How dare the Times report a story!

Posted on January 19, 2004 by Ampersand

The folks over at MarriageMovement.org are angry at the New York Times, devoting post after post to criticizing its coverage. Why? Because the Times article on the Bush administration’s Marriage Initiative included this passage:

The [Bush administration] officials said they believed that the measure was especially timely because they were facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage, after a decision by the highest court in Massachusetts. The court ruled in November that gay couples had a right to marry under the state’s Constitution.

“This is a way for the president to address the concerns of conservatives and to solidify his conservative base,” a presidential adviser said.

Elizabeth Marquardt speculates that maybe no administration officials actually said that – maybe the Times just made the whole thing up (although Elizabeth admits the attribution is “believable.”) Tom Sylvester declares that it was probably taken out of context by the Times.

Neither of them seem to find it remarkable to accuse the Times of fictionalizing news stories without the slightest bit of evidence; call me old-fashioned, but I think it’s nice to present some evidence that someone has actually lied when accusing them of lying.

Here’s my theory: probably administration officials said what the Times claimed they said. And the Times reported it because it is newsworthy, and to not include the administration quotes would have been irresponsible for any news organization. And other papers picked up on the story because it is newsworthy.

I know that’s not as much fun as made-up conspiracies (the Times may have made up the quotes! No, wait, they took them out of context!), but in this case the duller story is probably the more truthful.

As for the marriage initiative itself, the Bush administration is making it sound like a very humble proposal indeed.

Administration officials said their goal was “healthy marriage,” not marriage for its own sake.

“We know this is a sensitive area,” Dr. Horn said. “We don’t want to come in with a heavy hand. All services will be voluntary. We want to help couples, especially low-income couples, manage conflict in healthy ways. We know how to teach problem-solving, negotiation and listening skills. This initiative will not force anyone to get or stay married. The last thing we’d want is to increase the rate of domestic violence against women.”

Dr. Horn (who, in a previous stage of his career, was an extremist “father’s rights” advocate) gives the impression that this initiative merely provides to poor folks the marriage counseling that wealthier folks have been able to afford all along. If that’s what it does, then I have no problem with the marriage initiative. I’m not convinced it will do much good, but maybe I’m wrong about that, and it won’t hurt to try. If the result is that more people who would mutually like to stay married are able to keep their marriages intact, then hooray.

On the other hand, I don’t find either Mr. Horn or the Bush administration trustworthy; feminist and liberal groups will obviously have to monitor how the program is actually implemented to see if it’s as harmless as Horn claims.

Of course, I also suspect that the money could be spent in more effective ways. From a different Times article:

Other researchers, like Leslie J. Brett, the executive director of the Connecticut’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, have argued that other influences, like work hours, the availability of child care and access to health care, are set up to favor two-parent nuclear families, and that therefore families that don’t fit that model have a harder time.

“In order to improve the outcomes for families that do not fit the ‘ideal’ type,” Ms. Brett wrote in a paper published last January, “we can seek to change and broaden the systems to support more types of families, rather than seeking to change the families themselves.”

Still, most researchers concede that low-income people are no less interested in healthy, loving marriages than anyone else. As long as the marriage initiative is part of a constellation of programs that address other aspects of poverty, like jobs, education and proper health care, Professor Lichter said, “what’s wrong with the government helping them reach those aspirations?”

If I were president, Ms. Brett’s approach would be emphasized and funded. But face it: that kind of feminist reform, dedicated to helping all women, not just women who want to get married, will not happen under this president and this congress. In the meanwhile, since really good policies are unavailable, let’s take what we can get..

Posted in Same-Sex Marriage | 4 Comments

New Mobility's "Person of the Year": Harriet McBryde Johnson

Posted on January 19, 2004 by Ampersand

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed I’m a fan of disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson – I’ve blogged about her New York Times articles here and here.

(If you haven’t read Johnson’s articles, then you’re in for a treat! The first, Unspeakable Conversations, is about her Princeton debate with Peter Singer, who in disability rights circles is considered pure evil. The second, The Disability Gulag, is a critique of the American disabled care system. Both articles are funny, well-written, politically engaged, and human.)

Anyhow, New Mobility magazine has awarded Johnson their “person of the year” award. There’s a short, interesting article about Johnson, including this passage:

One public figure, Charles Colson, the Watergate crook turned born-again Christian, was critical of both Singer and Johnson on his Web site: “Ms. Johnson, obviously an able advocate, wrote that she doubted whether she had bested Singer in the exchange. The reason is that, as an atheist … she has no moral basis to refute Singer’s deadly logic so long as she embraces his premises about the origins of life. Only the Christian ideal, that all life is sacred because it is created in the image of God, provides an unassailable answer to Singer’s reasoning. It’s the only sure basis for protecting people like Harriet McBryde Johnson from a moral calculus that reduces them to non-persons.”

“Colson’s answer,” replies Johnson, “is not an answer at all, let alone an unassailable answer, unless you happen to believe in the Judeo-Christian god. I don’t. I uphold the value of life as an important foundation to building a just society, the kind of society that’s fit to live in. The idea is so useful that I don’t worry about whether it is ‘true’ in some ultimate or transcendent sense.”

The article includes the good news that she’s working on a book, to be published by Henry Holt..

Posted in Disabled Rights & Issues | 2 Comments

Ad Hom arguments and the Same-Sex Marriage Debate

Posted on January 18, 2004 by Ampersand

Eve, our hostess at “MarriageDebate.com,” invites us to discuss if the same-sex marriage (SSM) debate is about homosexuality.

At the most literal level, of course, SSM is about same-sex relationships. I mean, duh. You might as well ask if a traffic light ordinance has anything to do with traffic.

But of course, Eve isn’t talking about the most literal level. Rather, she’s asking whether or not opposition to gay marriage is necessarily motivated by anti-gay bigotry.

My answer is, who cares? I think a marriage law that discriminates on the basis of sex (or sexual preference) is bigotry; whether or not the people who support such a law have bigotry in their hearts is irrelevant. I’m against bigotry in people’s policies; I don’t care what’s in their hearts.

By asking this question, Eve is encouraging ad hominem debate. Isn’t that something we’d be better off trying to avoid?

* * *

The Koufax Awards don’t have a catagory for “most outragiously stupid anti-SSM argument.” If there was such a catagory, though, I’d vote for this post on MarriageDebate, in which Ben Bateman explains that people who disagree with him about SSM just don’t love children or care about childrens’ future as much as Ben himself does.

Aside from the usual flaws inherant in ad hominem attacks, Ben’s approach also indicates an impressive failure to comprehend opposing views. (And, I add later, a bizarre unawareness that some supporters of SSM are heterosexual). My suggestion to Ben – beyond, of course, suggesting he go fuck himself – is that he read this post and explain to me how the writer doesn’t care about what happens to children.

* * *

More generally, it seems to me that SSM opponants quite commonly imply that people who disagree with them don’t care about children, or care only about whatever is convenient for adults, or short-term pleasure, or whatever.

Fine, whatever. If people stoop to that kind of argumentation, it’s their business. I think that any SSM opponant who makes such an argument, however, loses the right to act affronted when a SSM proponant accuses them of being a bigot. People who routinely accuse their opponants of having terrible motivations, ought not complain when they are accused of same.

[Edited later to correct spelling and link errors… and fix up the prose here and there.].

Posted in Same-Sex Marriage | 47 Comments

Margaret Cho: attack of the stupid racist misogynists

Posted on January 17, 2004 by Ampersand

So MSNBC posted a few transcribed fragments (about 2 minutes of a 20 minute stand-up routine) of Margaret Cho’s set at a MoveOn event. From MSNBC the transcript migrated to Drudge, and from Drudge to a thread on FreeRepublic (down, down, sinking ever down).

And from there, a remarkable deluge of hate mail, mostly criticizing Cho for being fat, Asian and female, traits that are considered grievous flaws by some right-wingers. The mail suggests that Cho should go back to China (Cho, who has Korean-American parents, was born in San Francisco); the mail uses the phrase “slant-eyed” over and over again; the mail suggests she should go fuck a pig.

Cho’s reply, on her blog, shows that she has a thousand times more wit and class than her attackers:

Let’s see. because I am absolutely adamant to fight for the right for same sex couples to marry, enjoy all the benefits that heterosexual couples have, because the government cannot and should not be able to tell consenting adults how and whom they would love, nor should they penalize them for doing what is natural and in the name of the Lord – righteous – because love is love is love is love – because I am a woman, because I am a feminist, because I am an Asian American, because I question our current administration and their disturbing tactics, their hypocrisy, their lies, their murderous, conniving antics – I should be fucked by pigs? I think that is such a strange penalty for an opinion that is only fair and just. I don’t think that the pigs would like me that way. I haven’t ever done a pig, but you just know when the other party just isn’t attracted to you. I don’t think that a pig or a boar for that matter would be that into me. I have tried flirting, looking a little too long in a pig’s eyes, touching the pig’s leg when I was talking to it, letting my hair fall over the pig’s snout while laughing a sexy, snorty chuckle. Pigs just don’t think I am hot.

That’s just a small sample – I really recommend that you go read the whole thing. And read Cho’s earlier blog response, as well.

Cho’s manager originally posted the hateful emails intact – including the names and email addresses of the writers. As a result, the haters have been flooded with emails, and some of them begged Cho to remove their emails from her website. Cho, showing the hate mail writers far more decency than they’d earned, complied and is asking that her supporters no longer send emails.

Remarkably, a few of the hate mail writers have since written again to apologize. One person who originally wrote in to call Cho a “fuckin’ fat cunt” wrote again to apologize, and added that “I am the father of a daughter, the husband of a wife, the son of a mother and the brother of a sister and I feel like I owe them an apology also–although I’ll never be brave enough to do so.” It’s surprising that he’s perceptive enough to realize that his misogyny was an insult to all women, not just to Cho.

Years ago, when I was one of the token feminists on the anti-feminist Usenet group “alt.feminism,” most of the folks there assumed I was a woman. I would sometimes get vile, angry, semi-literate emails. Once it became better-known that I was male, the frequency of the hate mail went down. There was apparently no longer as much need to slap me back down into my proper place, once I was no longer thought a woman.

“D Ce” wrote an excellent analysis of the Cho hate mail, which was published on American Politics Journal. Here’s a sample:

It seems obvious to the most obtuse observer that the reservoir of misogyny which overflows here — in this type of hate mail directed at any woman who “steps out of line” — is the self-same reservoir which fuels the stoning, mutilation, rape and multifarious other abuses of women worldwide. The sound of men stoking up their own righteous misogyny (domestically or in public) is the same in any language and in any century.

The irony is of course both ludicrous and painful — men who fancy that “their” Anglo-American culture is so civilised and superior to all others, are nevertheless eager to pick up their (verbal, thank goodness) rocks and indulge in an orgy of misogynist abuse and vicarious/fantasy violence. They indulge all the more freely and with no pause for reflection, since the verbal abuse occurs online, in the virtual world — semi-anonymous and “not real”. But the viciousness, the intent to hurt and humiliate, and the evident relishing of the intended hurt and humiliation, are quite real even if no physical contact is ever made. The racism is hardly distinguishable from the misogyny — race is sexualised and gender is racialised, both vilified in one seamless paroxysm of loathing.

I have the deepest sympathy for Ms Cho. She was of course selected more or less at random, in our perverse new variant on Warhol’s axiomatic 15 minutes of fame. You can never tell who the hatemongers will put in their crosshairs next, who will happen to catch their fickle attention. One week it will be Penn, then Sarandon, then they’ll drag Jane Fonda out of cold storage again, then Hillary Clinton… The intensity of the attack has little to do with anything actually said or done by the target; the fickle attention of the e-mob skitters over the surface of celebrity and visibility, a plectrum on the Ouija board of our culture-wars.

In a very real sense — as I am sure Cho understands — it’s nothing personal, it’s strictly business. The rightwing demagogues promote this kind of hate-fest almost as a commercial service, a form of pimping — inviting their “friends” to the next scheduled public stoning or hanging, as it were. It’s both an entertainment and a ritual, like cock-fighting or bear-baiting. Like cock-fighting and bear-baiting it is a ritual closely linked to essentialist notions about masculinity and male pride. The dual nature of the Internet makes the poison-pen campaign an ambiguously public experience, with elements of both group exhibitionism and intensely private (masturbatory, as attested by the content of these hate mails to Cho) self-indulgence.

D Ce’s analysis is exactly on-target, in my view. It’s men with a peculiar notion of masculinity – that masculinity is something that can be threatened or lost and is under attack and must be defended – who would think to write such hate mail. D Ce likens the mass asshole attack on Cho to a circle-jerk. It has elements of that to it, but I think it also has elements of a frat house gang rape. Not that writing a racist, woman-hating email is the same as rape – of course, it’s not equivalent at all. And I’m not saying that the letter-writers would themselves rape if they had the chance (I have no way of knowing). But I think the wellspring of contempt for women and wounded “masculinity” that led to this orgy of hate-mail, is the same wellspring that rapists drink deep from.

Cho’s manager has asked that no more letters of support be sent, right now – Cho’s mailbox is overflowing with support. As disgusting as Cho’s attackers are, it’s a pleasure to see her rise above them so effortlessly.

Some links via The Sideshow..

Posted in Race, racism and related issues | 14 Comments

Sigh.

Posted on January 15, 2004 by PinkDreamPoppies

In the near future I’ll either be blogging and commenting a lot more, or a lot less. I lost my job today and so will be busy looking for a new one. If things look good and I get some nibbles, it’ll be a bit before I can blog. If things look bad, I may get to post even more often than even Amp cares to read.

It’s actually not as bad as it sounds. I lost my job, yes, but I was planning on leaving in the near future anyway. It’s a mixed blessing: I’ll have the ability to look for a job without having to schedule around the nine-to-five, on the other hand I don’t have a source of income but do have bills. We’ll see.

Just wanted to let you know: Alas’ll either be PDP-free or so-much-PDP-you’ll-be-past-the-legal-limit..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 20 Comments

The Case for Cannibalism

Posted on January 15, 2004 by Ampersand

In City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple issues a challenge to his readers:

The case raises interesting questions of principle, even for those who take the thoroughly conventional view that eating people is wrong. According to the evidence, Meiwes and Brandes were consenting adults: by what right, therefore, has the state interfered in their slightly odd relationship?

Of course, one might argue that by eating Brandes, Meiwes was infringing on his meal’s rights, and acting against his interests. But Brandes decided that it was in his interests to be eaten, and in general we believe that the individual, not the state, is the best judge of his own interests. […]

Lest anyone think that the argument from mutual consent for the permissibility of cannibalism is purely theoretical, it is precisely what Meiwes’s defense lawyer is arguing in court. The case is a reductio ad absurdum of the philosophy according to which individual desire is the only thing that counts in deciding what is permissible in society. Brandes wanted to be killed and eaten; Meiwes wanted to kill and eat. Thanks to one of the wonders of modern technology, the Internet, they both could avoid that most debilitating of all human conditions, frustrated desire. What is wrong with that? Please answer from first principles only.

I have libertarian tendencies, but I don’t go so far as to say that “individual desire is the only thing that counts.” Take the minimum wage, for example: Sally wants to pay Bob $1 an hour to work in Sally’s store. Bob, for whatever reason, genuinely wants to work for $1 an hour. In this case, frustrating their individual desires seems justifiable to me, because having a minimum wage law prevents a “race to the bottom” that would hurt thousands more workers.

But I really can’t see that sort of logic applying to the cannibalism case. It seems to me the desire to eat people must be rare – and the desire to be eaten rarer still. It doesn’t seem likely that we’d be creating any sort of “race to the bottom” by allowing consenting adult meals to be eaten by consenting adult diners.

I suppose one could make a public health argument; I’ve heard that cannibalism is a particularly effective route for transmitting diseases. But, again, it doesn’t seem that banning cannibalism is necessary to prevent this from becoming a major problem, because there are simply too few wannabe meals in our culture.

I do have a problem with the idea of someone consenting to be murdered; there is a good argument to be made that laws against murder need to be enforced with as little slippage as possible. (Otherwise, we might have problems like murder victims being forced to sign consent forms at gunpoint before being killed.) But we could easily get around that by having the meal commit suicide rather than being killed by the eater.

So put me down in the pro-cannibalism column, I guess. If a competent, consenting adult wants to be a meal, and his competent, consenting adult friend wants to be an eater, I wouldn’t want to be invited to the dinner – but nor do I see a need to ban it.

On the other hand, I find that conclusion disturbing enough so I’d welcome anyone coming up with an argument that would change my mind.

Thoughts?

Via Invisable Adjunct..

Posted in Libertarianism | 41 Comments

Behind the Typeface: The Rise and Fall of Cooper Black

Posted on January 15, 2004 by Ampersand

This nifty flash movie, a well-done parody of “Behind the Music” tracing the career of a font, is a lot more interesting than you’re probably imagining.

From the movie, I wandered onto Mastication is Normal, which (at least in the parts I read) consists mostly of reviews of book-cover designs. Again, nifty.

Via Wanton Deconstruction..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 5 Comments

Roe v Wade and Infanticide

Posted on January 14, 2004 by Ampersand

Hey, did you know that a leading cause of infanticide is the Supreme Court? According to RealClearPolitics’ Mark Reinzi:

Given that these women could have legally killed and discarded their babies at any time during the preceding nine months, is it so surprising that they felt they could discreetly kill their babies a few moments after birth?

In the thirty years since Roe v. Wade, the number of infant homicides has skyrocketed. According to a study released last year by the Centers for Disease Control, babies are at the greatest risk for homicide during the first week of life and are now ten times more likely to be murdered on the day they are born than at any other time in their entire lives.

In fact, babies are now killed on the first day of their lives almost daily in this country. The rate of infant homicide is now twice what it was before we began telling women they were free to kill their unwanted babies before birth.

Mark’s thesis, as I understand it, is that pro-choice laws and attitudes create a culture of permissiveness towards killing babies, which leads to an increase in infanticide. Frankly, I think this theory is too stupid for words – does Mark really imagine that couples sit around saying “Honey, I see the Supreme Court just passed Roe v. Wade. Don’t you think we’d better kill Junior?”

Nonetheless, otherwise intelligent conservatives apparently take this claptrap seriously, so let’s test Mark’s theory against the facts. If Mark’s theory is correct – pro-choice attitudes lead to increased murders of newborns – states that have a (relatively) pro-life culture should therefore have much less infanticide than states with a (relatively) pro-choice culture. (State-by-state statistics are available from the federal government’s WISQUARS database).

First, consider five states with reputations for being strongly pro-life. Let’s look at their infanticide rates:

Infanticide rates (per 100,000) of pro-life states
State White Black
Arkansas 8.02 22.28
Louisiana 7.38 18.73
South Carolina 10.26 7.80
Montana 8.12 n/a
Utah 8.92 37.77
Entire USA 4.65 15.62

These statistics are for homicides of children aged 1 or younger for the year 2000. As you can see, infanticide rates are significantly higher among blacks than whites; I’m presenting the data for blacks and white separately because it allows better comparison between states. (Where “n/a” is listed, there were no known infanticides among blacks in that state in 2000).

Now, compare five states with reputations for being relatively pro-choice:

Infanticide rates (per 100,000) of pro-choice states
State White Black
Connecticut 2.82 4.00
Maine 1.95 n/a
Massachusetts 1.51 9.47
Rhode Island 2.38 n/a
Washington 2.65 10.05
Entire USA 4.65 15.62

Notice the pattern? It’s the exact opposite of the pattern Mark’s theory would lead us to expect. The states with the strongest pro-choice cultures experience the least infanticide.

It’s clear that Mark’s theory is false. Now, I suppose I could turn around and claim that clearly pro-life attitudes increase infanticide – but that theory doesn’t make sense to me, either. (A couple of pro-choice states, like Hawaii, have very high infanticide rates). The truth is, pro-choice or pro-life laws probably have very little to do with infanticide rates.

What factors do matter? According to Child Trends Databank:

Key risk factors associated with infant homicides focus on the circumstances surrounding the birth of the child. Among the homicides on the first day of life, 95 percent of the victims were not born in a hospital. Other important maternal risk factors include a second or subsequent infant born to an unmarried teenage mother (19 years of age or younger); no prenatal visit before the sixth month of pregnancy or no prenatal care; a history of maternal mental illness; a mother with 12 or fewer years of education; and premature birth (gestation of less than 28 weeks). There is a notable absence of data on risk factors associated with males, either biological fathers or others, reflecting the lack of father data on birth certificates.

So why do pro-choice states have lower rates of infanticide? I don’t know for sure, but I have a theory. My bet is, it’s because pro-choice states are mostly liberal states, which provide more support for low-income women. That translates to more prenatal care and more infants born in hospitals, both factors that make it less likely that a newborn infant will be murdered.

Pro-life states, in contrast, tend to be dominated by conservatives and libertarians, who – despite evidence showing that state-provide prenatal care improves outcomes – would rather live with high infanticide rates than pay a higher tax rate.

But what about that increase in infanticide since 1970? That could mean anything. It could mean, for instance, that increased computerization of records and improved medical technology have made it much more likely that infanticides will be detected and statistically recorded. (In other words, the overall rate of infanticide hasn’t changed – just the likelihood of infanticides being detected and recorded). It could reflect demographic or racial shifts. It could reflect the growing influence of conservatives leading to less prenatal care for poor mothers. It could, in short, mean any number of things.

But – given the strong evidence provided by state-by-state data – only a pro-life ideologue could claim that it shows pro-choice attitudes lead people to murdering newborns. I therefore predict that many pro-lifers will continue making this claim, regardless of the evidence against it.

(Link to RealClearPolitics via Diotima, who mistakenly calls the article “worthwhile.”)

TWO AFTERTHOUGHTS: It’s impossible to intelligently discuss infanticide rates in the USA without at least nodding to the racial differences. As I’ve pointed out in the past, blacks in the USA are in effect living in a third world nation, when it comes to infant and maternal mortality.

Secondly, the unsubtle subtext of the RealClearPolitics essay – “pro-choicers are evil monsters who favor murdering children” – has not escaped me. This is, of course, the attitude that leads some pro-life psychos to justify murdering doctors and bombing clinics, and more generally part of the “dehumanize the opposition” approach to the debate which makes discussing abortion in the USA such a pisser. I haven’t responded to this aspect of the RealClearPolitics essay in detail because I consider it beneath reply (and also beneath contempt).

UPDATE: Be sure to read the comments to this post, which include a lot of valuable info added by Alas readers..

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights, Anti-feminists and their pals | 60 Comments

A Vote for Dean is a Vote for Bush

Posted on January 14, 2004 by Ampersand

Paul Campos argues that Howard Dean “is, socially speaking, practically the same person as the current president.”

Both men are the scions of old money East Coast WASP families of the sort where anyone who is anybody is everybody else’s third cousin (indeed, Bush’s grandmother was a bridesmaid at Dean’s grandmother’s wedding). Both went to exclusive prep schools, and then to Yale, where both were what might be described charitably as indifferent students.

Both spent a good deal of time after college in the sort of aimless drifting engaged in by the hopeless poor and the idle rich. […] Both men assiduously avoided combat during the Vietnam War, by legal though morally dubious means, and both eventually decided to accept the immense privileges that their families insisted on handing them (Bush was more or less given a large ownership share in the Texas Rangers baseball club, while Dean was admitted to medical school despite his dismal academic record).

In other words, both Dean and Bush have lived lives that are monuments to class privilege. To be a Bush or a Dean means that you can spend much of your life failing to do your homework, while still having the option of growing up someday, and, with daddy’s help, becoming a doctor, or a governor, or a president.

Of course, Campos is stretching to make his point – there’s a world of difference between help getting into med school (even if that’s true, passing med school and building a career as a doctor are legitimate accomplishments) and being more-or-less given a baseball team in exchange for family connections. Still, Dean vs. Bush is not exactly a stirring choice for those who dream of a classless society..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 27 Comments

Nap Time

Posted on January 13, 2004 by Ampersand

Sydney Quinn and Oberon share an interest in sprawling.

sydneyandoberon.jpg

By the way, I’m headed off to Florida, to visit my parents and hang out by the pool (it’s a tough life, I know). I expect I’ll be able to keep posting semi-regularly, but if you don’t hear from me for the next week, then that didn’t work out..

Posted in Baby & kid blogging | 12 Comments