Playboy: Would you support [Bill] Clinton [for president again if you could]?

Maher: Sure. He has a reputation as a party animal because of the Monica Lewinsky situation, but basically he’s a wonk. He can do Monica and run the country. He’s a multitasker. If he had been president when Katrina hit, he would have been in New Orleans three days before the storm. He wouldn’t have slept. Yes, he would have been getting blown—come on, Slick Willie in the Big Easy? He would have had some excellent étouffée. But he would have been working the whole time. I think the country has learned a lesson: If he can do the job, let the guy be who he is. People don’t care about sex.

Playboy: They cared about Mark Foley.

Maher: Monica Lewinsky was an adult. Foley went after boys. [sic: The 16-year-old in question was above the age of consent in the District of Columbia.] Actually, I wasn’t terribly taken aback by Foley. He was like a college professor, in a job where every year there’s a new wave of fresh meat. He would look over the field and decide. He probably had pretty good radar to know which kids were amenable. From the evidence we have, he tried to do something only after they were out of the page program. If a 19-year-old gay kid wants to go out with an older guy, why not? The guys his own age are probably dumb doofuses [sic: doofi].

Playboy: But even after leaving their jobs as pages, they were far younger than Foley.

Maher: Look, I’m a 51-year-old man, and I go out with girls in their early 20s. I’d be hypocritical if I said it’s ridiculous for a gay man to do that. I’m very libertarian about love. I’m the only guy I’ve ever heard who defends Mary Kay Letourneau.

Playboy: Are you saying teachers should be allowed to have sex with their 13-year-old students, as she did, and not go to jail?

Maher: I think it’s a little offbeat, but you know, I believe in the double standard. If a 28-year-old male teacher is screwing a 13-year-old girl, that’s a crime. But with Debra Lafave [another teacher who had sex with a student] screwing her 14-year-old boy student, the crime is that we didn’t get it on videotape. Was he being taken advantage of? I wish I had been taken advantage of like that. What a memory she gave him! I would think he’s a champion among his friends. Are you kidding? Even with Michael Jackson—

Playboy: You’re being remarkably open-minded.

Maher: Woody Allen is the one we might have been wrong about. I was pretty hard on him on my show, but how many years has his relationship continued? Maybe that, like Letourneau’s, was true love. If you look at him or Letourneau, who is still with the guy after her time in jail—they have two kids—the lesson is love will take the form it’s going to take. Sometimes it’s at great variance with the mainstream. I don’t think teachers should be allowed to do that. I think they should be fired. But to send that woman to jail and separate them all those years?

Labels: AgeMaj, ArtPic, Lib, MorPa, MR, UCL

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 3:03 PM

Andrew Sullivan: freedom for me, but not for teens

Radley Balko and Andrew Sullivan have each given The New York Times’ David Brooks a good pounding for his defense of government growth under George W. Bush. Brooks had it coming, but Sullivan has revealed a chink in his own armor. According to a Yiddish proverb, a liar needs to have a good memory. Sullivan reminds me that a non-libertarian needs the same trait to avoid embarrassment about the forms of government meddling that he happens to like.

“I’m a small government Goldwater conservative, but I think compulsory high school education is worth the trade-off of freedom,” says Sullivan in passing. Ah, but of course, someone else’s freedom is always easy to trade off. (For example, the sodomy laws that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down just a few years ago were academic problems at worst for Sullivan’s conservative heterosexual friends.) Federal and state governments conveniently give teenagers only as much autonomy as soccer moms see fit to give them—even though societies where life as an adult is much harder have often considered their members adults at 14. What I’ve said about teenagers may be vulgar, but there is little hyperbole in it, I’m afraid.

Labels: AgeMaj, BGC, Educ, Lib, OthBlo

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 9:06 AM

March 12, 2007

Maybe Andy Rooney is a bigot after all

I’m not talking about the remarks attributed to him in emails, either. I’m talking about what he said last night on 60 Minutes. He’s come out in favor of the draft, which means he wants slavery for those born at the wrong time in history.

No type of war—not even a class war—justifies the draft.

A related earlier post:
The draft makes it easier, not harder, for politicians to wage dubious wars

Labels: AgeMaj, Cintv, ForPo, Lib, MR

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 10:11 AM

January 17, 2007

Show a friend a Playboy, get called a sex offender

Thanks to Hit and Run, I’ve learned of an unfortunate teenager in Arizona named Matthew Bandy. After being raided at his home in paramilitary fashion by police and hounded for two years by a cruel, sanctimonious district attorney on flimsy charges of downloading images of child pornography onto the family computer—which would have brought a 90-year prison term—Bandy was forced to plead guilty to showing a Playboy to another teenager (technically a crime). For this confession alone, attorney Andrew Thomas tried to force Bandy to register as a sex offender.

Two questions for my readers:

1.) Aren’t you glad this didn’t happen to you when you were Bandy’s age?

2.) Doesn’t this make Playboy look less like kitsch and more like a subversive publication?

Labels: AgeMaj, ArtEnt, Lib, MorPa, OthBlo

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 1:00 PM

January 15, 2007

Prolonged adolescence comes from big government, not capitalism; accidentally, not on purpose

Anxious Grad Student left this comment on an earlier post:

Interesting post and I definitely agree with the assertion that US public education, and its evolution in our society into its current state and form, encourages a prolonged adolescent period which did not exist in human societies until our very modern period of institutional education. To take it further, perhaps you should discuss the inherent power structures established in secondary education and their relationship with the overarching power structures of our capitalistic republic and Western society in general. Particularly the relationship between authority figures and the emerging independent thinker our system is supposedly set up to produce, which in actuality is geared towards making citizens easier to control and manipulate.

Also - I wonder what your solution to the problem of institutional education would be.

Thanks for the post idea, AGS. I propose a two-part solution:

1.) Have the law treat teenagers less like children and more like adults in terms of both liberty and accountability.

2.) Privatize the entire education system. Compulsory, government-run schooling as we now know it—barely a century old—is a road to hell paved with good intentions. Not every civic impulse born of the Progressive Era deserves our ongoing respect. Jim Crow, a regrettably fitting example for Martin Luther King Day, is one of its bastard children. Even many radicals of the day, like Eugene V. Debs and Jack London, saw no problem with it. Left to more of its own devices, the free market would almost certainly have weakened racism, and it could do much to liberate teens. Our system isn’t too capitalistic; it’s not capitalistic enough.

In related news, the bureaucracy of the Food and Drug Administration, another spawn of the Progressives, almost killed an entire family of six.

Labels: AgeMaj, Educ, Lib, MorPa, OthBlo, Ra

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 4:52 PM

December 26, 2006

Left-wing puritanism in Ms. magazine’s “No Comment” section

“A number of companies have removed offensive ads in response to your feedback. Keep writing and calling the offending advertisers at their contact information above.”—Ms., Fall 2006, p. 80

The editors of Ms. would certainly deny having anything important in common with the boycott-happy Christianists of the American Family Association. But consider the damning evidence on the back page of every issue. “No Comment” shows miniature reprints of newspaper and magazine ads that supposedly degrade women enough to require angry letters and phone calls. With a few remotely possible exceptions, the outrage reinforces the stereotype of the humorless feminist. An ad can offend merely by associating a product with the sensual appeal of the female form or laughing at the foibles of human sexuality. Some might seem to glorify violence against women—if you’re determined to see that message in them. Does this ad for Royal Elastics shoes, blacklisted in the summer 2005 Ms., encourage men to kick women in the head? Was the “crushed flower” sniffed on one occasion by animated superhero Mighty Mouse actually cocaine, as AFA chairman Rev. Donald Wildmon alleged with about as much plausibility?

In some cases, the offensiveness is as hard to discern as the subliminal dirty pictures Wilson Bryan Key finds in the ice cubes of liquor ads (Key makes Wildmon look like an amateur). In fall 2006, Ms. wagged its finger at American Apparel’s ad with a photograph of an attractive young woman of Indian and Pakistani heritage under the caption “India meets Pakistan.” I wondered and wondered why anyone but the Church Lady would take offense at the very mildly titillating image. It turns out that it contains racism and pedophilia detectable only with specialized lab equipment. AA’s website seems to have deleted its photos of that particular model in response to the controversy. But as I write, it still has the guts to post a similar ad. Kudos.

“No Comment” is not unusual in its “progressive” prudery. The “liberal” battles against tobacco, fast food, and breast implants are waged under the same banner. For further explanation of how moralists (like mystics) all speak the same language, try this article by Radley Balko for the very unpuritanical Reason.

Update, December 29, 2006, 12:26 p.m.: I have answered Pandagon.net’s criticism of this post.

A related earlier post:
Playboy is more feminist than some feminists

Labels: AgeMaj, BGC, Femi, Lib, MorPa, NPH, OthBlo, Ra, UCL

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 9:46 PM

November 20, 2006

The draft makes it easier, not harder, for politicians to wage dubious wars

“There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,” says Congressman Charles Rangel of New York.

I very much doubt it. As Thomas DiLorenzo at LewRockwell.com has observed, the saddest irony of Rangel’s endorsement of involuntary servitude is that he happens to be black. Considering the misery-loves-company mentality by which parents rationalize the time-wasting, humiliating drudgery of high school for their own teenagers, I don’t believe the older generation can be trusted with the power to force the younger generation to pay for its geopolitical fuck-ups.

As a thought experiment, consider what would have happened if the crowned heads of Europe had been politically incapable of conscripting their subjects in 1914 or thereafter. Some unfortunate young men might still have been swept up in early war mania and volunteered for service in the trenches, but their leaders would have had so much trouble replacing them that peace would soon become the only option. Almost certainly, the madness of war wouldn’t have lasted long enough to beget the madness of the Treaty of Versailles, which begot the madness of Hitler and another war. The twentieth century would have been much happier.

Labels: AgeMaj, ForPo, Lib, MR, OthBlo, Ra, UCL

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 7:26 AM

October 7, 2006

Naomi at Martian Anthropologist thinks I’m a Bible-thumper

brian423: we’re bored with you. Simple as that. Obviously, we’re not going to follow your link, nor are we going to visit your website.

You get your info from tainted, biased-against-reality, regressive/repressive sources.

As your religious institutions atrophy and crumble from lack of relevance in the 21st century, you’ll be left with nothing.

Unless you renounce your addiction, you’ll be on your own. But we do have a nice 12-step recovery program for you, if you’re interested.

Now, go back to your bibble-study. Your heaven is waiting for you...

Naomi

What did the author of Reflections on Playboy do to deserve this unlikely abuse? The post is about a 17–year-old woman who was easily persuaded to get into the parked car of a 38–year-old male stranger impersonating a police officer. She safely left the car a few minutes later, but not before giving him her address, phone number, and parents’ names. A comment penned by “reaper” called her a “dumbass.” Naomi more or less agreed, adding that only a Christian could be so stupid:

Fundie Alert: the next section will contain ideas that will cause extreme distress!

Blind, unquestioning obedience starts in church! Well, maybe in church-y families...

Twenty bucks say her parents were interviewed and stated, “God saved our daughter from that monster”, or something along those lines.

No, I didn’t google(tm) it, so that’s just a guess. But we all know how commonplace it is to thank him for “delivering from evil”; conversely, he never gets blamed for “delivering to evil”. Why is that?

Come on, xtians! This is right up your alley. Reminder: this is, for the most part, an atheist blog. So if we drag theism into the discussion of an Oklahoma mayor (whose wife posed “largely” nude on the Internets), why can’t we drag it into this topic? (The Rapid City SD mayor, arrested at the Iowa State Fair, did not meet our standards for blaming gaud...)

Naomi [italics and bold in the original]

I contributed this comment:

reaper, you’re blaming the victim.

Naomi, you’re placing blame on the wrong institution. Most likely, the young woman got in the car because compulsory schooling has led her to believe she is still a child. If you don’t believe me, please read my call for teenage liberation. (I thank TerraPraeta for making me aware of this post of yours.)

From that, Naomi jumped to the conclusion that I study the bibble, whatever that is. Despite its misleading title, she knew instantly that Reflections on Playboy is a “fundie” site. She already knows everything about all opposing points of view.

Where does self-righteousness come from? Religion per se doesn’t create it, or else atheists like Naomi wouldn’t show it. Some historians of philosophy blame Platonism, but I don’t buy that theory, either. The tragedy of Hippolytus, a polytheistic study of a self-righteous man, was first produced at about the time that Plato was born. To be so inspired, Euripides must have seen self-righteousness around him even then. “Indeed, the problem with Homo sapiens may not be that we have too little morality,” says cognitive scientist (and atheist) Steven Pinker. “The problem may be that we have too much.” My source for the quote—however tainted it may seem to Naomi—is “The Sanctimonious Animal,” chapter 15 of his book The Blank Slate. Whether or not they’ll admit it, atheists are just as capable of intolerant fanaticism as the rest of us.

Labels: AgeMaj, BlaSla, Educ, Lit, MorPa, OthBlo, RS, Sc

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 3:06 PM

October 4, 2006

Mark Foley is a hypocrite—and not one of the good ones

“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue,” said François de la Rochefoucauld. Conservative intellectuals frequently use this quotation to defend hypocrisy as a way for morally fallible human beings to pay lip service to the good even when they lack the strength to live it. For example, a congregation is none the less wise to accept the preacher’s advice against stealing when said preacher turns out to have a shoplifting habit. The defense applies to some instances of hypocrisy, but not all. Former Congressman Mark Foley’s instant-messaging scandal is one that, in my opinion, La Rochefoucauld’s argument cannot redeem.

The distinction between “good” and “bad” hypocrisy hinges on whether the act proscribed (and perpetrated) by the hypocrite is truly wrong or merely a target of moral panic. The closet homosexual who beats up known or suspected homosexuals is becoming an unambiguous example of the latter category in the United States. In my last post, I deplored our society’s general treatment of teenagers as children rather than adults. Foley’s online paramour has reached the age of consent in the District of Columbia and most states (but not my home state of California, which doesn’t deserve its reputation for social liberalism). The affair may be somewhat irresponsible because of the interpersonal tension it could generate in a work environment, but it shouldn’t be a crime. And yet it is a crime, thanks to the karmically challenged Foley. At Reason Online, Kerry Howley explains:

If charges are leveled, they’ll likely be based on broad legislation inked by the man himself. It’s a safe bet that any law with a kid’s name in it will overreach, and the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act is no exception. The law, a hodgepodge of a response to MySpace panic, strikes at everything from hawking “date rape drugs” over the tubes to the use of “misleading domain names.” It penalizes the solicitation of all minors—everyone under 18—despite the fact that the age of consent is two years lower in most states. Merely channeling an invitation through the magic of fiberoptic cables is a federal crime.

Bill Clinton was similarly hoist with his own petard: the resurgent feminism that helped get him elected in 1992 also wrote the overreaching sexual-harassment law that later threatened his presidency. One need not be conservative or religious to hypermoralize.

Labels: AgeMaj, BGC, Educ, Lib, MorPa, Rom, UCL

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 5:56 PM

February 9, 2006

I deeply resent my schooling—and you should resent yours

This is another of the confessional posts I feel a need to write from time to time.

In September 1980, at the age of eight, on my first day of the third grade, I decided that my teachers were my friends. With all its fateful consequences, this was the worst mistake I ever made.

Before that day, I had constantly rebelled against authority at school. In the first grade, I wouldn’t stay in my se