Confidential to John McCain

I'm so very, very glad you lost [your bid for the White House], you unprincipled. petty hack. I look forward to your inexorable slide into obscurity and historical oblivion, right alongside the antiquated, pointless military policy you cherish so very much.

Dispatches from the flat earth

Let's call a spade a spade, shall we? The Family Research Council and the American Family Association hate gay people. Sputtering protestations to the contrary, they do. If your entire raison d'etre is to deprive me and people like me of civic and social equality, and to demonize us as degenerate and predatory, then it's safe to use the word "hate" to describe what you do. And, having spent my entire childhood and adolescence in conservative religious communities, I can say with a great deal of confidence that plenty of evangelical Christians hate us, too.

Thus, I responded to the Southern Poverty Law Center's designation of the FRC and AFA as "hate groups" with a distinct lack of surprise. This was no more shocking than if they had called out the NFL as a sports organization. The FRC and AFA make their money and spend their time hating on gay people, and the SPLC's calling them what they are is almost laughably obvious. Frankly, one would almost expect them to be proud of themselves.

Inexplicably, the FRC has taken umbrage at being called what they are. Professional lunatic Bryan Fischer (who apparently plans to enlist in the Marines to show us how "real men" earn the Medal of Honor) has gotten his widdle feewings hurt:

"Until the Southern Poverty Law Center adds the FDA and the CDC to its list of 'hate' groups," he writes, "there is no reason to think that either the AFA or the FRC belongs on that list. In point of fact, we are 'truth' groups, not 'hate' groups."

I'm guessing that the FDA and CDC reference is due to the ban on gay men giving blood. Whether or not you think this is good policy, it's at least based on the reality than gay men are at higher risk of infection with HIV than the general population. What doesn't follow is this:

Fischer claimed in a blog post last May 27 that "[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews."

In fact, the SPLC has handily debunked a list of anti-gay myths promulgated by the FRC and its ilk. Among them, that gays are more likely to die young, molest children, or recreate the Third Reich. Fischer calls all of those myths "truth," because he has a remarkable ability to ignore tedious facts that he finds disagreeable, no matter how reputable the organization that spreads them. Since you can find people who are willing to believe just about anything, he's not particularly unique in this regard.

None of this changes the fact that he is a hateful human being, and an especially disgusting one at that. As far as I'm concerned, he may as well just embrace it and start planning potlucks with his like-minded (if slightly more impolitic) fellow-travelers.

Meandering thoughts about WikiLeaks

First off, a disclaimer. I am not an expert in either foreign policy or law, and do not style myself as one. Thus, any opinions I offer are those of an admitted layman. I'm not going to pretend to know what the implications of any particular revelation may be. In fact, for the purposes of this post, I'm not even all that interested in the contents of the gigantic WikiLeaks info dump per se.

The question that I pondering right now is about whether unfettered transparency (or attempts thereat) is a good thing or a bad thing. I tend to think it's bad, and perhaps you'll bear with me as I attempt to muddle out why.

One thing I'm musing is whether I'd be more inclined to support WikiLeaks were Bush still in office. On the whole, I didn't trust the Bush administration to do just about anything right, either because of a lack of competence or scruple, or both. I tend to trust the Obama administration a great deal more, though not entirely. (I'm not particularly sure that unmanned drone attacks, for example, are either moral or effective.) Does my dim view of this leak have to do with its weakening a president I tend to support, or is it more principled? If this had happened during the Bush years, would I have supported it more because I viewed it as a corrective to some errant policy (extraordinary rendition, for example) or merely because it embarrassed an administration I despised? I honestly don't know.

Further, what balance is appropriate when determining what should see the light of day? Somewhere I've read about government bureaucrats and their tendency to want to classify information as a general rule. (I think it was somewhere on Plain Blog, but I'm not sure and I can't find it.) In a nutshell, the random State Department apparatchik whose job it is to decide if Document A should be classified or not is more likely to classify it through a combination of self-protection and the tendency of bureaucracies toward secrecy. I don't believe that a government should be able to hide whatever it wants to and expect us to trust that it does so judiciously. Leaks can provide an important corrective, examples of which aren't hard to recall.

From what I understand (and, given the mass of information released, it's probably too early for anyone to know with certainty), most of the leaks aren't all that damaging. But how damaging is too damaging? By tipping the hand of Iran's neighbors, will it now be harder to contain its nuclear ambitions? Fearing future leaks, will the diplomatic corps be less inclined to communicate readily within the community? Who draws that line and how? I certainly don't trust the likes of Julian Assange to do so.

While I think it is inflammatory and intellectually sloppy to characterize WikiLeaks as a terrorist organization (whatever meaning that word has will be rapidly eroded by slapping it on everyone whose actions one decries), it certainly seems like it may be a treasonous one. My understanding of the legal definition of treason is rudimentary, but I think one could plausibly argue that the leaked information gives aid to Iran. (Perhaps espionage is a more correct term.) It's hard to know the motives of Assange's source, but helping the US hardly seems like one of them.

I wish we had a country we could trust to keep only those secrets that ensured it security, and not ones that hid its bad decisions. I don't know that such a country has ever existed, or ever will. I don't know a good metric for "good" leaks vs. "bad," and would sincerely love to see anyone's suggestions in the comments. But these leaks seem to serve no purpose other than to embarrass the United States diplomatic corps, and to complicate their work. It's hard to defend them, and I don't think I'm inclined to try.

Update: More and better thoughts from Sully.

Give this man an award

Wow.

Wow.

I... wow.

If there were an award for the most tortured, contrived pile of metaphorical balderdash to be found on the Internet, I doubt I could find a more deserving nominee than this astounding essay about the "dark meat/white meat" debate. Its author, Ron Rosenbaum, is to be congratulated for both the triteness of his analysis (racism!) and for finding a way to combine a discussion of pork with this quote from Sartre:

Slime is the agony of water.

Yes. YES!! The agony of water! Slime! Pass the gravy!

This essay is the agony of its readers, and yet must truly be read to be believed. Enjoy.

The contribution of the severely disabled

Recently, I was listening to NPR and they were reading comments people had sent in on previously aired stories. I missed the original story, but I gather that the story was about a family concerned that Medicaid cuts were making it difficult for them to care for their severely disabled adult daughter at home. Instead, she had to go to a nursing home. The host said they received a lot of mail along the following lines: "I think it's fair to ask what her severely disabled daughter contributes, and why we should have pay for it."

So enough people feel passionately about this that they bothered to write in to a radio station. As resident mom-of-a-severely-disabled-kid, I think it's worth a response.

First, set aside the contribution question for a moment (I'll get back to it below). The fact remains that caring for a disabled person is insanely expensive. In his first four months of life, my son racked up a solid seven figures worth of medical bills. If I were not insured, or had crappy insurance, my family would have been utterly devastated through no fault of our own. Even with my great insurance, I don't have coverage for medical equipment. If my kid needs a wheelchair, leg braces, etc. etc. I could be out tens of thousands - so we have supplemental Medicaid. Parents of kids with special needs did not do this to our kids; disability happened to them. So there are three choices: Medicaid, bankrupted caregivers, or exposing the disabled on mountaintops. Medicaid is far from painless, but nonetheless I think it is fairly clear which choice has the smallest harm-to-benefit ratio.

Second, I think it's a question worth answering what the disabled can contribute. My son cannot live a full life. He will never live entirely independently, he will not contribute to the economic life of his community in any meaningful way (which is what I gather the commenter must have meant by "contribute"), he will not have children and raise a family.

So here's what he's contributed so far (and he's only 15-months-old). He's made our family happy. He gives hugs and kisses and smiles and giggles. He babbles and throws toys and his face absolutely lights up when he sees a member of his family or his stuffed dog. I am delighted pretty much every time I see him.

I understand that when people think about what it would be like to have a special needs kid, they think it would be utterly devastating. And we were utterly devastated when we found out, and it's still not what we would choose. I know when I heard all the moms talking about how much they loved their special needs kids, I thought they were lying - either to the world or themselves. I thought they felt guilt-tripped into pretending they loved their kid. Maybe I didn't put it into so many words, but that's what I believed. But I am not pretending when I say my kid makes me so happy. Maybe I'm self-deluded - who knows? But either way, my kid makes several people feel happy every day - which is not true of everyone.

Also, he makes people more morally virtuous. He has given my life a greater sense of purpose. In caring for him and coming to terms with his condition, my husband and I have both become more sensitive, understanding, patient people. He has done the same (perhaps to a lesser degree) for other relatives, his nanny, and even friends. Even strangers! I joke around that when I go out in public with him, I frequently have to have The Talk - where a stranger is moved to near tears and tells me how beautiful the disabled are, or how we all deal with life's obstacles but become stronger - and I just want to buy a gallon of milk, thanks. But the thing is, just seeing my kid reminds people of the better angels of their nature. Just being nice to him reminds them of their most moral selves, and reinforces a sense of treating everyone as valuable.

When we look at people's contributions only in an economic sense, and thus discount the contributions of the disabled, we are traveling down a path when we see people as commodities. My kid forces people to stop and think. If he is valuable, there is something more valuable in him than merely in what he can perform. When people respond positively to his presence, they are reminded that people are not valuable only in terms of economic contributions. He forces us to see everyone as less of a commodity, and more of a person.

I honestly think his mere presence makes many people better people. And again, not everyone who had all intact faculties can say that.

Plagiarism

During a semester in which I've already caught two plagiarizers, including one who copy-and-pasted from a website called (I kid you not) freeessays.com, I come to the subject of plagiarism pre-irritated. But I have to say, Ed Dante (not his real name) managed to kick me up a notch from irritated to rankled. Mr. Dante has written a confessional essay describing his career as an academic essayist for hire, supplying papers for lying students who wish to pass them off as their own work. Maybe "confessional" implies Mr. Dante feels guilty. He does not.

He writes:

My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can't detect, that you can't defend against, that you may not even know exists.

You would be amazed by the incompetence of your students' writing. I have seen the word "desperate" misspelled every way you can imagine. And these students truly are desperate. They couldn't write a convincing grocery list, yet they are in graduate school. They really need help. They need help learning and, separately, they need help passing their courses. But they aren't getting it.

Of course, I know you are aware that cheating occurs. But you have no idea how deeply this kind of cheating penetrates the academic system, much less how to stop it.

Mr. Dante likes to feel smarter than his professors were, and one gets the feeling that that is one of his main motivations in his chosen profession. And he feels smarter by believing that professors don't know that plagiarism is a pervasive problem. But let me tell you this. We are aware that students cheat. We are aware that we don't catch everyone. We are aware that this generation tends to see rules against plagiarism not as moral rules, but as arbitrary rules that must be followed if one is to jump through the hoops, like not picking one's nose at a job interview. And we are plenty aware of the incompetence of student writing. We get emails from students, too, you know (more than he does!). Plenty of terrible writers still don't use a plagiarism service. And there are plenty of students who are unaware that their writing is so bad that they need such a service.

For those of you who have ever mentored a student through the writing of a dissertation, served on a thesis-review committee, or guided a graduate student through a formal research process, I have a question: Do you ever wonder how a student who struggles to formulate complete sentences in conversation manages to produce marginally competent research? How does that student get by you?

I thought this was interesting. I was very surprised that he said he wrote graduate level work. We have several meetings with our advisers along the way to a PhD. I can't imagine faking one's way through those if one hadn't written the work. Are other disciplines vastly different?

And why does he do it?

How dispiriting to find out that college was just another place where grades were grubbed, competition overshadowed personal growth, and the threat of failure was used to encourage learning.

Although my university experience did not live up to its vaunted reputation, it did lead me to where I am today. I was raised in an upper-middle-class family, but I went to college in a poor neighborhood. I fit in really well: After paying my tuition, I didn't have a cent to my name. I had nothing but a meal plan and my roommate's computer. But I was determined to write for a living, and, moreover, to spend these extremely expensive years learning how to do so. When I completed my first novel, in the summer between sophomore and junior years, I contacted the English department about creating an independent study around editing and publishing it. I was received like a mental patient. I was told, "There's nothing like that here." I was told that I could go back to my classes, sit in my lectures, and fill out Scantron tests until I graduated.

Well, if all one had to do to get a university degree was take Scantron tests, shouldn't Mr. Dante be out of a job? But seriously, this is among the more ridiculous post-hoc moral rationalizations I've come across. There are plenty of very valuable things to do in life, such as having children or working in soup kitchens or writing novels, for which universities do not give course credit. Universities are not in the business of granting degrees for anything which a student decides is educational for them. They grant degrees which indicate completion of a certain kind and level of research and writing and analysis.

But I understand that in simple terms, I'm the bad guy. I see where I'm vulnerable to ethical scrutiny.

But pointing the finger at me is too easy. Why does my business thrive? Why do so many students prefer to cheat rather than do their own work?

Say what you want about me, but I am not the reason your students cheat.

Yes, in simple terms, he's the bad guy. If you want to be so simple. If you want to get really really complex, of course, he's not responsible at all. Accomplices never are, especially when they don't get course credit for their novels.

I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow.

Interesting that plagiarism is an ethical problem for seminary students and not failed novelists. But what if the seminary student wanted to get course credit for her, like, totally new liturgy? But was told that didn't count for course credit? Wouldn't she then be justified?

You know what's never happened? I've never had a client complain that he'd been expelled from school, that the originality of his work had been questioned, that some disciplinary action had been taken. As far as I know, not one of my customers has ever been caught.

He's right about one thing. What can we do? The reason he's never heard about it from his customers is not that we don't know what goes on. There are times when I know a paper must be plagiarized. But what am I supposed to do? Call aside a student and say, "This is too intelligent/coherent/literate/on topic for you to have actually written"? We usually can't prove it. And so lying is rewarded over effort, plagiarists get spots in grad schools and jobs they don't deserve, and an atmosphere of distrust continues to be built between professors and students.

That's one reason

Oh, Politico. How I love your shallow analysis. Your obsessive coverage of all things political, to the exclusion of anything that has even the faintest whiff of policy. Your ineptly hidden conservative bias. You're the "Entertainment Tonight" of politics. Bless you.

My favorite offering of yours just now is this analysis of why Sharron Angle failed to beat Harry Reid, a politician roughly as popular as amoebic dysentery. The culprit? Poor campaigning.

It’s widely recognized that in the marquee 2010 Senate race, Majority Leader Harry Reid ran a nearly flawless, textbook campaign, an operation so extraordinary that it enabled him to defy an almost certain political death.

It turns out he got some inadvertent inside help. Interviews with Nevada and Washington Republicans familiar with the campaign of Reid’s GOP opponent, Sharron Angle, describe a not-ready-for-prime-time effort that was equally astonishing — a model of dysfunction that was as bad as Reid’s campaign was good.

I must admit that I had missed the "widely recognized" praise that the Reid campaign received. In all seriousness, I'm sure his campaign had to be very, very good for his career to have survived. Perhaps it really was "extraordinary," I dunno.

On the flipside, I'm hardly surprised to read that Angle's campaign was a complete mess. I particularly enjoy this anecdote:

In one occasion that was emblematic of the chaos that marked the fall effort, [Angle advisor Terry] Campbell nearly scuttled an appearance by Sen. John McCain while the 2008 GOP presidential nominee was midair on the way to an Angle rally at The Orleans Hotel and Casino.

While McCain was en route to the event, held five days before Election Day, Angle was bombarded with calls from teary tea party activists who begged her not to campaign with the Arizona senator because they contended he was not conservative enough to appear on the same stage with her.

The source of the emotional appeals from some of Angle’s most loyal followers? Campbell himself did the urging, according to multiple sources with first-hand knowledge of the incident. Much to the relief of national Republicans, Angle ignored their pleas, and the McCain event went on without a hitch.

If this is true, it's hilarious. I cherish the idea that a high-ranking campaign advisor would try to scrap an appearance with a marquee GOP politician while said politician was on his way to the event.

But the thing is, the event still actually went off, no matter the drama surrounding it. The public never knew about Campbell's interference, so it's something of a stretch of blame Angle's loss on problems like this.

My theory? Sharron Angle lost because she is a complete lunatic. As distasteful as Nevadans may find Harry Reid, they clearly found the idea of being represented by Ms. "Second Amendment Remedies" even more so. (It probably didn't help to be a blatantly anti-Hispanic race-baiter in a state with a growing Hispanic vote.)

Now, it stands to reason that a cretinous maniac would run a lousy campaign, so there's kind of a "chicken/egg" problem going on here. But I happen to believe that even a lackluster campaign could have defeated Harry Reid with a candidate less patently unhinged than Sharron "No Questions" Angle.