"I do not think it means what you think it means"

Well, it's rare that I agree with Rep. Steve King (R - Mountains of Madness), but today I cannot help but concur. Via TPM:

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) literally accused the Republican leadership of the House of being a bunch of big old liars on the floor of the House last night. But that isn't exactly what he meant.

[snip]

"As I deliberate and I listen to the gentleman from Tennessee, I have to make the point that when you challenge the mendacity of the leader or another member, there is an opportunity to rise to a point of order, there is an opportunity to make a motion to take the gentleman's words down, however many of the members are off on other endeavors and I would make the point that the leader and the speaker have established their integrity and their mendacity for years in this Congress and I don't believe it can be effectively challenged and those who do so actually cast aspersions on themselves by making wild accusations." [emphasis giddily added]

No arguments here, Rep. King. The mendacity of the leader and the Speaker is impossible to effectively challenge.

Because words matter

I'm going to meander my way toward my point today, I think. Thank you for bearing with me.

In Orwell's "1984," there's a scene toward the end wherein Winston is faced with another man incarcerated with him in the Ministry of Love. The man is there because he failed in his job, which was to redact literature to suit the purposes of the Party. He left the word "God" in a poem, because there was simply no other word that would have made sense in its place. The desperate man couldn't make sense of nonsense.

Back in the real world, I own a copy of Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories." It is one of my favorite books in the whole world. I love it. My copy contains a publisher's note at the front, explaining that the edition contains Kipling's original language and was published thusly because it reflects the actual words of the author. (I'm paraphrasing a bit.) This note is there because, in one of the stories, the word "nigger" is used.

I plan to read all of these stories to the Critter when he is old enough for them, because they are charming and magical and some of my best childhood memories comprise having them read to me. When I get to the story that includes the word "nigger," I am going to explain to him that it is a word that was used a lot when Kipling wrote the book. I will explain that the word is an awful word that people shouldn't use, because it was meant to insult and oppress black people back when white people thought they had the right to do so. I will explain that using that word today would be very wrong, and I would be very angry to hear the Critter ever use it.

What I won't do is pretend that it isn't there.

I mention all of this as preamble to sharing my thoughts about this:

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic by most any measure—T.S. Eliot called it a masterpiece, and Ernest Hemingway pronounced it the source of "all modern American literature." Yet, for decades, it has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation's most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word: "nigger."

Twain himself defined a "classic" as "a book which people praise and don't read." Rather than see Twain's most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the "n" word (as well as the "in" word, "Injun") by replacing it with the word "slave."

This is so very wrong-headed.

First of all, the two words don't mean the same thing. One is a slur, and another is a social condition, albeit an awful one. One has no use other than as a term of abuse specific to one kind of person, while the other could be used to describe anyone who is in a state enslavement. They do not communicate the same concepts and replacing one with the other is intellectually sloppy and does naive readers a disservice.

I will abashedly admit that I myself have not read "Huckleberry Finn." (As chance would have it, my ignorance of Twain's writing was a subject of much surprised parental conversation over the recent holidays.) But my understanding is that Twain's use of the word "nigger" is not for the purposes of perpetuating the degradation of black people, but as a reflection of the language and attitudes of the society he is depicting. Isn't one of the primary reasons for introducing children to great literature to instill the ability to read critically and with discernment, to understand the layers of meaning in written communication? By depriving them of books that challenge their assumptions and experiences, are we not making them less able to function as mature and intelligent adults?

And even if Twain were using "nigger" with approval, the approach to objectionable speech isn't to silence it or pretend it doesn't exist. It is to thoughtfully and carefully explain what makes the speech objectionable, to counter it with better, more convincing and moral speech. It's not to take an eraser to it.

I obviously object to Gribben's efforts, and hope this edition dies a quick death. But I believe his intentions were good, and meant to counter the ridiculous exclusion of one of America's great novels from our schools. Our history and culture are complicated, and contain much that is ugly and troubling and difficult. Our children deserve nothing less than an honest understanding of this reality, and they deserve to read the literature that reflects it.

How's that for timing?

Well, if that doesn't just beat all. I make a little joke about Johnny Weir, and he makes the news with the least surprising announcement in the history of homosexuality:

Never a fan of labels, Johnny Weir is giving himself one: He's gay.

The figure skater says in an excerpt of his new book, "Welcome to My World," that being gay is "the smallest part of what makes me me." But he's not ashamed of it — or anything else, telling People magazine he hopes to be an example to other people. People is publishing excerpts of Weir's book in its Jan. 17 issue.

First of all, juuuuuuuuust in case anyone stumbles across this post and gets the wrong impression, let's be clear that I'm not making fun of Weir for being gay. What with my being gay myself, and all.

No, my reasons for not liking Johnny Weir have nothing at all to do with his being gay per se. (Okay, before I go any farther, can I just say that I think it is side-splitting that Weir is saying being gay is an eensy, weensy little part of who he is? Because Johnny Weir is incredibly gay. He's like the Village People to the power of Liberace. He makes Tim Gunn look like Steve McQueen.) I don't like Johnny Weir because he is impossibly obnoxious.

I can't find the link right now, but in a recent issue of Out magazine (which I find pretty damn obnoxious itself, for that matter), Weir responded to criticism of his wearing fur by saying he's not "passionate" about animals but he is "passionate" about fashion. Which means, I guess, that in Weir's world all that one needs to justify one's actions is "passion." I'm sure the toads at Westboro Baptist Church are plenty passionate, but somehow that fails to make me like them.

Anyhow, he's out and we can all stop wondering. Good for him. Now does this mean his fifteen minutes are finally up?

When you wish upon a star...

Oh, Blue Fairy*, if get my one wish on a star, let it be that this is true:

Could it be -- could Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the darling of the Tea Party right who has claimed to get her political marching orders directly from God, emerge as a sensational new entry into the presidential race?

ABC News reports:

A source close to the three-term congresswoman said Bachmann will travel to Iowa this month for multiple meetings to seek advice from political forces there and party elders close to the caucus process before coming to a final decision regarding a potential presidential run. Bachmann, a native of Waterloo, Iowa, also is set to deliver a keynote speech at an Iowans for Tax Relief PAC fundraiser Jan. 21 in Des Moines, Iowa.

I fervently hope that this comes to pass.

First of all, it would be hilarious. Not since Lyndon LaRouche has there been a candidate for President with as... let's say "glancing" a relationship with reality as Rep. Bachmann. I would have material for months. It would be like a day at Barney's with someone else's American Express Platinum card.

But if there's any candidate whose run would cannibalize a Sarah Palin bid, it's Bachmann. The Ladies from Crazytown will split the hard-core social conservative Tea Party vote, and anything that makes former half-term Alaska Gov. Palin less likely to come within a grizzly bear's whisker of the White House is OK by me. (I know that she's supposedly unelectable, but even a remote chance that she could get elected is too close for me, and the GOP nomination would make it far too possible.)

Run, Michele, run. If you and your buddy can rip each other to shreds, the better for everyone else.

* by which I mean, of course, Johnny Weir

If only this ended the debate

An utterly unsurprising bit of news from the Times:

The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.

The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues was renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal Lancet, where it was published. Still, the suggestion the MMR shot was connected to autism spooked parents worldwide and immunization rates for measles, mumps and rubella have never fully recovered.

A new examination found, by comparing the reported diagnoses in the paper to hospital records, that Wakefield and colleagues altered facts about patients in their study.

A lie. The first study to suggest a link between vaccination and autism was a lie. Really, what further commentary need one add?

Why is this important? We'll start by looking at the last paragraph of the same article:

But measles has surged since Wakefield's paper was published and there are sporadic outbreaks in Europe and the U.S. In 2008, measles was deemed endemic in England and Wales.

A disease that is easily prevented with routine vaccination is now endemic in one of the world's wealthiest and most advanced nations. But measles is no big deal, right?

From the WHO:

Measles is a highly contagious, serious disease caused by a virus.

It remains one of the leading causes of death among young children globally, despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine. An estimated 164 000 people died from measles in 2008 – mostly children under the age of five.

Admittedly, the overwhelming majority of deaths occur in the developing world. But the disease has killed in the developed world, too, and doubtless many more would become severely ill or die if the majority of people didn't continue to vaccinate their children. Frankly, it is unspeakable that anyone should die anywhere because of concern about a safe vaccine that was based on a lie.

And yet, as I type this, Wakefield's study is still cited with approval by Jenny McCarthy's "Generation Rescue." I wonder if they will continue to dig in their heels and defend him like they did after Lancet retracted the study, or if they will scrub their page of any mention of him.

For every patient who could have received the vaccine but didn't, only to develop a disease they never would have gotten otherwise, the damage is already done. Here's hoping this goes a little way toward ending the lunacy of linking vaccination to autism.

Update: First of all, anyone interested in a thorough discussion of the Wakefield fiasco would be well-served by this post at Science-Based Medicine. From there, I learned that the wagons are, indeed, circling around the vaccine-autism crowd's charlatan hero.

I seem to recall a certain oath

Over at TNR, John McWhorter has an interesting essay about the effects of the War on Drugs on the black community. In short, he argues that it would be an incredible boon for black people to have drugs legalized across the board. It's an interesting piece, and the comments afterward are worth reading, as well.

For my part, I am broadly in favor of drug legalization. My libertarian streak is strongest when personal behavior is concerned, and I happen to believe that people should have the right to utterly destroy themselves if they want to. If consenting adults want to ravage their bodies with crystal meth, I don't see why it should be society's job to prevent it.

Further, the War on Drugs has been markedly ineffective at preventing access to drugs and the subsequent problems of addition, crime, etc. Having now worked in a wide variety of settings, from the inner city to impoverished rural areas, I can say with a certain degree of confidence that desperate, determined people can get drugs wherever and whenever they want to. I also do not believe that most people who avoid drugs do so because they are illegal, but because they are harmful. Add in the enormous costs in terms of incarcerating drug criminals, fighting cartels in the increasingly violent border areas and beyond, keeping opium profits away from terrorist groups, etc etc etc, it seems to be that the War on Drugs has been far more costly than it was worth.

However, whatever the particular merits (or lack thereof) of McWhorter's argument as it pertains to the black community, the British authority he cites with approval strikes me as insane. McWhorter quotes Bob Ainsworth's address to the House of Commons:

“We need to take effective measures to rob the dealers of their markets and the only way that we can do that is by supplying addicts through the medical profession, through prescription. We cannot afford to be shy about being prepared to do that.”

He continues: “We spend billions of pounds without preventing the wide availability of drugs. It is time to replace our failed war on drugs with a strict system of legal regulation, to make the world a safer, healthier place, especially for our children. We must take the trade away from organised criminals and hand it to the control of doctors and pharmacists.”

This particular doctor wouldn't touch the drug trade with a ten-foot clown pole, thanks all the same. Frankly, I cannot imagine any ethical doctor or pharmacist feeling otherwise.

Let's start with the idea of what medicine is meant to do. It is meant to promote good health and cure disease. Providing users (not just addicts, mind, but users of all stripes) with a means of getting high does neither. One might argue that certain drugs (most commonly marijuana, and also certain psychedelics) are essentially harmless, and some psychiatric research has explored how they may have therapeutic uses. Fair enough, I suppose. But "I'd like to get high" is not a compelling argument for "treatment," or whatever else one might want to call it. And that's to say nothing of the well-described and overwhelming health risks associated with drugs like cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. The promise to "first, do no harm" goes right out the window, does it not?

Now, perhaps one might argue that doctors should be allowed to prescribe all manner of narcotics legally to people willing to seek treatment for addiction. I have some qualms with this idea, but at least one could plausible squeeze it into the disease/treatment paradigm. But, as I mention earlier, what about all the people who would want to use a little coke this weekend but are loath to call themselves addicts? What possible argument exists in that case? What physician with any scruples would sign up for the role of dealer? And if only addicts can obtain drugs legally from their doctors, how does medicalizing illicit drug use correct the problem of the War on Drugs to begin with?

Further, it seems to me that wherever drugs are dispensed, there's still going to be a high risk of crime. Those places would be ripe for robbery. I have a hard time imagining Rite Aid being willing to risk selling heroin alongside the Dristan, much less the nice family practice down the street.

I suspect that even if drugs somehow were to become legal across the board, they will never be legitimized. People will always need to turn to the seamier elements in society for a fix, because only those parts of society are willing to assume the risks associated with the trade. (Again, this argument does not apply so much to marijuana as to the more addictive, destructive drugs already mentioned.) It seems not only somewhat fitting that such a harmful personal choice should remain in the demimonde, but also the only feasible option.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

As God is my witness, I may actually have a little sympathy for the Tea Partiers. From the Times:

As Tea Party politicians prepare to take their seats when the 112th Congress convenes this week, they are already taking issue with Republicans for failing to hold the line against the flurry of legislation enacted in the waning weeks of Democratic control of the House of Representatives and for not giving some candidates backed by Tea Party groups powerful leadership positions.

Just a month ago, Tea Party leaders were celebrating their movement’s victories in the midterm elections. But as Congress wrapped up an unusually productive lame-duck session last month, those same Tea Party leaders were lamenting that Washington behaved as if it barely noticed that American voters had repudiated the political establishment.

Welcome to the club, ladies and gentlemen! It's awfully frustrating when you get all excited about sending your folks to DC, voting them into office with your eyes shining in happy expectation, only to find that your agenda gets attenuated and ignored and alloyed during the political gamesmanship that happens once they arrive. Being that I voted for Obama largely because of W-era human and civil rights abuses, it was a bitter little pill to swallow when he codified indefinite detention and averred that the President has the right to order the murder of American citizens. It sucks, does it not, to see the very candidate positions that propelled you to campaign offices and into the polls ignored or reversed entirely. Get used to it!

Oh, and another thing you're going to have to get used to?

“We sent them a message that we expect them to go home and come back newly constituted and do something different,” Mr. Meckler said. “For them to legislate when they’ve collectively lost their mandate just shows the arrogance of the ruling elite. I can’t imagine being repudiated in the way they were and then coming back and saying ‘Now that we’ve been repudiated, let’s go pass some legislation.’ ”

“I’m surprised by how blatant it was,” he added.

Yeah, um... sometimes the "messages" that you "send" get ignored by the opposition, which uses every parliamentary trick in the book to advance its ends at your expense. One might have interpreted the results of the 2008 election, wherein the electorate gave the Democrats hefty majorities in both houses of Congress as well as the White House, as a "message" that we "sent." As it happened. the GOP caucus in both houses proceeded to obstruct every single blessed thing the Democrats put forth; in the Senate, they used the filibuster to an historic degree. "Message" ignored, it would seem. On the flipside, the Democrats used their time in the recent lame duck session to pass legislation they wanted to get passed, despite the "message" sent. Once again, "message" ignored. (Since I happened to disagree pretty strongly with the implied message, I'm not at all unhappy that it was thusly ignored.)

As Jonathan Bernstein will happily tell you, this is how Congress works. (Or, if you prefer, "works.") Love it or hate it (and he certainly seems to like it just fine), it's the way things work. No matter how much of a mandate you think you've got, it's not going to get everything you want done.

On that note, I find this (from another article in the Times) confusing:

Soon after the 112th Congress convenes Wednesday, Republicans in the House plan to make good on a campaign promise that helped vault many new members to victory: voting to repeal President Obama’s health care overhaul.

The vote, which Republican leaders pledged would occur before the president’s State of the Union address later this month, is intended both to appeal to the Tea Party-influenced factions of the House Republican base and to emphasize the muscle of the new party in power.

Er... OK, then. Go for it, I guess. But I generally try to avoid demonstrating how puny my muscles are. I guess maybe the House Republicans like to show off the constraints on their power?

Because the Democrats still control the Senate, and the President will veto anything that somehow lurches out of Congress that threatens his signature piece of domestic policy. (Oh, hey, Tea Partiers! Another thing I was disappointed to watch die? A public option. See how I came full-circle there?) The House GOP will come nowhere near actually accomplishing a repeal. And, as the article goes on to point out, at this time the Democrats have nothing to lose by defending health care reform and talking it up, so demagoguing on this issue seems like a risky strategy at best.

Given my place at the opposite end of the political spectrum from the Tea Party, it doesn't hurt my feelings to see them frustrated. But I still feel a little bit of sympathy, as they're going to watch their new reps fail them in myriad ways over the next couple of years. It can't be helped, and it kind of sucks. Oh, well.