Ain’t Small Town Life Great?

Call me an elitist snob, but…

When Wendy DeVore, the drama teacher at Fulton High here, staged the musical “Grease,” about high school students in the 1950′s, she carefully changed the script to avoid causing offense in this small town.

[...]

A month after the performances in November, three letters arrived on the desk of Mark Enderle, Fulton’s superintendent of schools. Although the letters did not say so, the three writers were members of a small group linked by e-mail, all members of the same congregation, Callaway Christian Church.

Each criticized the show, complaining that scenes of drinking, smoking and a couple kissing went too far, and glorified conduct that the community tries to discourage. One letter, from someone who had not seen the show but only heard about it, criticized “immoral behavior veiled behind the excuse of acting out a play.”

Dr. Enderle watched a video of the play, ultimately agreeing that “Grease” was unsuitable for the high school, despite his having approved it beforehand, without looking at the script. Hoping to avoid similar complaints in the future, he decided to ban the scheduled spring play, “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller.

Isn’t the act of banning the Crucible some kind of super cliche, so densely packed with cliche-matter that it threatens to draw in everything around it?

The Sacred Order of the Shrill

…welcomes Kevin Drum.

I think that Roy’s post about the difference between writers and political operatives might be useful in explaining how I talk about abortion (as well as many other issues.) Every time I post a critique I can expect a comment or three about how I don’t pay enough respect to whatever bad arguments are used to defend irrational and inequitable abortion regulations because peoples’ views are just messy or some such. Well, I don’t afford these arguments any respect because they don’t deserve any respect. Giving a scary name to a medical procedure and banning it while permitting other procedures that produce exactly the same outcome but less safely doesn’t become a rational argument just because it’s a politically effective ploy. And worse, these arguments always end up with the same outcome–abortion-on-demand for the wealthy, highly restricted abortion access for the poor–which is indefensible from any serious a priori position on the abortion issue. It doesn’t matter to me, in this context, how many public opinion polls suggest that this is what the public wants. The thing is, I’m not running for office, so I don’t care. That a majority of the public holds incoherent positions that produce highly undesirable outcomes doesn’t prove that these positions are reasonable, any more than the fact that The Phantom Menace made oodles more money than Raging Bull makes it a better movie. I’m under no obligation to pretend that risibly illogical arguments that collapse on the slightest scrutiny are reasonable, or to pretend that reprehensible ethical self-dealing and double standards are consistent with democratic principles. Politicians, or people who aspire to be “opinion leaders,” may have to take such things into account; I don’t.

This is the same reason that my writings about the Alito nomination were much more critical of “reasonable centrists” like Ann Althouse than with real conservatives, even if the former share much more in common with my views. Supporting Sam Alito because he’s a very able judge who shares your very conservative jurisprudential principles is a reasonable position worthy of respect; I will explain why I believe these principles are wrong, but these people are not playing their audience for fools; they’re making a serious, consistent argument. On the other hand, taking to the pages of the New York Times to tell your readers that Alito is a moderate with no evidence whatsoever, or arguing that Alito was picked for the court not because he shares long-held conservative views but because he rejects them (although, oddly, none of his supporters thought he was a squishy moderate before he was nominated), isn’t a serious argument; it’s the argument of an operative, not a thinker. And it’s the same thing with the “keep abortion nominally legal but let states pass every half-baked regulation of abortion for certain classes of women they want because aborton is so so wrong even if I think my sister should be allowed to get one” crowd. I’m here to tell you what I think, not to win votes.

More, Please

Anne Lamott has decided to reject William Saletan’s suggestion that pro-choice politics emphasize the premise that women who get abortions are immoral, and good for her:

EVERYTHING WAS going swimmingly on the panel. The subject was politics and faith, and I was on stage with two clergymen with progressive spiritual leanings, and a moderator who is liberal and Catholic. We were having a discussion with the audience of 1,300 people in Washington about many of the social justice topics on which we agree–the immorality of the federal budget, the wrongness of the president’s war in Iraq. Then an older man came to the mike and raised the issue of abortion, and everyone just lost his or her mind.

Or, at any rate, I did.

Maybe it was the way in which the man couched the question, which was about how we should reconcile our progressive stances on peace and justice with the “murder of a million babies every year in America.” The man who asked the question was soft-spoken, neatly and casually dressed.

[...]

Then, when I was asked to answer the next question, I paused, and returned to the topic of abortion. There was a loud buzzing in my head, the voice of reason that says, “You have the right to remain silent,” but the voice of my conscience was insistent. I wanted to express calmly, eloquently, that pro-choice people understand that there are two lives involved in an abortion–one born (the pregnant woman) and one not (the fetus)–but that the born person must be allowed to decide what is right.

Also, I wanted to wave a gun around, to show what a real murder looks like. This tipped me off that I should hold my tongue, until further notice. And I tried.

But then I announced that I needed to speak out on behalf of the many women present in the crowd, including myself, who had had abortions, and the women whose daughters might need one in the not-too-distant future–people who must know that teenage girls will have abortions, whether in clinics or dirty backrooms. Women whose lives had been righted and redeemed by Roe vs. Wade. My answer was met with some applause but mostly a shocked silence.

Pall is a good word. And it did not feel good to be the cause of that pall. I knew what I was supposed to have said, as a progressive Christian: that it’s all very complicated and painful, and that Jim was right in saying that the abortion rate in America is way too high for a caring and compassionate society.

But I did the only thing I could think to do: plunge on, and tell my truth. I said that this is the most intimate decision a woman makes, and she makes it all alone, in her deepest heart of hearts, sometimes with the man by whom she is pregnant, with her dearest friends or with her doctor–but without the personal opinion of say, Tom DeLay or Karl Rove.

I said I could not believe that men committed to equality and civil rights were still challenging the basic rights of women. I thought about all the photo-ops at which President Bush had signed legislation limiting abortion rights, surrounded by 10 or so white, self-righteous married men, who have forced God knows how many girlfriends into doing God knows what. I thought of the time Bush appeared on stage with children born from frozen embryos, children he calls “snowflake babies,” and of the embryos themselves, which he calls the youngest and most vulnerable Americans.

And somehow, as I was answering, I got louder and maybe even more emphatic than I actually felt, and said it was not a morally ambiguous issue for me at all. I said that fetuses are not babies yet; that there was actually a real difference between pro-abortion people, like me, and Klaus Barbie.

Then I said that a woman’s right to choose was nobody else’s goddamn business. This got their attention.

Now that’s more like it. Whether this is the optimal strategy, I don’t know; I’m inclined to agree with Amanda that Saletan’s “pro-choice war on abortion” may have some tactical advantages but is bad strategy. (I also should make it clear that pro-choicers should continue to support policies–access to contraception, rational sex ed, good childcare for poor working mothers, etc.–that will tend to lower abortion rates, and it’s fine to point out these consequences to expose the contradictions of the “pro-life” position.) But I do know that I certainly think that Lamott is right, and when you’re dealing with a critical right I think that substantive merits matter. Since most pro-lifers aren’t willing to act as if they actually believe that abortion is “murder,” I continue to think that there’s no reason for pro-choicers to play lip service to to the claim. I’m happy that people like Lamont are willing to actually start speaking truth to received “wisdom.”

(Cross-posted to Sisyphus Shrugged.)

Friday Cat Blogging… Starbuck and Nelson

That word, I do not think it means what you think it means

Matt is quite correct; Rich Lowry ought not be allowed to appropriate the term “neorealist”:

Rich Lowry’s trying to coin a term “neo-realist” for that brand of foreign policy thinker who just so happens to mix and match their realpolitik and their idealism to match up with roughly whatever George W. Bush is doing in any given situation. He notes that The Wall Street Journal used “neo-realist” as a description for Condoleezza Rice and her circle earlier this week. It’s a trend!

It’s a trend and it’s got to stop. “Neorealism” already has an established meaning in international relations jargon — the people who, following Kenneth Waltz, have sought to formalize and systematize the earlier “classical realism” of Hans Morgenthau, etc.

Lowry wants to think that a neo-realist is someone who combines the idealism of neocons (chuckle) and the hard-headedness of realists. Since neorealism has been a functioning term of international relations theory since 1979, and since several of its proponents are prominent in both academic and public circles (particularly Mearsheimer and Waltz), and since (especially) neorealism as it stands means almost precisely the opposite of what Lowry would have it stand for, I think that Lowry should give it some thought and try to find a new phrase.

May I suggest “neocon with a hangover”?

Save Neorealism.

Now *That’s* Twisting MLK’s Legacy

You know who needs to really, really shut up? People who 1)are crying rivers of crocodile tears about how the friends and family of a civil rights leader comport themselves at their funeral although they’ve never met, and 2)could care less about segregationist sympathizers being appointed to the federal courts. In Wallace we can see many of the manifestations of the racism of the modern Republican Party: he helped Trent “we never would have had all these problems if only an apartheid President had won in 1948″ Lott defend Bob Jones University, as an aid to Lott tried to keep inspectors out of Mississippi prisons, clerked for William “Plessy was right and should be upheld” Rehnquist, and he would replace Charles “if I have to do grossly unethical things to stop cross-burners from being prosecuted to the full extent of the law, I’ll do ‘em!” Pickering. I think it’s also pretty safe to say that Jeff “The Klan would be OK if they didn’t smoke pot” Sessions will support him.

And the punchline: Pickering, who “penned a 1959 law review article that showed legislators how to tighten Mississippi’s ban on interracial marriage,” was given a recess appointment by the man who was so, so unfairly put upon at CSK’s funeral on…MLK’s birthday. A nudge is as good as a wink to a blind segregationist, know what I mean, know what I mean.

So, if I understand correctly, to delicate modern Republican sensibilities, friends, family and allies of Coretta Scott King paying tribute to the things she consistently fought for is beyond the pale of civilized discourse, but appointing a protege of a Senator who was expressing nostalgia for Jim Crow in 2002 and who fought to help said Senator fight for segregationist universities–a beautiful, loving tribute!

Seriously, who cares what these clowns think about anything, let alone funerals of people they’ve never met?

(Cross-posted at Sisyphus Shrugged.)

"OK Boys, 23, 11 and…you want three dimes on Arizona State?"

Ironically, with the recent retirement of the staggeringly great and effectively named Mario Lemieux, I was wondering what had ever happened to Rick Tocchet, an important cog in the great Penguins teams of the 90s. Well, now I know. It doesn’t sound like anybody bet on hockey, but still, the consistent linkage of “Wayne Gretzky,” “gambling,” and “the Jersey mob” cannot be good for the sport. (I wonder if “Operation Slap Shot” will become a plotline in The Sopranos?)

Venus Shrugged

Julia of Sisyphus Shrugged will be taking a much-needed blog vacation for a few days, and hence occupying her blog in the meantime will be a passel of all-star bloggers, and I will be posting there as well. I’ll still be around these parts too, but definitely worth checking out as always.

Conflating Aesthetics and Health: Still Extremely Deleterious to the Latter

Seeing this post reminded me that I’ve been meaning to link to Ampersand’s exhaustive decimation of yet another study that starts with assumptions about weight loss being the object (rather than a potential aesthetic side effect) of healthy dieting and exercise, and because of this makes a series of pernicious snake oil claims that aren’t supported by the data. Weight, as an independent variable, has a small impact on health in all but extreme cases, and the failure to understand this produces all kinds of distortions. Some of his conclusions are particularly worthy of notice:

* But by claiming that losing weight has been scientifically proven to be both practical and easy, they’re legitimizing bigotry against fat people, by spreading the myth that the only reason anyone remains fat is laziness and lack of caring.

* By pushing weight-loss methods that have been scientifically shown, according to the studies they themselves cite, to not work in the long term, they’re encouraging yo-yo dieting, which has terrible health consequences.

* By making weight their only measure of health, they’re obscuring the fact that eating well and exercising regularly has enormous, maintainable, long-term benefits for fat people regardless of if any weight is lost.

* By making weight their only measure of health, they’re obscuring the fact that being “normal” weight is no guarantee of good health; health-concerned “normal” people need to eat a healthy diet and exercise, too.

All of these points are extremely important. The conflation of weight and health is bad, first of all, because it’s utterly ineffective at encouraging lifestyle changes. People who aren’t overweight will believe there’s no harm in eating bad diets and/or being sedentary, and overweight people are likely to abandon salutary lifestyle changes when they discover that, in most cases, the radical transformation of their bodies they’ve been promised doesn’t occur. But it’s much worse than that. The conflation of health and weight creates all kinds extremely bad outcomes–not just yo-yo dieting, but eating disorders, grossly unbalanced fad diets, social isolation, cocktails of speed and laxatives, etc. etc.–that are far, far worse than not doing anything at all. Eating a good diet and getting consistent exercise are good and should be encouraged, full stop. Claiming that a particular body type, rather than health, is the ultimate object of these lifestyle choices is both empirically fallacious and obviously counterproductive.

No-Talent Ass-Clown of the Day

Mr. Chris Muir, author of the faux-hipster poor man’s Mallard Fillmore. Again, the only “twisting of King’s legacy” is being done by conservatives engaged, in Steve‘s phrase, as “part of a conservative shell game to claim the legacy of Martin Luther King, by denuding every bit of the radical nature of his message and tying it to some bland form of equality.” Amanda invites people to make funny out of painfully unfunny-ade.

(Parody by the great Norbizness.)

"Well, I once skimmed a Tech Central Station Article about Indians and ecology, so I think my insights have a great deal of validity."

Brad DeLong plays Marshall McLuhan to Jonah Goldberg’s pompous windbag.

…Jonah’s WWII history is about equally strong.

I Hate Them So Much!!!!

Shorter Mickey:

Sometimes my need to pretend I’m a Democrat conflicts with my visceral hatred of all actual Democrats.