Sherry Chandler

from the Washington Post:

BEIJING — When access to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, was disrupted across China last October, a lanky chemical engineer named Shi Zhao called his Internet service provider to complain. A technician confirmed what Shi already suspected: Someone in the government had ordered the site blocked again.

Who and why were mysteries, Shi recalled, but the technician promised to pass his complaint on to higher authorities if he put it in writing.

…

Officials tolerated Wikipedia at first, perhaps because it seemed to be exactly what the party had in mind when it began promoting Internet use 11 years ago — an educational resource that could help China close its technological gap with the West, encourage innovation and boost economic growth.

But as the Chinese Wikipedia flourished, the authorities apparently came to see it as another threat to the party’s control of information, and an example of an even more worrying development. The Internet has emerged as a venue for people with shared interests — or grievances — to meet, exchange ideas and plan activities without the party’s knowledge or approval.

I know that wikipedia has taken its shots lately. I know it is flawed, and there are those among my readers who would argue that information, in order to be trusted, should come from authority. Which gets at one of the fundamental human conversations, I suppose.

Still, this long Post article on the growth and suppression of the Chinese wikipedia illustrates the power of the idea:

In the beginning, the Chinese edition was heavy with science and technology. The Norwegian mathematician Kirsten Nygaard was added before Sun Yat-sen, the father of modern China. But as months passed, people from around the world began to submit articles on a variety of subjects, including wine and cars, history and politics.

In July 2003, a prolific Hong Kong user known online as Lorenzarius sparked one of the site’s first political debates with an essay urging people to avoid “China-centrism.” He argued, for example, that the war that began when Japan invaded China in 1937 should be called the “Second Sino-Japanese War” instead of the “War of Resistance against Japan,” as it is referred to by the party.

Most who responded posted objections, saying that almost all Chinese knew the war by its official name. But they also endorsed his larger point about trying to maintain a neutral point of view in Wikipedia’s entries.

A few months later, another debate erupted over how contributors should resolve disputes on the site. Some advocated a system in which only the most active users could vote, but Sheng argued that all users should be treated equally. Lorenzarius concurred, and urged users to try to compromise and seek consensus before resorting to a vote.

To many educated in China, these governing principles of Wikipedia — objectivity in content, equality among users, the importance of consensus — were relatively new concepts. Yuan said he consulted the work of philosopher John Rawls and economist Friedrich Hayek to better understand how a free community could organize itself and “produce order from chaos.”

“We had heard of these ideas, but they really didn’t have much to do with our lives,” said Yuan, now a computer programmer. “In school, we were taught an official point of view, not a neutral point of view. And we didn’t learn much about how to cooperate with people who had different opinions.”

Read it all.

Well, even if it is, I’d still recommend this NYTimes backgrounder on the Armstrong Ranch by Rick Lyman and Anne E. Kornblut.

ARMSTRONG, Tex. MORE than a century before it became the scene of a vice presidential hunting accident, this humble stretch of property had connections to another gun incident.

On a manhunt in 1877, a hard-bitten Texas ranger named John B. Armstrong captured the notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin after what the officer later described in a telegram back home as a “lively shooting” aboard a train in Florida. The capture made a hero of Mr. Armstrong, who bought a 50,000-acre plot from the owners of an old Spanish land grant using, according to one account, the $4,000 reward from the capture of the notorious gunman. When Mr. Armstrong died there in 1913, the land passed down to his heirs and soon was known by the family name.

Vice President Cheney’s mishap on the property last weekend drew the curtain back on a place that has become a quiet destination for the powerful, rivaling Hyannisport, Kennebunkport and the Hamptons as a setting where important relationships have been nurtured. The rise of the Armstrong Ranch, and its even larger and more famous neighbor next door, the King Ranch, is as much a story of the rise of the Republican party in Texas, and George W. Bush as it is about the Armstrong family itself.

…

The political power of the Texas ranches persisted into the 20th century. Representative Richard Kleberg came from the family that owned the King Ranch and was a powerhouse in Congress in the 1930’s and 40’s.

In the late 40’s, opponents of young Lyndon B. Johnson accused him of stealing a United States Senate election by using the South Texas political bosses who were controlled by the ranch owners, something that Johnson always denied.

“Back in the ’40’s, Lyndon Johnson could still steal a Senate election in South Texas with the help of the big patrons,” said Calvin Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

“But what happened is, in the late 60’s and early 70’s, is the feds came in and threw some people in handcuffs, along with some of the bosses of those South Texas counties, and it cleaned up a lot,” he said. “But you notice, even today, you can still call the local sheriff and say, ‘We’ve had an accident out on the ranch, not to worry, it’s under control,’ and the sheriff says, ‘Yes ma’am, I’ll drive out in the morning and we’ll piece this thing together.’ There’s still a deference to the ranch owners that would astound most Americans.”

I think I may have to go watch “Giant” again. There may have been more bothering that James Dean character than I realized 50 years ago, when nobody even knew that Rock Hudson was gay. Not that I think Edna Ferber (and here, too) was much of a muckraker.

Samuel A. Schreiner, Jr. writing in today’s New York Times online:

PRESIDENTS’ DAY is generally reserved for honoring our presidents. But how about the wives of our presidents? And how about presidential wives who have been unfairly maligned over the years? In this regard, there is no better candidate for rehabilitation this holiday than Mary Todd Lincoln.

For years, authors and scholars have claimed that Mary Lincoln was insane. This is simply not true, and a file of documents found in 1975 in a closet in the Manchester, Vt., home of Mary Lincoln’s son Robert proves it.

The article goes on to offer proofs that, contrary to popular opinion, the Lincolns were happily married and entirely in love. I would venture that marriage to powerful men is always complicated. I wonder whether the same kind of article will be written about Bill and Hillary in centuries to come. Shreiner makes Mary Todd sound a bit like Hillary:

With a well-stocked mind and the nerve to speak it, she persuaded her husband to follow her advice in matters like coveted appointments, and this infuriated the men around the president.

But I’m pretty sure this is most-often true of First Ladies. Though many of us like to pretend that the President’s wife is just a smiling hostess, the nation’s housewife, I think most elections give us two for the price of one. Some are just more willing to play the game.

Anyway, I’ve always had a soft spot for Mary Todd Lincoln, a Lexington belle who married into some pretty hard times.