Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 74

The Left, The Campus, And The Death Of Humor, Ctd

A reader writes:

I am a comic who, until I got a TV writing job a year ago, made most of my income touring colleges. It’s not as black and white as Chris Rock’s interview suggests. Different types of schools have different crowds, just as clubs in every city differ. Engineering schools have better crowds than even the best clubs. They’re intelligent and earnest. Jesuit schools are great too. Major public universities are like club audiences, but younger. They’re a little bit of everything.

Then you have the worst two: liberal arts colleges and Christian schools. The two political extremes are the worst. But they’re horrible in different ways.

Liberal arts schools are exactly as Rock describes. Christian schools aren’t bothered by political correctness. They just want their comedy to be “nice.” They get uncomfortable when you’re dark. Who wants nice comedy?

My trick for these schools is a “fuck these people” approach. I just do everything I know they won’t like. When they get uncomfortable, I let them know that they’re wrong. At first, they don’t like that. Usually, after 2-3 times of calling them out for being awful, they loosen up, realize no one is getting hurt, and enjoy the rest of the show. The worst thing you can do is pander to them. You have to confront their uptightness. Usually they change. Sometimes the Christian schools never come around, but the liberal arts schools almost always do.

The bookers at these schools are the real problem, much more so than the general student body. Check out this email my comic friend just got from Swarthmore:

I thought I would be the first to take a crack at explaining uptight Swatties to you…

Something I like about Hari Kondabolu is he distinguishes between offensive and hurtful — so, jokes can be offensive or crude, without being hurtful. Things that are hurtful: rape, racism… We can talk about whether funny rape jokes are possible (personally, I think Louis CK pulls it off, because his jokes are about rape culture, instead of the “haha she was raped”). Jokes about race are funny, but I would recommend against relying on racial stereotypes, and I think Swatties would like it better if a racist was the butt of a joke instead of a victim of racism. I also would stay away from things like acting “retarded” or making fun of disabled people for being different. Sorry, I’m not trying to be the PC police here!!

Swatties would laugh if you made a joke about them being uptight/righteous/liberal/whatever, and they would laugh at jokes about how frequently we say “problematic” and “heteronormative”. Swatties are overly intellectual, geeky, and socially awkward. Although we do have significant number of student athletes, religious students, and sorority/fraternity members, they are made fun of more here than you might see elsewhere. We never get enough sleep, study too much, watch too much Netflix, and frequently complain about our dining hall… Typical college kid stuff.

Relevant to the night you are performing: we never have successful Friday night parties (because homework..?). I think a lot of people will come out to this, though, since we never have this kind of campus event, and non-party-Friday-night-things usually go well.

I want you to have the best show you can, so I am just sharing my thoughts on how to keep the crowd with you.

I told him to do whatever he would do if he didn’t get that email. If people don’t like him, fuck them. He did that and had a great set. Sometimes I think young people on the left only want to be uptight and sometimes forget and have fun for a few minutes.

Thanks for covering this subject.

Another continues to:

Regarding humor and political correctness, Paul Cantor, the University of Virginia Shakespeare scholar, wrote a wonderful essay titled, “Cartman Shrugged“, which explores the transgressive humor of South Park. The genius of Parker and Stone is that they are left to defend freedom from the encroachments of both right and left. Both sides have their own versions of political correctness, or cant or pieties. And both need to be skewered, relentlessly, to protect everyone else’s freedom:

This is where libertarianism enters the picture in South Park. The show criticizes political correctness in the name of freedom. That is why Parker and Stone can proclaim themselves equal opportunity satirists: they make fun of the old pieties as well as the new, ridiculing both the right and the left insofar as both seek to restrict freedom.

“Cripple Fight” is an excellent example of the balance and evenhandedness of South Park… The episode deals in typical South Park fashion with a contemporary controversy, one that has even made it into the courts: whether homosexuals should be allowed to lead Boy Scout troops. The episode makes fun of the old-fashioned types in the town who insist on denying a troop leadership to Big Gay Al (a recurrent character whose name says it all). As it frequently does with the groups it satirizes, South Park, even as it stereotypes homosexuals, displays sympathy for them and their right to live their lives as they see fit.

But just as the episode seems to be simply taking the side of those who condemn the Boy Scouts for homophobia, it swerves in an unexpected direction. Standing up for the principle of freedom of association, Big Gay Al himself defends the right of the Boy Scouts to exclude homosexuals. An organization should be able to set up its own rules, and the law should not impose society’s notions of political correctness on a private group.

This episode represents South Park at its best—looking at a complicated issue from both sides and coming up with a judicious resolution of the issue. And the principle on which the issue is resolved is freedom. As the episode shows, Big Gay Al should be free to be homosexual, but the Boy Scouts should also be free as an organization to make their own rules and exclude him from a leadership post if they so desire.

This libertarianism makes South Park offensive to the politically correct, for, if applied consistently, it would dismantle the whole apparatus of speech control and thought manipulation that do-gooders have tried to construct to protect their favored minorities.

Laboring Before Delivery

Claire Zillman provides background on Young v. UPS:

When [Peggy Young] became pregnant and a midwife instructed her not to lift packages over 20 pounds, Young asked to return to UPS to do either light duty or her regular job as a truck driver, which seldom required her to lift heavy boxes. According to Young’s Supreme Court petition, her manager told her that UPS offered light duty to workers who sustained on-the-job injuries, employees with ailments covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act, and those who had lost Department of Transportation certification because of physical aliments like sleep apnea; not—the manager said—to pregnant workers. UPS wouldn’t allow Young to return to her former role either since her lifting restriction made her a liability. As a result, Young was required to go on extended, unpaid leave, during which she lost her medical coverage.

Oral arguments are scheduled for tomorrow. Lyle Denniston explains what is at stake:

For nearly four decades, it has been a form of illegal discrimination in the workplace to treat women workers unequally, just because they become pregnant. But it still is not entirely clear just how much and what kind of equality that provision imposes on businesses.

They clearly cannot treat pregnancy as a reason to fire a worker, or cut her pay, or to deny her health benefits. That is outright discrimination based on sex, under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, added in 1978 to Title VII of federal civil rights law

But women’s rights advocates, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Act, take the position that the Act adds another layer of protection for pregnant workers: if an identified group of workers on the payroll gets lighter duty, or easier inside-the-plant assignments such as paperwork or answering phones, because they are temporarily disabled, the same opportunity should be available to workers whose doctors limit the kind of work they can do during pregnancy.

Gillian Thomas remarks that “Young’s story is increasingly typical”:

Women now constitute close to half the workforce, and three-quarters of them will be pregnant at least once during their working lives. Most pregnant women stay on the job right up until their due dates; according to a U.S. Census Bureau study, in the past 50 years, the number of women working into their ninth month more than doubled, with a whopping 82 percent of women who gave birth between 2006 and 2008 working into their final month of pregnancy. Coupled with these demographic realities are pregnancy’s medical realities: Even an uncomplicated pregnancy can cause nausea, migraines, urinary tract infections, carpal tunnel syndrome, back pain, shortness of breath, dizziness, and chronic fatigue while more serious conditions include diabetes, deep vein thrombosis, placenta previa, and pre-eclampsia. For women in jobs that involve prolonged standing (retail clerks, cashiers), are physically strenuous or dangerous (firefighters, law enforcement officers), or include contact with toxic materials (janitors, hotel housekeepers), pregnancy can be in direct conflict with their ability to work. Simply put, in order to continue earning a paycheck while pregnant, many women will need their employers to make some adjustments.

Bryce Covert covered the case back in October. Even if Young’s case fails, progress is being made at the local level:

Nine states have passed Pregnant Worker Fairness Acts that require all employers to give pregnant workers reasonable accommodations, like providing a stool or granting light duty, unless they would impose an undue hardship. The company says the new policy “will aid operational consistency given that a number of States in which UPS operates have relatively recently mandated pregnancy accommodations.”

These state laws may force other employers’ hands. “We see that these state pregnancy accommodation laws enacted recently really have made a tremendous difference,” [director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project Lenora] Lapidus said. “There’s sort of a tipping point that has been reached where now a number of states have passed pregnancy accommodation laws, so companies that operate in multiple states really should…be changing their laws to comply.”

The President Backs Body Cams … And Not Much Else

Zeke Miller details Obama’s planned executive orders:

President Barack Obama is preparing to issue an executive order to calling for additional oversight of various federal programs which provide military surplus equipment to local law enforcement agencies, senior administration officials said Monday, but will stop short of banning the transfer of heavy gear to police forces. …

Obama will also announce a three-year $263 million package to increase the use of police body-worn cameras and expand local law enforcement training. The program, modeled after a similar program for bullet-proof vests for officers, would provide $75 million over three years for the “Body Worn Camera Partnership Program.” Administration officials said it would provided a 50 percent match for body-camera purchases by state and local agencies, enough for 50,000 new cameras. Officials said they hope to secure about $70 million in funding for the effort as part of a government funding deal that must be reached in the coming two weeks.

George Condon Jr. views the announcement as yet another example of Obama’s “trademark caution”:

He was cautious about the use of surplus military equipment by domestic police forces, promising to make it more transparent so it can be studied. He was cautious on police behavior, promising to work with Congress to pay for more body cameras to be worn by cops on the street. He was cautious about the Justice Department’s role, announcing that the outgoing attorney general will “convene a series of these meetings all across the country.” And he was cautious in falling back on that most familiar of Washington responses—a task force to further study the situation.

Scott Shackford is skeptical that the president is really committed to de-militarizing the police:

The White House promised to study police militarization in the wake of how various law enforcement agencies in Ferguson, Missouri, responded to the peaceful protesters, not just the aggressive or criminal ones. What comes out of the report is a call for better documentation and transparency, and an easily supportable demand that local governments must actually review and authorize acquisition of the “controlled property” military equipment (guns and vehicles) by law enforcement agencies.

What the report doesn’t recommend is scaling back the programs in any notable or significant way. It appears as though the White House is trying to have it both ways on police militarization, calling for reforms without having to tackle the issues surrounding whether it’s actually necessary.

Trevor Timm is more blunt:

Obama said he wants to avoid building a “militarized culture” in police departments, yet his White House report claims all the militarization programs are “valuable” to law enforcement, without going into any detail of where that value has actually been shown. For example, when was the last time a local police officer drove over a fucking mine? Why would neighborhood cops ever need Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs) that were meant to protect soldiers against IEDs in Iraq? The White House’s four months of “research” into federal funding simply does not venture to explain. Nor does it explain any use for any of the Pentagon’s weaponry now in the hands of our local police.

Emily Badger argues along the same lines:

[B]y calling for local police to receive more training — including on civil rights and civil liberties — when they receive military-style equipment, the review leaves unasked the question Obama’s own earlier comments seemed to raise: Is it even a good idea to give it to them?

Joshua Brustein focuses instead on the body cams fund, which could “almost double the number of cameras in use in the country”:

The White House’s support of cameras isn’t a surprise. In the days after Brown was shot, a petition on WhiteHouse.gov in support of legislation requiring all state, county, and local police to wear cameras gathered nearly 155,000 signatures. Roy Austin of Obama’s Domestic Policy Council posted an official response that described years of work by the administration to advance the use of body-worn and dashboard cameras. Police departments have long been coming around on cameras, but progress is slow. Adopting police cameras requires thousands of independent agencies coming to terms with thorny privacy and accountability issues.

Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation, says that the biggest barrier is cost. The White House will match the spending of local and state agencies who decide to buy cameras, mirroring a similar federal program that has led to the purchase of over 1.1 million vests for law enforcement agencies. The money won’t come without strings attached: Bueermann expects a requirement that every officer in participating departments wear a camera at all times while in the field.

Rich Lowry recommends a different reform:

The most needful reform in Ferguson and surrounding communities, per the excellent reporting of Radley Balko of the Washington Post, is the end of the obnoxious and parasitic practice of squeezing revenue out of residents with fines from traffic and other petty offenses. This creates an incentive for police to hassle motorists and is especially burdensome to poor residents. Because this issue is exceedingly local and dull, almost no one talks about it.

(Photo: New York City Public Advocate Letitia James displays a video camera that police officers could wear on patrol during a press conference on August 21, 2014 in New York City. By Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Obsessed With Being Obsessed

Willa Paskin wonders why it’s not enough simply to like something anymore:

[A]dults used to obsess about things in a more steadfast manner, by having long-term interests known as hobbies. (Whatever happened to those?) Or they obsessed with downright stately occasionalness, when something out there really gripped the nation. Now we are engaged in a near-constant cycle of being “totally obsessed” with a cultural object (“obsessed” is the term of art on social media) and perpetually on the lookout for that next binge-experience. Why are we getting hysterically excited about very good but not hugely original cultural products seemingly every other month? Why have we turned into compulsive obsession-seekers?

As with nearly every aspect of contemporary life, the Internet has a lot to do with it. The Internet’s default mode is obsession. Nothing worth thinking or talking or writing about—nothing not worth thinking or talking or writing about, for that matter – gets thought or talked or written about in moderation. At the start, products like Serial or True Detective feel as though they are made inescapable not by their obvious and overwhelming clickiness – like, say, pictures of Kim Kardashian’s derriere – but by the force of good taste. There are things on the Internet that happen to us, but these are things that, initially, feel as though we made “happen.” And yet, at a certain point, the frenzy surrounding these beloved objects achieves the same level of inescapability as those naked pictures. Someone out there surely feels as annoyed by all the Serial coverage as someone else feels about Kim Kardashian’s tush. They have both become the latest obsession of “the Internet,” and you can either get on board yourself or get put on board, eyes rolling.

Platonic Procreation, Ctd

A reader remarks on a recent post:

Long before Michael Woodley theorized it, the link between asexuality and genius was covered on Seinfeld, when George Costanza’s girlfriend had mononucleosis and couldn’t have sex with him for six weeks. The result, as you may recall, was that George dedicated all of that time and energy once used to think about women and sex to thinking about other things and became … a genius!

Another goes on a bit of a rant:

I’m going to call BS on the evolutionary psychology idea that asexuals devote more of their brain away from sex. That is an incredibly self-serving idea; it simultaneously flatters the person who says they are too smart for sex and absolves them from having to engage with the cognitive complexities (and potential failures) of an intimate relationship or coupling.

I am certain there are asexuals, but I don’t think they are asexual because their brains are eugenically superior by dent of conscious intervention on the part of the asexual in question. There are definitely a few geniuses who are asexual, but the idea that most geniuses are asexual is absurd. There are probably an equal number of dumb asexuals and smart asexuals. Humans simply do not have that granular level of control over their own hormones – and if you think you do, that’s just a sad cognitive illusion and you are deluding yourself.

Geniuses are just the extreme end example of this. Their brain is so great and everyone else’s brains are so puny their ineptness in relationships must be because their brain is so great, omg, in fact, their ineptness is actually EVIDENCE their brain is greater! It’s a beautiful unbreakable feedback loop of self-serving delusion. Like Fox News.

I dated a very brilliant woman in college whom as best I can tell from Facebook now identifies as asexual. She had her own set of background and baggage she prefers to believe she is above, and she would love the theory that she was just so smart her body wasn’t interested in sex. Her body was interested in sex, but as she would often assert she would eventually mentally clamp down hard on any sexual response she felt when we were making out because she didn’t want to lose control (and she would get scared at her own non-conscious responses to physical intimacy, in my opinion).

I respected her boundaries, and while we explored each other moderately, we never went very far – which was fine, considering we were eighteen and it was a first relationship for both of us. I think our relationship was a positive growing experience for both of us, but she never got comfortable with the idea that her body had a mind of its own.

Personally, I think this whole evo-psyche explanation is an extension of Smart Kid Syndrome. Smart Kids have everything relating to school come so easily to them that they never learn how to struggle through something that is new and initially incomprehensible and requires a long time investment of repeatedly failing before its no longer impossible. On top of that, Smart Kids are subjected to an unending geyser of addictive exclamatory over-the-top praise about how SMART and brilliant they are. Every time they make a minor achievement, they’re given a hit of that addictive praise for something that required a minimal input of effort; this has a huge downside, when something is not effortless their output is not amazing and they don’t get praised and they don’t get the endorphin rush they’re used to getting every time they complete something. And when they try hard and put in tons of effort the praise they get is not commensurate to their immense effort, it’s the same praise they get for doing something that took minimal effort.

The natural response to this is anything that does not come as easily as schooling is derided and diminished as “stupid”. This is exacerbated when the “stupid” thing is widespread or popular and the Smart Kid feels that they are missing out on something or being deliberately excluded. But the fault cannot be the self, no, it must be the “other” exterior to the self that is at fault.

Do you see how seductive this line of thinking is? “I’m smarter than everybody else therefore I’m better than everybody else, how come they can get dates or play sports when I am so much better and smarter? It’s because X are so stupid or X are so shallow” etc.

No it is not. It is because X made the effort, X tried to have a relationship, X invested years in learning sports skills. It isn’t that asking a girl out is hard, or taking that long anxiety ridden path towards a first kiss is difficult, nope, according to the smart kid it is the entirety of society being stupid. How dare they achieve success in something and win praise for something the smart kid is scared of confronting and failing at? There’s nothing worse than failing, you don’t get your hit of endorphins from a geyser of praise when you fail, so the best strategy is to avoid at all costs situations where failure is likely to recur.

Previous Dish on asexuality here.

Dirty Cops Around The World

Charles Kenny highlights the harm they do:

In countries including Uganda, South Africa, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria and Indonesia, more people pay a bribe to a policeman every year than to any other government service provider including health professionals, teachers, utility workers, the judiciary or tax and land records officers. Police are the most common or second most common bribe recipients in 38 out of 107 countries that Transparency International surveys.

And, according the same organization, “seven percent of Americans who say they had contact with police over the last year report paying a bribe.” What can be done?

When it comes to straightforward corruption in rich and poor countries alike, paying a bribe to a police officer should be decriminalized (to encourage reporting) while receiving a bribe should be automatic grounds for being sacked and incarcerated. And in the many countries where large numbers report paying bribes to policeman, the solution may be to reduce the number of police officers. Even in the U.S., where corrupt cops are the exception, the police in cities like Ferguson would be far more effective without the officers that are financed by fines, because that would reduce the pressure to put predatory officers on the beat. A cop’s job is to serve and protect. We shouldn’t pressure them to fleece and intimidate.

The Best Of The Dish Today

We don’t seem to have finished discussing Ferguson, so one more thought. I agree with those who argue that the police’s interaction with young black men is, in too many cases, riddled with bias and far too quick to use lethal force. But I agree with others that the Michael Brown case is not the case with which to make that argument. And the liberal reflex to turn it into a synecdoche is a troubling one for reasons John Judis lays out:

Liberals took the decision by the grand jury to symbolize, or stand in for, the greater injustice of the Ferguson and of the American criminal justice department. But in fact the reverse occurred. They projected the larger injustice of the system onto the grand jury’s ruling.

I’m reminded of the case of Matthew Shepard, where the need to project the injustice of violence against gay men onto one complicated case blinded people to a more interesting and complex reality. Michael Brown did not deserve to die, any more than Matthew Shepard did. But that doesn’t mean both are perfect victims, unalloyed by all the flaws that flesh is heir to; or that their deaths illustrated pure random homophobia or pure racism. And this need for perfect victims is of a piece with a church of liberalism in which there is only one way to be good – a member of a minority – and only one sin – prejudice. All churches need saints and martyrs. But liberalism – no more than conservatism – should never be a church. It’s as dangerous to civil politics as Christianism.

A reader notes how this church’s doctrines are increasingly enforced – and sinners punished – on social media:

Many of us mocked the Tea Party in its seemingly religious quest to root out “RINOs” and its dedication to finding ever more fringe and lunatic conservative causes, but something similar seems to be happening to liberals. Looking at the weekly outraged Facebook posts and blog articles of friends, colleagues, and commentators, I see the purpose of the liberal conversation as increasingly being the enforcement of a shared set of ideals and the rooting out of those among us who might disagree with them. We’re building an echo chamber in which dissenting voices are first drowned out and then excluded. This isn’t about building forums for debate with like-minded souls – it’s about dividing the world into The Righteous and The Wicked.

And the Wicked will be fired from their jobs as well!

Today, we covered some other topics: Israel’s latest lurch toward disenfranchising its non-Jewish citizens; Chris Christie’s enduring cruelty; Chris Rock on the left’s war on comedy; and the prospect of fine wines from Sweden. Plus: dogs who can’t fetch; and Obama’s uptick in approval.

The most popular post of the day was Listening; next up: Why Doesn’t Ferguson Happen Abroad? A reader has an addendum to that post, and it is the case of the police shooting of Mark Duggan in north London in 2011, prompting the Tottenham riots. A good primer on the case can be found here.

Many of today’s posts were updated with your emails – read them all here. You can always leave your unfiltered comments at our Facebook page and @sullydish. 19 more readers became subscribers today. You can join them here – and get access to all the readons and Deep Dish – for a little as $1.99 month. Gift subscriptions are available here. Dish t-shirts are for sale here and our new coffee mugs here. One happy customer:

Just got mine! It’s big, solid. I can feel the quality!

Another new owner:

My ten-year-old rescue mutt (border collie/Labrador?) is enjoying our new beagle mug.

Happy AIDS Day and see you in the morning.

New Dish New Media Update

The monthly report card is due. Revenue remained pretty solid last month at $30.5k:

The monthly pattern for revenue seems to echo 2013, with a decline in the summer months and an upsurge in the fall, leading to $26.5k in November 2013:

So we’re up a bit year-on-year. The comparison, as of yesterday, is $814k for the first eleven months of 2013, versus $934k for the first eleven months of 2014, a 15 percent year-on-year increase. Traffic is also relatively steady: at 714,000 unique readers this month, for 5.2 million pageviews, about average for the last six months, but lower than when we had just initiated the pay-meter.

The number of subscribers edged up a bit this month to 30,264 but remains in the 30,000 range we reached at the end of the summer. All in all, a very gradual growth on a very solid base. We’d like to be growing more, and we’ve been brainstorming how and what that would entail – probably an upgrade from our current very amateur but viable business model. But I’m cognizant of what David Carr told Lucia Moses today:

This was a big year for new media startups. How sustainable are they?

What would happen if you took away all the exits and people had to make a living off existing CPMs? It would be pretty bloody.

We’re currently making a living off no CPMs. Know hope.

Face Of The Day

A dangerously ill HIV patient waits to be taken to the hospital for treatment on November 29, 2014 in Yangon, Burma. The center, which has be been in operation since 2002, is owned and has been operated by the opposition party, the National League for Democracy, after the failure of the Myanmar government to take action and NGO’s being prevented from intervening. By Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images.

What’s A “Legal Immigrant”, Anyway?

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Julia Ioffe posted a reflection on how her Russian-Jewish family came to the US that zooms out into a history lesson on our immigration laws – a history replete with political calculations, arbitrary rules, exceptions, and yes, presidential fiats. Far from offering a clear-cut distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, she concludes, “American immigration law is perhaps one of the most mercurial sets of laws we have”:

It is not set in stone, nor has it ever been. Historically, it has depended on racism, trade priorities, and geopolitical considerations, just as it does today. And as Senator Ted Cruz, son of a Cuban immigrant, rails against Hondurans and Mexicans for coming to America illegally, keep in mind just how lucky his family is to come from a country that got the kind of special status that allowed, and still allows, Cubans to come to U.S. in ways that would be considered illegal for other populations and to get a green card in a year. Consider that this is not because of a law passed in the U.S. Congress, but because some guy we didn’t like seized power in 1959 and a few American presidents decided to help the Cuban bourgeoisie—and to stick it to Nikita Khrushchev. It’s why I and my 60 relatives are here, too. And it is quite likely that one of your ancestors got in through some giant, executive loophole ages and ages ago. Or got here when there were no loopholes because there were simply no laws pertaining to immigration.

The Dish previously covered the “cutting the line” argument against amnesty for illegal immigrants here.