Every
village has an idiot and Cross-Currents has Jeff Ballabon. I've suffered
through a dozen of his blogs and have yet to be enlightened about anything.
What is this guy doing on a blog with numerous prestigious commentators?
Why must the person with the least to say post the most?
With a BA from Yeshiva University and a JD from Yale, Ballabon represents
to me everything that is odious about the organization man, a go-along-to-get-along
corporate player who combines pomposity, smugness, and mendacity to succeed
at hawking a destructive product - television forced on children at school.
"I may participate in blogging, but "I" am not a "blogger."
I am a Jew. I am an American Jew. As a Jew and an American, I am bound
religiously, morally, ethically to Halacha, American law, and the dictates
of my conscience - my "Sechel Ha'enoshi".
So, unless someone can explain to me why I should feel bound to "blogging
ethics" I hereby declare my intention to remove, retroactively, any post
of mine which, upon reflection, I find to contain halachically or ethically
problematic material...."
A woman writes: "Well, Luke, if there aren't any ethics regarding the
bad taste of blogging on about absolutely nothing, there should be."
A man writes:
I've had enough of his self-righteous nonsense too. Worst of all it's
all poorly written. This guy hawks sex, violence and junkfood to kids.
Which is fine if you're up front about what you're doing. But stop justifying
it with talk about your "hyphen-journalism awards."
"He was VP of Court TV (ever wonder why we never saw the Orthodox Rabbi
Lanner trial live, only the trial of a Reform Rabbi Neulander?).
From a Google search on "Jeff Ballabon," it appears that his job is "Apologist-In-Residence"
for Channel One, which has beamed a newscast into thousands of schools
for the past decade. I can think of few things that children need less
than TV news piped into their schools.
According to this Primedia
press release: "Its award-winning 12-minute news broadcast is seen
daily by more than 8 million students and 440,000 educators in more than
12,000 middle and high schools across the country."
Jeff Ballabon makes his living increasing American children's intake of
television. Wow. That's honorable. But I'm sure he can justify it halachicly
(Jewish Law).
I've done a ton of disreputable things but I hope I never sink so low
as to promote television intake by a captive audience of school children.
As
Dennis Prager points out, television news gives you an inherently
distorted view of the world because it depends on pictures, on action
video. School kids would be better off watching reruns of Mary Tyler Moore
than Ballabon's Channel One. I bet his own kids don't have to watch Channel
One at their yeshiva. Instead, his company forces it on the goyisha kids
(and some unlucky Jews) and Ballabon profits.
ADS AIMED AT YOUNGSTERS UNDER ATTACK PRACTICES SEEN AS EXPLOITIVE
September 11, 2001
by David Crary The Associated Press
Sixth- and seventh-graders required to watch TV ads at school.
The Teletubbies helping to promote giant burger chains. Advertisers seeking
data on how children nag their parents to make a purchase.
Those were some of the practices targeted Monday as psychologists and
parent activists met for a symposium on exploitive advertising aimed at
children -- a counterpoint to a conference of children's advertisers at
the same time and in the same Manhattan hotel.
Captive Audience Award: Channel One Network
"For using the public schools and compulsory schooling laws to require
more than 8 million children to watch its daily commercials in their classrooms.
Channel One TV programs market violent movies, junk food and other commercial
fare to this captive audience."
Response: Jeff Ballabon, of Channel One, said its 10-minute daily newscast
(accompanied by two minutes of ads) has won journalism awards and received
positive reviews from teachers and principals.
Boycott Aimed at Channel One Ads
Los Angeles Times
June 11, 2001
by Edmund Sanders
A coalition of consumer groups and children's activists are
planning to launch an advertising boycott today, aimed at New York-based
Primedia Inc.'s Channel One Network, which distributes news, entertainment
and paid commercials to U.S. classrooms.
The groups say Channel One, which is seen by about 8 million children
in 12,000 schools nationwide, exploits students.
"Compelling impressionable children to view commercials during their limited
school time is repugnant," states a letter sent by the coalition to Channel
One advertisers, including government agencies who have bought air time
on
the network.
A spokesperson for Channel One said the network has been consistently
honored for providing educational programming created specifically for
teenagers. "Channel One has had rave reviews from 98% of teachers who
use
it," said Jeff Ballabon of Channel One.
Ballabon's statement can't be anything but a bald-faced lie. There's no
way that 98% of teachers are going to submit any reviews, let alone rave-reviews,
of anything, let alone a 12-minute newscast.
Washington Post, April 9, 2000, by Mark Francis Cohen:
Channel One was something of a public scourge, and it fomented
a coast-to-coast uprising. The very notion of hanging a TV set in a classroom
and prodding students to watch it -- and the commercials that support
it -- inspired a whole lot of bile. Critics saw it as child exploitation
and television mania run amok. New York and California banned the network,
and almost every major educational group, including the American Federation
of Teachers and the National Education Association, denounced it.
Channel One's executives are quite aware of their unmatched position in
the marketplace. In ads they have run in publications like Advertising
Age, they pitch potential sponsors this way: "We have the undivided attention
of millions of teenagers for 12 minutes a day -- that might be a world
record."
Before Channel One was conceived, schools were considered sacrosanct.
It was unimaginable that educators would stand behind a profitable television
company that hawked candy bars and high-priced sneakers to students in
the classroom. At that time, corporations and schools did not enter into
commercial agreements. Taco Bell wasn't sold in cafeterias. Coca-Cola
didn't sponsor school events. Dell wasn't donating "Donated by Dell" computers.
Jeff Ballabon, a public relations executive at Channel One, is in the
room, too. "Our model is no different than any news organization!" Ballabon
says, visibly annoyed. "We use advertising to pay for the program, and
it's an
expensive program to create. If we didn't care about the program, why
would we spend all that money?"
Washington Post, December 25, 1999
In her Dec. 12 Outlook article, "A School by Any Other Name
Would Be . . . Richer," Elizabeth Chang dismisses Channel One as a marketer
that provides TV monitors in exchange for showing advertisements in classrooms.
This
description insults the journalists at Channel One and the educators who
support us.
Ninety-eight percent of educators who have Channel One in their schools
recommend the program to their colleagues. Channel One provides 12,000
schools around the country with a daily 12-minute news broadcast that
is
produced specifically for middle and high school students. Ten times as
many teens receive their news from Channel One as from all other news
sources in the nation.
Our broadcast has won nearly 200 awards for journalistic excellence. How
disappointing that your publication would focus only on the delivery mechanism
and dismiss Channel One as a marketing scheme.
--Jeff Ballabon
The writer is executive vice president for network affairs at Channel
One Network.
Washington Post, July 2, 1997
Jeff Ballabon, senior vice president of Court TV, said the aftermath
of the Simpson case has not prevented his cable network from gaining access
to many trials. "Initially," he said, "we had trouble getting into high-profile
cases like {the murder of singer} Selena and Susan Smith," who was convicted
in Union, S.C., of drowning her young sons. "But people realized it really
didn't matter. . . . Now we're getting in about the same amount as we
were before O.J."
Mr. Ballabon, the son of a Board of Education supervisor and an economics
professor from Queens, has always lived in two worlds. A Haredi, or
ultra-Orthodox Jew from the scholarly Lithuanian tradition (as opposed
to the more visible Hasidic groups, which place less emphasis on education
and are typically poorer), he’s a yeshiva boy first. But after studying
at a prestigious Baltimore yeshiva and then spending three semesters
at Yeshiva University, he decided to take the LSAT, the law-school entrance
exam, on which he got a perfect score. And the next thing he knew, he
was on the very foreign soil of Yale Law School.
There, friends recalled him as brilliant and not particularly hard-working.
One close friend, Mark Costello, recalled shooting pool with him at
3 a.m. before an exam. But Mr. Ballabon also maintained his faith, and
Mr. Costello said that he once found his friend exhausted after being
unable to turn out the lights in his dorm room on the Sabbath.
Mr. Ballabon lives a traditional family life on Long Island with his
wife and five children, and observes religious strictures that seem
exotic even to other Jews: He won’t celebrate Halloween, for example,
and insists on explaining his card tricks because of rules against magic.
His piety may have won him friends among conservative Christians, but
it was his decision to get behind George W. Bush early that brought
him to his current level of influence.
If you’re looking for a New Yorker with deep ties to the Christian
right—you know, the folks running America—Mr. Ballabon is your man.
Oh, and so are -- for startes -- the people at National Review,
but apparently Smith can't be bothered to know his own borough.
Which is odd, first of all, because he’s not Christian, but an ultra-Orthodox
Jew from Long Island. And, second, because he’s spent most of his
career as the lobbyist for New York media companies, including Court
TV and Primedia.
And why is either of these strange? I don't know, and can't imagine
what mistaken assumptions carried Smith to assume so.
There are no reliable nationwide figures on the Orthodox vote, but
evidence from some New York area counties is telling. The village
of New Square, an Orthodox enclave in Rockland County, went for Al
Gore in 2000. Last year, Mr. Bush won the village, 1,530 votes to
16. And, less dramatic but still striking, turnarounds were visible
across Rockland County and in Lakewood, N.J., another community with
many Orthodox Jews.
These are both top-down voting blocs that provide no indication of
grassroots Orthodox sentiment, or of solidity with a general "Orthodox
vote." They voted for Gore, for goodness' sake; does Smith think
there's a real values shift that's led us to this 2004 vote?
Of course, Ballabon contributes some stupidity of his own:
Mr. Ballabon talks a good deal about Israel and has allies in the
settler movement. Not long ago, he hosted a fund-raiser for a Hebron
settlers’ group, and at another recent gathering he introduced, with
a wink, a settler friend as “a minor terrorist.”
4/7/05
Why Won't Jeff
Ballabon Shut Up?
In The Name Of Values, Not Politics
Jeff is the paid propagandist for Channel One, a large corporation which
makes deals with schools (public and private) to force children to watch
television (including commercials) in exchange for giving the school free
TV (schools don't need TVs, they need teachers who can teach kids to read
and write).
So, fine, that's how he makes his living. It's not honorable, but many
of us are forced to make compromises with our integrity to pay the bills.
What bothers me is that Ballabon waves his Orthodox Judaism like a bloody
flag, and continually proclaims how he lives his life in accord with Jewish
Law, while engaging in work that sullies the souls of children (without
admitting that what he is doing is, at best, problematic according to
his religion). If he'd admit that he's doing this, then I wouldn't have
a problem. I do have a problem that he's becoming an influential voice
of the religious and political Right. He doesn't speak for me or for anyone
who wants to protect children from the encroachment of television. I loathe
Jeff Ballabon (even though I agree with almost all his political and religious
views).
This moral center is no departure from Republican principles. Small
government and economic thrift are not, as Danforth argues, the core
principles. All things being equal, they are a means to achieve the
core principle: the protection of individual freedom against unnecessary
government intrusion.
But all things are not equal. Secularists want to invest government
with the power to force citizens to abandon their scruples on an array
of the most basic building blocks of individual conscience. Judges willing
to ignore the Constitution want to force citizens to redefine families.
The left wants to assign power to the government to determine the quality
and worth of innocent lives in order to allow their intentional destruction.
Jeff works for a company that makes deals with government schools to
force kids to watch television. Ballabon expands the power of government
to force kids to watch TV. He destroys individual freedom and increases
government intrusion. Through his work, Ballabon invests government with
the power to force citizens to abandon their scruples against watching
television and to ignore their conscience (television is the antithesis
of religion, and if many religious people watch TV that only shows that
they do not live up to the demands of their religion).
It is precisely Jeff Ballabon and his company that "assign[s] power
to the government to determine the quality and worth of innocent lives
in order to allow their intentional destruction."
I highly doubt that Jeff Ballabon sends his kids to a school which has
a deal with his employer.
…The report said Jeffrey Ballabon, then executive vp of public affairs
for Channel One, wrote in January 1999 to Abramoff and to another
lobbyist at the firm Preston Gates, where Abramoff worked, asking
for support for arguments that Channel One saves tax dollars. Ballabon
suggested favorable treatment by Abramoff associate and well-known
conservative Grover Norquist, and by month’s end The Washington Times
had published a favorable op-ed under Norquist’s byline, the report
said.
Days later Abramoff in an e-mail to Ballabon suggested payment to
Norquist’s organization, Americans for Tax Reform, according to the
Senate report. In April, Abramoff suggested a $3,000 payment to Americans
for Tax Reform as the price for a policy brief the group wrote portraying
Channel One as a tax-saving service, according to the Senate report.
In May 1999, Abramoff wrote to Ballabon suggesting “5 pieces for
$10K,” referring to payment for favorable op-ed and think-tank treatments
of Channel One. According to the Senate report, Ballabon responded:
“yup—I have not forgotten (was it $10?—I wrote it down—whatever it
was, she’ll get it.”)
In a later e-mail exchange, the two discussed payment of $49,000
“to support public programs,” according to the Senate report.
Ballabon left Primedia in 2004, the company said.…
I noticed Ballabon is no longer listed on the CC
masthead. When did he leave CC? Why? And why the deafening silence from
Rabbi Yakov Menken and the CC bloggers?
More importantly, will Ballabon go down with Abramoff and Lapin?
And, is there any way we could link Toby Katz to this? Please?