Reason Magazine - Staff > Cathy Young > Hit & Run Posts

Hiroshima, moral purity and moral blindness

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:30:00 EDT

A thoughtful, poignant post by Shaun Mullen at The Moderate Voice (and in a longer version on his own blog) commemorates yesterday's anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Mullen opens with a heartbreaking image of human suffering -- the death of a three-year-old boy who was outside riding his tricycle when the bomb hit. Then, he examines the arguments for and against the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and concludes that Harry Truman made the right call.

Oliver Kamm, British commentator and liberal hawk, makes the same argument in The Guardian, challenging the "alternative history" which claims that Japan was on the brink of surrender and the nuclear bombs were dropped in order to intimidate Stalin's Soviet Union. Says Kamm:

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are often used as a shorthand term for war crimes. That is not how they were judged at the time. Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome. The bomb was a deliverance for American troops, for prisoners and slave labourers, for those dying of hunger and maltreatment throughout the Japanese empire - and for Japan itself. One of Japan's highest wartime officials, Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties. The destruction of two cities, and the suffering it caused for decades afterwards, cannot but temper our view of the Pacific war. Yet we can conclude with a high degree of probability that abjuring the bomb would have caused greater suffering still.

Here, I will say that my knowledge of World War II is limited. I don't know who is factually correct about the situation in the Pacific theater at the end of the war. (The revisionist case is made here by the Hoover Institution's David Henderson.) The argument that the primary goal of dropping the bombs was to intimidate the Soviets doesn't make much sense, given that we allowed the Soviet Union to keep all of Eastern Europe, half of Germany, and the Baltics as part of its empire.

On a purely instinctive level, I am of course appalled by justifications for the killing of about 150,000 civilians, many of them children. One cannot, if one is a normal person, justify such an act without doing violence to one's moral sense. But are there times when the unspeakable is the lesser of two evils? Obviously, arguments that noble ends can justify terrible means can lead to some dark places, and such arguments have also served countless tyrants as excuses for barbarism. The danger of becoming "as bad as the enemy" is real.

But at the opposite extreme, the view that all use of terrible means is equal represents a kind of moral laziness, an abdication of critical distinctions and context. When some have the will and the power to do evil things -- to enslave and murder -- there is generally no way to stop them except by force; and when we choose to use force, terrible choices must sometimes be made. Yes, even necessary violence, particularly when it kills innocents, damages the soul. I will agree that we should all find it a little harder to live with ourselves knowing that the victory over evil in World War II was bought with the lives of so many innocents, not only at Hiroshima but in Dresden or in Tokyo, where the men, women and children killed by "conventional" firebombing were as dead as the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nonetheless, it was as clearcut a victory over evil as there has ever been in history.

And that's why what truly shocked me was the responses to Oliver Kamm on the Guardian website, where many of the anti-Kamm posts were truly striking in their venom and their strident moral equivalency:

What a disgusting article. For me, the dropping of an atomic bomb on any town anywhere is entirely despicable. In my opinion it proves beyond a shadow of doubt that whilst Americans may be lovely people when they are getting their way, they will stoop to any depths to ensure their personal gain in the face of opposition. They will also, always hide behind "holier than thou" reasons for their contemptible behaviour.
Wow. Americans are just shocking in their denial. By this sick logic the jihadis are completely justified when they attack American civilians in massive acts of terror - which I might add are mere blips in comparison to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We live in a sick culture, where 60 years have passed, and there isnt even a shred of shame with regards to this heinous crime. For the sake of our species - Boycott America.
"Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome."
The other side also did similar terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome which became war crimes.
It is the winner who decides what is or is not a war crime.
America has ever been a psychopathic bully ever since it's (sic) first days and the genocide against the indiginous Americans. Why all these attempts to justify what was clearly a war crime greater than all others?
The US has never learned the lesson of treating one's enemies with grace and magnanimity once those enemies have lost--it is always vindictive, always demands unconditional surrender, complete acquiescence to US subjugation.

What is absent from these comments (and many others like them) is any awareness of things like the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March, or the Holocaust for that matter; or of the fact that America's supposed determination to crush her enemies manifested itself in rebuilding postwar Germany and leaving Japan with a political system that allowed it to become a strong economic rival to America herself. A few commenters suggest that America should have allowed the Soviets to end the war by invading Japan, blithely unaware of the hell on earth that would have awaited the Japanese under Soviet occupation. This isn't mere ignorance; it's a profound conviction that only evil done by the West, and above all by "psychopathic bully" America, truly matters. Meanwhile, posters who point out Japanese atrocities in World War II are rebuffed with accusations of "the implicitly racist overtone [of] recounting the endless 'savagery' of the Japanese."

When anti-Americanism becomes so extreme that it turns the U.S. into the bad guy of World War II, that's truly frightening and depressing. As for whether the bombing was indeed the least evil of all available options: again, I don't know. I'm sure there is room for legitimate debate on this issue. But that debate is almost entirely drowned out by hate and self-righteousness. The insistence on moral purity has turned to moral blindness.

See more at The Y-Files.

L'affaire Beauchamp: The sound of many knees jerking

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 09:02:00 EDT

The Scott Thomas Beauchamp brouhaha, if you have been following it, is a proverbial tempest in a teapot. The claims Beauchamp made (as the barely pseudonymous "Scott Thomas") in his "Baghdad Diarist" New Republic article about American soldiers behaving badly are fairly trivial; the war in Iraq does not stand or fall on their truthfulness. Nonetheless, the blogosphere's reaction to the story has been sharply divided along pro-war and anti-war lines almost from the start, and this across-the-board knee-jerk response is, perhaps, the most interesting (if depressing) aspect of the entire affair.

Right meme: it's a liberal media conspiracy to besmirch the war effort by encouraging a leftist literary poseur to publish fictional or embellished stories painting soldiers as depraved sociopaths. Left meme: it's a right-wing cyber-lynching of a soldier telling the ugly truth about the war. TNR's announcement that it has confirmed the story to its satisfaction has not changed any minds.

There is no question that some of the right-wing rhetoric directed at Beauchamp and at TNR was indeed shockingly ugly, violent, and paranoid (Beauchamp was a leftist mole who had deliberately infiltrated the military in order to destroy it from within!). But the defense of Beauchamp from the anti-war camp seems misguided. For one thing, the one detail that TNR admits he got wrong -- the incident which opens his piece, in which Beauchamp and a buddy publicly mock a woman disfigured in an IED explosion, did not occur in Iraq but in Kuwait while awaiting deployment -- is not a triviality. After all, with the correct location, the anecdote would not have fit into Beauchamp's narrative. His point was that war messes up one's moral compass, including his own. If this happened before he was in a war zone, there goes the moral of the story.

Far less attention has been paid to the curious matter of Beauchamp's first diarist piece, "War Bonds". In it, Beauchamp chats with a friendly Iraqi boy while changing a flat tire, only to find out the next day that the boy, who called himself "James Bond," had his tongue cut out by insurgents for talking to Americans. This horrifying tale abounds in improbabilities -- above all, the fact that a month or two later Beauchamp sees the same kid back on the same streets, hanging around Americans and waiting for handouts, smiling happily and sprinting after a soccer ball. His spirits are apparently undampened by the mutilation or by fear of further reprisals, and his family has not thought to keep him off the streets, or maybe try to get out of that neighborhood. None of it rings true -- though I'm certainly not denying that the insurgents could have done such a thing. (For more analysis of that piece, see my post at The Y-Files.) Of course, no one questioned that story because no one has a political or emotional stake in disproving atrocities by insurgents.

So yes, I think there are good reasons to question Beauchamp's accuracy, and neither TNR nor liberal bloggers are doing themselves any favors by coming uncritically to his defense. But conservative bloggers aren't covering themselves in glory either when they stridenly insist that TNR gave Beauchamp a platform in a nefarious plot to smear and slander the troops. TNR is not some far-left rag that revels in spitting on American soldiers; it is a centrist magazine that initially supported the war in Iraq. Indeed, while I think the story of the boy who had his tongue cut out raises further doubts about Beauchamp's credibility, it also points to the aburdity of claims that TNR editors were eager to publish Beauchamp because his writings put U.S. troops in Iraq in a bad light. I think Beauchamp wanted to write gritty, vivid, human-interest-rich accounts of the horrors of war, and TNR wanted to publish them.

I also think Andrew Sullivan probably has a point when he speculates that one reason for the Beauchamp brouhaha is that, unable to discredit the real bad news coming from Iraq, war supporters have targeted the Beauchamp story as a weak link. There are also far too many on the right who do not want to hear, or to accept, any bad news about the conduct or the morale of American troops.

But none of that changes the fact that a magazine like TNR owes its readers real accuracy, not just a "close enough." Truth in journalism matters; that's why the Beauchamp saga is not entirely trivial. And even those who are rightly disgusted by the hysteria about "slandering the troops" should not overlook this fact. In the end, Beauchamp and his persecutors may well deserve each other.

Extended version cross-posted at The Y-Files.

With avengers like these...

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:15:00 EST

Patterico covers what should be a blogosphere scandal but isn't, for some reason.

A few days ago, one of Patterico's regular commenters, Carlitos, informed him that a comment he had posted in a debate on abortion on the Liberal Avenger blog was altered (by someone with admin privileges) to include this lurid passage:

Still, there are some valid and acceptable reasons to have abortions - reasons I think we can all agree with. For example, when my sister and I were in Junior high school we used to experiment sexually - you know, the usual stuff that horny, young brothers and sisters do: rimming, finger-fucking, dry humping, etc. We practically spent the entire summer between 7th and 8th grade in bed - it was great. Of course, by the end of the summer my sister was pregnant. Given our age and maturity levels, we knew she had to get an abortion.

After Patterico emailed Liberal Avenger about this, the comment disappeared. However, a screenshot was preserved, and Patterico posted it on his blog on February 13 at 6:51 a.m.

Liberal Avenger responded (February 13, 11:03 a.m.):

I don't know what the big deal is. The comment appears to be gone. I never saw it. I have no reason to believe that it ever existed in the first place. Patterico's screenshot is meaningless as by its very existence it had to have been manipulated by Photoshop. I'm not saying that he made it up, but I'm saying that in order for somebody to take a screenshot and crop/reduce it to post on their blog it has to be pulled into Photoshop or another image editing practice. Once that happens, the content of that image belongs to Patterico - not me. I've learned this through the course of reading countless shrill wingnut blog posts about image manipulation over the past year.

He then concluded:

I'm closing this thread to commenting. Patterico - shame on you!

On Patterico's site, Liberal Avenger posted:

Yeah, I'm not too concerned about carlitos suing me because of something Patterico made up.

A few hours later, Patterico posted a full screenshot of the altered comment (which he had previously cropped for size).

Liberal Avenger then admitted in Patterico's thread that he had personally altered Carlito's comment, and offered a charming defense:

The comment in question as originally written by him was an elitist swipe at poor/minority women. It was yet another bogus collection of facts and innuendo to support the racist/classist opinion that most women seeking abortions use abortion as a casual means of birth control. His argument consisted of several variations on the old "the bitch had an abortion because she didn't want pregnancy to interfere with her fabulous ski vacation" canard.

In fact, Carlito had posted information from this birth control website about women's reasons for having abortions. He also says that he actually made fun of the "ski trip" rationale. But let's say, for argument's sake, that Carlito's comment was a collection of putrid ideological clichés. Does that make Liberal Avenger's "prank" okay? Would it be okay for, say, Jeff Goldstein to edit a comment by a poster spouting clichés about The Evil Patriarchy to include a lurid description of her secret fantasy of being dominated by a big, hairy, musclebound, hung-like-a-horse male chauvinist?

Liberal Avenger also now claims now claims that he was just kidding when he said that the edited comment may never have existed:

It's hilarious that they can't tell when they're being teased.

Well, if there was any humor in Avenger's "Patterico -- shame on you!" February 13 post, I certainly didn't see it.

In a ghoulish twist, Patterico's follow-up post revealed that the rewritten comment was especially disturbing to Carlito because his only sister died several years ago. Admittedly, Liberal Avenger was unaware of this when he altered the comment. However, he is aware of it now, and he has yet to offer an apology. Instead, he and his left-wing friends continue to treat this as a big joke on his blog, and he continues to tell Patterico and his commenters to "stop taking yourselves so seriously."

It's a shame, because I have encountered Liberal Avenger on Eric Muller's Is That Legal blog and elsewhere -- he first came to my attention in debates over Michelle Malkin's odious book In Defense of Internment -- and have generally found him to be a reasonable and interesting commenter. I'm disappointed that he has both compromised his integrity, first with the alteration of Carlito's comment and then with the attempted cover-up, and played into the worst right-wing stereotypes of liberals as intolerant of conservative dissent. With avengers like these, liberals don't need enemies.

Liberal Avenger's "prank" is not only juvenile, unethical, and offensive; it is also dangerous to blog discourse. If people know that a blog administrator can tamper with comments at will, it could have a truly chilling effect on speech in the blogosphere. Any blogger, liberal or conservative, should take this very seriously indeed.

Extended version cross-posted at The Y Files.

PandaGate and anti-male bigotry

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 06:40:00 EST

I'm coming a little late to the farewell party for Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte as blog coordinator for the Edwards campaign. Now, Marcotte's sister-in-arms, Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister, has stepped down as well.

Some, such as my Reason colleague David Weigel, are concerned that the Marcotte/McEwan brouhaha may backfire against all bloggers who don't write like political hacks. I think outspoken bloggers have nothing to fear unless they aspire to actually become paid political hacks. (Andrew Sullivan has a good comment on this.) What I find more troubling is that the criticism of Marcotte has focused so much on her swipes at religion, and so little on her brand of feminism -- a cult of female victimhood rife with militant anti-male bigotry.

A number of publications have quoted her sarcastic comment on the Duke alleged sexual assault case: "Can't a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair." But it's hard to appreciate the full flavor of that comment without its full context. This is the post that Marcotte scrubbed from her blog after it attracted unwanted attention in the wake of her new job with the Edwards campaign. It seems she also deleted some of her comments in the thread, preserved here. Even with Marcotte's posts gone, the thread remains quite revealing: Marcotte's like-minded regulars (particularly ginmar) verbally assault, insult, and mock any dissenter. Responding to a feminist blogger who says she is a survivor of sexual assault herself but is concerned about fair treatment for the accused players, ginmar offers this gem:

Natalia, I don't think anybody cares if you're a rape victim and you toe the party line when it comes to "But what about the menz!"

(Yes, I know ginmar is not Amanda Marcotte, but ideologically they're pretty much peas in a pod.)

A sampling of Marcotte's other posts on the Duke case can be found on this page. Anyone who questions the guilt of the accused players, in her book, is a "rape apologist." In this post, she fumes:

Kathleen Parker has been ... building a long case that unless the victim is 9 years old and a virgin and white and blonde and her attacker kills her and he mutiliates her body, then rape isn't so much a crime as a feminist plot to put all men in jail so that we can, I don't know, wear sweatpants more or something.

Here are three Kathleen Parker columns, discussing the "rush to judgment" in the Duke case. In the last of these columns, Parker actually expresses concern that the alleged victim may be seen as less deserving because she's a stripper, and writes, "A woman raped is a woman raped, no matter what her ill-chosen profession."

Marcotte's crude "satire" is far worse than a caricature of Parker's views. A caricature is an exaggeration of truth. Marcotte's summary of Parker's position is an outright, slanderous lie.

I should add here that I have been on the receiving end of the Marcotte method of polemics myself. On July 25, 2005, Marcotte made a post at Pandagon titled, Cathy Young to battered wives-"Stop hitting yourself!" This in reference to my Boston Globe column on the Violence Against Women Act. Somehow, my discussion of the false assumption that mutual violence always involves male aggression/female self-defense becomes a call for throwing battered women in jail if they fight back or so much as accidentally hit the abuser while flailing around trying to escape. See also Marcotte's post here at Feministing, and more of my discussion here.

And finally, best for last: an October 19, 2006 post in which Marcotte explains that there's no such thing as man-hating feminists. She's particularly unhappy with the "made-up word 'misandry.'" (Actually, the word "misandry," or "hatred of males," appears in the Webster's Encyclopaedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language [1996] and its origins are traced to 1945-50. That patriarchal conspiracy sure is insidious!) Sayeth Marcotte:

This is a word that was made up by men on a victim trip because they don't get to abuse and oppress women as much as they'd really like to, and it's an attempt to pretend there's a tradition of man-hating so severe it deserves a word of its own. ... Attempts to create a false equivalence are about the worst sort of victim tripping imaginable. It wasn't the girls that were sent out of the room so boys could be raped and killed in recent school shootings.

Marcotte, I assume, is referring to these two cases. The horrific actions of two severely disturbed men become her paradigm for male attitudes toward women in our society. (Was serial killer John Wayne Gacy a self-hating misandrist male because he killed only boys?)

Marcotte's conclusion:

The phrase "man-hater" is more an insult to men than to feminists. Anyone who uses it generally means that the person thus accused is a rapist-hater, abuser-hater, sexist-hater. And when you call someone a "man-hater" who is actually hating on sexists, abusers, and rapists, you imply all men are these things. And they are not. So who are really the man-haters when that phrase is being wielded? It's not the feminists; it's the men implying that hating rape or hating abuse is the same thing as hating men.

Or maybe the person using the phrase "man-hater" means that the person thus accused is ready to presume any man to be a rapist or abuser at the drop of an accusation, no matter how non-existent the evidence. For a stark demonstration of such bigotry, look no further than the Marcotte/ginmar lynch-mob mentality in the Duke case.

Extended version cross-posted at The Y Files.

Lee Goldberg's war on fanfic

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:26:00 EST

The February edition of Reason has my column on fan fiction, "The Fan Fiction Phenomena: What Faust, Hamlet, and Xena the Warrior Princess have in common," in which I discuss fan-written stories based on television, film, and book characters. (As I mention in the column, I myself write Xena: Warrior Princess fanfic.) I also discuss some of the critiques directed at fan fiction. One of those critics, writer Lee Goldberg, now argues on his blog that I misrepresented his position.

Here's what I wrote:

[S]ome arguments advanced by fanfic’s foes make little sense. Thus Hobb exempts from her scorn professionally written Star Trek novels licensed by the copyright owner—even though the license comes from the corporation, not the creators of the characters. ... The vehemently anti-fanfic writer Lee Goldberg, who blogs at leegoldberg.com, is the author of several authorized novels based on the TV shows Monk and Diagnosis Murder—a contradiction he defends on the grounds that he does it only for the money.

Says Goldberg:

I have written extensively on my blog about fanfiction, particularly my view that the practice of publishing it in print and on the Internet infringes on the original author's creative rights (not to mention the trademark and copyright issues). I've argued that fanfiction writers should get the permission of the author or rights holder before distributing their work. If the original author or rights holder has no problem with fanfiction based on their work, then I don't either. I have also said that licensed tie-in fiction, which I have written, differs significantly on ethical and legal grounds from fanfiction because it is done with the consent, participation and supervision of the original author or rights holder. At no point have I *ever* expressed the views that she incorrectly (and I have to assume deliberately) attributed to me.

Now, I assume the views I have allegedly misattritubed to Goldberg are, (1) that he is vehemently anti-fanfic, and (2) that he has defended his authorship of tie-in novels on the grounds that he only writes them for the money.

On the first count, I think that a read-through of Goldberg's blogposts on fanfic will suffice to prove my case. While Goldberg does in fact state in a number of posts that in his opinion, fan fiction violates copyright and intellectual property, he devotes far more space to jeering at the moral degeneracy and weirdness of fanficcers, focusing on such fringe phenomena as kiddie porn fanfic, a fan who surfs the Web searching for masturbation fic, male pregnancy fanfic, one fan's fantasies about Roy Orbison and cling-wrap, real-person slashfic in which actors, singers, and other celebrities are depicted in homoerotic sexual situations, and the like. (By the way, it's hard not to notice that Goldberg seems especially incensed by gay-themed fanfiction.) He constantly engages in gross generalization; a post about a self-professed Harry Potter smut aficionada is entitled "The Fanfic Mind." If Goldberg has ever said anything positive about fanfic writers in fandoms where the copyright holders and creators have explicitly allowed and even encouraged fan fiction -- such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Harry Potter -- I have found no evidence of that on his blog. I have, however, found such statements as:

Money and copyright aside, what an incredible waste of creativity. Why toil on characters you don't own in a world that's not your own? It's not even literary masturbation. It's more like the literary equivalent of having sex with an inflatable woman who looks like Halle Berry.

In another post, mocking an email correspondent who asks him for a link to some fanfic he has mentioned, Goldberg says that it's "sort of like asking a Jew to direct you to some really rocking anti-Semitic screeds." Wow, Mr. Goldberg. Tell us how you really feel.

It was not my intent in my column to extensively discuss Lee Goldberg's views on fan fiction, or the debate about fanfic and copyright/intellectual property laws (an issue I briefly mentioned in my discussion of fantasy writer Robin Hobb's attack on fan fiction). I would say, however, that "vehemently anti-fanfic" sums up Goldberg's stance pretty well.

Now, on to the second part. Did Goldberg ever defend his tie-in novels on the grounds that he only writes them for the money? Sure he did, on the very same blog where he now claims to have been misrepresented. In fact, he devoted an entire post to this point on June 16, 2005:

[S]omeone asked what the difference is between someone who writes tie-ins and someone who writes fanfic... beyond the fact that tie-ins are written with the consent of the author/right's (sic) holder.

There's a big difference.

I was hired to write DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MONK novels. It's something I am being paid to do. It's not like I woke up one morning with a burning desire to write DIAGNOSIS MURDER novels, wrote one up, and sent it off to a publisher (or, as a fanficcer would do, posted it on the web). The publisher came to me and asked me to write them.

I would never write a book using someone else's characters unless I was hired to do so. It would never even occur to me because the characters aren't mine.

Given a choice, I would only write novels and TV shows of my own creation. But I have to make a living and I take the work that comes my way...and that includes writing-for-hire, whether it's on someone else's TV show or original tie-in novels based on characters I didn't create. Ultimately, however, what motivates me as a writer is to express myself...not the work of someone else.

That's the big difference between me and a fanficcer.

Given a choice, fanficcers "write" fanfic.

(The numerous italics are all in the original.)

More recently, Goldberg returns to this theme in a September 20, 2006 post, "Am I a Fanficcer?" While he does stress that his TV show-based novels are published with the consent and involvement of the owners, the "I'm only in it for the money" defense rears its head again:

What I do isn't comparable to fanfiction -- which is using someone else's work without their consent or involvement and distributing on the Internet. I don't do it as my personal artistic expression -- it's a job, one that I do to the best of my ability. ... I much prefer to write totally original work and if I could make my living only doing that, I would.

In fairness to Goldberg, I should have said that he defends his tie-in novels partly on the grounds that he only writes them for the money. I singled out this argument because I found it particularly bizarre -- it's the first time I have seen paid hackwork held up as morally superior to an unpaid labor of love -- and because I had already mentioned the "fanfic is intellectual theft" argument in my comments on Robin Hobb. If that gave a misleading impression of Goldberg's views on fanfic, I will readily offer my apologies. However, I certainly did not put any argument in Goldberg's mouth that he did not repeatedly make on his blog.

Since we're on the subject, I will answer a question Goldberg poses in his September 20 post:

What I have yet to see any fanficcer explain why they won't to (sic) ask the creator or rights holder for permission before posting and distributing their work. ... I know the answer, of course. Fanficcers are terrified of officially being told NO... and identifying themselves in case they decide to blithely violate the author's wishes anyway.

Is Goldberg kidding? Would original fiction writers be willing to spend hours every day answering emails asking them if it's okay to post a fanfiction based on their work? In the case of movie- and TV-based fanfiction, does Goldberg expect studios to hire a staff just to field requests for permission to post a story? And to whom should the request be directed? The corporation? The creator(s) of the characters? What's more, the writers or the studio personnel would have either to read the stories -- which would be incredibly time-consuming and legally problematic -- or to authorize them unread.

I do think that it would be an ideal resolution to the legal dilemma of fan-created works if authors or creators/copyright holders were to state upfront that they do not object to non-commercial fan endeavors, perhaps under certain conditions. I also strongly believe that the wishes of any writer who has asked people not to write fan fiction based on his or her work -- or has set guidelines for such fan fiction, like Rowling or Anne McCaffrey -- should be respected. In the absence of such explicit statements, given that the widespread existence of fan fiction is by now no secret to anyone, I think silence may be presumed to equal consent. (Since a pro-Goldberg blogger indicts me for "absconding with characters" created by others, I will mention that the producers of Xena actually hired one of my fellow intellectual thieves, fanfic writer Melissa "Missy" Good, to write scripts for the show.)

Finally, since we're on the topic of misrepresentation: In a post on October 12, 2006, Goldberg suggests, on the basis of a New York Times profile of fanfic writer-turned-pro Naomi Novik, that Novik has revised her previously "liberal" views on fanfic and copyright now that she is a commercially published author herself. As some of his commenters point out, Novik has in fact specifically said that this is not so. Goldberg has yet to issue a retraction in the body of his post or even to acknowledge his error in the comments, despite having posted in the comments thread several times.

(Somewhat longer version cross-posted at The Y Files.)

Eric Pianka: Smear victim, eco-fanatic, or neither?

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 14:28:54 EDT

(Cross-posted at The Y Files.)

My Y Files post on the Eric Pianka controversy has generated considerable debate in the blog's comments, with some posters saying that I have fallen for a right-wing creationist smear against an innocent scientist accused of advocating the deaths of billions for the sake of the planet. The "smeared by the right" meme also prevails in the liberal blogosphere, and one conservative blogger, Atlanta Rofters, has retracted his anti-Pianka position and apologized.

So, do I stand by my first blogpost? Mostly, yes.

I'm quite certain that Pianka, a University of Texas biologist, did not advocate active steps to kill 5 billion people with a deadly virus; but I made it clear in my initial post that I endorsed no such claim. I believe that for "Intelligent Design" maven William Dembski to report Pianka to Homeland Security as a potential terrorist was ludicrous and reprehensible.

Did Pianka, as reported by Forrest M. Mims III, wax enthusastic to the Texas Academy of Sciences about the prospect of over 5 billion people dying in an Ebola plague, or express hope that such an epidemic would come to pass (rather than merely warn that it will if we don't change our profligate ways)? I'm not absolutely certain of that; but I think that the rush to exonerate Pianka in some quarters is a little too quick and easy. For instance, at The Panda's Thumb, we're told that "KXAN News36 in Austin, TX, has just debunked the whole thing." But the "debunking" does not include any independent evidence, such as a transcript of an audio recording of Pianka's speech, or an eyewitness account contradicting Mims. It consists, instead, of Pianka's assertion that he is not pro-genocide, doesn't want vast numbers of people to die and wants his granddaughters to have a future. Well, that's very nice. But, as one commenter at The Panda's Thumb correctly noted, "A denial is by no means a 'debunking.'"

Others have pointed to this statement on Pianka's website, denying any ill will toward humanity and asserting that Pianka's apocalyptic scenario was simply a warning, as exculpatory evidence. But this statement, as far as I can tell, was posted after Pianka became the target of unwelcome publicity. It does not, as Atlanta Rofters seems to think, represent the content of his speech.

So, what about this content? A partial transcript of the Texas Academy of Sciences speech has been posted on the website of Nancy Pearcey, another ID champion. In those portions, Pianka hails draconian measures to restrict childbearing, but the part dealing with the human "die-off" is not there.

There is, however, a transcript of another, apparently quite similar speech Pianka made before the controversy broke, at St. Edward's University in Texas. It was given on March 31 -- actually, the very day Mims published his account of the earlier speech. The trasncript from an audio (with a few small gaps) was published on April 7 in The Sequin Gazette-Enterprise, which has covered the Pianka story. Weirdly enough, a couple of days later the paper removed all Pianka-related material from its website (even though stories generally stay up for a month). What is behind this removal, I don't know. However, thanks to Google cache, I was able to locate a copy of the transcript. Here it is.

This transcript, as the pro-Pianka blog The Questionable Authority points out, differs in some substantial ways from the paper's own report about the speech. It's also interesting to note that in this speech, Pianka actually says that it's likely going to be some virus other than Ebola that is going to get us. But TQA's textual analysis omits the portions of the transcript that tend to bear out Mims's claims:

So this is really, really an exciting time in the history of mankind. Remember the ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times"? I think that right now has got to be just about the most interesting time ever and you get to see it, and, hopefully, a few are gonna live through it. ... Things are gonna get better after the collapse because we won't be able to decimate the earth so much. And, I actually think the world will be much better when there's only 10 or 20 percent of us left.

It would give wildlife a chance to recover -- we won't need conservation biologists anymore. Things are gonna get better.

So yes, there is documented evidence of Pianka expressing enthusiasm for a mass die-off. There is also, as I previously mentioned, Brenda McConnnell's blogpost about his speech -- one that supports his views, and also largely supports Mims's account. McConnell has now deleted her blog, but the relevant portions are reproduced in my blogpost.

Check out, too, this interesting post in the Daily Kos comments thread from Neil Sinhababu, a UT graduate student in philosophy who closely knows people who work with Pianka:

I just asked them if this sounded like something Pianka would actually say. The grad student laughed and told me that Pianka is in fact crazy, and has repeatedly said in classes that it'd be good if devastating diseases would wipe out 90% of the human population. There were freakish references to "our friend, AIDS."
He has a history of other bizarre behavior too. The professor says that whenever new prospective faculty are brought into the biology department and meet Pianka, Pianka likes to puts his feet up on his desk and loudly say, "We're all fucked!" (This is apparently how the professor himself was greeted.) The biology department has started making sure that new hires meet the other ecologists before they meet Pianka, so as to make clear that not all Texas ecologists are insane.

The poster's bona fides seem to be in order (check out his own blog). Admittedly this is second-hand information, but in conjunction with the speech transcript, Brenna McConnell's blogpost, and some of the student evaluations he has posted on his own website, the picture that emerges is not a pleasant one.

Many people find it unbelievable that someone who spouts the human-hating views attributed to Pianka would be treated as mainstream in the biology/ecology field. Well, in my last post, I cited the example of Dr. David Graber, a biologist with the National Park Service, who wrote in 1989 in the Los Angeles Times:

We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. ... Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.

If Graber has been professionally shunned for this repugnant statement, I'm certainly not aware of it. (He is currently a science advisor to the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.)

It should be noted as well that the kind of views Pianka has been accused of holding have been expressed by some of his supporters on various blogs. Take, for instance, this post by "Praedor Atrebates" at Pharyngula:

Umm...feeling some personal satisfaction at the thought of an inevitable population decline (due to disease, famine, whatever) because of the harm we as a species are doing to our home is NOT the same as advocating same.

I welcome a culling for the same reasons but have no desire to see any particular people die. It is a general, theoretical feeling of satisfaction. We as a species getting our comeuppance due to your thoughtless activities against the natural world. Such an onslaught can ONLY come to ill, not only for humans, but for far too many innocent other species as well (the collatoral damage).

...

I also fully realize that a human species fall could well include ME. So be it. That doesn't mean I don't, in general, get a feeling of satisfaction from the idea of schadenfreude: humans getting their broad just deserts for thoughtlessness, greed, profligacy, and selfishness. Totally different from advocating actively bringing about such a result, which Pianka is accused (falsely) of.

It is objective fact that the environment would do EXTREMELY well should humans fall out of it. There's a silver lining to all storm clouds.

This post, I believe, speaks for itself. (It should be noted as well that none of the other Pianka supporters in the thread reacted to "Praedor's" post with outrage.)

I don't want to get into the issue of how much of Pianka's alarmism -- for instance, about deadly virus mutations due to overpopulation -- is rooted in good science. This is primarily an issue not of science, but of ideology.

The conflict between Pianka and his persecutors, most of whom are ID supporters, has been (mis)cast as a war between science and reason on one side, and religious zealotry and superstition on the other. But as I have said before, I think it is in fact a conflict between two different brands of religious zealotry. Commenters at Kos and other left-of-center blogs have gleefully pointed out that the same religious conservatives who voice outrage at Pianka's vision of an agonizing death for 80 to 90% of humanity often embrace the idea of a God who will visit horrific destruction upon the world and punish the disobedient with eternal agony. They are correct, but they miss the point that the irony goes in the other direction, too: the radical environmentalists are as enamored of Armageddon as the more conventional religious extremists. The eco-doomsayers are driven at least as much by their fervent belief that humanity needs to be punished for its sins of greed and luxury as they are by scientifically based concerns. (Note the moralistic, not scientific, language in "Praedor Atrebates'" post above.) Joseph Herzlinger, who has a blog of his own, puts it best in the comments thread at Bad Astronomy Blog:

This looks like crackpot vs. crackpot. It's a debate between someone ignoring the evidence in favor of Darwin's theories and someone ignoring the evidence against Malthus's theories.

The enviro-zealots and the religious zealots are united in their hatred of the human mind, of human freedom and pride; and both long to see humanity crushed under the weight of a superior power, be it God or Nature. I should add here, by the way, that I have nothing against God or Nature, against religion or environmentalism -- as long as they are not anti-human.

But of course, humanism -- the bugaboo of the religious right -- is also in disfavor with the Piankas of this world, who lament the evil of "anthropocentrism." Even PZ Myers of Pharyngula, who regards Pianka as "eccentric," writes that he is "more sympathetic to the egalitarian view that denies humanity a privileged position, except in our own personal esteem." Being a humanist, it seems, is a lonely job these days.

Blasphemy in Denmark -- and here

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:19:30 EST

Last September, some cartoons about Islam published in a Danish newspaper caused serious offense to Muslims. (To see the cartoons, go here and scroll about halfway down.) A few days ago the paper apologized, but apparently not enough -- the apology was for offending the feelings of Muslims but not for actually publishing the cartoons -- leading to more protests and boycotts, as well as threats of violence.

The media in Muslim countries have weighed in. According to the Christian Science Monitor:

The Arab News of Saudi Arabia calls upon Denmark to legally ban religious hate speech.

Meanwhile, some European newspapers have reprinted the cartoons as a way of striking a blow for freedom of expression.

Under the headline "Yes, we have the right to caricature God", France Soir ran a front page cartoon of Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian gods floating on a cloud.

It shows the Christian deity saying: "Don't complain, Muhammad, we've all been caricatured here."

The full set of Danish drawings, some of which depict the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist, were printed on the inside pages.

The paper said it had decided to republish them "because no religious dogma can impose itself on a democratic and secular society."

Or can it? Unfortunately, France Soir's demonstration of the value of free speech ended in a fiasco: the paper published an apology and sacked its managing editor.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian Christian paper Magazinet, which also published the cartoons, then took them off its website because of threats. According to The Brussels Journal:

Magazinet also interviewed two leading Norwegian cartoonists: Finn Graff and Morten M. Kristiansen. Graff, who was known in the 1960s and '70s for his satirical drawings of Jesus Christ, said that he does not draw pictures mocking Muhammad. He does so out of fear for Muslims, and also "out of respect." Muslims, he said, are very sensitive about their religion and their prophet, which is something one has to take into account and one has to respect. Kristiansen said he had received many protest letters in the past whenever he mocked Christ. The same applies to cartoons about Muhammad, but lately the protest letters from Muslims had increasingly become threats, including death threats in e-mails from places such as Iran. Unlike Graff, Kristiansen said he will not change his behaviour because of these threats because it is important to defend the right to freedom of expression.

All this prompts Pieter Dorsmann to compare this to the "Piss Christ" controversy and Glenn Reynolds to comment:

The lesson is that if you want your religion not to be mocked, it helps to have a reputation for senseless violence. Is this the incentive structure we want?

That observation is, of course, quite correct. Christians who protest blasphemy generally do not threaten a violent response (though there were some bomb threats in response to a planned production of Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi a few years ago). But I would note that the "blasphemy as hate speech" meme is shared by quite a few conservative Christians as well; and, in some cases, this translates into sympathy for even violent Muslim backlash against perceived anti-Muslim blasphemy. Here, for instance, a Christian blogger condemns the cartoons about Islam on the grounds of disrespect:

The cartoons are clearly offensive attacks on the faith of all Muslims and it is not surprising that people are upset (if similar cartoons were drawn about Christians there would be considerable protest and outrage). Thus, it was sad to learn that one of the newspapers that published the cartoons was an evangelical Christian paper in Norway. The editor said he had received death threats and hate letters.

What did he expect? He published hate cartoons and thus should not be surprised to receive hate mail. How does this guy think he can reach out to the Muslims in Norway with the Gospel if he so grossly mocks their faith? Why must Christian newspapers publish tabloid trash? It is time for Norway's Christians to demand the editor leave or to cancel their subscriptions.

And Pat Buchanan recently had this to offer:

When Bush speaks of freedom as God's gift to humanity, does he mean the First Amendment freedom of Larry Flynt to produce pornography and of Salman Rushdie to publish The Satanic Verses, a book considered blasphemous to the Islamic faith? If the Islamic world rejects this notion of freedom, why is it our duty to change their thinking? Why are they wrong?

The "hate speech," "bigotry," and "Christian-bashing" label was slapped on the NBC show "The Book of Daniel" (canceled due to protests and boycotts), which featured an Episcopal priest with a dysfunctional family and a Jesus who urged him to be tolerant of human frailties.

I agree that cheap religion-baiting, and particularly Christian-baiting, has long been in vogue among the liberal intelligentsia, and that it can be very juvenile and tiresome. But there is something dangerous, in my view, about the idea that certain beliefs are beyond criticism, even disrespectful criticism (or irreverent reinterpretation).

Once, in illiberal and authoritarian times, blasphemy was outlawed as an offense to God and the authority of churches. Now, we are hearing calls to outlaw blasphemy as an offense to human sensibilities based on group identity.

In attacking "The Book of Daniel," Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition urged the entertainment industry to treat Christians with the same respect it treats Muslims and Jews. I don't know about Jews; but if the Danish cartoons saga is an example, the way Western societies today treat speech deemed offensive to Muslims is precisely the wrong way to approach speech about religion.

(Cross-posted at The Y-Files.)

Terri Schiavo redux? Not quite.

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 18:48:19 EST

In a horrific and heartbreaking case in Massachusetts, an 11-year-old child abuse victim lies comatose in a hospital while medical and social welfare authorities try to decide whether to disconnect her feeding tube. Some conservatives, notably Michelle Malkin, are trying to turn this into a Terri Schiavo II. More links can be found in this Malkin post, along with a chiding of bloggers and others who are exhibiting a "post-Schiavo syndrome" and failing to show concern for Haleigh's fate.

In fact, this case is eminently worthy of attention and concern. The Massachusetts Department of Social Services managed to overlook egregious signs that the girl was being abused by her adoptive mother and stepfather (including multiple and repeated physical injuries), and then, after those lovely people finally beat her into a coma, exhibited a rather unseemly haste in wanting to take her off life support -- a mere three weeks after she lapsed into unconsciousness. It now seems that Haleigh may have been misdiagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, and after having being taken off the ventilator she has actually shown signs of improvement. Plans to remove her feeding tube have now been suspended, and certainly public attention to the case is needed to ensure that this child gets every chance she can to live and have some degree of recovery.

However, if Haleigh Poutre is getting less attention than she should as a result of Schiavo fatigue, the fault will rest squarely with the so-called "champions" of Terri Schiavo.

After all the lies and all the hysteria from the "save Terri" brigade, any cause seen as Schiavo redux is going to be seen with a certain degree of cynicism. As far as I'm concerned, those responsible for that macabre circus have squandered all moral authority on this issue. The best thing they can do for Haleigh is keep quiet and leave this case to those who have some credibility.

See more on the subject at my blog, The Y Files.

Off the Plantation

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 15:12:32 EST

Last night on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes," amidst fulminations against Hillary Clinton's "the House is run like a plantation" remark, the hapless Alan Colmes repeatedly asked how it was different from Newt Gingrich's rather similar 1994 comment ("Since they [the Democrats] think it is their job to run the plantation, it shocks them that I'm actually willing to lead the slave rebellion"). Dick Morris brushed him off with a dismissive accusation of reciting talking points off Hillary's faxes (which really seemed to get under Colmes' skin, and I don't blame him). Larry Elder at least took the question seriously, and stressed that the big difference was Hillary's line, "And you know what I'm talking about!" which, addressed to a black audience, clearly had an implication of "The Republicans who run the House are racist bigots."

At first I thought that Elder was reaching for excuses; now I think that he has a point, but he should have made it better. And he should have been much tougher on his comrades-in-arms on the right who have used plantation metaphors to score political points.

Robert George comments:

First, as a quick aside, the left is really stretching in claiming that Gingrich's comments are the same as Hillary's. Not to defend a former boss, but the context here matters: He said those words in the course of a Washington Post profile of the man identified as the likely next Speaker of the House. If the context is about the majority abusing its powers when running a legislative body, then the partisan analogy holds.

But -- important difference. He was not speaking to a black audience -- or even obliquely referring to one; there was not an implicit racial connotation to his words. Yes, talking about plantations usually conjures up images of American slavery, but referring to oneself as the "leader of the slave rebellion," one could be referencing Spartacus as much as anything.

Hillary, on the other hand, made a clear -- "and you know what I'm talking about" line to a black audience. I'm actually a little surprised that those on the left whose eyes were raised when Ross Perot made reference in 1992 to "you people" when speaking to a Southern black audience, didn't find Hillary's implied "you people" just a little it pandering.

But conservatives don't get a free pass on this. I don't know who started it -- though this was an early entry -- but too many on the right have adopted the "plantation" language as a favorite trope in trying to dislodge minority (particularly African American) allegiance to the Democratic Party. It matters little whether those comments have come from black conservatives or white conservatives (or Latino conservatives), it is inherently insulting and counterproductive to the very principle that the writer is advocating.

It's very difficult to convince someone of the validity of your argument by suggesting that continuing to vote for the other party is evidence of a slave-like mentality. Invite individuals over with the power of your positive arguments, not by trashing the "family" that they have been part of for large segments of their lives. In short, suggesting that blacks have a plantation mentality for continuing to support Democrats -- and then expecting them to support Republicans -- makes about as much sense as trying to convince a Republican to switch parties because, well, "the GOP are Nazis."

It's actually worse really.

The plantation rhetoric is the manipulation and exploitation of American racial tropes that are better of dead and buried. Yes, the left-wing will often use it against black conservatives. (We've been down that road before; no need to dredge all THAT fun stuff up again.) But that is hardly an excuse. This country will never move beyond its history until it decides to leave noxious racial references dead and buried -- especially on King's birthday.

I think Robert's a leetle too easy on Newt; when you're talking about plantations and slave rebellions, in an American context, it's pretty clear you're not talking about Spartacus. But other than that, I think Robert's comments are right on the money, and I don't have much to add to this except to say, "Right on!" I will add, though, that the demagoguery of HRC's speech is amplified by the fact that she made it not only to an African-American audience in Harlem, but also on Martin Luther King Day. In this sense, the analogy to Newt's comment in the Washington Post interview is a bit thin.

(Cross-posted at The Y-Files.)

Pat may be a loon, but he's our loon

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 06:08:46 EST

Yesterday, after Pat Robertson's inspired remarks about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke as divine retribution for giving up the Israeli settlements in Gaza, I asked if we can all finally agree that Robertson is beyond the pale. A lot of us, apparently, can: the White House has condemned Pat's remarks as "wholly inappropriate and offensive," and Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's ethics and religious liberty commission, says he is "stunned and appalled that Pat Robertson would claim to know the mind of God concerning whether particular tragic events ... were the judgments of God." But tonight, I was pretty stunned myself when former Congressman-turned-Fox News talk show host John Kasich, subbing for Bill O'Reilly on "The O'Reilly Factor," offered a sort-of defense of Robertson, whom he judged to be guilty only of poor timing.

After offering some mild criticism of Robertson while questioning Christian radio talk show host Janet Folger, Kasich inquired of his other guest, Fordham University media studies chairman Paul Levinson:

John Kasich: Your feelings about this, Mr. Levinson? I mean -- is the media sort of grabbing onto everything Pat says and tries to blow it up? I mean, you saw his statement, right? It wasn't a statement out of some mean guy -- he claims that he was quoting the book of Joel, and if you read the Book of Joel and what it says here -- he's basically saying, it wasn't him, it was something he quoted out of the scripture.

Paul Levinson: I have an enormous amount of respect for the scripture, but when people in our modern age try to apply it literally in a fanatical way, it leads to graceless, absurd statements such as Pat Robertson made. If you think about the fact -- the only other public figure who' commented about Sharon's dying being appropriate in any way is the President of Iran, who's a fundamentalist Islamic nutcase.

John Kasich: (chuckles) You're not trying to compare Pat Robertson to the -- this lunatic over in Iran, are you?

Janet Folger: I hope not.

Paul Levinson: I'm comparing two people who are fundamentalists and who don't seem to have a modern view of the world -- who don't seem to understand that the Prime Minister shouldn't be judged according to scripture when he's on his deathbed.

John Kasich: So let me ask you this, then. I mean -- are you saying that what is written in the Bible cannot be applied today? You said that, you know, what we're doing is trying to apply things too literally -- don't you think that in America today, we don't apply it at all, too much of the time?

Paul Levinson: No, I think we apply it just fine in the United States.

John Kasich: Yeah, but when we look at --

Paul Levinson: We have a diversified --

John Kasich: Yeah, but when we look at problems of character, integrity -- whether it's professional athletes, pop culture, whatever -- aren't you basically saying that, you know, let's modernize the whole book? And I think what Pat Robertson is saying, rightly or wrongly, is -- that book shouldn't be modernized. It ought to reflect what that Old Testament says.

Paul Levinson: I'm not saying that the Old Testament is wrong. I'm saying that the literal application of it to a Prime Minister who is trying to bring peace to his region when he is on his deathbed is a very inappropriate statement.

John Kasich: Fair point. Now, Janet, what I need to know from you is, when Pat does things like this or says things like this -- and I think you would agree, it wasn't the appropriate time. Agree with that? It was just not the right time to be talking about this.

Janet Folger: Look, the time you make statements like that is when you can do something about it -- don't divide the land.

John Kasich: So, inappropriate time. The question is, does Pat sort of undermine the movement when he makes a statement like this -- that he might -- which he says was taken out of context or whatever -- does it undermine the movement, the Christian movement? People say, I'm not gonna listen to that.

Janet Folger: You know -- again, I'm not gonna be another voice to bully up or beat up on PR. He's free to defend himself and he's very capable of it --

John Kasich: Yeah, but I want to know what you think.

Janet Folger: -- but I don't think we should blame him for reading from the bible. And I'll be honest with you -- the way I read the Bible, it talks about -- nations that bless Israel are gonna be blessed, nations that curse Israel are gonna be cursed -- and I'll be honest with you, where I worry about the judgment being cast is that I think we need to look in the mirror -- because we're one of the groups, the nations that actually strong-armed the prime minister into giving up land, making Israel less secure. And --

John Kasich: I got you. Now -- People for the American Way, professor -- you know -- against flag desecration -- they're not like some mainstream group, you know -- they're way out there. It's like they grab everything that Pat says, they monitor everything he says. You're in communications -- have we gotten to the point now in America where, with the blogs and the 24-hour news cycle, you can't say anything? It's going to be analyzed, overanalyzed, taken out of context? Don't you think that's fair?

Paul Levinson: No. Criticism of what public figures say is a crucial part of dialogue in a democratic society, which we have. We don't live in a totalitarian state where religious or political leaders can say whatever they please and they're beyond criticism. Pat Robertson chose to say this in a public forum and I think that he's fair game for criticism. It's not the end of the world that he said it -- I don't think he should be executed, I'm not a fanatic myself --

John Kasich: Yeah, and I wouldn't compare him --

Paul Levinson: Well, it's an indication of what happens you apply in a fanatical, fundamentalist way --

John Kasich: Look, I don't think it's a fanatical way -- it's a reading of the Old Testament -- he has his view, to label it somehow, you know, off the deep end, I don't think is fair. Janet, what I'll say to you is, I know Pat, I like him very much, he's been a great leader. He's got to be a little more careful with how he says things and when he says things.

(The complete transcript of the segment can be found here.)

So, let me see if I'm getting this straight. What Pat Robertson says cannot be labeled as fanatical or "off the deep end," because his views are rooted in his reading of the Old Testament. And, of course, you can't possibly compare him to "this lunatic over in Iran," whose views are rooted in his reading of the Koran.

And no, I'm not saying that there's no difference between Pat Robertson and fundamentalist Islamic fanatics. Pat isn't urging people to strap on explosives and go blow up the infidels, nor is he calling for unchaste women to be stoned to death. But, just out of curiosity, if Pat did call for the stoning of adulteresses, would Kasich consider that "fanatical" and "off the deep end," or not? After all, that's based on a very literal reading of the Old Testament.

There's been a lot of talk in recent years about how religiously based opinions have the same right to be heard in the public square as opinions rooted in secular ideas. That's all good and fine; I certainly don't think that someone's position on any given issue is illegitimate because it's influenced by religion, and I think that a lot of the time, secular liberals have been dismissive of certain conservative views for no other reason. But if religiously based ideas should have equal access to the public square, they should not be off-limits to harsh criticism and even ridicule, any more than secular ideologies. If you can spout vicious nonsense and then have it excused on the grounds that it's your interpretation of the Bible, then maybe you don't belong in a public forum.

And how pathetic that, instead of firmly repudiating the odious Pat Robertson, Kasich should try to shoot the messenger and bizarrely suggest that it's unfair for the statements of public leaders to be analyzed too much.

(Cross-posted at The Y Files)

A shameless plea for votes

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 15:57:37 EST

Yours truly is one of the nominees for "Conservative Blogress Diva" at GayPatriot.com. Actually, I don't know about "conservative," I've never fancied myself a diva, and I think "blogress" sound a bit too much like "ogress" ... but how ungracious to quibble! It's an honor to be nominated after only 3 months in the blogosphere, and while my chances of winning are close to those of, say, Olympia Snowe getting the Republican presidential nomination, I offer the guys at GayPatriot my humble thanks for the nomination.

Oh, and you can go here to cast your vote.

(Cross-posted from The Y-Files.)

Nannygate

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 16:53:00 EDT

It seems I've missed quite a dust-up in the lefty blogosphere: the cyber-lynching of one Helaine Olen over a New York Times article about how she and her husband fired their nanny over the nanny's blog, to which the nanny herself had given Olen the link. (The article is no longer available at the Times site, but can be found in its entirety here.) This bizarre controversy came to my attention via an essay by Rebecca Traister in Salon, in which Olen's article became a centerpiece of a diatribe about the Oppression of Women. Traister claimed that Olen, in rankly sexist fashion, fired her nanny for the crime of daring to be her own person and an openly sexual being. Which has been pretty much the standard charge in the Olen-bash, links to which can be found in this post at Atrios.

Full disclosure: I know Helaine Olen. We had a few dinners and lunches some ten years ago, mostly as professional acquaintances, and then lost touch after she moved to Los Angeles (she now lives in Brooklyn). I am not defending her for personal reasons, and frankly, her Times piece belongs to a journalistic genre I don't much care for: the Me Chronicles. Most of it is about Olen's conflicted reaction to the nanny's blog with its descriptions of partying, sexual adventures and sexual fantasies: she felt envious of the young woman's freewheeling lifestyle and nostalgic for her own single life, "young and hip by proxy" (enough to brag about her cool nanny's cool blog to friends), sympathetic to a woman she saw as much like her younger self, and threatened by the thought that the hip young nanny would judge her own married-with-children life and find it wanting.

Personally, I find it a bit baffling that Olen saw something impressive in the Nannyblog. The pseudonymous "Tessy," who is working toward a Ph.D. in English, comes off as mix of a lefty intellectual poseur (she writes papers on sadomasochism -- oh, the banality of radical chic!) and an immature exhibitionist (who cloaks her rather flagrant heterosexuality in the trendily PC persona of a "lipstick lesbian who mostly has sex with men").

But all that aside -- here's the thing. Olen did not fire the nanny for blogging about sex. Indeed, she specifically says that while her husband wanted to terminate "Tessy" right away because he felt that her online discussions of her sexuality were "inappropriate," she herself defended the nanny's freedom of expression. Traister's article (among other distortions, such as wrongly implying that Olen did not mention the nanny's grad-school plans and dismissed her interest in literature as a youthful hobby) manages to completely omit the two incidents that actually led to the dismissal. First, after having an argument with her husband while the nanny was in the house, Olen read a blog entry which included the following: "i heard a couple fighting within the confines of couples therapy-speak. i wanted to suggest they hit each other. its true. i wanted to say, smack him, bite her, pinch, pull, and wince. make each other believe you really care." Then, finally, there was the last straw: "I am having the type of work week that makes me think being an evil corporate lawyer would be okay. Corner office, subordinates, no bullshit. Or at least a different order of bullshit. Seriously. Contemplated sterilizing myself yesterday."

So, let's see. Nanny gives Olen link to blog. Nanny uses blog to make veiled snarky comments about life chez Olen and the burden of caring for the Olen children. (Not to mention such lovely revelations as, "I woke up three hours later with a terrible hangover and obligations to very small children.") Nanny gets fired. And Olen is the bad guy?

Apparently so. Her essay, one blogger tells us, "fails to transcend its own sexism and achieve some kind of feminist solidarity"; besides, she dares to refer to Tessy's sex life as "promiscuous," thus passing sexist judgment on female sexuality. How awful! Because, of course, we would never pass judgment on a man who blogged about his sex life even though, by his own admission, his girlfriend hates it. Or who whined online that he resents his girlfriend's insistence on monogamy even though he wants sexual fidelity from her. Feminism, in some circles, seems to have become an abbreviation for female narcissism. And it brooks no thoughtcrime.

Let's hear it for lack of feminist solidarity.

The "faith card": Right-wing P.C.

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 20:41:00 EDT

My latest column, which takes issue with conservative complaints about the "religious bigotry" of Democrats who are blocking socially conservative judicial nominees, has elicited (via the Volokh Conspiracy) an interesting response from Professor Stephen Bainbridge.

To my argument (with which Eugene Volokh agrees) that the issue is not religious faith as such but public policy views, Prof. Bainbridge replies that Volokh and I overlook the issue of "disparate impact." Under this principle, employment practices that are not overtly unfair constitute illegal discrimination if they substantially, disproportionately and adversely affect members of a particular race, ethnicity, gender, or religion. Prof. Bainbridge argues that opposing judges with hardcore conservative views on abortion or gay rights has such a selective adverse impact on "devout Christians."

Two points:

1. The human resources guide Prof. Bainbridge quotes refers to "any qualifying test that hurts minorities, and isn't job-related" (emphasis added). Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has stated that in order to be a violation of Title VII, an employment practice must be "unrelated to measuring job capability." For instance, job interviews that focus heavily on a prospective employee's familiarity with sports -- tending to screen out women -- are legally acceptable if you're hiring writers for a sports magazine, but not if you're hiring stockbrokers.

Is Prof. Bainbridge saying that a judge's views regarding the legality of abortion are not "job-related"? If the Democrats were refusing to confirm someone as, say, Secretary of Agriculture based on his or her anti-abortion zealotry, that would be mere prejudice. However, protecting the legal right to abortion is -- for better or worse -- a key part of the Democrats' political agenda. Thus, disqualifying judges who not only oppose abortion but passionately advocate its banning is, from their perspective, directly job-related (hence not discriminatory under the "disparate impact" standard).

2. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't conservatives supposed to be against nebulous standards like "disparate impact"? Creative interpretations of what is and isn't "job-related" have led to some absurd court decisions -- throwing out "gender-biased" physical strength and endurance tests for firefighters, or nixing written tests for promotions in the police force because they are disproportionately flunked by minorities. Do conservatives now want to extend this "logic" to the absurd conclusion that a prospective judge's views on important legal issues cannot disqualify him from the job if those views are based on religion? (By the way, would that also apply to a "devout Muslim" who advocated the adoption of Islamic sharia law in the United States? Just wondering.)

In a way, Prof. Bainbridge's invocation of "disparate impact" confirms a point I made in my column: that the cry of "anti-religious bias" has become the "political correctness of the right," a "faith card" similar to the left's race/gender card.

This still leaves open the question I raised about a double standard toward religious and non-religious beliefs. Take a hypothetical nominee for the federal bench who has publicly stated that male dominance is essential to a healthy social system. He is (a) an evangelical Christian whose beliefs are rooted in his understanding of biblical principles, or (b) an agnostic whose beliefs are rooted in his understanding of sociobiology. It seems that according to Prof. Bainbridge, the Senate would be allowed to hold the nominee's views against him in scenario (b), but not in scenario (a). Personally, I think that this particular belief ought to disqualify him whether it's based on the Bible, the Koran, Confucius, Darwin, Nietzsche, or the Gor novels.

Conservatives have been arguing for some time that the "no establishment of religion" provision of the First Amendment should not be interpreted so as to discriminate against religious viewpoints: for instance, political views rooted in religious values are just as legitimate as ones rooted in secular moral principles. Fine. But then let's really treat religious and non-religious beliefs equally.

Hate Speech at Stanford

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:29:41 EDT

University of Michigan law professor Catharine MacKinnon, the surviving half of MacDworkin, gave a speech at Stanford University the other day about how every day is Sept. 11 for women in America (or should that be "Amerika"?). Noting that "the number of people who died at [the terrorists'] hands is the same as the number of women who die at men's hands--every year," MacKinnon asserted, "A kind of war is being fought, but there is no name for this war in which men are the aggressors and women the victims."

It's true that about 3,000 American women and girls are murdered every year (about 10% of them by other women). Of course, that number is dwarfed by the roughly 10,000 males who are also murdered every year, but never mind: "Just like terrorist attacks, acts of violence against women are carefully planned, targeted at civilians and driven by ideology." This is, of course, nuts. There may be a few woman-killers who are driven by misogyny, but MacKinnon's broader claim is akin to the notion that every interracial violent crime is part of a race war. This analogy brings to mind another point. Anyone who blamed African-Americans as a group for violent crimes committed by black perpetrators, or Arabs or Muslims as a group for radical Islamic terrorism, would be branded a bigot -- and rightly so. Yet MacKinnon can say things like, "half of society is attacking the other half" -- and it's "incisive" and "thought-provoking," according to one female law student who attended the talk.

The Dworkin Whitewash

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 02:22:00 EDT

What's with all the posthumous adulation of loony feminist extraordinaire Andrea Dworkin? The New York Times gives Dworkin's sister-in-censorship, law professor Catharine MacKinnon, a platform to celebrate the late writer/activist as a Nobel Prize-caliber genius, misunderstood by the world and maligned by "minions of the status quo" (such as, presumably, American Civil Liberties Union president Nadine Strossen, who coined the brilliant term "MacDworkin" to describe the duo and their followers). The Boston Globe published an equally glowing eulogy by Wheelock College professor Gail Dines (my own considerably more jaundiced view runs on Monday). I was especially taken aback when the usually reasonable Ann Althouse, University of Wisconsin law professor and blogger, decided to "honor" Dworkin with this tribute. Althouse notes that in contrast to the "blatantly partisan" feminists who flocked to Bill Clinton's defense when he was accused of sexual misconduct, "Dworkin, for all her overstatements and wackiness, was truly devoted to feminism as an end." All right, so Dworkin was nonpartisan in her demonization of men and male sexuality ("What needs to be asked," she notoriously told a British writer on Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, "is, Was the cigar lit?"). That's a good thing? And what is this "feminism" she was dedicated to, anyway? It certainly wasn't liberal feminism, anti-censorship feminism, or pro-sex feminism, all of which she despised.

The bottom line:

Whatever her defenders may say, Dworkin was a relentless preacher of hatred toward men ("Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman" -- Letters from a War Zone, 1989, p. 14). Yes, she apparently had genuine and even warm affection for some men in her own life, and spent her last 20 years with a male companion she eventually married (John Stoltenberg, a MacDworkinite feminist and practically a poet of male self-loathing). But no one would absolve a male misogynist on the grounds that he loved his mother and sister, or had a devoted wife who embraced his ideology.

Whatever her defenders say, Dworkin was anti-sex. No, she may not have ever written the actual words "All sex is rape" or "All sexual intercourse is rape." But she did extensively argue, in particular in the 1987 book, Intercourse, that (1) all heterosexual sex in our "patriarchal" society is coercive and degrading to women, and (2) sexual penetration may by its very nature doom women to inferiority and submission, and "may be immune to reform." A chapter from the book, filled with such insights as, "Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women," can be found here. (Again, if a male writer had written book after book arguing that women were evil creatures whose sole purpose in life is to sexually manipulate and destroy men, would we spend a lot of time quibbling over whether he actually used the phrase, "All women are whores"?) In the 1976 book, Our Blood (p. 13), Dworkin had this to say about a feminist transformation of sexuality: "For men I suspect that this transformation begins in the place they most dread -- that is, in a limp penis. I think that men will have to give up their precious erections and begin to make love as women do together." (Gee... can you say "castrating"?)

It's sadly obvious that this supposedly bold and visionary prophet was, in actuality, insane. (Among other things, she described the Caesarian section as "a surgical fuck" by "the new rapist, the surgeon.") So why the praise? Is this really little more than slightly over-the-top rhetoric in defense of the oppressed? Is challenging the very existence of sexual intercourse really a wonderfully bold and provocative idea, as even pro-sex feminist and frequent Dworkin target Susie Bright seems to think? Why the lack of stigma against anti-male bigotry?

In her Times op-ed, MacKinnon complains that Dworkin's brilliant ideas have been "marginalized." Clearly, they haven't been marginalized enough; and that's bad news for women, men, and feminism.

By the way, the best critique of MacDworkinism can be found in Daphne Patai's outstanding 1998 book Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism. I leave you with Patai's observation: "Cultivating hatred for another human group ought to be no more acceptable when it issues from the mouths of women than when it comes from men, no more tolerable from feminists than from the Ku Klux Klan."

UPDATE: Today's New York Times, in the Week in Review section, features a piece on the praise bestowed on Dworkin by some conservatives. Actually, one of the curious aspects of Dworkin's "legacy" is the extent to which appropriating her language helped social conservatives attack freedom and equality for women without appearing anti-woman. I recall Terry Jeffrey of Human Events, a few years ago, saying on the late, unlamented Crossfire that the sexual revolution was "violence against women." And just the other day at the blog of the Independent Women's Forum, Charlotte Hays referred to women being wounded in combat in Iraq as "state-sanctioned violence against women." In a way, it makes sense. The MacDworkinite focus on violent male abuse of women completely obscured the fact that at least in Western history, patriarchy far more commonly took the form of paternalism and special protections for women. Thus, this ideology played straight into the hands of the neo-paternalists.

UPDATE, again: My Boston Globe column on Dworkin is now online.