Various friends are linking to Jonathan Chait’s recent article, “School Closures Were a Catastrophic Error. Progressives Still Haven’t Reckoned With It,” New York Magazine, January 17, 2022. It really is quite good.
I found the analogy in the second paragraph below faulty:
Social scientists have measured the factors that drove schools to stay closed last year. One study found schools with unionized teachers, more of which were located in more Democratic-voting districts, were more likely to remain all virtual. Another likewise found “local political partisanship and union strength,” rather than the local severity of COVID, predicted school closing.
It is always easier to diagnose these pathologies when they are taking place on the other side. You’ve probably seen the raft of papers showing how vaccine uptake correlates with Democratic voting and COVID deaths correlate with Republican voting. Perhaps you have marveled at the spectacle of Republican elites actively harming their own audience. But the same thing Fox News hosts were doing to their elderly supporters, progressive activists were doing to their side’s young ones.
There are two claims here. The first is that Fox News hosts were encouraging their elderly viewers not to get vaccinated. I’m not sure that’s true. I haven’t seen them say that. We quit watching Tucker Carlson a few months ago. I’ve been a much happier person now that I watch fewer than 2 hours of Fox a week. Maybe Chait watches Fox more than I do. So it’s quite conceivable that he’s right about that claim. But I must say that I have seen literally no one in the minutes I watch recommend what Chait says they recommend.
But let’s assume, arguendo, that Chait is right about his factual claim. Does his analogy between Fox on vaccines and the elderly on the one hand, and progressives on schools and children on the other hand, hold up? Or, as cousin Vinny would say, does Chait’s case hold water?
I say, as Mona Lisa Vito, would say, Chait is wrong. But I’ll leave the reasoning for that conclusion to commenters.
READER COMMENTS
Mark Z
Jan 19 2022 at 6:41pm
Doesn’t that depend on what point Chait is trying to make? Two things do not need to be the same in every respect in order for one to be analogous to another in some respect; otherwise no analogy would be valid. The key point of emphasis may be that both are causing harm.
Aaron W
Jan 19 2022 at 8:46pm
I don’t watch Fox News (or any cable news for that matter), so this may or may not be true. I wonder if Chait’s analogy is more an attempt to make admitting a mistake on school closures more palatable to a left leaning audience instead.
Rob Rawlings
Jan 19 2022 at 9:21pm
I do not read him as making an analogy at all. He is not saying that school closures are analogous to anti-vax polices but rather that both are in the class of things that do harm to ones own supporters.
Johnson85
Jan 20 2022 at 3:05pm
I think you are exactly right about what Chait is doing, and it’s probably reasonably effective for that purpose. But it’s still somewhat jarring to see locking students out of school and leaving parents scrambling to figure out daycare (after using taxpayer funded provision of daycare to ensure there aren’t sufficient private alternatives) to Fox allowing vaccine skeptics or anti-vaxxers on their programming (assuming that’s what is being complained about; I don’t watch infotainment, so I don’t know what fox did or did not do).
BC
Jan 20 2022 at 3:27am
The usual claim against Fox News is that they are telling their audience what it wants to hear: that there are good reasons not to take the vaccine. Pleasing its audience helps Fox maintain high ratings, even though Fox may be encouraging the audience’s self-destructive behavior by doing so. (Btw, it’s not clear whether Fox actually “influences” its audience to not take vaccines or merely plays to its audience’s confirmation bias about their pre-existing anti-vax sentiments. Why would the audience want to hear anti-vax propaganda unless it’s already anti-vax?)
The situation with school closings is different. Teachers unions want to keep schools closed and, from a strictly selfish perspective, it probably is better for union members if they can just stay home while collecting a paycheck instead of going to school in person. Teachers unions represent their members, not students and parents. Parents, however, want schools open to educate their kids. So, in the case of school closings, its a matter of Democratic leaders prioritizing the interests of teachers unions, who are big Democratic supporters, over the interests of parents, about half of whom support Democrats and half of whom support Republicans.
Pleasing an audience instead of delivering “tough medicine” is quite different from siding with one interest group over another.
Scott Sumner
Jan 20 2022 at 9:47am
I don’t believe that Fox News hosts explicitly told their supporters not to get vaccinated. But their reporting did have the effect of discouraging vaccine use, by presenting information that tended to question their effectiveness in a misleading fashion. I hardly ever watch Fox News, but saw an example of this on one of the rare times I tuned it. On the other hand, I suspect that conspiracy theories on the internet were a bigger problem.
KevinDC
Jan 20 2022 at 10:20am
The disanalogy, I believe, would come from the fact that the elderly viewers of Fox News are still left with a free choice to get vaccinated or to opt out, whereas the young people kept perpetually isolated due to continued advocacy of school closures do not get any similar degree of choice in the matter, nor do their families.
David Henderson
Jan 20 2022 at 11:01am
Bingo!
AMt
Jan 20 2022 at 3:39pm
The existence of differences between them does not mean his analogy is “wrong.” His analogy is obviously about both groups “actively harming.”
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/analogy
KevinDC
Jan 21 2022 at 10:16am
It’s true that situations don’t need to be identical to serve as analogies, of course, but analogies still fail when there are fundamental disconnects. As you say, “[Chait’s] analogy is obviously about both groups ‘actively harming.'” But one group is using persuasion, and the other group is using coercion. If you want to make an analogy about actively causing harm, the use of coercion on one side and the lack of coercion on the other breaks that analogy.
AMT
Jan 21 2022 at 11:10am
Absolutely false. Try learning the definition. Here’s another:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/analogy
You can’t just by fiat decide some particular difference you choose to seize upon means it’s not an analogy. Analogies are about THE SIMILARITY between DIFFERENT THINGS.
KevinDC
Jan 21 2022 at 2:46pm
I’m fully aware of the definition of analogy, but I appreciate the effort regardless. And I already agreed that analogies are comparisons of things that are different from each other, so why you felt the need to put that part of the definition in bold is beyond me. You’re only highlighting something I just said myself and already agreed with.
Nobody said that it was “not an analogy.” I have no idea where that came from. There’s a difference between saying “this isn’t an analogy,” which nobody said, and saying “this is a mistaken analogy,” which is what actually was said. And the reason the analogy was mistaken was, to use the definition you helpfully provided, on the issue of “resemblance of a particular aspect” or “resemblance in some particulars between things.” The particular aspects of the two different things that Chait used as the basis for his analogy do not, in fact, resemble each other. In one instance, he’s pointing to persuasion, and in the other instance, he’s pointing to coercion. Those aren’t just some random “difference [I] choose to seize upon,” those are the specific points of comparison he’s highlighting as the basis of his analogy, and they are very different from each other. This doesn’t mean “it wasn’t an analogy,” it just means it was a mistaken analogy.
AMT
Jan 21 2022 at 7:38pm
Wow…I can’t believe you still aren’t getting it. Even the bold and capital letters didn’t help you understand…”a comparison of two otherwise unlike things based on resemblance of a particular aspect.”
“Breaks that analogy.” That very clearly conveys you think it is not an analogy, and David saying “Chait is wrong” is very similar. Anyways, assuming arguendo, it still doesn’t even make any sense to say an analogy is “mistaken.” Your response completely ignores my post. To have a valid (“non-mistaken”) analogy, you only need to point out a similarity (NOTE: SINGULAR) between two things. Chait obviously did that, and it seems quite clear that’s all he was trying to do anyway. “both sides hurt their own, [obviously] in different ways.” You simply cannot say an analogy is “mistaken” because of differences between the two things. Otherwise, someone could literally always say that some difference means an analogy is “mistaken.” This is clearly false. Differences are literally required for there to be an analogy and nowhere in the definitions does it say there is some minimum level of similarity, or criteria for determining if two things are similar enough for there to be an analogy. The second definition I shared even implies the things are different except in the similarity that is the focus of the analogy.
What you can say is that the differences between things in an analogy are so significant that it is not useful, but NOT that it is not an analogy, or that it is “mistaken.” Chait is obviously not making a “mistaken analogy” by saying different groups were both “actively harmed,” obviously in different ways. Explaining how the second group was harmed was the whole point of his entire post, for crying out loud!
AMT
Jan 20 2022 at 11:07am
I’m not sure what you’re saying.
Are you saying his analogy is wrong because his facts are incorrect? “But let’s assume, arguendo, that Chait is right about his factual claim.” I guess not.
So, are you saying his analogy doesn’t make sense? It seems incredibly obvious that he is saying:
-Fox news harmed old people by decreasing vaccination rates,
analogously,
-progressives harmed young people by closing schools.
It’s not clear if you only wanted to assume the Fox news details and get opinions on the truth of the second point, so I won’t elaborate much. Basically I’d think closing universities was fine because remote learning is fine, and probably the same for high schools, but for elementary schools I’m not so sure how well young children can learn over zoom.
PS:
They don’t need to be encouraging elderly viewers specifically. Even if they strenuously encourage all elderly viewers to get vaccinated, but tell everyone else to not worry about the virus or getting vaccinated, there is a clear argument they are still harming their elderly viewers by decreasing overall vaccination rates, and therefore still putting the elderly at greater risk compared to encouraging widespread vaccinations, since vaccines are less than 100% effective. If you would ever argue that most deaths from covid are elderly people anyway, then this should make perfect sense.
David Henderson
Jan 20 2022 at 3:37pm
You wrote:
See KevinDC’s answer above. The difference between voluntary and involuntary is huge.
David Henderson
Jan 22 2022 at 11:43am
To AMT, KevinDC, and all others paying attention:
I think that AMT is right that it’s not a wrong analogy. I should have said that it’s a weak analogy because it leaves out a crucial element, the voluntary versus involuntary issue.
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