing on his alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs:
“If I am guilty of anything, it is being too trusting of everyone, wanting to see the best in everyone, and being nice to everyone. If I’m considered to be ignorant in that, then so be it.”
My personal favorite comes from Dominos Pizza. Patrick Doyle, CEO of Dominos Pizza, also used bolstering as he discussed a YouTube video in which employees were seen contaminating food by putting it up their noses (among other nasty things):
“It sickens me that the actions of two individuals could impact our great system. Where 125,000 men and women work for local business owners around the U.S. and in more than 60 countries around the world, we take tremendous pride in crafting delicious food that they deliver to you everyday.”
Here, Patrick Doyle and Roger Clemens both tout their redeeming qualities in an effort to offset the damage caused. Whether we actually believe that Dominos Pizza makes “delicious food” is left up to the judgment of the target audience.
These two techniques represent only portions of the full fifteen strategies, but from them you can see that we humans will do and say anything to get out of trouble. This week at Pizza and Politics, Dr. Kevin Stein will be stopping by to show some of the more funny examples of failed apologia. It will be rare opportunity to hear from Dr. Stein in such a personal, informal setting. Be sure to stop by and participate in his presentation. Or don’t, whichever it is your call. If you can’t make it though, be sure to have a good excuse and apology handy when we call you out for missing!
Jay Sorensen is a member of the Executive Council and is currently enrolled in the Master’s of Professional Communication Program at Southern Utah University. He will be traveling to China this fall to study with Professor Stein at the Hunan Normal University.
Excerpts from the Distinguished Faculty Lecture at SUU, September 13, 2011 were used with express permission from Dr. Kevin Stein.
Photography credit to This Day in Quotes, Straight from The A, NPR, and Sports Illustrated.
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The Leavitt Center is proud to host a student-led debate this Wednesday at Pizza & Politics. The College Republicans, led by President Sean Romney, will be toeing off with the College Democrats, led by President Jordan Greenwell. Our debate will be focused on three issues: sex-education, taxes, and lands/enviornmental issues. Each political club will be given time to argue the political party’s position, be permitted to rebut opposing views, and then the student audience will be able to voice their opinions.
The Young College Democrats will be represented by: Jordan Greenwell, Darrah Jones, Beth Mertin, and Elias Brooks. The College Republicans will be represented by: Sean Romney, Logan Bunker, Courtney Brinkerhoff, and Jordan Cox. To give proper context to the issues we have put together brief talking points about the issues from both parties.
Republican Stance
“Most conservatives don’t want to have very explicit information disseminated to students in regards to sex education. Conservatives would rather leave the responsibility to parents, and not give that control to the public education system.”
-Sean Romney, President of the College Republican Club
Democrat Stance
“The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to affordable family planning services and comprehensive age-appropriate sex education which empowers people to make informed choices and live healthy lives.”
The Young Democrats Club pictured at The Grind Coffee House for their opening social.
Democrat Stance
“We support allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest to expire and closing loopholes and deductions for the largest corporations and the highest-earning taxpayers. We are committed to reforming our tax code so that it is fairer and simpler, creating a tax code that lives up to the Buffett Rule so no millionaire pays a smaller share of his or her income in taxes than middle class families do. We are also committed to reforming the corporate tax code to lower tax rates for companies in the United States, with additional relief for those locating manufacturing and research and development on our shores, while closing loopholes and reducing incentives for corporations to shift jobs overseas.”
Republican Stance
“We oppose retroactive taxation; and we condemn attempts by activist judges, at any level of government, to seize the power of the purse by ordering higher taxes. We oppose tax policies that divide Americans or promote class warfare. Because of the vital role of religious organizations, charities, and fraternal benevolent societies in fostering benevolence and patriotism, they should not be subject to taxation, and donations to them should continue to be tax deductible. In any restructuring of federal taxation, to guard against hypertaxation of the American people, any value added tax or national sales tax must be tied to the simultaneous repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, which established the federal income tax.”
SUU students pictured with Congressman Chris Stewart.
Republican Stance
“As the pioneer of conservation over a century ago, the Republican Party believes in the moral obligation of the people to be good stewards of the God-given natural beauty and resources of our country and bases environmental policy on several common-sense principles.”
Democrat Stance
“Democrats are committed to balancing environmental protection with development, and that means preserving sensitive public lands from exploration, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Pacific West Coast, Gulf of Maine, and other irreplaceable national landscape.”
Please join us this Wednesday in the Sharwan Smith Center at 12:00pm for a lively discussion!
Cory Wadsworth and Jared Zonts produced the research on the political platforms, both are students at Southern Utah University.
Graphic credit to New Jersey Human Resources.
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I am more than half way done with my internship and oh how the time has flown! Believe it or not, Washington D.C. is such a small place– in just the last few months I have been fortunate to run into a handful of students from SUU. Including Courtney Brinkerhoff [member of the Leavitt Center's Executive Council] and fellow Political Science Students who were visiting on Spring Break, and then bumped into SUU Football player Jason Mayer at a Metro station. It really is such a small world!
A little about what I am doing at work… I feel like I am out here at such an interesting time because I have gotten to see the huge debate regarding Sequestration. Let me tell you, people were not happy when our front desk receptionists told them their White House tours had been cancelled. Rand Paul’s filibuster was also a very hot topic. No, I was not at work until one o’clock in the morning supporting the Stand with Rand movement but I did stay up and watch it on C-SPAN.
Recently Senator Hatch held a press conference with Senator Barrasso and Senator Johanns regarding the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. At this press conference, held in the capitol, they used Senator McConnell’s Red Tape Tower that is Obamacare Regulations that he featured at CPAC. Well, this tower is in his personal office and of course, us interns had to haul it over. Let me just describe how much of a task this really was. It is a seven foot tower, almost 20,000 pages that is stacked up on a dolly. It took three people to move it because it was so heavy and had to be balanced otherwise it would have come crashing down. We were even written about in the National Review (see below), check twitter and instagram with #redtapetower and people have talked about this little adventure we had to go on, I have received a little media attention as a lowly intern.
Most recently I have been actively in engaged in the “vote-a-rama” on all the amendments to the Senate continuing Resolution 8 proposed by Senator Murray (the budget) that is actually occurring right now as I type this (March 22 11:30pm). I am responsible for tracking all the amendments and creating write-ups about every one so that Senator Hatch’s staff can quickly make a decision on whether or not to support each amendment. I stayed at the office for an extra two hours tonight in order to track these amendments, when I left there had been close to 600 amendments filed, and there was still more coming in! This is where the term “vote-a-rama” comes in because the Senators have to vote on all of these and will be there all night, I feel bad for all the staff members that are still in the office!
One of my latest highlights had to be my recent tour of the Capitol dome. A dome tour is given inside the top of the Capitol rotunda and out onto a balcony just below the Statue of Freedom. You can only do this if you have a member of congress or a chief of staff with you; I had neither. Don’t ask me how I did it, I still don’t know. I went with staff from Congressman Chris Stewart’s office and how they pulled off going without him, or his chief of staff is still a mystery to me.
Things have been very busy in the political world, and it will just get crazier as we get to Cherry Blossom season and the tourists start pouring in… lots of tour giving for me! I am thoroughly enjoying it though; I recently went to the zoo, ran in the DC marathon, have visited many monuments and the office recently celebrated Senator Hatch’s birthday so we had a party for him! I am looking forward to this last stretch of the internship.
Simone Shumway is a Fellow at the Michael O. Leavitt Center for Politics and Public Service and is a Southern Utah University student interning on the United States Senate.
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Our very own SUU intern, Simone Shumway, made headline news in the National Review! See the article below:
With the hashtag #redtapetower trending on Twitter, McConnell stood next to the regulations as he called for repealing Obamacare. At CPAC, where staff members set up the tower on stage the night before McConnell’s address, he called for dismantling the program “root and branch” and vowed to fight the legislation and “every other assault on liberty the Left throws at us.”
The “red-tape tower” has been making its way around Washington, D.C. At a press conference earlier today, GOP senator Mike Johanns, flanked by senator Orrin Hatch, stood next to it as he called for the repeal of the regulations. The tower reportedly stands a whopping 7 feet, 3 inches high.
The article was taken directly from the National Review and can be read here.
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“For decades social critics in the United States and throughout the Western world have complained that ‘property’ rights too often take precedence over ‘human’ rights, with the result that people are treated unequally and have unequal opportunities. Inequality exists in any society. But the purported conflict between property rights and human rights is a mirage. Property rights are human rights.”
-Economist Armen Alchain
Why is it that the environmental group Friends of the Forest are not concerned about the extinction of the American Chicken? There are no federal laws protecting the American Chicken, and greedy private profit-driven businesses slaughter approximately 18 billion chickens a year. By contrast, the Friends of the Forest are concerned about the extinction of the Utah Prairie Dog, which has the force of US environmental laws protecting it. Humans have no practical use for prairie dogs, and would be perfectly happy to just be left alone by them. So what gives?
The answer: private property, profit and markets protect the chicken. Individuals own chickens, and therefore protect them. There are no private markets for prairie dogs, and no one owns them. If society could learn to eat prairie dogs, prairie dogs would be safe from extinction. The reality of the international bans on markets in exotic species is that these bans are driving the extinction of the tiger, elephant and other animals. Markets and private property would save them.
The main alternative to markets and private property is public ownership and control, e.g., public schools. Markets and private property are in most cases preferred to government ownership because private markets produce more economic efficiency and are morally superior.
In 1984 the US Congress passed a law making it illegal to buy or sell human organs. The US organ market operates with a maximum legal price of zero. This price ceiling results in chronic shortages and approximately 6,600 deaths each year from people waiting for organ transplants. If private markets in organs were allowed, the shortage would vanish and 6,600 lives would be saved annually.
The Michael O. Leavitt for Politics and Public Service is proud to host Professor Baker this upcoming Wednesday at Pizza & Politics. Our discussion will be begin at 12:00 pm in the Entertainment Bureau. Professor Baker will explore using private property and markets as solutions to endangered species/environment and organ transplants.
Some questions to consider
1. Should the organ market price ceiling be removed, i.e., should anyone be able to buy or sell an organ in free markets?
2. Should international bans on ivory trade and trade in exotic animals be lifted so that markets for these animals can be created and they will be saved from extinction?
3. Should national parks, (e.g., Zion, Yellowstone) and state parks be privatized and operated to make a profit?
Professor of Economics Joe Baker received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Utah.
Photo credit to Getty Images and the Gill Report.
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This spring we’ve begun sequestration: a rare word, being used to mean that the government won’t spend money it already decided to spend. But sequestration is the child of “the fiscal cliff.” That was a dramatic turn of phrase used to describe the January 1st deadline when spending cuts would be made automatically if they couldn’t be made voluntarily. Yet that in turn was a child of the debt ceiling compromise of 2011, when House Republicans used raising the debt ceiling as a wedge issue to try and slow down the growth rate of government spending. And all are part of an extended family of related attempts to rein in spending, going back five decades. Clearly this is not an issue that’s been resolved. Why is that so?
Government spending doesn’t have to be a problem, but it is. Keynesians argue that certain sorts of government spending are beneficial. And, while macroeconomists may have diminished the role of the Keynesian viewpoint, we’re more certain than the conservative parts of the media that its effects, while small, are on the positive side. That effect is above and beyond the basic law-and-order role that everyone thinks government should handle. A bigger issue is that government has evolved from something that does things that someone, somewhere, wants, to an institution that merely shuttles checks back and forth. The big problem, then, is not the conservatives view (that government spend too much), but rather the progressives worst nightmare: inability to control shuttling checks will necessitate cuts in programs that actually do things that some people want.
Government spending has two main components: discretionary spending and entitlements. Discretionary spending is approved as part of new bills. Entitlement spending is check sending, based on criteria established in older laws. Most of our entitlement spending is increasing … automatically. And the criteria set up by past legislators are generous enough that they lead to entitlements increasing faster than our willingness to pay for them. Even worse, they’re on a path to exceed our ability to pay for them. As entitlements have grown, they’ve taken a larger share of the government spending pie; even as that pie has itself grown.
People vote. That’s half the problem. The other half is that non-people don’t vote. Non-people could be a lot of things: the dead, zombies … or those who haven’t been born yet. The thing is, the people who haven’t been born yet will be richer than you are. Think about that: what sort of electoral dynamics would you get under majority rule when the rich people can’t vote? Transferring money from the rich to the poor isn’t inherently a problem. But it does have its limits. Those limits are economic: we can’t transfer more money from the rich to the poor than the rich actually have. And this is the fundamental problem: we have no political mechanism to keep this from happening.
So, our politics leads us to spend money from the future, mostly on entitlements, that are crowding out other spending we might like, which has led to the sequester (and all its antecedents). That’s goofy. Except the sequester itself is, at best, benighted. It’s all about cutting the spending that we can. But that ends up meaning that we’re cutting the spending that may not be a problem, because no one will take the political risk to cut the spending that is the problem. That’s self-destructive. Perhaps we can, and should, have a debate about discretionary spending. But this is secondary. If we don’t address the primary problem of entitlements, there’s not point.
The floor is now yours…
Professor Dave Tufte is an Associate Professor of Economics at Southern Utah University and will be guest speaking at Pizza & Politics this Wednesday in the Sharwan Smith Center. Professor Tufte received his Ph.D. in economics at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Photography credit to Pete Marovich/Bloomberg and Jacquelyn Martin/AP.
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We are talking about Government Spending this Wednesday at Pizza & Politics with Professor of Economics, Dave Tufte. To get the conversation started we have included an article from the Washington Post. Do you agree or disagree with the Washington Post article?
Posted: 03/06/2013 10:30 am on Washington Post
Remember the dreaded “fiscal cliff”? It was all the rage in December. The media hyped it. We were told that going off the “cliff” would lead to economic catastrophe.
What happened? How did “sequestration” — a banal, bureaucratic, deliberately opaque word — replace “fiscal cliff” in the media and in Congress?
The explanation is simple. Wall Street and most major corporations and investors came to recognize that the “cliff” was only a danger to the little guy. Consider this from the on-line New York Times:
Experts estimate so-called budget sequestration could cost the country about 700,000 jobs, but Wall Street doesn’t expect the cuts to substantially alter corporate profits or threaten stock markets.
Indeed not, as the Dow Industrials hit new highs yesterday. So much for a “fiscal cliff” for the suits and operators on Wall Street. But for the government employee facing a 30 percent cut in salary and extended furloughs, a “cliff” is not such a bad metaphor.
Our politicians like to wring their hands while pointing the finger of blame at the other party. But the truth is that Republicans and Democrats would have forged a compromise if their corporate handlers had told them to. But the bankers and CEOs recognized they had little to lose — and perhaps much to gain — by allowing the country to go over the fiscal cliff. Oops, scratch that last phrase. I mean, allowing the sequester cuts to happen.
There. Don’t you feel better? If your salary or benefits have been cut, you’re no longer facing a cliff; you’re just a victim of “necessary” or “stupid” sequester cuts.
Remember Obama’s “Jedi mind meld” comment? The real Jedi mind trick was getting everyone to forget the scary “cliff” and to focus instead on the banal and largely impenetrable “sequester.”
Score another rhetorical and financial victory for the Sith Lords on Wall Street!
Astore writes regularly for TomDispatch.com and can be reached at wjastore@gmail.com.
Picture credit to Womenarewatching.org
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The Michael O. Leavitt Center for Politics and Public Service is very proud to host a Town Hall Meeting with newly elected U.S. Congressmen Chris Stewart.
Please come to the open mic discussion this Thursday at 7:30pm in the Church Auditorium! Congressman Stewart welcomes your input and questions. For more information on Congressman Chris Stewart visit his website here: http://stewart.house.gov/
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Imagine a Utah without Zion’s, Arches, or even Cedar Breaks. If tourism diminished, Utah’s economy would lag, its national and international presence would suffer (the 2002 Olympics would have been impossible), and there would be no major cities between Salt Lake City and St. George. Even if these parks were created by the state, they would still lack national visibility that would bring in tourism dollars. Thus, there is a reason that Teddy Roosevelt, 26th President of these United States, is one of four men carved into Mount Rushmore. In that vein, Southern Utah University Convocations welcomes acclaimed author and historian Douglas Brinkley this Tuesday and his presentation “Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America.”
Dr. Brinkley points out that Theodore Roosevelt did more for the conservationist cause than perhaps any other man in American history. As a young man TR strongly considered going into biology before eventually deciding on politics. His impact as president on the National Parks System cannot be understated. Using executive powers that would make today’s Republicans blush, TR once made an island a wild bird refuge simply by saying, “I so declare it!” His most influential piece of legislation is the Antiquities Act (June 8th, 1906) which allowed President Roosevelt and his successors to proclaim historic landmarks and structures as national monuments, thus preserving them.
If you’re curious about the influence of President Roosevelt on Utah, look at the following statistics:
- 13 national parks
- 9,503,304 visitors to national parks (in 2012)
- $693,000,000 economic benefit from national park tourism (in 2011)
- 1,698 National Register of Historic Places listings
- $199,403,274 of historic rehabilitation projects stimulated by tax incentives (since 1995)
- 146,553 hours donated by volunteers
- 2 National Heritage Areas
- 4 National Natural Landmarks
- 14 National Historic Landmarks
- $48,902,940 in Land & Water Conservation Fund grants (since 1965)
- 2,765 acres transferred by Federal Lands to Parks for local parks and recreation (since 1948)
- $23,596,171 in historic preservation grants
- 54 community conservation and recreation projects (since 1987)
- 668 places recorded by heritage documentation programs
- 2,201,565 objects in national park museum collections
- 19 threatened and endangered species in national parks
- 6,627 archeological sites in national parks
Join us Tuesday in the Great Hall at 11:30 a.m. to listen to Dr. Brinkley’s lecture on the visionary that was President Theodore Roosevelt.
Grayson Moulton is a Senior Musical Theater BFA major from Provo, UT and was recently elected PVA senator for SUUSA. He is a member of the Executive Council and hosts a weekly radio show “Talkin’ Politics” every Wednesday at 11 a.m on Power 91.
*Photo credit to suu.edu and SUU Convocations.
Questions
1. Would Utah’s National Parks be as successful if they were state parks?
2. Was it/is it a violation of executive powers for TR to decide that something is a National Monument?
3. Should these lands be the in the control of National or State governments?
4. How would Southern Utah University be effected without National Parks?
The floor is now yours…
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