Ha, Ha... Ha?

As I listened to the kids hash out whom to invite, it became clear that to get work, a comic had to be at once funny—genuinely funny—and also deeply respectful of a particular set of beliefs. These beliefs included, but were in no way limited to, the following: women, as a group, should never be made to feel uncomfortable; people whose sexual orientation falls beyond the spectrum of heterosexuality must be reassured of their special value; racial injustice is best addressed in tones of bitter anguish or inspirational calls to action; Muslims are friendly helpers whom we should cherish; and belonging to any potentially “marginalized” community involves a crippling hypersensitivity that must always be respected.
Caitlin Flanagan “That’s Not Funny!”

I remember, in the late 1980s, being a college student, a possessed of what now strikes me as both a crippling hypersensitivity to issues of black-white relations and a complete insensitivity to issues that were of importance to anyone else - including race. But I was also stereotypical nerd - I played role-playing games  and read science-fiction and fantasy novels. I didn't date and didn't drink and the closest that I ever came to campus entertainment was an abortive attempt to go to a blues club that we mistakenly thought was only a few blocks away. So I can't speak to whether or not the “particular set of beliefs” straitjacketed on-campus entertainers then as it is said to now. I suspect that it did not, if only for the reason that I assume that the parents of my peers were a lot like my own parents. Had I called my parents to complain about a stand-up comedian hurting my feelings with jokes that referenced a gay man and his “sassy black friend,” I would have regretted it. Why, my parents would have wondered, was I making them pay for a long-distance telephone call for something that had nothing to do with either my schoolwork, housing arrangements or the financing thereof? My father was angry enough with me as it was, just for taking a stand on my choice of schools - there would have been no wisdom in further antagonizing him over trivialities.

Not that my parents weren't sensitive to the idea that being black would make me the butt of jokes - and thinly veiled expressions of disrespect, dismissiveness and even outright hostility described as “jokes” - but for them, part of going to college was to prepare me for a world in which there was no shelter from the malice and racism that permeated society. It might not have been the Army, but the goal was to toughen me all the same. And for the most part, my sensitivity to issues of race - a sensitivity that bordered on outright paranoia - was of little concerns to the rest of the people I went to school with. They had their own concerns to deal with, and making sure that I found everything on campus to be inoffensive was not one of them.

Of course, in the end, it wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as I would have told you it was when I was 20. Which I think was part of the central organizing principle of our parent's generation. Compared to what my parents endured when they were young, I was kicking back on East Street - I could handle the fact that my peers were occasionally unafraid to call me “nigger” to my face. Unlike the South that they’d grown up in, it was unlikely to ever go any farther than that. But in the same way that genuine First-World Problems represent actual difficulties for people, being an outsider in school came with its hurdles, and I can understand not only simply not wanting to deal with them, but not wanting anyone else to deal with them. I’d much rather than my niece not have to deal with the same antagonisms that I did - I’m simply at a loss to come up with a way for her to be prepared for the world she’ll find as an adult if she doesn’t.

In that sense, I’m more Conservative (in a political sense) than a lot of other people of my generation, who have children old enough now that they’re in, or have just graduated from, college. I don’t have any confidence that we can Newspeak our way to a better society by using a younger generation as shields. I realized that some of my schoolmates were were reticent to refer to me as “nigger” when I was in the room had no such compunctions when I exited it, and that enforcing outward obeisance merely resulted in me not knowing how people really felt about me. And while I found knives in the chest unpleasant, there were far preferable than knives in the back. Demanding obedience while cloaking it in “respect” simply encourages deception and hiding who one really is. It is when leaving behind old stereotypes and prejudices behind visibly improves one’s life that changes really begin to take hold.

Wedged

As you might guess, I'll be passing on the sticker.

One of the things that I came to understand as an adult is that while politics had an effect on many aspects of my life, the actual identity of the person in the Oval Office rarely, if ever, made a direct, noticeable, difference. And so I learned to be more interested in who my Representatives and Senators were, and who was being elected into office at the state and local level.

But we live in a political environment where the Apocalypse is seemingly one wrong vote away. And as the two major parties become more and more polarized, they have made an open lack of respect for each other into a virtue as they see to energize and mobilize their base voters.

As you may have guessed, I'm no more thankful for the Obama presidency than I was for anyone else's, and I take exception to terming the 10 participants in yesterday's Republican primary debate "fools." Even though I couldn't see myself voting for more than one or two of them, if it came to that, I don't see them as being any more foolish than any other person who conducts a serious run for the White House, regardless of how little I agree with their policies.

In the end, the calculus is simple: Republican voters are Americans too, and I don't see how the nation fixes some of the issues that ail it if all the two parties have for one another is animosity and spite. Contrary to popular mythology, the United States has never been a unified populace. If we ever want it to be one, dialing back on things like this would be helpful. But that would take something of a truce - not between the Democrats and Republican parties/political establishments, but between their broader voting bases. Which seems unlikely. So I suspect that we'll simply see this sort of thing go on, at least for the immediate future.

Presto, Change-o

How do we really know that one species evolved into another?
"How do we know that evolution is really happening?"

One of the factors that drives skepticism about the process of evolution (outside of a religious conviction of humanity holding a special, divinely-ordained place in the Universe and/or that only a creator deity can be a source of ethics) is the idea that it entails one lifeform "turning into" another lifeform. This can conjure up an image of change that takes an entire population, and over time, transmogrifies them, in a coordinated fashion, into a population of entirely different lifeforms. And one of the things that can help drive that misconception is the way laypeople talk about evolution.

Now, I say this as a layperson myself - after all*, I'm a project manager, not an evolutionary biologist. And, as a layperson, I likely often make mistakes when talking or writing about Darwinian evolution. So I'm not making the case that everyone always has to get everything right. But I do think that it's somewhat important to avoid certain specific phrasings that provide fodder for critics and motivated skeptics. Sure, the process of evolution can, and inevitably will, given enough time, alter an entire species to a point where, if you could re-create an archaic example of that same species, interbreeding with the modern population would no longer be possible. (This process is termed "anagenesis.") This isn't say that the particular word choice should never be used - only that it's worth being careful with, so as not to engender confusion or needless controversy.

People taking the statements of the uninitiated as gospel, however, is something that I encounter all the time. Especially when those statements can be construed to fit in with preconceptions about the topic at hand.

* (Feel free to insert "Damnit, Jim!" here.)

Ossification

Oh, I've seen the videos, and I guess, to me, they are a sign of a sort of a gradual moral degradation that occurred. Whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, to talk in this way, suggests to me just a hardening of the heart that happens when you, I guess, deal with this on a daily basis and are not - don't remain morally sensitive to the issues involved.
David Brooks. "Week In Politics: 'Black Lives Matter,' Planned Parenthood" NPR.

My first job out of college was working with children who had been taken out of their homes for abuse or neglect. These were children who could tell you some stories. It's been some twenty years since I left that job, and I can still remember many of them. And one thing that surprises some people when I tell those stories is the dispassionate way in which I do it.

One of the things that I've noticed is that there appears to be an expectation that horror never simply shades into everyday experience. That the fiftieth terrible story of abuse of a child should be just as unsettling as the first. But this isn't how people operate - instead, we adapt. It's like anything else that becomes a constant in one's life - eventually, it all fades into the background noise. Or people just don't make it. When I worked with children, a lot of people just didn't make it. One washed out within four days. The average length of time that people stayed on the job was six months. I was there for four and a half years, and a number of my co-workers had been there that entire time. And that meant that we had witnessed a steady stream of young people (this isn't a line of work you go into in your thirties - or at any point after you're making real money) come in the door with high hopes and high ideals, and decide that they couldn't deal with it. The work demanded a heart harder than the norm, because otherwise, the emotion would overwhelm you.

But it made talking with other people about work difficult. "How can you be so cavalier?" people would ask. In my less thoughtful moods, I would reply: "How quaint. You think there is a choice." David Brooks may see a need to remain morally sensitive to the issues involved, but when it's something that you have to do day in and day out, that moral sensitivity isn't an advantage. And so, it fades, so that you can do the job better. Because, on the job, you have to talk to the other people who do the job. And they don't have time for beating around the bush or euphemism.

The Planned Parenthood "sting" videos play on this. Insiders (and supposed insiders) talking business, but in a way that comes across as insensitive to those not in the business. If they are a sign of moral degradation, then it's an occupational hazard.

Character, Pictured

Here is a picture that has been making the rounds on LinkedIn:

And I get it. Reputation, being simply other people's impressions of you, isn't as important as the real person that you are, or strive to be.

But whenever I see that picture, I'm reminded of this one:

Copyright Matthew Lee High. https://www.flickr.com/photos/matthigh/2982698709

George Johnson mistakenly earned a reputation as a horse thief with the people of Tombstone, Arizona. So they hanged him. Later, they learned that he'd purchased the horse, in good faith, from the actual thief. And so the poetic grave marker. I suspect that it brought the late Mister Johnson scant comfort.

So if it's all the same to you, I think that I will be just as concerned with my reputation as I am with my character. Because while it is true that it better to actually be a good person than simply to be thought one, it's better to be thought a good person than to be thought a bad one.