Cro-Magnon Park

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Jeff Fecke

Remember John Tierney? Sure you do! He was the glibertarian columnist for the New York Times who got bumped down to the science beat, where he could expound on why global warming isn’t real. Because that’s science!

Anyhoo, Tierney noted the news that we’re closing in on completing the Neandertal genome, which will give us more insight into our closest relatives, and help answer some longstanding questions, like why the Neandertals died out, and whether they interbred with modern humans before they did. But Tierney isn’t content merely to see this as an interesting bit of science; he wants to know something a little bit dumber:

Now that the Neanderthal genome has been reconstructed, my colleague Nicholas Wade reports, a leading genome researcher at Harvard says that a Neanderthal could be brought to life with present technology for about $30 million.

So why not do it? Why not give Harvard’s George Church the money he says could be used to resurrect a Neanderthal from DNA?

Um…because they’re human? And we don’t do cloning on humans?

If we discovered a small band of Neanderthals hidden somewhere, we’d do everything to keep them alive, just as we try to keep alive so many other endangered populations of humans and animals — including man-biting mosquitoes and man-eating polar bears. We’ve also spent lots of money reintroducing animals into ecosystems from which they had vanished. Shouldn’t be at least as solicitous to our fellow hominids?

Well, you see, John, there’s a difference between preserving a hypothetical existing band of H. s. neandertalensis and creating some in a lab. The former is basic decency, the latter is performing genetic experiments on humans.

Granted, it would be disorienting and lonely for the first few Neanderthals, but it would be pretty interesting for them as well as us. (What would a Neanderthal make of Disneyland, or of World of Warcraft?)

Wait, what?

Granted, it would be disorienting and lonely for the first few Neanderthals, but it would be pretty interesting for them as well as us. (What would a Neanderthal make of Disneyland, or of World of Warcraft?)

I’m sorry. Did he just say…

Granted, it would be disorienting and lonely for the first few Neanderthals, but it would be pretty interesting for them as well as us. (What would a Neanderthal make of Disneyland, or of World of Warcraft?)

Excuse me a minute.

John, you do understand that a cloned Neandertal wouldn’t be a person magically transported from 45,000 BCE, right? You do know that a cloned Neandertal would be raised, you know, now, right?

Neandertals were on the same order of intelligence as modern humans. They had larger brains than we do; while that doesn’t mean they were smarter, we do know that they were using stone tools, had control of fire, and buried their dead, sometimes with grave goods, something that suggests the same capacity for abstract thought that is the hallmark of H. sapiens sapiens. We don’t know why they died off; it’s possible they interbred with modern humans until they disappeared, it’s possible that as omnivores, we were better adapted than the apex hunters that were our cousins. It’s possible that our progenitors practiced genocide against the Neandertals — indeed, it’s possible that a little of all of these contributed to the demise of the species.

The Neandertals are so similar to modern humans that many scientists don’t classify them as a different species; the biggest differences are things we can’t recreate — their culture. Their worldview. What they thought of the world, and what they thought of us.

We can certainly create a Neandertal clone, of course, but he or she will be raised by humans. He or she will be suffused in our culture, based in our world. World of Warcraft and Disney World will be no stranger to them than it is to you or I — after all, they’ll grow up with it just like us. Assuming — as most scientists do — that Neandertals were close to our cognitive equals, a Neandertal clone would engage with our world somewhere on the continuum between the way a mentally challenged human does and the way a gifted human does.

Except, of course, for the fact that they’ll be raised as freaks, as sideshow attractions for us to poke and prod, to examine and gawk at. They’ll be around not for their own purpose, but for ours. And that, of course, is a barbaric and horrific thing. Would our society give a cloned Neandertal full rights, if he or she proved to be as capable as your average H. s. sapien, or would we view them always as something other? Would their children be free to chart their own destinies, or would they be the property of the lab that made them?

We generally prohibit genetic manipulation of humans for a reason — humans are intelligent, self-aware creatures, and it is inhuman to experiment on them. This can be taken too far, of course (a stem cell line is not self-aware or intelligent) or not far enough (it’s hard to argue that chimpanzees aren’t self-aware and intelligent), but as a general rule, it’s the right thing.

Neandertals were humans, as human as you or I. They may be our ancestors — and at the least, they are our closest cousins, the most similar species to ours ever to walk on this world. They lived and died out, as most species do; let us not bring back one of their number, alone and apart from ourselves, simply because we can.

Posted in Mind-blowing Miscellania and other Neat Stuff | 8 Comments

Well, What Else are You Gonna Do After Splashing On a Little Bay Rum?

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Jeff Fecke

I’m a big fan of the Vermont Country Store catalog. While I don’t actually buy anything from there (though I intend to get some Lifebuoy for next Christmas), it’s extremely entertaining, a little piece of Americana that stubbornly clings to life.

For those not familiar with the catalog, it feels like the sort of catalog your grandmother would have ordered sundries out of. And I’m not just saying that to Generation Y — if you’re a boomer, it’s the sort of catalog your grandmother probably ordered sundries out of. They specialize in keeping dead brands alive (Bay Rum cologne! Licorice Allsorts! Bozo the Clown bop bags!) and serving up the sort of technology that was cutting edge in 1954, like your basic double-edge razor,  or an Olivetti manual typewriter. Now, I did not come of age in the ’50s, but heck — it’s kind of nice to see that stuff still out there. Not everyone wants to be on the net. Not everyone wants to use those newfangled disposable razors. I like to think that when I’m 77, and not wanting to get the brain implant, that I’ll be able to buy an old-fashioned internet computer through a similar company — or indeed, the same one.

But the purveyors of the Vermont Country Store have come under fire for adding something new to the catalog, something that’s selling well, but bumping up against the staid, olde timey-quality of the catalog: they’re selling sex aids:

[Lyman] Orton, a spry 67-year-old with a country storekeeper’s sense of what sells and what doesn’t, says the idea of helping older folks keep sexually active was his.

“We never got any letters saying we want this. This was a sense, because our customers are a certain age and sex is below the surface in the world we deal in. I said, ‘Look, let’s see if our customers respond to this.'”

What are they selling? Well, intimate compact massagers, herpes relief sprays, hair dye that’s primarily for your partner’s enjoyment, that kind of thing. And Orton says it’s selling; turns out that the people who are buying the manual typewriters are also having sex — and it’s less embarrassing to order your vibrator from the Vermont Country Store than to take a trip into town to SexWorld.

Naturally, this is not going over well with a certain segment of the store’s clientele:

The customers responded, alright — some with their pens, some with their pocketbooks.

“The intimate massagers are certainly not what will uplift the youth of America but instead will lead them to be perverted pleasure seekers,” wrote one customer, asking to be removed from the mailing list. “Please rethink what you are doing.”

“I am one of the women who respects her God-given human femininity,” wrote another now-former subscriber, in a longhand letter. “These items are offensive to me.”

Orton figures he got 600 letters, most of them critical. Some called the offerings “pornographic.” Others told Orton his father wouldn’t have approved.

“You’d think I suggested that we sell nuclear devices to terrorists,” Orton said.

In fact, the “intimate solutions” items have been big sellers, though the company won’t give sales data or say which items are moving the fastest.

“It turns out they wanted these products, and they spoke with their wallets,” Cabot Orton said.

sears_1918_home_motor_adsized.jpgThe people who are complaining think that this is completely out of character for an old-fashioned catalog company, but they’re 100 percent wrong. After all, their grandmothers used to order exactly this type of thing from Sears, Roebuck, & Co., to help alleviate “Female Hysteria.” And women bought them — and of course they did.

No, this is, in fact, perfectly in keeping with the longstanding tradition of catalog companies to offer a little bit of everything for everyone. It started with the Sears and Montgomery Ward, and has continued on through to the modern version of the catalog retailer. It’s a long and very American tradition, the ability to order for delivery a new bed, a new record player, some toys for the kids, and some toys for the adults.

Don’t get me wrong — I can understand being surprised to find the Intimate Solutions section of the catalog. I certainly was when I first tripped across it, and I remember laughing at the time, finding it a bit incongruous, an odd thing to find amidst the flannel nightgowns and cotton plaid pajamas.

But just because you’re wearing  old-fashioned pajamas, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a libido. I’m rather cheered by the fact that a catalog aimed at the over-fifty set is aware that over-fifty doesn’t mean over intimacy.

Posted in In the news | 2 Comments

Breaking the Seals

Posted on February 17, 2009 by David Schraub

The Z-Word Blog (guess what the Z stands for) is, if anything, more focused on the intersection between anti-Zionist and anti-Semitism than I am. Which is why I think this post is important — it not only affirms that “It is possible to be very critical of Israel and its actions without being antisemitic” in the abstract — but pulls out a specific piece by a Spanish columnist as an example, one who writes that “We all agree that the response of the Israeli army [in Gaza] was disproportionate and that the massacre of the Palestinian civilian population, with emphasis on the children, was unspeakable and unforgivable even by God.” (( The column is excerpted and translated from the Spanish — not speaking Spanish, I can’t read the whole thing to get a feel for the whole article beyond what they’re translating. ))

That is quite a severe critique — needless to say, the Z-Word bloggers probably would disagree with the characterization. But the point isn’t to parse whether they or I agree with this columnist’s views or not; the point is that a very prominent pro-Zionist blog is publicly and demonstratively saying “yes, you can level critiques like this without being anti-Semitic”. Even as a gesture of trust-building, I think it’s an important step. And the columnist, for his part, couched his criticism by also firmly condemning the anti-Semitism he’s observed ripping through Spain, often “justified” as anti-Israel sentiment. That obviously enhances his credibility when he makes statements like the above.

I don’t know if this is a new development or I only just started noticing it, but of late I’ve observed that folks who are trying to argue that certain criticisms of Israel are anti-Semitic always preface with “of course, one can criticize Israel without it being anti-Semitic. But….” This affirmation hasn’t had much of an impact on people who believe that one can’t engage in such criticism without being tarred with the brush; I assume it’s because they think that the caveat is completely theoretical and that no critique (at least, that isn’t completely mealy-mouthed) will ever pass muster. The fact that Z-Word went beyond theoretical affirmation and was willing to say this article, though we might disagree with it, is a harsh criticism of Israel that is nonetheless not anti-Semitic hopefully will help dissipate some of that mistrust.

Posted in Anti-Semitism | 60 Comments

Rights and Left

Posted on February 17, 2009 by David Schraub

Rights discourse is internally inconsistent, vacuous, or circular. Legal thought can generate equally plausible rights justifications for almost any result. Moreover, the discourse of rights imposes constraints on those who use it that make it almost impossible for it to function effectively as a tool of radical transformation. Rights are by their nature ‘formal,’ meaning that they secure to individuals legal protection for arbitrariness—to speak of rights is precisely not to speak of justice between social classes, races, or sexes. Rights discourse, moreover, simply presupposes or takes for granted that the world is and should be divided between a state sector that enforces rights and a private world of ‘civil society’ in which atomized individuals pursue their diverse goals. This framework is, in itself, a part of the problem rather than of the solution. It makes it difficult even to conceptualize radical proposals such as, for example, decentralized democratic worker control of factories.

Because it is logically incoherent and manipulable, traditionally individualist, and willfully blind to the realities of substantive inequality, rights discourse is a trap. As long as one stays within it, one can produce good pieces of argument about the occasional case on the periphery where everyone recognizes value judgments have to be made. (( Duncan Kennedy, Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy, 32 J. Legal Educ. 591, 598 (1982) ))

Duncan Kennedy spoke for a large portion of the Critical Legal Studies movement when he wrote these words in 1982. CLS scholars were, at the time, launching a left-wing Marxist attack on the traditional structures and assumptions of legal institutions. Critical Legal Studies attempted to subvert the supposed coherence of our dominant legal categories, exposing them to be actually chaotic and incoherent, and then examine what sorts of entities would have the interest in (arbitrarily) constructing legal reality as we now find it. One of their favorite targets was the idea of “rights”, which they thought were (to say the least) overrated. CLSers dedicated themselves, in fact, to “trashing” rights — exposing them as indeterminate, inchoate, and manipulable to whatever ends desired by the empowered classes. (( See, e.g., Mark G. Kelman, Trashing, 36 Stan. L. Rev. 293, 293 (1984) (describing the CLS technique of “trashing”: “Take specific arguments very seriously in their own terms; discover they are actually foolish ([tragi]-comic); and then look for some (external observer’s) order (not the germ of truth) in the internally contradictory, incoherent chaos we’ve exposed.” (emphasis original) ) ))

The Critical Race Theory movement grew out of CLS, and agreed with many of its observations. The writings of Derrick Bell (( See, e.g., Derrick Bell, Serving Two Masters: Integration Ideals and Client Interests in School Desegregation Litigation, 85 Yale L.J. 470 (1976); Derrick Bell, Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma, 93 Harv. L. Rev. 518 (1980) )) , in particular, took the legal world by storm as an indictment of some deeply held assumptions about the utility of the legal system as a tool for effected civil rights reforms — particularly given Bell’s history as a front line attorney for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund during the height of the civil rights era. Most Critical Race Theorists agreed with Bell that the efficacy of rights talk had been wildly overstated by self-congratulatory White folks, and that progressives needed to reevaluate their options.

Nonetheless, fissures rapidly began to appear between the largely White CLS movement and the more integrated CRT wing. These came to a head in 1987, when the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review published a symposium entitled, simply enough, Minority Critiques of the Critical Legal Studies. One of the primary angles of attack, ironically enough, was that CLSers had gone too far in their dismissal of rights, legal remedies, and formal legal protections. In her contribution, Patricia Williams — one of the most important contributors to Critical Race Theory — told the following story, which has stuck with me for a long time:

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Posted in Whatever | 7 Comments

The Left Needs To Start Opposing Obama

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Ampersand

I’m not thrilled with the stimulus bill; I’m not sure it’s large enough to get us out of our economic hole, and it could have done a lot more to build up infrastructure and help the states. John Judas argues that a weak and compliant left is part of the problem:

A member of one liberal group, Campaign for America’s Future, pronounced the stimulus bill “a darn good first step.” MoveOn–as far as I can tell–has attacked conservative Republicans for opposing the bill, while lamely urging Democrats to back it. Of course, all these groups may have thought the stimulus bill and the bailout were ideal, but I doubt it. I bet they had the same criticisms of these measures that Krugman or The American Prospect’s Ezra Klein or my own colleagues had, but they made the mistake that political groups often make: subordinating their concern about issues to their support for the party and its leading politician.

What, you might ask, would have been the result if these groups had gone after Obama and Reid–and in the case of the so-called Americans United for Change–the self-appointed centrists? They would have certainly incurred the wrath of the Obama administration. I know this myself. One Obama press person recently asked a mutual acquaintance, “Why does John Judis hate us?”

But they would have also moved the political debate to the left, so that the center no longer resided somewhere in Susan Collins or Ben Nelson’s heads, but considerably to their left. Suddenly, a $900 billion bill without the AMT and with expanded health insurance for the unemployed would have looked like a compromise. These angry leftists would have actually done the Obama administration an enormous favor.

What’s the basis for my saying this? Look at the last two periods in Americans history where dramatic reforms were adopted–the 1930s and the 1960s (up to 1972). These were periods when the presence of a popular left moved the center away from the laissez-faire, pro-big business right. The experience of the 1930s is particularly relevant now. […]

What really made a difference was the Second New Deal of 1935-36 that included massive public works, Social Security, and the Wagner Act. And that Second New Deal was made possible by the growth of a popular left.

In 1934, there was a wave of strikes. Huey Long’s Share Our Wealth movement began. In a year, it had organized 27,000 clubs across the country. Francis Townsend organized a movement for old age pensions. As a result, the center of politics shifted dramatically to the left and made it possible for the liberals in Congress and in the administration to pass legislation that under different circumstances Roosevelt would have deemed too radical.

Glenn Greenwald agrees:

Prioritizing political allegiance to their leader was exactly the mistake the Right made for the first several years of the Bush presidency. Even Bill Kristol admitted in The New York Times: “Bush was the movement and the cause.” An entire creepy cottage industry arose on the Right devoted to venerating George W. Bush. And it wasn’t until well into his second term, when his popularity had already collapsed, that they began opposing him in a few isolated cases when he deviated from their beliefs — on immigration reform, the Harriet Miers nomination, Dubai ports, the TARP bailout and the like. But, by then, it was too late: Bush became synonymous with “conservatism” because the latter wasn’t really about anything other than supporting the President no matter what he did. The ideological movement and their political leader had merged, and it was destructive for both of them. […]

Criticizing Obama from the Left (as, say, Paul Krugman has been doing in the stimulus debate) expands the scope of the debate in a very important way that can only advance the Left’s political goals and, incidentally, enable/force Obama to avoid the Center and Right.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy for the U.S. left to oppose Obama, post-Bush. We’ve spent so many years fighting opposing Bush and the Republicans, many of us have forgotten that we how to stand for anything more than that.

Posted in Elections and politics | 2 Comments

Planet Karen creator's home destroyed by fire.

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Ampersand

From my inbox:

Karen Ellis, creator of diary comic Planet Karen, lost nearly everything in a fire this weekend.

The apartment above her own caught fire on Sunday night, and while firefighters fought the blaze for three hours, tragically, the occupant was killed. Karen is physically fine, but most of her possessions, including books, clothes and drawing supplies, are ruined beyond repair. The apartment itself has suffered so much structural damage that she’s also been made effectively homeless. (See this comic for an account in her own words.)

Karen is a valuable part of the webcomics community. If you can, please consider making a dontribution to her paypal account to help out — there’s a donation button at Planet Karen. Every donation, whatever its size, really counts!

Girl-Wonder.org, the organization that hosts Planet Karen, is also planning a fundraising auction on Karen’s behalf. If you have items you think you’d like to donate, please contact Karen Healey at
ten.karen@gmail.com for details.

Posted in Cartooning & comics | Comments Off on Planet Karen creator's home destroyed by fire.

Dialogic Respect and the Segue

Posted on February 17, 2009 by David Schraub

In her writings about how people debate and discuss political and social issues with each other, one of the points Iris Marion Young tries to impress upon her readers is the importance of certain norms of conversational etiquette, such as the “greeting”, to the project of respectful dialogue. We often view things like a greeting as a polite but fundamentally extraneous pleasantry that is outside, external to, and irrelevant to substantive content of the exchange. Young argues instead, though, that acts such as the greeting serve important functions that are essential to mutually respectful engagement — affirming people as part of the discursive community, signaling that they are a welcome part of the discussion, representing them as equals.

The importance of conversational norms to this project was further impressed to me by the experiences related to me by my girlfriend while she was taking a seminar on Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Many elements of Rousseau’s writings Jill found to be quite sexist, and she would say so in class. She’d get the chance to speak her piece and then … it was as if she never said anything. It wasn’t that she got shouted down or her points belittled as stupid. It was more that the other members of the seminar didn’t view her concerns or arguments as something important enough to be acknowledged, as against what they wanted to talk about. Understandably, Jill felt disrespected, and did not feel like she was being allowed into the conversation as an equal.

This came up between Jill and I because, regrettably, I’ve done similar things in conversation — transitioning to the topics I find interesting and want to talk about without any recognition that what was said to me was important and meaningful, at least to the person who said it. That’s patronizing at best; at worst, it can be deeply hurtful when what was said to me was something that the person felt was extremely important to their sense of personhood, their equal standing as a human being, or their physical security.

Any time in conversation you want to change the topic to something different from the main thrust, you run the risk of signaling to your interlocutor that you find what they’re talking about unimportant or a waste of time. That risk is magnified when the subject of their speech is deeply tied to their personhood, identity, or human dignity. Weighed against that is the fact that conversations need to be able to evolve — they can’t stay tied to what the first speaker wants to talk about indefinitely.

I put the rest of this post below the fold — I think what needed to be said has been said, and there isn’t much purpose in pressing the issue further.

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Posted in Whatever | 27 Comments

I'm engaged!

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Myca

This afternoon my lovely girlfriend got home from work, took me outside to our deck, proposed to me, and became my lovely fiancée! Yay us!

IMG_2627

Posted in About the Bloggers | 32 Comments

Getting My Mojo and My Email Back

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Rachel S.

So as many of you have probably noticed I’ve been MIA at my site and here at Alas for the past year. I try to put up the occasional post, but taking care of two infants is really overwhelming. I promised myself I would get back to blogging when the babies slept through the night, and finally last week, after 8 months we had to let the boys cry it out. I decided not to feed them anymore in the night, and it only took one night for them to sleep through the night.

I’m already starting to feel better, and I’m getting my mojo back.  My career and my site have been suffering, and I’ve decided I’m the poster child for family leave.

On another note, my email is messed up.  This weekend I was going through my email, which has really piled up, and I realized I’ve been having email troubles. Several emails I’ve sent haven’t gone through. I’ve been receiving messages (I think I’ve gotten all them them, but who knows.), but there was a problem with the server where messages weren’t going out.  In the fog of my sleep deprivation, I somehow missed that this was happening, so if you wrote me and didn’t get a response, I’m sorry. It seems that my emails was not working properly, and I don’t know how long its been happening.

In the meantime, I’m excited about blogging and writing again. It may be at a slower pace, but my goal is 2 substantive/original posts a week, and 2 general posts a week. There are so many things to write about. We are in the Obama era, and I have a lot to say about our first black President. I’m also starting a new blog about parenting and diversity, which I will unveil soon.

I’m happy to be back, and thanks for sticking with me through the semi-hiatus.  I’ll also try to add some baby blogging, so you guys can see how the boys have grown.

Posted in Whatever | 4 Comments

Ghost: Episode Review of Dollhouse

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Maia

So Joss Whedon has a new show. I’ve already reviewed the premise. On Saturday night I sat down with my best friend Betsy incredibly excited that I was again watching a Joss Whedon show.

And I was disappointed.

I liked the opening, even though, or perhaps because, it was ridiculous. Clearly I don’t find male fantasies that involve motorbike chases and barely present dresses interesting, but it was clearly framed as being a fantasy. And I thought the opening did a really good job of portraying how creepy it was that she went from being this person to being blank. It seemed clear to me what they were taking away from her.

I also really liked the characters who work in the dollhouse. I liked the relationship between Topher (the computer geek) and Boyd (the handler). For the time being the relationships between the people who work in the dollhouse are going to be the main on-going relationships in the show. I think the work they’re doing is repugnant, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not interesting.

I’m interested in what happens to the dolls in their blank state, and thought it was very well done. There have been lots of people question the politics of the show, but I’m not one of them. I’m fascinated with the idea of a story about people who have been so atomised and commodified. The first glimmerings of Echo’s self-awareness “I don’t remember what fell on me?” and her recognition of Sierra, are great.

Less great, more ridiculous, was the cliched FBI fight argument/kick boxing match. Clearly FBI agents arguing with their superiors is a hard scene to understand on TV, so we needed a second depiction of this where Tahmoh Penikett was shirtless for no reason.

But my main objection to the episode was its plotline (which is not an incidental part of an episode of TV). Initially I thought the biggest problem with it was that it was deathly boring. If I wanted to watch a procedural about a child being kidnapped I’d watch Without a Trace.

I said in my concept review that I thought it might be difficult for the episodes of the week to engage me. Having watched the first episode I think this may be a bigger problem than I realised. Because the engagements are all going to be about meeting the needs of the obscenely wealthy. And while I do think you can tell interesting stories about the obscenely wealthy, I think it takes work that was missing from this episode.

But my problem with the kidnapping plotline ran deeper. The character that Echo was imprinted with included parts of a woman who had been kidnapped and sexually abused by one of the kidnappers.* Others have commented on the clichedness of this plotline. But I would go further, I would say that it was horrific.

The dollhouse gave a Echo memories of being sexually abused as a child in order to make her a better tool. In doing so they were taking memories from someone who had killed herself because of them. They were doing something obscene both to the woman who hadn’t been able to survive those memories, and to Eleanor Penn, who was suffering from these memories they had created.

None of this was given any particular time or weight – they were just plot points, not what the episode was about. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with telling a story about someone who is imprinted with memories of childhood abuse. But I think if you’re going to tell a story where someone is imprinted with memories of child sexual abuse to meet a man’s need, then you have to say something about it. Otherwise your using that sexual abuse narratively in the same way Topher is.

I think I saw glimmers of that – Eleanor Penn calling herself a Ghost. But it wasn’t central enough, and it wasn’t thought through.

I know this episode was probably written in a hurry, as Joss decided Fox needed a new pilot. I understand that there wasn’t time to get the script of this episode right, and I’m optimistic that the episodes will get better. But I’m worried about the lack of judgement in including sexual abuse in the opening plotline, when they didn’t have time to think it through.**

When my friend and I finished watching it we talked about authenticity and identity until three in the morning. I still think the show is fascinating. But I’m worried about the weekly plotlines.

* Given that Topher did not know who were the kidnappers were this is a coincidence of the laziest sort.

** It seems to me the same sort of ‘sexual abuse as plot point’ which led to Spike trying to rape Buffy so they could develop his character, and not ever try and say anything about the effect of the sexual assault on Buffy.

Posted in Buffy, Whedon, etc. | 7 Comments