Clash and the Titans

Let's commence with the first question from Gwydion,

Why doesn't the character of Superman resonate with modern audiences the way, say, Batman and Spiderman do? He's an immigrant (or a refugee), struggling to assimilate, adopting
"heartland American values" to fit in. It would seem to me that in a country that's transforming as much as ours is, he'd be a natural candidate for capturing our attention. Batman, on the other hand -- a self-made, technology-focused, angry white male -- does so much better at the box office. (You could describe Iron Man, another box office success, the same way.) Likewise Spiderman, a teenager going through a pseudo-adolescent transformation and struggling to control his changing body, also gets top billing. Even the Hulk -- a victim-of-modern-technology, seething-with-rage white guy -- seems to be more popular. So what gives?

My guess is that it has something to do with the complexity of characters like Spiderman and Batman who pull both from our aspirations and our insecurities. Superman, in a sense, is more one dimensional. He's good, but not so much complex or conflicted. He isn't human and while he may embody super-human attributes we desire or admire, he does so in a way that is more reminiscent of earlier, simpler times when we could pretend the world was more black and white.

Indeed, when I think Superman, I think black-and-white -- I think of George Reeves who was the man of steel but not abs of steel. Superman was American when pure evil like Nazis and Commies were the enemy. I think the associations with Superman are the associations of a view of the world that seems oversimplistic -- fair or not to the Man of Steel -- and that may be why we are drawn more today to superheroes who are flawed like we are, who live in more complex psychological worlds.

bill asks,

Should I stay or should I go? When things get tough, how do you know when it's time to leave -- a job, a marriage, a political movement, grad school -- rather than continuing to try to solve the problems? What's the difference between cutting your losses and quitting, and how do you spot it? Is there a metric, a litmus test, a way to know that you're getting out instead of giving up?

Of course, you should go bill, London's calling.

Man, this is a tough one. One could go the economists' route and bring in questions of expected value. You calculate the probability of succeeding and multiply it by the benefits you would receive and costs you would endure, and this is your expected utility for staying. Compare it with the costs and benefits of leaving and you pick the higher one. Of course, in real life, you can't actually make these calculations.

In the case of staying at a job, rouging this out though may be the appropriate line. I really need the benefits, so I have to stay even though the work is tedious and the boos is a jerk. Or, you know, there really is nothing keeping me here but fear of the unknown, so take this job and shove it. Something will turn up.

Of course, it also depends on the job. My grad school adviser once mused that you can never tell which grad students will be the ones who really do well in the long run. He said he had seen many stars burn out and that the ones who ultimately made it were the ones who simply had the tenacity to keep chugging away no matter what. So, certainly there is an advantage of being able to keep on taking it when other would throw in the towel.

On the other side, I had a beloved former student forced out of his grad program by a horrible adviser and it looks like it will turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to him. Doors he never imagined are opening for him and an incredibly exciting life seems to be unfolding that he never could have predicted.

But in cases that deal with interpersonal relationships, often the "rational" thing is not the right one. When you've made commitments to someone, how much do things have to change on the ground before you break them? How much should you expect to sacrifice for the sake of the relationship and how much sacrifice is too much? The easy way, is to simply go passive aggressive and let them determine when to dump you, but that probably is not a terribly helpful suggestion. The only think close to a metric that I could offer in such cases is the existence of the self measure. Are you still you within the relationship? Is the whole adding a dimension to you or taking one away? If you have lost your identity for the sake of keeping the relationship together, that seems pernicious and unfair. The problem, of course, is that the problems come in all shapes and sizes as do the relationships. Anyone else got a better answer?

More tomorrow.

Auto Mechancis to Quantum Mechanics: Any Questions?

It's been a while since we've done this and I've been meaning to get back to it for about a month or so, so let's have at it.

For those new to the Playground, I have a schtick I do at the beginning of each class where I let the students ask absolutely any question they have, any question at all, from auto mechanics to quantum mechanics. Some former students asked me to revive it on-line when this blog first started, so every once in a while I open it up. So, if you've ever had a question you always wanted to ask or something that's just been stumping you, here's your chance. Ask away and I'll get to as many as possible in this week's posts.

Celebrities, Self-Esteem, and Nietzsche

Aristotle said that humans are political animals, that is, we are social by nature. We are not atoms, but require interaction. There's an interesting article coming out in the journal Personal Relationships on the way those who suffer from low self-esteem benefit from relationships that don't actually exist.

For many people, the admiration of celebrities can have some important benefits. Jaye L. Derrick and Shira Gabriel of the University at Buffalo, State University of New York illustrate how parasocial relationships can provide a safe route for people who have a difficult time with real interpersonal relationships. People with low self-esteem can use their parasocial relationships to feel closer to the ideals they hold for themselves.

Researchers conducted three studies using approximately one hundred undergraduate university students each to examine the relationship between self-esteem, parasocial relationship closeness, and self-discrepancies. Participants identified their favorite celebrity and described that celebrity in an open-ended essay. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale assessed global self-evaluations.

Results showed that people with low self-esteem saw their favorite celebrities as very similar to their ideal selves. Low self-esteem people primed with their favorite celebrity felt more similar to their ideal selves than low self-esteem people primed with a control celebrity. Also, people with low self-esteem primed with their favorite celebrity felt more similar to their ideal selves than low self-esteem people primed with a close relationship partner.

The current research demonstrates that parasocial relationships can have self-enhancing benefits for low self-esteem people that they do not receive in real relationships. These parasocial relationships, which have very low risk of rejection, offer low self-esteem people an opportunity to reduce their self-discrepancies and feel closer to their ideal selves.

“Even ‘fake’ relationships with celebrities, relationships without any actual contact, can have benefits for the self,” the authors conclude. “We found that parasocial relationships can sometimes have benefits for people with low-self esteem that ‘real’ relationships do not.”

We do use celebrities as ideal selves. That's why I found it so interesting years ago when basketball player Charles Barkley, not noted for his decorum and well-mannered way, declared unilaterally that he was not a role model. The fact is, that is not for him to decide.

We use celebrities to personify what we as a culture deem virtuous, whether that be beauty, strength, artistic talent, or rebellious spirit. On the one hand, as Nietzsche argued in On the Use and Abuse of History, it is good to have great figures who stand as markers for how far humanity can go, who give us something to aspire to, and who force us to revise upward our image of ourselves individually and as a whole. On the other hand, it is utterly unfair to those who end up as celebrities to have to live up that role -- I believe it was that unfairness that Barkley was chafing at. Further, those who excel at some endeavor generally do so at the expense of other parts. Great individuals are often lousy humans.

At the same time, celebrities today are by in large created by those with monetary interest shopping for "the next big thing" in order to cash in as they are elevated by society for their virtues. Focus groups are used to shape images that will catch on with the masses, that titillate and appeal to our baser desires. This would undermine what Nietzsche saw as the value of celebrities -- they give us something to gawk at, not something to emulate and transcend. Does this mean we are harming the character of those with low self-esteem who turn to these celebrities as role models?

Of course, one with low self-esteem would look to others to validate them -- that is the nature of having low self-esteem. The celebrities are popular and that in and of itself surely is part of what makes the association esteem-building, by being a devotee of something very popular makes you part of the movement and thereby normal. Celebrities are not used to create high water marks in the development of humanity, but to dictate the direction of the herd. There is no doubt that we should be glad that those who suffer from low self-esteem have this means of normalizing their lives, but at the same time we should also be concerned about having surrendered the power to define that which normalizes us to profiteers.

What celebrities say the most about us as a culture? What celebrities give us the most hope for progressing as a culture and which are the most worrisome?

Home of der Whopper

This is nothing short of stunning.

So we went to war based on bad intelligence. A group of neo-conservatives cherry picked intel about the Iraqi program for weapons of mass destruction and used it to sell an unpopular war. The main informant was an agent named "Curveball." When the President of the United States said,

we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities.

it was Curveball who sold them on it through reports from German intelligence that the Germans said were not credible. Curveball's story was bought without ever having American intelligence agents actually talk to the man...if they had, they may have figured out what employees at Burger King quickly realized...

The LA Times tracked down Curveball who is in exile Germany...fleeing corruption charges in Iraq. "Curveball has flipped burgers at McDonald's and Burger King, washed dishes in a Chinese restaurant and baked pretzels in an all-night bakery."

In early 2002, a year before the war, he told co-workers at the Burger King that he spied for Iraqi intelligence and would report any fellow Iraqi worker who criticized Hussein's regime.

They couldn't decide if he was dangerous or crazy.

"During breaks, he told stories about what a big man he was in Baghdad," said Hamza Hamad Rashid, who remembered an odd scene with the pudgy Alwan in his too-tight Burger King uniform praising Hussein in the home of der Whopper. "But he always lied. We never believed anything he said."

So we were led into a war because our President and his administration were outfoxed by a man that couldn't fool teenagers working at Burger King.

What Are the Necessary Conditions For Democracy?

As Bush attempts to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq that includes what amount to permanent bases and immunity from prosecution for US troops and contractors, one realizes that even the person who spent so much time trying to trumpet the idea of a free and sovereign democratic Iraq doesn't buy it.

One of the interesting ironies is that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was the result of neo-conservative thinking largely shaped by Francis Fukuyama, who in his book The End of History, argues a neo-Hegelian line in which there is an end state to history, a state towards which all countries are moving. It is American-style corporate capitalist free-market representative democracy. All nations strive for it and if only loosed from their shackles would instantaneously begin to create it. This is why the neo-cons were so certain that we would be greeted as liberators and Democracy would be on the march right in. "Shock and awe" would cut the head off the snake and a democratic Iraq would spontaneously appear. (Dozen of democracies spontaneously appear each year, it's just not widely reported.)

Of course it didn't quite work. Thus Bush negotiating a SOFA while more likely needing time on the couch.

This idea that there are no other prerequisites for a democratic government than release from tyrannical rule stands in distinction to earlier conservative writing. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, in her famous article "Dictators and Double-Standards" argues that it is ok to try to assassinate, undermine, and overthrow left-wing evil, murderous dictators, but to prop up, aid, and supply arms to right-wing evil, murderous dictators because the right-wingers are not apt "to alter significantly the distribution of goods, status, or power" and this means that they are more likely to give rise, ultimately, to democratic societies. In other words, right-wing tyrants will create the preconditions for democracy, but left-wing tyrants won't.

That one didn't quite pan out either, of course, but the paleo-conservative picture at least considers that there is certain social, political, and intellectual infrastructure that must be in place for democracy to come about, to flourish, and to be maintained. Surely, whatever those preconditions are, they are not in fact aided by right-wing death squads. But what are they?

What about free speech? Scott argues that this is overrated as a condition.

Would Burma be on its way to democracy if the junta was ousted tomorrow? They have a popularly supported party and a charismatic leader, but is that enough? Is it like India just after partition? Could one argue that they are different because the British left the notion of a functioning independent judiciary?

Does there have to be a lack of ethnic/tribal/sectarian tensions? What needs to be present in a nation for democracy to take root?

Modus Tonens and the Psychological/Rational Tension

There's a wonderful article in the forthcoming edition of Argumentation by our friend Bob Talisse -- he of the weakman arguments. Talisse, along with Scott Aikin, look at the rhetorical use of repeating someone's words back to them with an incredulous tone of voice.

Such a response is fine when it is a genuine reaction of incredulity. It is also fine when one repeats back the words with an incredulous tone in order to call attention to an obvious error -- a trick that teachers use often, allowing conversational space for the errant pupil to realize the mistake and correct it before continuing the discussion. As such, the tone of voice comes with an assertion of power, it establishes a hierarchy. Using that tone of voice says, I really know what I am talking about, you almost do, I'll cut you a break here so that we can keep on talking as if we were equals who both understood this topic, which of course we aren't, but it is only by practicing in this way that you, young grasshopper, can come to learn what is needed to actually understand this topic.

But this pedagogic use is what allows the tone to be misused for undeserved rhetorical gain. By using the tone of voice in a legitimate disagreement, what one does is mislead listeners into thinking that your opponent is cognitively subordinate without giving actual arguments to oppose your interlocutor's position and thereby shift the burden away from yourself -- the burden of undermining the other person's argument -- and putting a new burden on your interlocutor, that of not only defending the position, but also showing that the position is not so absurd that it can be written off immediately. Such fallacious use is called by Aikin and Tallisse "Modus Tonens."

I love informal logic. I love puns. This is sheer joy for me.

Pointing out and delightfully naming the fallacy would be enough, but the interesting part of the discussion is in the pragmatic effects they discuss at the end of the article. They stress that honest discourse already faces the hurdle of group polarization, that is, when people find themselves in groups that agree on an issue, the result often ends up that the group moves towards an extreme of that position. It is a social psychological effect that has been clearly demonstrated. Modus Tonens is just one more way that dissenting voices can be marginalized, undermining the virtues of authentic discourse.

Here is where I want to pick up the discussion because Aikin and Talisse are touching on something that I've talked about with Kerry and Aspazia. Spaz contends that critical thinking may not make for better thinkers, just smarter assholes. It does not cause people to truly think critically, but rather gives them ammunition to defend previously held biases and justify them in more intellectual sounding ways. Scott and Bob bring in the issues that have most interested me, psychology. In some sense, we are fighting against our own wiring in striving to be rational. This is not to say that we cannot be rational, but that there are pre-existing barriers that slant our minds.

As such, should critical thinking be taught without a psychological component? Is being aware of these psychological hurdles a necessary or sufficient condition for avoiding them? Is it worth teaching informal reasoning. if we know there are features of the mind that we are working against or at least is it worth teaching if we don't point those features out?

Seemingly Trivial Unanswered Problems In Discourse: Pope Edition

Two weeks ago, we had the first go at the new feature, Seemingly Trivial Unanswered Problems In Discourse, which goes by the acronym D.U.C.K., in which we take a question that should not be asked, a question that seems to have no answer or a perfectly trivial answer and actually have a discussion about it for no good reason.

Last week there was an interesting exchange about Martin Luther's 95 theses and it inspired this week's D.U.C.K.:

Is the Pope, in fact, Catholic?

Can There Be Non-Linguistic Jokes?

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

This week marks the 110th birthday of M.C. Escher. Escher was the son of a Dutch civil engineer and at his parents' behest began to pursue a degree in architecture, but failed out by not passing several courses including bookkeeping.

He switched over to decorative arts and trained in making woodcuts when he began traveling to see the art of Europe. Going to Spain in 1922, he visited the Alhambra. Islamic art is not allowed to include images and as a result, they developed tiling to an incredible degree. Amazed by the art form, Escher began to work with space-filling repeating sequences, or tesselations. It was a topic that apparently had been with Escher for many years previously,

Many years later a lady... "remembered the care with which this little boy [Escher] had selected the shape, quantity and size of his slices of cheese, so that, fitted one against the other, they would cover as exactly as possible the entire slice of bread. This particular trait never left him."

Escher's fascination with tesseleations led him into group theory, projective and non-Euclidean geometry, and topology. This attraction to mathematics, a subject he showed no affinity for as a child, led to the famous "impossible world" works, the most famous being "Waterfall."
My question is "Does this count as a joke?" The way the viewer interacts with the piece seems to have all of the structural elements of a joke. There is a set up, a straight scenario that does not seem out of the ordinary. then there is a punchline that makes you realize that your initial interpretation of the set up couldn't be right. There is the moment of confusion where the mind is trying to hold competing interpretations. People react to viewing this in a way that is joke-like. They come to "get" the painting in a way similar to getting a joke. So, it seems like it could be considered a joke.

But it is non-linguistic. There is non-linguistic humor aplenty, for example, slapstick comedy. But this is a different type of comedy from joke telling. the question here is whether there could be non-linguistic jokes.

Again, let's bracket off something like what Bob Newhart would do in merely giving a look instead of delivering a punchline at a great set-up. That technique left formulating the punchline to the view, but it is a truncated linguistic joke, it was linguistic. In this case, it is visual, but non-linguistic.

So, is it a joke? Is it visual irony?

Speaking of irony, we need not move to impossible worlds. Good brother Richard has alerted me to this item from this possible world.

A casualties of powerful storms that hit the Kansas State University campuse on Wednesday was the Wind Erosion Lab, which the university said was destroyed by apparent tornado.

"The damage on campus is extensive," Tom Rowson, the university's vice president for administration and finance, said in a statement. "The Wind Erosion Lab is gone. There is significant damage to the engineering complex."

The Wind Erosion Lab was blown away. Yet another example to support our theory of humorous design.

Of course, if we pair that argument with M.C. Escher's Waterfall, we might be able to formulate something akin to the traditional problem of God creating a rock too heavy for Him to lift. Hmmmm... A job for Comedist theologians to come...

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

On Vanity

Ginger Meyerson of The Hackenblog has picked up on a recent trend in a fascinating direction. Where a number of bloggers have parlayed their successful novelty blogs into books, Mayerson goes at it honestly and has started The Journal of Bloglandia, collecting what she sees as the writings of some of the more interesting voices from around the blogosphere. Volume 1, number 1 is now available and well worth the time.

One of the pieces in it, Vanity, comes from one of Susan O'Doherty's weekly posts on M.J. Rose's blog, Buzz, Balls, and Hype. In it, O'Doherty muses about the meaning of the term "vanity" as in vanity press. Someone who engages in a do-it-yourself approach to anything that has (normally corporate) gatekeepers, is deemed a vanity production and treated as necessarily inferior.

Yet, she argues, if we think of the standard meaning of vanity -- the noun form of vain -- then isn't it those who slave to gain the approval of the gatekeepers, those who determine their worth from the acceptance of the establishment, rather than those who simply delight in their work and want others to also enjoy it, who are the truly vain ones in the equation?

There is definitely something to this argument, but as a blogger (yet another form of vanity publishing in this sense) it seems like there are vain bloggers and ones who are not so vain. There are blogs whose purpose is to be self-aggrandizing, others that are about the author but not in a vanity-type sense, and still others about something the author cares about other than him/herself.

The use of the word "vanity" that pops to mind is vanity license plates. At first, when this was an expensive proposition, having a custom plate may have been an act of vanity. But with the price significantly decreased in most states now, it hardly seems vain to put a joke or a reference to something one loves on one's car. It's a metal bumper sticker.

Yet, there does seem to be something to the use of the word vanity here. Sometimes there are books that are not as deep or novel as the author thinks. We get attached to our projects and often do have inflated images of them. If you write, you will understand this by going back and rereading something that you thought was great work several years ago. The experience is quite humbling. But vanity publishing happens in the deluded time frame. As such, perhaps there is something to the "vanity" here.

Hillary Clinton and the Sexist Chicken and Egg

The postmortems of Hillary Clinton's Presidential run (Aspazia's is the one that started me on this question, although the folks at Shakesville have been all over this from the start) have all rightly mentioned the blatant and horrible sexism that was directed at her, often from major media figures. Where the racism question was treated in code words, it was shocking to see how open people were in using misogynistic language and images.

There is no doubt that these attacks are due to longstanding, but threatened patriarchal power structures. That said, I know, as someone who was bullied, that the bullies don't pick on you because of the things they pick on you about. First, you are determined to be a target, then they look for the soft spots, the places they can attack that will do the most damage.

The sexism was there and came from a place of threatened male privilege (that's why we heard so little of it when Carol Mosley-Braun ran -- she was seen as having little chance and so was not threatening); but did the sexism start from a place of pure sexism or did it start as Clinton hatred which found its expression naturally in a biased society most easily in sexist terms?

I wonder how much of this misogyny would have come out if it had been a different woman running. Suppose the woman was a Republican, say, Liddy Dole or Lynn Cheney. Do you think that either one of them would have received the same treatment if they had been viable Presidential candidates close to picking up the GOP's nomination?

My guess is that Condoleeza Rice, if she were in the equivalent of Clinton or Obama's position would have received much less of a racist or sexist treatment.

Obama's Birth Certificate and the Republican Trap

Barbara has a discussion at Mahablog about the latest in Right-wing smears:

We’ve been watching this happen for years now: Some juicy bit of disinformation appears on a far-right blog or forum, and within hours it goes up the rightie media infrastructure food chain — to NewsMax to Drudge to Limbaugh to the Washington Times to Bill O’Reilly — and then corporate media reports that “a story is circulating about. …”Other rumors are that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii; his middle name is really “Muhammad,” not “Hussein”; his parents weren’t really married...

One might argue the Obama campaign ought to just release the mystery birth certificate to put the rumors to rest. But you know that would just set off a new round of rumors. Some rightie blogger would question the authenticity of the birth certificate, and that very evening Sean Hannity would look into a Faux Nooz camera and intone, why did Barack Obama release a forged birth certificate? Questions are being asked, after all.

The hunger of the right-wing rumor beast can never be satisfied. However, I do strongly suggest the Obama campaign hire some hall monitors for their campaign web sites — no more unfiltered public comments allowed. Obama supporters will understand.

The fact is what we are looking at is trap...the same stupid one the Republican operatives been using for two decades. They create a dilemma:

If you don't answer their inane questions, it's an argument from ignorance based inference that something is being hidden. Gotcha.

If you do respond to debunk it, then (just like with Intelligent Design) they simply repeat, repeat, repeat the accusation while ignoring the evidence refuting it. The fact that there is now a "serious disagreement" involving a Presidential candidate shows that it is a serious topic to be reported on widely and the fair and balanced way to present the story is "some say this is true, but slimy politician worried about getting votes denies it." Gotcha.

Further, once you've shown you'll play their silly little game, they'll deluge you with made up accusations to tie you up and make sure you can't stay on message. They will work hard to use up all the oxygen in the room -- gotcha.

And should you try to stop playing it once you've started, the fact that you answered the previous questions, but not the next one is used as evidence that THIS LAST question really has something behind it because if the candidate wasn't hiding something, why wouldn't he answer it the way he did with the others? Hmmm? Gotcha.

One way to deal with it is to do what the Republicans do. Ignore it and slime the person who brought it up. This is why they never have to answer for anything.

The best way to deal with it, though, seems to be what Obama is best at -- going meta. The Wright nonsense? Give a serious talk about race. Show the scam from above the scam as opposed to trying to fight the scam from inside. Show that the problem isn't with the question,itself, but with the fact that we ask THAT inane question instead of the deep one beneath it that we've been ignoring.

The third option is to get a press that isn't so bad that it falls for it every time...never mind...

Send More Chuck Berry: Music and Politics

This is far too rich not to comment upon. John McCain had been using Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Good as a campaign song. But now that Berry has come out as a strong Obama proponent, he's switched to...wait for it..."Take a Chance on Me" by ABBA.

I was sure that was a joke when I first read it. So we've got a candidate with an age problem, a relevance problem, and an excitement problem and the theme song his marketing people believe will help do the trick is a 1970s disco snoozer by a group of Swedes...Swedes who would not give him the rights to play it at his rallies without paying stiff fees.

Turns out he's a big fan:

"The intriguing - some might say disturbing - revelation occurred during the Johnjay and Rich show at 104.7 FM (KZZP). The presidential candidate called in at 6 a.m. as part of the duo's Who Do You Know contest, in which famous people phone in and stump for everyday folks to win a car. "He said that a lot of people won't admit that they love ABBA, but he would," radio jock Rich Berra says. "Then he asked us if it was old-fashioned to like ABBA, and we said that it wasn't old-fashioned at all.''

So McCain is a fan of ABBA, but ABBA and Chuck Berry are not fans of McCain.

This is actually an interesting side note to contemporary politics. Campaigns are treated by those running them as they would go about marketing any product. A good ad campaign has a theme song and to rally the supporters, generate excitement, seem contemporary, and appeal to fans of the musicians, campaigns have followed the 92 Clinton/Gore example which used Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" quite effectively. It appealed to boomers, signaling a change of generation and provided a sense of the campaign.

As such, classic rock has been the call for campaigns, but the rockers then get a say...and often it is "NO!" John Cougar and/or Mellencamp has refused to allow McCain to play "Little Pink Houses" or "Our Country." Tom Scholtz, who pretty much was Boston, smacked Mike Huckabee for using "More Than a Feeling."

Is there a problem here? On the one hand, it is certainly their intellectual property and their work, and it seems that they should be able to keep it from being used to support that which they find objectionable. Further, using the song would give a false sense of endorsement. At the same time, these songs are out there for public consumption, they are part of the broader cultural landscape. The political reinterpretation seems one that the free and open marketplace of ideas would want to encourage, especially when it comes to political speech.

Should artists have veto power over the political use of their songs or should the political arena have primacy even when it comes to mere packaging and not policy proposals? If they are willing to pay the fair market royalty rate, should they have the right to play whatever they deem most desirable?

Dancing With the Devil

Joe Lieberman will speak to Rev. John Hagee's conference "Christians United for Israel," calling the organization "a vital force in supporting the war against terrorism and defending our ally, Israel." Hagee, of course, is the pastor whose support was actively sought by John McCain only to be rejected when Hagee's statements became public that:

"A hunter is someone with a gun, and he forces you...Hitler was a hunter...How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, 'My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.'"

Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans....New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God...there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came.

Hagee refers to Catholics as "'The Great Whore,' an 'apostate church,' the 'anti-Christ,' and a 'false cult system.'

Lieberman responded to this by saying of Hagee, "I would describe Pastor Hagee with the words the Torah uses to describe Moses, he is an "Eesh Elo Kim," a man of God because those words fit him; and, like Moses he has become the leader of a mighty multitude in pursuit of and defense of Israel."

Lest we roll our eyes and write this off as simply an act of one lone Senator, consider the reaction to Reverend Hagee from AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee). He was given a major ovation for his anti-Iranian saber rattling in 2007 and just this last week a mere mention of his name received a rousing cheer.

Speakers at the session, titled “Friends in Faith: Evangelical Christians and the Pro-Israel Movement,” included Gary Bauer, president of American Values; John Buhler, founder of Christian Advocates for Israel; and David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, the group led by Hagee.

“I want to take a moment to discuss with you a good man, evangelical pastor John Hagee,” Brog said to the audience. Before Brog could finish the sentence, the crowd broke into a lengthy round of applause, ending in a standing ovation. Among the few attendees who did not cheer at the mention of Hagee’s name was Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who has occasionally been critical of the ties between the Jewish community and Christian Zionists.

Of course, this is not just about Hagee. There has been a warm embrace of American Dominionists since Begin.

Dominionism is a radical Protestant theology which posits that Man has dominion over every living thing and that there is a demand to convert the world to Christianity. Politically, the view dictates Christian theocracy, but the narrative metaphysic, coming out of an unorthodox interpretation of the Book of Revelations holds that Jesus' return to Earth requires the existence of Israel as a Jewish nation. Upon the return, Jews would convert or be damned. There is no tolerance for the Jews as Jews, but those in Israel serve as a vehicle for the Second Coming. This is how the outward, hard anti-Semitism of the Christian right became soften and hidden beneath pro-Zionist zeal. All of this has only been deepened since American and Israeli security appear to face perils from the same Islamic fundamentalists (This, of course, is a naive oversimplification, but Islamophobia generally does not allow for the details of a complex multinational, multi-ethnic situation).

This enthusiasm for all that would maintain Israel's existence as a Jewish state was not lost on those running the nation. American Jews were one source of income, opening another spigot of cash, diversifying the portfolio seemed like a rational and profitable move.

And so began an odd relationship. The Israelis rolling their eyes at, but pocketing the cash from, these right wing anti-Semites, while the Dominionists defending, arming, and subsidizing the murderers of Jesus who would get theirs eventually, but not until they were raptured away. It is a marriage of convenience without a prenuptial agreement, keeping both partners in the marriage without love.

But a prominent strain of American Judaism has become a sort of proprietary Zionism that more closely resembles Christianity. Judaism is a tribal religion. You are a Jew by birth, not necessarily by faith, and it is intentionally made very difficult for those not born into it to become a "member of the tribe" -- a term still very much in use. Judaic theology is informed largely by the history of being a minority in other people's lands. The understanding of the world is through the eyes of the little guy, the outsider, the oppressed.

Christianity, on the other hand, is an evangelical religion. It is a religion of belief. It was a religion that began and sustained itself through conversion. Souls were things to be gotten and held onto, to be possessed by the organization. Command and control is essential to a faith-based religion starting from a small group, aiming for subsistence and then domination. It is spiritual Amway -- you need to constantly recruit and retain in order to keep the pyramid supported. Add to this, the fairly rapid adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, turning it into a religion of the powerful and these factors combine to result in a very different ethos at the heart of the religion.

This, of course, is not to say that Jesus' own message is not infused with the Jewish ethos. Of course, it is. It is not to say that one couldn't be Christian and perceive the world from the point of view of the downtrodden. Indeed, Christian liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movements are based in exactly this way. But these are relatively small groups compared with the larger organizational structures that make up Christianity writ large and the point here is that there are theological and sociological factors which actively steer these institution-level organizations in the way that they do.

With the founding of Israel, this same sort of ethos has come to replace the traditional Jewish stance towards life. Land is substituted for souls, but the need to command and control what is deemed valuable and essential for the continuation of the group becomes primary. The perspective then shifts from the outsider trying to be treated justly to the insider, the possessor of power doing whatever is necessary to maintain the source of that power. This is a major shift that does not come without an intellectual cost.

As a result, Dominionists like Hagee who are militaristic and conservative seem much more akin to hawkish Zionists. These people are seen much more as brothers, than as mere cash cows to be exploited while they think they are exploiting the Israelis. The Zionistic fervor of hyper-Zionistic Jews have led them to look at these Christian theocrats and think to themselves "Hey, they aren't that bad looking, in fact, they're kind of cute..." Like a long-lasting arranged marriage, American Zionists are falling for these people who have no doubt -- and no problem with the belief -- that all Jews will go to hell.

Wittgenstein invokes the image of a ladder that gets thrown away once it has been climbed. This is precisely how the Dominionists see the Jews. Love 'em and leave 'em. Lieberman may think he's a real player for showing up to prom with this rich evangelical movement on his arm. But Hagee's phrase "the great whore" may come back to haunt those who choose to dance with the devil.

RIP Saint Harvey

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

This week we lost another one. Harvey Korman is with the Cosmic Comic now, having passed away from an aneurysm.

He was a bit player on The Danny Kaye Show and the voice of the Great Gazoo on The Flinstones, but his big break was as Tim Conway's partner on The Carol Burnett Show where he was the very spirit of the show. The beauty of Carol Burnett was that the break-ups were live and part of action. You knew they were having fun and that was part of the joy of the program and the first one to lose it was often Harvey Korman. You watched Harvey waiting to see if he would keep it together, especially when Tim Conway was working him over hard. You knew how much he loved Conway and we all have that friend who just cracks us up. It was quintessentially human.

The two would try to replicate that chemistry on the short lived Tim Conway Show, but to many of us it was Harvey Korman's work with Mel Brooks for which he will always be remembered. He was masterful as Hedy Lamarr (THAT'S HEDLY!) and in High Anxiety and History of the World, Part I.

Often cast as a bad guy, he was well-thought of in real life. Here is far and away my favorite:What are your favorite Harvey Korman moments?

Rest in peace, Harvey and thank you for all the laughs.

Live, laugh, and love,

Irreverend Steve

John McCain Is So Old...

Working on some new material:

John McCain is so old that if he gets elected, instead of a Secretary of State, he'll have a Secretary of Prostate. You can always tell the Secretary of Prostate, he's the one who checks into the White House through the back door.

If John McCain becomes President, the DoD will go from the Department of Defense to the Department of Depends. Our Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles will become Incontinent Ballistic Missiles...two or three times a night they leak fuel.

Under a McCain administration, the FEC will no longer be the Federal Elections Commission, but rather the Federal Erections Commission. It will be chaired by Bob Dole and adopt the new slogan, "It ain't just the chads that are hanging anymore."

Every Rose Garden bill signing ceremony would end not with a press conference but with "Get off my lawn!"

To Interact or Not?

Great question from my cousin:

I'm sure you saw the pictures this week of a tribe in the Amazon that has had NO contact with the outside world. To intervene or not to intervene...that is my question. Do you leave these people alone, or go in and say hello, maybe offer them a coca-cola? My initial response is to leave them alone, but what if their average lifespan is 40? What if many of their children die of preventable diseases? What if they often go hungry? What if they are bored and would really like an ipod?? What if they haven't heard about Jesus?

Well? We certainly seem to have the reverse Midas touch when it comes to interacting with other cultures. At the same time, certainly there are some things we have to offer. Interact or not?

A Copernican Election

Copernicus changed nothing in the universe. His heliocentric theory merely changed the way we looked at the universe. Sometimes that shift of mind is more radical than actual alterations in the world.

I was born less than a week after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. My parents needed a police escort to get through the riots in Baltimore to the hospital. Now, a mere forty years later Barack Obama is the presumptive nominee for President of the United States of America.

There is no doubt that racism is alive and well. There are shots ringing out from both of the old trenches. But this is not Ward Connerly or Clarence Thomas and this is not Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. Nor is this John Lewis or Andrew Young. This is somebody altogether different.

This is not Dennis Kucinich. Should he become President, Obama will not be a bulldozer ramming through progressive change. But neither is he Joe Lieberman whose ilk hijacked the term "centrism" and redefined it to mean a cobbled together pro-corporate economic stance, hawkish foreign policy positions, and moderately liberal social policies, and then uses the meaningless term "middle" to vilify anyone who disagrees with their views as extremists of the left or right.

This was the approach of the Democratic Leadership Council and their poster child Bill Clinton. It is what led Hillary to support the war in Iraq. For all the talk of Chamberlain a few weeks ago, this was indeed appeasement. Give the Republicans most of what they want and hope they'll play nicer with us. They argue that it is what got Clinton his second term and that anyone who demanded that the Democratic party stand for anything was a member of the loony left and the cause for all our failures. But the real story is that the right, led by bully Newt Gingerich, saw that the jelly-spined left would cower whenever they said boo and took their lunch money for a generation. The Democratic Party lost every position of power.

That is, as a group they lost every position of power, but the individuals most responsible for those losing ways gained much. We have a winner-take-all electoral system and that means we will necessarily have two parties. During fifteen years in the political wilderness, this group learned how to parlay loss after loss into personal gain. These are the folks who form the top of the Clinton campaign.

I feel sorry for them. Harold Ickes was going to be the next Erskine Bowles. He was set. The Democratic Party is not only in politics, but it itself is a political entity. There are those with power and having power means making the rules and it means that those who want power come to those who have it and if they are deemed loyal enough begin to share in it. He had played the game properly. The Clintons had played the game properly. They were the source of power in the Democratic Party for fifteen years. The power was theirs. They had it and determined who would share in it. If CNN or one of the networks needed a Democratic voice, they went to the Clinton machine which controlled the party. If you wanted to go anywhere in Democratic politics, you needed to be a part of the in-crowd and since the early 90s, that was the Clinton clique. Whether the Democrats won or lost, they were still the cool kids.

And this is what make for the most interesting contrast of all. Barack Obama is not Harold Ford, Jr. Both are thin, light-skinned, good-looking, extremely intelligent African American men. But Ford played the old game. He hitched his career to the powerful in order to ride their good graces to the top. Obama, on the other hand, distanced himself from the standard operating procedures of the in-crowd and provided an alternative vision. Ford lost his bid to the Senate, Obama is on the verge of winning the nomination for President of the United States.

FDR changed the course of American politics, a change that was still working its way out through the Nixon administration as we can see in the founding of the EPA and the visit to China. Reagan changed the direction of American politics, changes that were still working themselves in the Clinton administration which were evident in "the era of big government is over," the Defense of Marriage Act, and welfare reform. Obama will not be a progressive savior. He will not radically alter the world we live in. but what he realistically could do is to once again alter the direction of American politics.

We have been slaving under the curse of the venomous attack dog politics of Atwater, Gingerich, Rove, and company where personal destruction from the Republicans and bed-wetting from the Democrats trumped rational discourse. This could begin to end. Diplomacy as it has always been conducted until the last eight years may not be cast as irrational weakness. Race, religion, and class insecurity could be openly discussed with intelligent insight instead of being used in coded and naked ways to enrich and empower those who do not deserve it. The morality of torture may no longer be seen as an open question.

Barack Obama will not change the world or this nation in radical ways. But he could do is to nudge the ship that is so slow to turn off of its current course, a slight deviation that could play itself out for generations in a healthier, saner, more humane way. That is the hope. Now, forty years after Dr King's death, we have someone who may be able change the way we see race, change the way we see politics, change the way we see America, change the way we see the world. This may be seen by historians as a Copernican election.

E-Mail and Moral Luck

A friend of mine is an administrator and we got to talking about the conundrums that can surface regarding listing someone in the bcc: slot, the blind courtesy copy (or for those old enough to remember carbon paper -- the blind carbon copy). The idea is that you are a member of the list of recipients for that message and all others for which "reply to all" is used, but no one other than the original sender knows that you are privy to the communications.

It seems to give rise to two classes of moral concerns. First, are the concerns of the visible recipients. Is it ok to even use the bcc:, to correspond with someone without letting them know who else is reading along and who else they may be sending potentially sensitive or embarrassing information to? Is it enough that the visible recipients know that someone might have been bcc'ed on the message?

Second, what are the responsibilities of the person bcc'ed? You now seemingly have a confidence to keep, yet unlike making a promise you never agreed to accept this moral obligation. This is what Bernard Williams calls moral luck, ethical claims on you that arise by happenstance, not of your own intentional doing. What is entailed by the responsibilities of being bcc'ed? Suppose you have a contribution to the conversation that would be important, is it wrong to send an e-mail to someone on the visible list "I don't know if anyone has talked to you about this, but it might help to know that..." Suppose you write the message so that it in no way is evident that you've been inside the conversation that has been happening? Do you have to request that the bcc'er release you from your hidden status to join the conversation when he or she didn't ask you when assigning it? Should someone be able to lay this ethical burden on your shoulders without your agreeing to it and how heavy is this burden anyway?

Crispin Sartwell's Challenge on the Moral Justification of State Power

Crispin Sartwell has a new book out and issues this challenge:

My irritating yet astounding new book Against the State (SUNY Press) argues that

(1) The political state or government rests on violence (force and coercion).
(2) Violence is always wrong if it can't be morally justified. (That is, violence is wrong if it lacks a moral justification.)
(3) The arguments for the moral legitimacy of state - for example those of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Hegel, Rawls, and Habermas - are unsound.
(4) Hence, state power has not been shown to be morally defensible.

Until you show me otherwise, I insist that government power is in every case illegitimate.

Not only are the existing arguments for the legitimacy of state power unsound; they are pitiful, embarrassments to the Western intellectual tradition.

So I issue a challenge: Give a decent argument for the moral legitimacy of state power, or reconstruct one of the traditional arguments in the face of the refutations in Against the State.

If you can't, you are rationally obliged to accept anarchism.

Henceforward, if you continue to support or observe the authority of government, you are an evil, irrational cultist.

You're an anarchist now, baby, until further notice.

We don't let "irritating, but astounding" go so easily around these parts, buddy.

The rub here is that one would have to read the book to see if premise 3 is correct, but my line would have to follow Thomas Hobbes. I've been swayed by Hanno's non-standard reading of Hobbes wherein it's not that we all are psychological egoists (people who can only act in our own perceived best self-interest), but it is a fact that no matter where we are there will always be an asshole among us. If we do not have a strong enough state to keep the asshole in check, no one thrives. Given that human flourishing is a significant moral good, state power at least to the point of keeping that amount of order which provides the social infrastructure for human flourishing would be morally justified. It may be a live question how much government that is, but that at least some is needed seems legit on this basis. You can watch Crispin's response to the social contractarian line over at his blog Eye of the Storm.

So, what's your take?

The Feast of Saint Fred

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

This week we celebrate the feast of Saint Fred. Fred Allen would be 113 years old.

Best known for his radio programs in the 40s (many of which can be downloaded here), Fred Allen was a comedian ahead of his time. He was the first to make fun of his sponsors and the control they had over content. It was Fred Allen who introduced the fake news program that would become a standard part of American comedy from Rowan and Martin's "News of the Future" to Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" to Michael Feldman's "All the News That Isn't." Allen would read up to nine newspapers a day to find his material which included fake man on the street with people of a wide variety of nationalities and news maker interviews. The usual suspect in the news maker category was the fictitious Senator Beauregard Claghorn who was the inspiration behind Foghorn Leghorn.

While Allen was as quick an ad-libber as there ever was, he was in fact a perfectionist editing and re-editing his scripts for twelve to fourteen hours a day. His mastery of timing and linguistic flow in a joke make his work still funny all these years later.

Perhaps, he will be best remembered for his on-air running feud with fellow Sunday night radio comedy star Jack Benny. Allen and Benny were good friends and one evening after a young violin virtuoso played "Flight of the Bumblebee," Allen took the opportunity to ad-lib a joke about Benny whose poor violin playing was a running gag of his own. Benny, upon hearing this, made sure to put an insult to Allen in his next show and they were off and running with the goofing between them getting wilder and wilder through the years.

A couple of Fred Allen classics:

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.

The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.

I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy.

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Elementary School Ontology

Yesterday was the last day of school for the shorties. The shorter was in kindergarten and the question arose whether he is now a first-grader. It was generally accepted that he now has the status of "going into first grade," but the question was whether that was a sufficient condition to be a first-grader. If he is asked "What grade are you in?", could he answer "First grade" without having yet attended a single class in first grade? Is it walking into the classroom on the first day of school or having completed all of the requirements necessary to walk in that confers the elevated status of first grader?

Philosophy of Chemistry: Why Only Now?

Taught a class this semester on the philosophy of chemistry with a friend who is a physical chemist. (You can always tell the physical chemists, they're the one's with the bruises -- much tougher crowd than those chemists who don't get physical.)

What is interesting for me is that it is a rare chance for an academic to be able to teach a field that is in its infancy. There are two journals -- Hyle which has been around since 1995 and Foundations of Chemistry which began in 1999. There are a handful of scholars devoted to the field, Eric Scerri from UCLA is probably the biggest name and, as editor of Foundations of Chemistry and a number of very nice authored and edited volumes, one of the main organizational engines driving it forward. I was fortunate enough to attend the annual meeting of the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry a couple of years back when it was at Georgetown. A dedicated group of smart folks who together fit comfortably into a good sized classroom.

This is certainly not the case with philosophy of physics which has a long and storied history. Philosophy of biology and psychology likewise are significant intellectual forces in their own right. Political, sociological and economic theory go back to ancient Greece with significant advances in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Even the philosophy of geography has been an organized field of study for the better part of at least half a century. Why so late with chemistry, a study whose alchemical roots go back to the ancient Egyptians?

This was the last question on the final exam, and it's one to which I'm not sure I know the answer. Why has there been no serious movement around the philosophy of chemistry until the late 1990s?

Seems like there are four possible answers:

(1) There are no big questions in chemistry that are not already somewhere else.
Physics has the origin of the universe, biology has the nature of life, but chemistry doesn't have anything deep that is particular to chemistry.

(2) Chemistry does not actually exist -- or at least it won't forever.
Maybe the reason is that chemistry is not really a science, just a placeholder connecting physics to biology and once we have the proper physical theory to reduce everything chemists do, it'll all go away. Right now we have chemists because physicists haven't completed the reduction yet, but it's really just a matter of time.

(3) It's the chemists -- they just aren't a philosophical bunch
Chemistry is to its core a practical science, funded by corporations in order to find practical solutions to real life problems. Chemists think in terms of things they can manipulate and solutions they can create. Theory is only important as far as it serves practical, hands-on chemistry. As such, there is no philosophical culture amongst chemists to worry about the philosophical questions there.

(4) It's the philosophers -- they just don't know any chemistry
Maybe the problem isn't that the philosophical problems aren't there, it's just that we don't have chemically trained philosophers the way we have philosophers who have backgrounds in physics, biology, psychology, mathematics,... Philosophically-minded chemists could only do so much until they actually had legitimizing figures in the phil depts -- and those folks simply were not to be found.

So, which one is it? A combination or some other factor?

Bullshit or Not: Ayn Rand Edition

There's an old sketch film called Amazon Women on the Moon and one of the bits in the film is a parody of the old Leonard Nimoy show, In Search Of... called, "Bullshit or Not?" which featured the tagline "Bullshit or not? You decide." It's a line I like so much that I've stolen it for an irregular series of posts.

This time it is a passage from Atlas Shrugged:

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other.

The marketplace forces you to see other human beings at least as consumers or partners in commerce. As such, the line goes, it establishes a restraint on brutality and keeps order and ideology at bay. As long as worship of the market is basis of the your ideology, more harmful ideologies will be eliminated.

So, bullshit or not? You decide. As usual, free free to leave a one word response or a dissertation.

Evolution and Degradation of Language

So, at a wonderful BBQ at YKW's place, the conversation turned to language. I mentioned that the short people had discovered MadLibs at the same time I was grading student papers, and this led me to think about parts of speech. I remarked how the adverbial form of words is disappearing from colloquial (and formal student written) English being replaced with the adjectival form -- "He writes bad" or "She runs slow" -- and how even people whom one would describe with the word "learned" (when used as an adjective with two syllables) now almost universally employ the word "quote" (a conjugated form of the verb) in place of the noun "quotation," as in "I found a great quote to support that point."

Gwydion, whose livelihood is language, remarked that it should be seen not as a degradation of language, but as a natural part of the evolution. Language is a living thing, he argued, alive and changing in the usage of the linguistic community and that there is a natural and proper pull between linguistic conservatives trying to maintain some sense of purity and the forces of linguistic selection introducing alterations into the way we speak.

This is, no doubt, true. But to play on the evolutionary metaphor, surely some mutations are advantageous and others not. Biologically, we spot successful adaptations through successful propagation, that is, if natural or sexual selection are aided by them. Should we use the same standard for linguistic changes? Is the suffix "ly" like the appendix, simply a useless relic of a former time? Is "quotation" a dinosaur that is rightly going extinct? Or is there reason to be protective of parts of speech for sake of clarity, eloquence, or some other linguistic virtue that may, always or in some cases only, stand above utility, simplicity, or whatever else it is that is spurring these changes?

Are all changes in language evolutionary or do some leave us with an inferior language?

In Memorium of Body and Soul

Memorial Day always makes me think of my grandfather who served during World War II. He had stories about the war that were curious, funny, sad, shocking, mysterious, and telling of the human condition. My sense of war comes in large part from the man, many tales he wove from his Lazy-Boy as I sat on the couch.

He had lived a full life: raising a family, running a business, raising orchids and making bonsai trees, kibitzing with everyone he met. But the defining time of his life had been World War II, during which he had been a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne, jumping behind the enemy lines before D-Day. As a teenager, I would mow my grandparents lawn and then sit with him for hours listening to old Yiddish jokes, arguing politics, and hearing the war stories. He always made sure that I knew that it was the convicts, colorful criminals with off-color pasts, let out of jail so they could serve in this unit that brought him home alive. And though it remained unsaid, it was always clear that in some indirect way I owed my existence to these people I was very lucky not to have had to associate with. Big Boy Buchanon, Jimmy D, the whole cast of them led to stories that might have been left on the editing room floor after shooting the Dirty Dozen. They were exciting, they were funny, they were poignant. Those were Pop Pop's stories and I heard them all countless times.

I was very fortunate that he and my grandmother lived only minutes from Johns Hopkins, where I was finishing my dissertation, so I could be close by. His last couple of weeks were clearly his last couple of weeks, so that I and the family as a whole could be with him. In the end, it was the cigars, not the Nazis, that finally got him.

But one thing about my grandfather's death that will haunt me until mine, was the way the war would not let him go. Even though he was surrounded by the people he loved most in the world, the war commanded his soul with an frightening ferocity. We all sat with him up in his bedroom; but in his last two days he drifted back to Europe and north Africa during the war. Sometimes it was hallucinatory, other times he knew he was in his bedroom, but he couldn't pull his mind off of the war. I saw in my grandfather's face something I had never seen before, it was beyond fear, it was true horror. And he would not talk about it. I tried for two days, hoping that describing it would exorcise it from his spirit. His agony was not from the disease of his body, but something in his mind. It was so painful to see my beloved Pop Pop in this anguish that I gladly would have taken the burden. But he would not speak. He would not dare expose me to whatever it was. His last act on Earth would be to protect his loved ones from his deepest demons the way he had protected the country decades before.

I will never know the particulars of it, but I know full well what it was. It was post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. With the advances in medical technology and so many returning from Iraq with grave injuries that would have killed them in wars past, we are all too easily turned to the body in thinking about permanent disfiguration. The loss of limbs or paralysis will be this generation's version of the homeless Viet Nam vet muttering to himself. But it is the psychic injury that will linger. Some will not recover from it, others will go on to be able to lives lives that seem normal and productive from the outside. But the effects of war on the mind will linger dormant. But they will be there.

And not for soldiers only. Indeed everyone who lives in the affected area will themselves be touched in a way that will never allow for life to be completely normal. We have entire nations now full of children whose brains have been altered by exposure to what we are capable of doing to one another.

So, on Memorial Day, when we think of those who have sacrificed their lives, we think not only of those who never came home, but also those who did, forced to leave part of their soul behind.

Say Good Night, Dick

Brothers, sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

It is with great sadness that I report that Dick Martin is with the Cosmic Comic now (hat tip to YKW). He died of respiratory failure last night.

It was 1967 and NBC was getting clobbered in the ratings, so they threw out some young comedians just to fill the slot, having little hope it would do anything against the likes of Ed Sullivan. But Rowan and Martin's Laugh In became a shot in the culture wars of the late 1960s. Dick Martin was tuxedoed update of G. Maynard Krebs designed to lampoon Hugh Hefner. Ironically, he would go on to marry, divorce and remarry Playmate Dolly Read.

His delivery was always joyful and his timing flawless. While Rowan and Martin represented the new generation in terms of content, they were perhaps the last of the great traditional American comic teams in the tradition of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and Lewis and Martin whose names theirs so closely resembled. In fact, it was as short term replacements for Dean Martin that they got their big break in moving from nightclubs to television as an act. Watching the two of them play off of each other, you always had the sense that these two not only knew their craft, but had a good time.Rest in peace, Dick. Thank you for all the laughs.

Passing the Plate: Sam Snead, 19th Hole Edition

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

It is that time again when we pass the plate and ask for donations. Other religions ask for money, but in Comedism we tithe jokes. So, for the good of the congregation and the community at large, please dig deep and be generous.

This week sees the anniversaries of both the birth and death of the great Sam Snead, the legendary golfer. It's a game I do not play. My father tried to introduce me to it years ago, but I quickly realized that I could get the same effect while saving the greens fees by simply taking a long walk and yelling obscenities. So to honor the memory of Sam Snead, please give us your best golf jokes.

Here are my offerings:

A couple was having breakfast when the wife asks, "If I were to die, would you remarry?" The husband looks up from his paper, shrugs his shoulders and says, "I don't know. I guess so." A few minutes later the wife asks, "Would you live with her in the house?" Looking up again, the husband responds, "Um, yeah, I suppose." The wife asks, "Would you sleep in our bed?" The husband answers, "Yes, I guess I would." "Would you let her use my golf clubs?" she inquired. "No," he says shaking his head, "she's left handed."

Tom and Bill are playing a tough par five when Tom's drive hits a tree and ricochets hard to the side. As they look for the ball, they notice that it hit a golfer from the next hole on the head, killing him. Staring in horror at the body, Tom asks, "What should we do with him?" Bill responds, "I'd leave him there. As an immovable obstruction, you get a two club-length drop."

Your favorites?

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Is There a Relationship Between Teaching and Scholarship?

The following claim is made on the University of Vermont's philosophy department's website:

The Philosophy Department at the University of Vermont is committed to pursuing philosophical scholarship while offering our students the highest quality undergraduate instruction. Our faculty are expected not only to be knowledgeable, but to be active contributors to their fields... We believe that students learn best when interacting directly with professors who are engaged in making philosophical progress.

Is there reason to share this belief?

I suppose the two arguments in favor of the claim are (1) those who are not up to date in the field will not have the complete sense of the topic when teaching it, and (2) the excitement that comes with mining the edge of a field would be communicated in the classroom, if the questions are live in the mind of the instructor, they will more easily be made live questions in the minds of the students.

The arguments against are (1) undergrads come nowhere close to the edge, so as long as the person has a solid grasp of the field, it is a matter of pedagogical talent and care which has nothing to do with an active research program, and (2) given that there are only 24 hours in a day, it becomes a zero sum game and time devoted to research is time not devoted to teaching and expecting your people to be active contributors to their fields will mean they will not be able to spend that time with students or mining the edge of recent pedagogical advances that would make them better teachers.

So, do you buy the UVM philosophers' claim? Is an active research trajectory either necessary or sufficient for successful college level instruction? Why or why not?

Pity Party: Whom Do You Feel Sorry For Today?

This week, I feel sorry for Neville Chamberlain. Here's a guy who has been utterly and completely vilified and all he did was agree to split the Czech. I mean, c'mon, give the guy a break. After all, it was Hitler who wanted to go Dutch...and go Polish, and go Austrian, and go Belgian, and go Danish, and go French, and go Russian...

I feel sorry for Joe Lieberman. I know holy Joe really, really, REALLY wants to be McCain's VP pick, but this is going a step too far:


And I thought Obama meant it metaphorically...

Finally, I feel sorry for Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman. Reporters suggested that a crude double entendre was inherent in the name of his ex-model wife's new hair care product, the "Blo and Go." Never mind, that Senator Coleman lives a short drive away from his former colleague Larry Craig's favorite hangout at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, the mere insinuation of such a reference surely offends his sense of family values. With irony like this, how can anyone doubt the existence of a Cosmic Comic and our theory of humorous design?

So, whom do you feel sorry for today?

Shapes of Racism

In Kentucky's Democratic primary election yesterday, according to the exit polls conducted by CNN, 21% of the voters reported that race was important to them in making their decision and of those 81% voted for Hillary Clinton. More than one out of every six Democrats polled in Kentucky were comfortable telling a complete stranger that the fact that they voted against Barack Obama at least in part because of the color of his skin. And those were the ones who had no problem admitting it. Racism is alive and well and receiving both fuel and oxygen.

What is interesting are the tactics used to conceal it. No longer are open and explicit racist statements acceptable in most mainstream outlets (rightwing talk radio is different because they have created a discourse space in which it is acceptable, indeed they hope to have it pointed out allowing them to play the victim card demonstrating that the PC police are trying to deny them their freedom of speech).

The standard move is to use the sort of dog whistle coded racist language perfected by Ronald Reagan. When Reagan referred to welfare queens" or "state's rights," no one had any doubt what it was he was talking about, but you could never point to the explicitly racist content. The meaning was clear, but required what philosopher H.P. Grice called a conversational implicature, that is an inference from the listener to unpack the meaning of an utterance.

This has been the sort of move used by the Clinton campaign, for example, when referring to working class and lower middle class white voters as "hard-working Americans." This distinguishes this group of white voters from their African-American economic peers, an inference that is unpacked in part with the stereotypical racist presumption of the laziness of oppressed minority groups.

We must be careful to distinguish between descriptive statements that include race. These are not necessarily racist. Race is a sociological factor and discussing the way that factor plays out does not make an utterance racist. Take Obama's comment about the bitterness of white working class voters. In this case, we have a discussion that involves race and class and discusses the complex interrelation among them, policy positions, and voting patterns is a perfectly legitimate topic of conversation.

In this way, some of the comments made by Geraldine Ferraro were on the acceptable side of the line. One could argue that in light of the history of racism in this country, there is a reticence in certain parts of our society to be seen to be critical of rising African-Americans and that the overwhelmingly positive treatment that Obama was receiving in the media was in part a result of this. Maybe it is true, maybe it isn't. We can look back to the Democratic Senators' squeamishness during the Clarence Thomas hearings as evidence that such a thing could be operative here, but whether it is or not is an empirical question that requires support.

But when Ferraro took the next step and argued that he is in the position he occupies because of his race, implying that he shouldn't be leading in the race for the Democratic nomination and is only there because of the treatment he receives because of his race trading on historic antipathy in parts of the white community to affirmative action programs, now what she is doing is diminishing the man on the basis of race, and that statement was explicit and open.

We see more egregious examples of racism from the right. Michael Medved, for example, argues that

The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide – between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits. Among contemporary African-Americans, however, this very different historical background exerts a less decisive influence, because of vast waves of post-slavery black immigration. Some three million black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean arrived since 1980 alone and in big cities like New York, Boston and Miami close to half of the African-American population consists of immigrants, their children or grandchildren. The entrepreneurial energy of these newcomer communities indicates that their members display the same adventurous instincts associated with American DNA.

The move here is a classic example of what I have termed the "cage and frame" rhetorical strategy which is frequently used by conservatives.

Cage and frame is the trick wherein one takes a set of questions that one does not want discussed and puts them in a cage, allowing out only one sacrificial question, a question carefully selected to be easily framed in a way that generates loud, divisive debate. In this way, there appears to be open conversation despite the fact that the real questions never get considered.

Conservatives work very hard to make sure that all questions about the sociological factors leading to social injustice never get asked. This is the reasoning behind the "personal responsibility" canard. What we see from Medved is a longstanding conservative move dating back to the Social Darwinists of the 19th century wherein the conversation is kept on the biological level. It is racist bait and switch. The real questions of social structure and remedies to unfair distribution of wealth and power need never be asked as long we stay focused on questions of heritability.

Further, it allows the racist to falsely hide behind the sort of legitimate natural and social scientific questions about the role, function, and ramifications of race. By couching it in biological terms, the racist can claim to merely be looking at the science and that is objective, non-racist. By allowing only an empirical question out of the cage, the racist motivation behind the strategy can be concealed.

A third rhetorical strategy of contemporary racists is to conflate racist and non-racist notions, thereby hiding the racism behind the innocent. In a recent piece by Kathleen Parker, we see this move.

"A full-blooded American." That's how 24-year-old Josh Fry of West Virginia described his preference for John McCain over Barack Obama. His feelings aren't racist, he explained. He would just be more comfortable with "someone who is a full-blooded American as president."

Whether Fry was referring to McCain's military service or Obama's Kenyan father isn't clear, but he may have hit upon something essential in this presidential race. Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide. Who "gets" America? And who doesn't?

The answer has nothing to do with a flag lapel pin, which Obama donned for a campaign swing through West Virginia, or even military service, though that helps. It's also not about flagpoles in front yards or magnetic ribbons stuck on tailgates.

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots. Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically — and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century — there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.

We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants — and we are. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.

Did you catch it? Let's play that old game from Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others: "heritage, core values, and made-in-America" and "blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values" It's not racism, it's about commitment and hard-won values. Racism is bad, virtues are good, I use virtue referring terms to justify my racist views, therefore my racist views are not racist.

It comes in all shapes and sizes, folks, from open and explicit to hidden and coded. One could even say that it mutates as it replicates, but that would be to use a cheesy genetic metaphor and no one giving a legitimate argument would stoop to such nonsense.

TO on KO

I love Countdown with Keith Olberman. He was the only media voice with the courage to speak truth to power when all others were giving us no truth, just cower. Usually, he's very good in terms of pointing out reasoning errors and inconsistencies in political rhetoric and making cogent, passionate arguments himself. But there were two last night that need to be called out.

The first occurred in his conversation with Rachel Maddow concerning John McCain's recent flood of major advisers who have had to step down when it was exposed that they not only were lobbyists working for the man who supposedly stands up to lobbyists, but actually were paid agents of foreign governments including the brutal regime in Burma, a warlord in Somalia, and Ferdinand Marcos. Pointing out the hypocrisy was fine. Arguing that major players in the campaign are those who become major players in the administration and arguing that putting people in positions of great authority who, up until very recently, were getting large checks from very nasty people would amount to at least a perceived conflict of interest and possibly a recipe for disastrous policy is well above board.

But he ended the piece (I'll get the exact wording as soon as I can find it) by saying to Maddow something along the lines of since we're out of time this will be a question for next time, but when will we be able to look into the income of Mrs. McCain and see where her fortune is invested and what other interests may or may not be having an effect on McCain's decisions.

That is a cheap argument by innuendo. I agree that Cindy McCain is being held to a different standard than, say, Teresa Heinz Kerry. Pointing out the double standard is perfectly kosher. I agree that the disclosure of candidates sources of income -- including their spouses' since things can be easily hidden -- is a good thing as transparency is a key to good governance. BUT the insinuation by KO was clearly there, pointing the listener to guilt without evidence. Call for the release, fine, but to frame it in a way that rhetorically asserts conflicts of interest without having the goods is fallacious.

The second one came during the "Worst Person in the World" segment. The "winner" for the evening was Oliver North who criticized Barack Obama for saying that he would negotiate with Iran. Of course, North himself negotiated with Iran at a time when they were ruled by an even more anti-American leader and he was not negotiating peace, but rather negotiating a price for military weapons that we were illegally selling them.

Yes, the irony is ironic. But, of course, there are problems here. It is a clean example of tu quoque. Just because I do it too doesn't mean it isn't good advice not to. If Keith Richards tells you to keep away from drugs, if Michael Moore tells you to eat well and get plenty of exercise, and if Dick Cheney tells you hunt safely, you should listen to them. Just because they don't listen to their own advice doesn't mean that the advice is necessarily bad. We all do things we shouldn't. There are doctors who smoke, policemen who steal, and seventh grade grammar teachers who dangle their participles in public. Evaluate the claims on their merits, not on who makes the claim and whether they themselves act in accord with it.

Further, to compare Iran/Contra to legitimate diplomacy is a very faulty analogy. Yes, North negotiated, but that bears little resemblance to the high level diplomatic talks Obama is proposing. I agree North's comment is funny in a sick and twisted sort of way, but the merits of early contact between world leaders is a subject of much greater complexity than it is generally receiving.

Keith Olberman is a gem, but even the good ones have bad nights and as I always tell my critical thinking students, it is important that we not only analyze the arguments of those we disagree with.

Seemingly Trivial Unanswered Problems In Discourse

I just read Steve Martin's memoir Born Standing Up yesterday (thanks Gwydion), and thinking back over his early albums (all of which I still have memorized), it inspired me to start a new occasional series of posts that I will call "Seemingly Trivial Unanswered Problems In Discourse" which will go by the acronym D.U.C.K.

The theme will be to take a question that should not be asked, a question that seems to have no answer or a perfectly trivial answer and actually have a discussion about it for no good reason.

Our first one is inspired by both Steve Martin and Hanno.

Comparing apples to oranges, which one is better?

Conundrum from the Congregation

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

This week, I received a plaintive plea from one of our own, good Brother Ron. He has a problem and I think it may take the community as a whole to help:

So, here I was, working on a piece about the Warner-Lieberman Global Warming Bill. And, into my mind popped the words, "Of course, we all know that the penguin is mightier than the swordfish." Not in context. Not with a joke attached. Just the words. It was like a shaggy dog story, but without the dog. It was, in fact, the leavings of a shaggy dog trimming. It was intellectual dander, from out of nowhere.

Now, I'm not concerned with coming up with the rest of the dog. I don't care. I don't even like shaggy dog stories. (Well, when I was a kid I loved the one about the snail in the sports car that ended with, "Wow! Look at that S-Car go!" But I've gotten older, and my appreciation of the divine has gotten better.) That's not why I have a problem.

My problem is that there are two strong possibilities. It is possible that I have been selected by the divine comedian to have a humorous insight, to be one of the few not forwarding, but rather *inventing*, a joke. And while I recognize that there is no holier moment, I must, like Moses before the burning bush (or Howard Beale in Network) stammer that I am neither worthy not a fitting vessel. I used to do stand up comedy. Trust me; I'm not that funny.

But it's equally possible that I'm just losing my marbles. Assuming I ever had any marbles to begin with. (Sorry, son. Those aren't marbles. Those are kidney stones...)

As a devout comedist, what is the prayer one says to be shown the way to either holiness or antipsychotic drugs? How *DOES* one tell if one is holy or off one's rocker? And is that merely a false dichotomy?

Good brother Ron, anyone who would claim the domain name "MotherZucker.com" has his comedist marbles firmly in place (I'll not comment on the state of your marbles beyond that, thank you).

Joke writing is one of those strange affairs where sometimes the complete joke hits you at once, other times, like this, the Cosmic Comic shows you the trailhead and you must climb that mountain to humorous holiness. I say that you have had a riotous revelation, you have been given a Divine punchline.

Suggestions, good comedist brethren and sistren as to a narrative theme or wording for a set up to this magnificent line?

Along with good Brother Ron, I wish everyone:

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

It's The Stupidity, Stupid

There are so many angles from which outrage should flow from Bush's "appeasement" comment in front of the Knesset. Making a cheap Nazi reference in front of the Israeli legislature that is celebrating the founding of the nation which was came about in no small part because of the actual horrors of Nazism is tasteless. Taking a nation's celebration of their 60th anniversary and hijacking it for domestic political shots is rude. Misrepresenting diplomatic engagement for appeasement is dishonest. Overlooking the fact that Bush himself is engaged in exactly this sort of diplomacy with fellow axis of evil leader Kim Jong Il and that the Israelis have a history of diplomatic engagement with their national enemies, not to mention criticizing a fellow American overseas after the Dixie Chicks fiasco, is nothing short of hypocritical.

All of this is disturbing, but what is truly stunning is that here is George W. Bush, the man whose policy of pre-emptive war, whose infantile black-and-white, with us or against us mentality, whose antipathy towards well-established and effective means of diplomacy put not only our country in greater danger, but which has made Israel significantly less safe. This man then stands in front of the government that now has to worry more about the safety of its citizens because of his policy stance and then in his embarrassingly adolescent manner lashes out at one of the adults for suggesting that we need to stop shooting ourselves and Israel in the foot, something everyone in the room knows we have to do. This is nothing short of oblivious.

At an occasion at which it would have been entirely appropriate to give a serious, thoughtful conversation about the state of the region coupled with a sense of what could be and some sophisticated analysis of the way we need to go forward towards a just and secure Middle East, instead we get oratory on the level the last hour of Bill O'Reilly's radio show. That the President thought this to be appropriate for that time and place shows a complete lack of understanding of the job he has held for the last seven years. It is not merely that this comment is a case of doing his job badly, it is the second order flaw, it's the person who screws up and is not even aware of what he is doing to the point where he recognizes that he has screwed up.

There are jerks who act like jerks and know they are acting like jerks and display a sense of arrogance, who put it in your face that they full well know they are being a jerk, know you are upset by their jerk-like behavior, and just don't care. But then there are the ones who act that way with a completely difference sense of arrogance, one that is coupled with the obvious fact that the jerk just doesn't get it. If the President went to Israel and was defiant in his tastelessness, rudeness, dishonesty, and hypocrisy, that would be bad enough. But it is the complete lack of understanding of the brutal stinging irony of his obliviousness that is the most upsetting. To try to insult the intelligence of someone in a way that illustrates your own intellectual flaws, which then reflects on us as a nation is enraging.

Contrary to what you may believe, Mr. Bush, you are not helping. You are not helping John McCain. You are not helping Israel. You are not helping your own legacy. You are helping the terrorist recruiters in the same way you have been for the last six years.

You have made yourself into a cartoon character and you did it in a country where people actually read newspapers, not just the comics; where sophisticated arguments about current events is a standard way of life; where simplistic approaches to terrorism are known to fail; where your own policies have made their lives more dangerous. They know this. They get it. They have no choice. Fortunately, we do. Our days of national shame and embarrassment are mercifully numbered. We simply ask that you stop trying to help. It's not the partisanship. It's not the saber rattling. It's not the immature rhetoric. It's the stupidity, stupid.

Bullshit or Not: Seneca Edition

There's an old sketch film called Amazon Women on the Moon and one of the bits is a parody of the old Leonard Nimoy show, "In Search Of..." called, "Bullshit or Not?" with the tagline "Bullshit or not? You decide." It's a line I like so much that I've stolen it for an irregular series of posts.

Today's quotation comes from the roman orator Seneca, specifically number 90 of his letters:

"My dear Lucius, who can doubt that life is a gift from the immortal gods, but that the good life is the gift of philosophy? And so our debt to philosophy would undoubtedly seem to be greater than our debt to the gods by the same degree that the good life is a greater blessing than life, were it not that philosophy itself was bestowed on us by the gods. They have given to no one the knowledge of philosophy, but to everyone the faculty of acquiring it."

So much in there. Does philosophy really contribute to the good life? Do we owe a debt to philosophy? Does everyone really have the faculty to acquire it?

Bullshit or not? You decide.

As usual, feel free to leave anything from a one word response to a dissertation.

RIP Robert Rauschenberg

The artist Robert Rauschenberg died yesterday of a heart attack. After the abstract expressionism of Pollack and Motherwell, the question was legitimately asked, "Where can art possibly go?" Robert Rauschenberg was one of the people who took it there.

One of my favorite works ever is one of his early works called "Erased de Kooning Drawing." He got Willem de Kooning, an artist of significance, to give him a drawing that de Kooning himself considered to be of some importance in his overall catalogue. Rauschenberg then proceeded to erase it, placing the blank sheet in a frame and displaying it as his own work of art.

Is it art? Is it Rauschenberg's piece if he ended up with nothing that de Kooning didn't already have before?

What Is Common Sense?

"Sure he's smart, but he's got no COMMON SENSE." Man, I hate that.

What is this "common sense" of which they speak? How do I know for any given sentence X whether X is common sense? Does that mean it is simply widely known? Is it self-evident? Is it a pre-theoretical truth, that is, something whose justification requires only everyday experience and no general theory?

Is common sense unrevisably true? If something is common sense, could it be wrong? If so, what good is it?

Those of you who supposedly have common sense, what is it?