My recent post about feminism and Hillary Clinton was probably a bit obscure. Certainly I think it’s sad that the public accepts the claim that Clinton’s female supporters whining about her loss is feminism but the reason I think it’s worthy of attention is that it’s part of a larger trend: the confusion of (simplistic) emotional sympathy for women with feminism. Now in a certain sense one might be able to identify feminism with concern for women as a class but it’s the confusion of feminism with sympathy for individuals as women that I think is so sad and misguided. In the abstract this distinction may seem quite subtle, even pointless, but a few quick examples should make it clear that there is an important difference between the two attitudes.

Whether or not US women are blocked or discouraged from achieving high political office is certainly a valid feminist concern. After all the existence of a systemic bias against voting for a woman to be president is a harm to woman as a class. On the other hand strong support of a particular candidate because she is a woman and as such you identify/sympathize with her is not a feminist issue. It’s just another example of the same type of sexism women fought so hard to eliminate in the workplace¹. This isn’t to say there is no acceptable reason to vote for a female candidate because of her gender; you might think this was the only/best way to overcome anti-female bias. However, it’s pretty clear that most of the women trying to suggest Hillary’s loss is the result of rampant gender discrimination² aren’t doing so because they thought out the issue in the abstract and came to the conclusion that this was the most effective way to advance the cause of equality. After all if this was the result of that kind of strategic thinking about the aims of women as a group you would think they would find plenty of reasons not to publicly tie gender equity to Hillary Clinton³ or even decide that the interests of racial equality outweighed those of gender equality here. Rather, these women are driven by their empathetic sympathy for Hillary as another woman (enhanced by the perception of gender based slights in the campaign) and have let that distract them from any interest they may have had in really achieving equity for women as a class.

Another good example is the attitude of women in various graduate programs toward the admission of women and affirmative action for women. Now one might be able to put together some pretty reasonable arguments justifying offering women special incentives to enter math and science programs but I suspect the best such arguments would all direct our resources toward the college years and below where the gender gap gets created. Yet the strongest support is often for programs that offer female graduate students priority in admissions, cash incentives or special mentoring programs despite the fact that the primary effect of these expenditures is probably on the choice of school of female graduate students. If the support for these programs really resulted from a desire to achieve gender equity you would at least expect the question of efficacy to be of supreme interest and any support of these programs to be openly conditioned on empirical support for their efficacy. However, it is quite evident that these programs enjoy strong emotional support prior to any thought or analysis about their larger effects on society’s attitude toward women.

It seems evident that the real psychological motivation behind the support for these programs is simple sympathy and identification. No one sat down and decided to support these programs because they thought they would accomplish some goal. They supported them because they felt emotional empathy towards women so they want to support women. In other words it’s the emotional pull of group allegiance/support that motivates these policies not rational analysis of their likely effect. If you are still skeptical consider the different way we treat the (assumed) subtle social pressure discouraging women from entering certain fields from that pressuring them into entering other fields. In other words why don’t we take measures to counteract the social forces pushing women into a traditional field like teaching or nursing. If our interest was in undoing the sexist stereotypes that society has packed into girls then we should be equally diligent in discouraging women from being nurses, teachers or primary care givers as we are in encouraging them to enter traditionally male fields. On the other hand if people were really just reacting to a vague feeling of sympathy it makes perfect sense why they would only offer women encouragements.

Maybe I’m mistaken but my strong sense is that feminism used to be something much more noble, even if sometimes silly and misguided. People would be genuinely troubled about engaging in traditional feminine roles since they saw that encouragement could perpetuate stereotypes just as much as discouragement. However, women (and men) eventually decided they weren’t really interested in rejecting most of our gender stereotypes and assumptions and the visible aspects of feminism decayed into mere group affinity and sympathy for women. In a future post I will explain why I think this decayed version of feminism does so much harm to the cause of gender equity but enough blogging for today.

In the 19th and 20th century courageous women like Susan B. Anthony struggled against vehement opposition to secure women the right to vote. In the 70s and 80s feminists fought against pervasive discrimination and struggled to live up to their notions of gender equity (even when misguided). But now that we have a woman losing the democratic nomination by hair’s breadth Hillary Clinton and some of her supporters are trying to lay claim to this legacy to complain about Hillary”s loss. Has feminism really descended this low? Gone from a noble struggle for equal treatment to an excuse to complain when a candidate you identified with based on gender losses.

Now the video from the women’s media center certainly succeeds in convincing me that Chris Matthews is a sexist jerk but aside from that it’s fallacious confusion of the media’s constant microanalysis of electability and likability with sexism. Asking whether Hillary will succeed in appealing to men is no more sexist than asking if Barack will succeed in winning white votes. Anyone who hasn’t been living in a cave for the past 12 years has seen the stupid discussions on cable news channels of whether candidate X has an appealing enough smile, will suffer for being short or has appropriate choice in ties. Sadly, not subjecting Hillary to this ridiculous microanalyses would be sexist response to her candidate.

Of course if you try hard enough you can read sexism into anything but `likability’ isn’t some minor issues that’s only trotted out as an excuse not to vote for a woman, likability is the essence of electoral politics. As we were endlessly reminded by the pundits the voters in ’04 would have rather had a beer with Bush than Kerry. If it weren’t for the inconvenient fact that Kerry was a man this would be another perfect example of the sexist media. Of course if you just change the channel you can get an equally compelling account of how the racist media has been biased against Obama.

Listening to the recent complaints about sexism that have flooded the media over the last few days one would think that Hillary’s likability problem was a penalty she was paying for behaving too masculine but that’s a load of crap. Hillary played best with the electorate when she highlighted her strength, resolve and experience (3am phone). She alienated voters in the debates not with her confident aggressive stances but with her passive aggressive whining. If anything Hillary was given more leeway than a man would have been given when she ‘observed’ that she seemed to be getting the harder questions instead of angrily lecturing the questioner or keeping a dignified silence. Some people just come across better than others on TV (supposedly Hillary is much more likable in person).

Now this sort of poor sportsmanship from Clinton supporters is bad enough but trying to claim the moral high ground in the fight against sexism is particularly galling and hypocritical. Most of these women complaining about Clinton’s sexist treatment support her (partially) because of they identify with her over gender. These aren’t the rightful inheritors of the struggle for gender equity but rather (for the most part) a group that is happy to impose different expectations on men and women when it suits their purposes and complain about it when it doesn’t. The noble feminist crusaders of earlier generations understood that gender equity would come with a cost. Now, instead, we see casual complainers who seem to think that gender equity means nothing but indulging their feelings of sympathy for other women.

No one could reasonably deny that our society still holds men and women to different standards. I certainly would prefer a culture that treated men and women more similarly but far from working towards gender equity this sort of feminism as sympathy for/indentification with other women is one of the greatest forces holding back equality. When women reward other women with sympathy and support when they are subject to aggressive verbal/intellectual attacks but tells men to toughen up it sends a message about how it’s appropriate for women to act and men to act towards them. If these women were really interested in equality they should be working to eliminate the double standard that says it’s okay to be aggressive and critical of another man but unacceptable and mean to do so to a woman. So long as society sends the message that women are fragile and need to be treated with special delicacy it will also view men as more strong and capable.

Admittedly these last comments have limited direct applicability to the Hillary campaign but they are an indictment of the modern conception of feminism as sympathy for other women that underlies this supposed feminist cause for Hillary. Not only are their complaints largely unjustified it is people like them, not Chris Matthews who make sure that men and women continue to be treated differently in our society. Maybe as a society we simply don’t want real gender equity but what we would need to do to achieve it is to stop treating women as if they needed special sympathy and protection.

Today on the front page of the dailycal is an article discussing the hardships student parents wil face as a result of UC budget cuts. The people interviewed in the article seem to think we should be moved by the unfairness of reducing the child care subsidy provided to graduate student parents and support the Graduate Assembly’s resolution to exempt child care from the proposed budget cuts. While I can empathize with any graduate student who faces tough choices because of our low wages (particularly at UC Berkeley) the universities subsidy of child care is blatantly discriminatory against people with other lifestyle choices and should be totally abolished not saved. I mean we surely wouldn’t tolerate a program that offered straight couples who wanted to have their own apartment (rather than rooms in a shared house) a subsidized low rent apartment but denied gay couples the same benefit so why do we tolerate a program that discriminates on this lifestyle choice?

My fiance and I will never have children but this hardly means that graduate school imposes no hardships on us. She is a graduate student at Harvard and I am finishing up at UC Berkeley and just as the low salary of graduate students makes it difficult to raise a child it also makes it tough to afford flights across the country. Yet does the university offer me a subsidy to visit my fiance the way it does to graduate student parents? No! Worse, this term UC Berkeley gave me a MWF teaching assignment (instead of the Tuesday one I requested) that made it impossible to visit my fiance over the weekends. But long distance relationships don’t get any consideration by the university while graduate students with children get automatic first dibs on teaching slots that are convenient for their child care arrangements. Moreover, the department is expected to bend over for graduate students with children if they need a particular day free while it’s just tough luck for me if I want to visit my fiance but can’t find anyone to substitute.

In light of this blatant unfairness does the article offer us any particular justification as to why we should subsidize those students who make the choice to have children? No, we are merely given a string of observations about how difficult it is to raise a child as a graduate student.

“If you have an infant, it’s $20,000 a year just in child care fees,” Keeley-Saldana said. “(The cost) really prohibits students from seeking their higher education degrees.”
…
With a new baby on the way, Cruz said the heightened costs would be “impossible” for he and his wife to meet.¹
…
Senior Dana Parsons, 32, said campus child care services are essential for student parents such as herself.
….
“Had it not been for subsidized care on campus, I would not have been able to attend school full-time,” she wrote in an e-mail.
…
“There is no good solution,” she said. “I’m not saying that I don’t think it’s fair for Early Childhood to be spared from cuts, but I’m hoping that they really do value the children on campus.”

First of all let’s make this absolutely clear. Failing to subsidize child care doesn’t force anyone to stay at home, leave graduate school or otherwise deny them the benefits of higher education. The lack of subsidized child care merely forces people to choose between the benefits of using their resources to have a family or attend school. This is no different from the fact that without subsidies or special considerations Sharon and I must choose between graduate school and getting to see each other more than rarely during the school year. It’s blatantly unfair to offer monetary subsidies and preferences to one lifestyle choice without the slightest official consideration for the other.

Of course sometimes radically unfair policies can be justified if they offer sufficient benefit for the society at large. However, in order to overcome the presumption against unfair policies such as this one would need compelling evidence that this was really the most cost-effective way to increase the number of US graduates in math/science or the equivalent. Since women make up a majority of graduate students even finding that subsidized child care did more to retain women than men wouldn’t justify the program.² Even restricting such subsidies only to the fields where women were underrepresented and granting the bizarre idea that numerical underrepresentation is ipso facto unfair³ one would need to establish that this kind of subsidy was particularly effective (more so than just giving women extra pay) to justify discriminating against those women who didn’t plan to have children.

I’m not going to even go into how this policy implicitly discriminates against those who have a more difficult time having children (the infertile, gays and lesbians). However, I will note that offering these benefits only to parents and not to those of use with other lifestyle preferences goes directly against the valid feminist justifications for legally required maternity leave and other bars against the implicit discrimination against women smuggled in via career punishment for maternity. However, unlike the lauditory goal of stopping corporations from imposing unfairly excessive penalties for one lifestyle choice (partially because of female stereotypes) we have a situation where the university is unfairly benefiting one lifestyle choice over another.

Of course I realize that few people are likely to be convinced by a logical argument in this situation. Most people want to have children themselves so, as is common with discrimination, it seems right and proper to them that people like themselves should receive a benefit. Moreover, the people who benefit from this program are easy to see while the small cost that all graduate students pay as a result is diffuse. So if you aren’t yet convinced just ask yourself this. How would you feel if things were reversed? Suppose I got subsidized air fare to go visit my fiance and got first pick of teaching assignments so my schedule would allow these visits but graduate student parents received no official consideration at all. If you find that disturbing tell me what’s different about this situation.

Today KQED (NPR affiliate) ran a program entitled Secret Asian Woman about the perceived racial inequities that Dmae Roberts undergos as a half-asian woman who can pass as white. For the most part I stay quiet on the particulars of these sorts of seemingly oversensitive claims of racial injustice since I lack enough personal experience with the situation to productively comment. However, while I’m not half-asian myself my fiance is and after dating for five years or so (and explicitly asked her opinion for this post) I’m quite confident that I’m not merely being naive about how people treat half-asian women. Given the social pressure not to dispute these sorts of claims and the potential for even false perceptions of racial injustice to cause suffering and undermine our resolve to combat genuine racism I feel it’s important for people to speak up against unjustified hypersensitive claims of racism¹.

I don’t doubt that Dmae Roberts has experienced genuine (and horrific) racism in her life². It’s certainly no overreaction to call her grandmother’s expressions of disappointment that Dmae’s mother couldn’t have been white racist. The rejection and poor treatment of her and her brother by other young children on account of her race was also literally racist. However, as Dmae admits herself at the time she never thought it was a huge deal when she would be made fun of by other kids on account of her race. It is only in retrospect that she interprets it as being hugely significant. Obviously it’s awful how cruel children are are to anyone who doesn’t fit in but nothing she describes about their behavior is any worse than the way children treat those who are different on account of being nerds, having a skin condition or whatever other weakness they seize upon. As the victim of this kind of behavior myself I certainly don’t want to trivialize the harm of this behavior but we should avoid the fallacy of treating children’s cruelty as dramatically worse because it falls into a historically recognized category of adult cruelty. It’s not something we’d like to believe but children are incredibly cruel and we shouldn’t implicitly send the message that it’s okay because their cruelty is based on a child’s lisp than on their racial background.

It’s understandable that someone like Dmae would come to see the world through the lens of race, just as kids who grow up poor often come to see the world in terms of social class and smart academic kids can come to see things in terms of popularity and jocks vs. nerds. However, this fact doesn’t make it the case that talking about a “Chinese fire drill” is a racist remark. The etymology of the term is irrelevant since the users of the term don’t reflect on it and unlike terms like “negro” use of the term doesn’t suggest affiliation with any anti-Chinese prejudice. Racial theorists might want this term to be racist but the fact that in actual practice Asian-Americans aren’t offended when their white friends use the term makes it a non-racist term. Similar points can be made about other things Dmae brings up like people imitating the martial arts master from Karate Kid. It isn’t racist now because it doesn’t suggest any prejudice or dislike and the last thing we would ever want to do is widen the class of comments that we decide express prejudice. We want to reduce the potential for accidental offense not increase it.

This brings us to the central hypocripsy of Dmae’s piece, an attitude that puts decades of progress against racism at jeopardy. Most of the complaints Dmae makes about modern events (not her grandmother or being raised in the midwest) ultimately reduce to the fact that people recognize race and view it as a genuine matter of commonality or difference. She complains that people ask what ethnicity she is or inquire about how her parents got together. Dmae gets very upset when a friend of hers comments, in response to Dmae’s claim that she can tell that some other girl is also half-asian not white, that you can tell but we can’t. In other words her complaint is essentially that people identify themselves with their racial group yet the other half of the piece is all about Dmae having pride in being half-asian and making a big deal out of racial identity. Dmae comments several times that she feels particular kinship with other half-asians even expressing how grateful she is that there are now more people like her out there. But if your ethnic background dictates certain common experiences that are justifiable grounds to feel kinship with others surely then being white in America involves certain commonalities (if nothing else the failure to have these experiences) that justify talking about what ‘we’ experience.

What I find so objectionable about this piece is that it threatens to undo much of the progress we have made towards racial equality. Sharon (my fiance) just assumes that she isn’t being the subject of racial discrimination (except the benefit of having more guys who want to date her) and as a result doesn’t suffer racial resentment or anger. However, it’s very easy to make yourself see racial bias around every corner and that perception can cause almost as much pain as true racism. It’s this pain that is why it’s important to eliminate racism in the first place so it’s similarly important to prevent this false perception of racism, not to mention the harm this does to the cause of eliminating true racism. Equating your experience as a half-asian having to hear people comment about “Chinese fire drills” or asking about how your parents met with the sort of things that happened at Jena not only trivializes real racism but creates faux feelings of racial victimization where they don’t need to exist.

Dmae’s family may be racist and growing up in the midwest when she did may have exposed her to some racial prejudices but give me a break. A half-asian woman in the US in this day and age is hardly oppressed. Somehow having more guys who think you are hot doesn’t make me very sympathetic.

Update:

Just to be clear I think my fiance’s experience is particular to the treatment of half-asian women (it may not even extend to guys) by whites. I’ve certainly had other half-japanese friends complain about the way other japanese people treated them (primarily when they lived in japan). It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if half-asians generally had trouble being accepted by the asian communities but my fiance has never really seen a reason to go out of her way to socialize with people because they share her ethnicity (and knows less about Taiwan than I do…and I just watch CNN). In short I think this is a peculiarity of the way our culture regards Asians and Asian girls in particular (if anything the stereotyped as hot and smart which is hardly an oppressive burden). I think there is still real racial discrimination that goes on and if you are half-black you probably run into real problems as a result but that’s one of the reasons it’s important to distinguish being oversensitive and offended by the term “Chinese fire drill” and real racism that we need to work hard to eliminate.

In any case part of what I wanted to point out here was the harmfulness of an attitude that always takes individual accounts of racial difficulty at face value while discouraging others from speaking up to say, “Hey, I don’t have those kinds of problems.” In short it bothers me that I’ve yet to meet a half-asian girl who had any significant problems with discrimination by whites but yet this one woman’s story is broadcast on the radio as if it was totally typical.

If I hadn’t seen this on the AP website with my own eyes I would have assumed it came from the onion but apparently Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) really is protesting drunk driving in Grand Theft Auto IV. Yes, that’s right they feel that this game deserves to have it’s rating bumped up from mature to adults only because in addition to the ability to murder, rob banks, perform hits, pimp girls out and engage in wanton violence you can also drive drunk. This is so fucking stupid I’m actually at a loss for words. MADD seems to actually believe that we need to portray our murderously violent felons as believing in designated drivers “out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving.”

This is just one more example of the idiotic tunnel vision of groups like MADD and our general irrationality in calculating costs and benefits. Ultimately drunk driving does differ in kind from any other kind of careless driving. If you drive after having just a little bit to drink and double the chance you will kill someone it’s no more harmful than driving while slightly sleepy, upset about your breakup or anything else that also doubles your chance of committing vehicular homicide. One might try to argue that drunk driving is in general far more dangerous than say driving while drowsy but this isn’t so clear.

According to the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA) there are about 1,550 deaths annually where drowsiness is cited by the police as a factor. Admittedly this is a much lower number than the 15,829 alcohol related deaths reported in 2006. However, as the NHTSA says it is quite likely that drowsiness is radically under reported. After all the crash is quite likely to wake you up (or put you to sleep) and who is going to volunteer to the officer that they were too tired to be driving? Moreover, we should expect these figures to underrate the danger of drowsiness compared to drunk driving since drowsiness is not testable post-mortem while BAC is.

Of course it’s reasonable to think that strong moral condemnation of drunk driving is more likely to reduce deaths than similar moral condemnation of drowsy driving. I’m not sure¹. However, even if this justifies more severe treatment of drunk drivers and a greater degree of cultural condemnation it doesn’t justify importing your prejudices and unexamined emotional reactions into the debate. We should step back and take a look at which measures/responses are most likely to save lives and balance this against the costs. What I have a problem with is people judging drunk driving more harshly because drinking is considered `sinful’ while working late at the office is considered virtuous. The whole tone of moral outrage against drunk driving is a classic example of demonizing people who aren’t like you. Sure most of us may drink but even most drunk drivers likely don’t think of themselves as such (I’m a big man and only had…) while it’s much easier for everyone to identify with someone who had to drive while sleepy. Maybe we should try and change that but anytime we single out one activity like this I worry that we won’t make the correct trade offs.

If you arrived at this page by following a link I posted in a comment discusson with the claim it was child pornography (which I neither approve of nor posses) you’ve done the same thing that allowed the FBI to get extensive search warrants to look for child porn on the computers or in the mail of those who followed the link. While this behavior may not break new legal ground the fact that otherwise law abiding people are willing to follow this link out of mere curiosity, skepticism or the desire to see if I was telling the truth suggests that merely following a link claiming to offer child porn is not a good reason to believe that the person who did so is a bad person.

Additionally I have a significant problem with the idea that merely checking to see if something is child porn could itself be a crime. In particular this seems to have troubling free speech implications. The first ammendment has long been held to protect the consumption of media as well as it’s production. Now there is a good argument that child porn as the product of a criminal act ought to be exempt but the supreme court has ruled that computer generated child porn is protected by the first amendment. If it is illegal to follow the link because it might be real rather than CG child porn this seems to raise troubling issues about your first amendment rights. Moreover, surely you have a first amendment right to read media that is titled to be child porn but isn’t and since you can’t know what the content is until you actually view it how can clicking on the link itself constitutionally qualify as a crime?

Now one might argue that clicking on the link isn’t a crime, it only gives probably cause to believe a crime has been committed. True, I agree that members of a forum populated by pedophiles and perhaps advocates for legalization of child sex/porn are very likely to also possess child porn but clicking on the link is not evidence of a specifc crime and relies on impermissible considerations. It’s also true that people who belong to NORML are likely to have pot at home but surely we don’t want the government to be able to justify searches based on our protected first ammendment activity.

Anyway I haven’t had time to really think this through or research it so I might be missing something but these are my initial thoughts.

I used to wonder why no one argued over affirmative action using practical evidence based approaches to gauge it’s effectiveness in attaining some desired end. I now wonder how I could have been so hopelessly naive. People can’t even parse simple remarks like those Geraldine Ferraro made to the Daily Breeze,

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” she continued. “And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” Ferraro does not buy the notion of Obama as the great reconciler.

“I was reading an article that said young Republicans are out there campaigning for Obama because they believe he’s going to be able to put an end to partisanship,” Ferraro said, clearly annoyed. “Dear God! Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship – that’s the way our country is.”

I’ve included the second paragraph to make the context clear. Ferraro is obviously a bit irked by the bizarre messianic conception many people have of Obama and the perception that Clinton’s actions are frequently seen as base political gamesmenship while they see the same actions by Obama as grand leadership. Now I actually think that is a compelling argument to vote for Obama. This skill is the essence of political talent and a useful attribute to have in a canidate or leader. However, it suggests that Ferraro is likely speaking out of understandable personal frustration rather than the devious political calculation some of the media are suggesting. But understood as an off the cuff remark what did it mean and should anyone get upset about it?

Well Ferraro obviously means that in some possible scenario where Obama wasn’t black he wouldn’t be competitive in the democratic party. The million dollar question is which scenario did Ferraro have in mind? Now it seems pretty obvious to me what she meant was something like: if everything had been the same at the start of the primaries except that Obama was white he would have quickly lost. Not only is this not a racist remark it’s probably true. Even those who are denouncing Ferraro for racism admit that many blacks are voting for him because he is black and it’s silly to think that at least some of his appeal to liberals comes from their perception of him as a healer of racial discord, a trait that (like it or not) depends on his skin color.

What then of the comment that “he is lucky to be who he is?” Far from meaning that blacks tend to have it better in America than whites as many critiques assume normal english usage suggests it merely means Obama’s race is a proximate cause of this good fortune. I mean assume that your friend went down to the corner store hoping to buy a magazine but because his job pays so little he finds himself a dollar short he instead buys a winning lotto ticket. Now you might reasonably remark, “damn man, your lucky you didn’t get that raise last month.” Obviously you wouldn’t be saying that in general people are better off not getting raises. In other words she is doing nothing more than reiterating the fact that Obama’s race is a net political assest in the democratic primary.

This view is supported by Ferraro’s contention that far from being racist her remarks are a positive racial message, i.e., people want to vote for a black man to help heal racial divisions in the country, as well as her remark that she was chosen as a vice presidential nominee because of her gender. Despite the stupendously stupid suggestion by Berkeley professors Edley and Echaveste that Ferraro is demeaning herself with this comment really all she is saying is that had she been in a similar situation but been a man she would not have been chosen. Yet more evidence that Ferraro was never suggesting that Obama owes everything to affirmative action or that blacks are better off than whites as the critiques all presuppose.

Note that this interpretation of Ferraro’s remarks didn’t require any mental gymnastics. It was the obvious meaning that jumped to mind when I heard the words. Now perhaps, because the news had primed you to hear them as racist, the same might not be true of you but really all I need to show is that there is a plausible interpretation that isn’t racist to show that we should give Ferraro the benefit of the doubt based on her past behavior. Now no doubt someone is going to try to argue that even though Ferraro didn’t mean to make a racist remark that her failure to properly guard against unintended racial effects of her words is enough justification for her public flagellation. Yet on these grounds it is the Obama people who have taken it upon themselves to widely publicize these words (even though Obama is reasonably refusing to call them racist) who should be held accountable.

As I said yesterday Spitzer deserves to be kicked out of his job for being a raging hypocrite. Or more particularly (since we tolerate some hypocrites) for doing one of the very things which he built his political reputation upon. However, the moralizing, holier than thou finger waving and faux concern is really starting to piss me off. Given the large percentages of the population who have tried soft drugs, visited prostitutes (something like 1/5) or the huge proportion of the population who has looked at porn the zero tolerance policies enforced at businesses and schools across the nation surely require a vast army of hypocrites to enforce. How many prosecutors, police, teachers and principals in our schools did (or still do) smoke pot? How many of them ruin some kids life instead of giving him a second chance while happilly keeping their own (past?) use secret? How many people who do/did view porn go along with it when their aunt, friend or even internet news posting disapproves of the activity? How many enforce their companies zero tolerance policies when someone is caught browsing questionable material rather than offering them a second chance? Who fails to speak up when a fellow teacher, secretary, attorney, whatever gets fired when drunken pictures of them at a party appear on the internet? I could continue but it would be too easy.

Ohh sure everyone has some excuse about why their behavior doesn’t really count. It was a different era back then, the pot now is weaker. I never looked at internet porn, it was just playboy (did you ever forget and accidently take it to work?). But everyone has a story. No doubt Spitzer told himself what he was doing was different because he made sure to give these girls extra cash. If it really is so different then there is no reason to hide it right? Everyone else would see it wasn’t like these bad things. Maybe you say you have to enforce the rules, that’s what the organization expects. But Spitzer could say the same and ultimately the reason our corporations and institutions have zero tolerance policies is that no one has the balls to say, “hey wait a minute, maybe this stuff isn’t that bad.” I’m not saying you need to admit to all your private peccadillos but don’t be so intimidated by them that you jump on the puritanical band wagon.

Ohh and don’t try to pretend that your real concern in this matter is Spitzer’s children or wife. I mean which do you think is going to be worse for them: Spitzer being accused of patronizing a prostitute or being accused of using a prostitute and losing his job. Hell, if your only concern here was the personal harm to his wife and children then why the fuck are you trying to make their lives worse by kicking Spitzer out of his job?

It appears that Spitzer was seeing prostitutes while publicly denouncing people and trying to send people to jail for operating a high end prostitution ring.

In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.

“This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,” Mr. Spitzer said at the time. “It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.”

Now prostitution should clearly be legal. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with explicitly paying money for sex, and let’s not kid ourselves what differentiates prostitution from dating the guy with the nice car is only the explicitness of the transaction. In fact criminalizing prostitution, and thus requiring those women who want to monetize their sexual allure to give up their autonomy and hitch themselves to a rich guy, seems decidedly sexist to me. True, as a practical matter it is right to worry that some women may get treated badly or abused in prostitution but once as a practical matter the question is will less women be hurt if prostitution is legal (or tacitly tolerated) or if it is illegal?. I think the answer is clear. If prostitutes don’t fear arrest they can seek police protection from extortionists and pimps, can receive health care, have worker’s rights and otherwise be protected by the same systems that protect the rest of us but so long as it is illegal we create a shadowy underworld that will trap the most desperate and abused women and use the illegality of their business as a means to subjugate them.

But while some argue that the moral acceptability of prostitution is a defense of Spitzer I couldn’t disagree more. At worst patronizing prostitutes is a relatively minor moral failing. Knowingly placing people in prison who don’t deserve to be there is on the order of kidnapping, rape or murder.¹. Sure, we can’t expect any one politician to undo all that is wrong with our justice system. If Eliot Spitzer had stood up and said, “I think we should legalize prostitution,” his political career probably would have died right there and done no one any good. But it’s one thing to pick your battles carefully, it’s another thing entirely to exercise your discretion to send people to prison for being involved in the same activities you do so you can further your political career. Unless evidence comes to light that Spitzer fought to minimize the penalties or change the law on prostitution he deserves to hang for hypocritically sending people to prison for offenses he must not have thought warranted that treatment. At the very least he doesn’t deserve a free pass from the people when he wouldn’t give that pass to others.

Now some complain about the use of seemingly absurd application of laws like the Mann act or arcane financial crimes to ‘get’ Spitzer. I couldn’t agree more with the queasy unease many people have about stretching these laws to cover Spitzer’s activity to satisfy the people’s moral outrage or serve political ends. But this sort of tactic was Spitzer’s calling card. Two wrongs don’t make a right and I believe we ought to take the high road and refuse to do to Spitzer what he did to others but having made his career on this sort of ‘dirty’ legal trick it’s appropriate that he lose it for the same reason.

Ultimately if this had been Bill Clinton chared with say smoking pot I’d go to the mat for him. Certainly he has never openly spoke in favor of legalization but he didn’t choose to advance his political career by throwing others into prison for the same things he himself did and I got the impression that his administration at least slightly favored liberalization (his pardons, DOJ attitude toward MMJ). However, if we don’t hold people like Spitzer accountable to their own standards we further encourage politicians to victimize the less powerful with faux moral outrage. More on this later.

Now, I’ll leave you with some links for purient interest about the girl he was with and other details. I would feel sorry for her if I didn’t think she was sure to get a generous offer from playboy, likely to get a book deal (or payoffs from other clients) and maybe even have her CD produced.

• people about Kristen
• Hufington Post, lots of links
• Kristen’s MySpace Page, note the creepy guys leaving messages.
• Details About Trysts
• Post Identifies Prostitute

The modern 24 hours news cycle is pretty good at deluging us with bizarre attempts from around the world to enforce the law and encourage social compliance but this one still surprised me. Someone in the UK apparently thought it was a good idea to have local schoolchildren lecture drivers so they have “chance to hear directly what the children think of speeding drivers.” For christ’s sake can’t they at least pretend to have put serious thought into this program instead of going with a feel good solution?

I mean presumably the only reason anyone might (honestly) support such a program is because they thought that deaths and injuries caused by speeding were a serious social harm and lectures would increase overall welfare by being a more effective deterrent. But if you really thought speeding was that big a harm go raise the fines or impose jail time on speeders. In fact it’s far from clear that speeding is even a net harm since the revenue contributes to society while allowing those who gain the most from speeding pay in to society for a small indulgence. It’s downright silly to think that this new program would provide such greater deterrence per unit of suffering to justify trading the revenue from tickets for the expense of having children give lectures. Somehow I doubt they gathered even the smallest smidgen of evidence about this or even thought about it. Nor, I suspect, did they even consider whether the greater attention people pay while speeding (gotta look out for cops) compensates for the increased danger of faster driving.

What really bugs me about this program though is the underlying dishonesty, underhanded social pressure and the dangerous cultural tendency is represents. Just bringing in children to confront a speeder is like pulling out a cute puppy during a political debate and saying, “your plan will kill little munchkins.” Having the children deliver the lecture is downright disgusting. This program doesn’t tell speeders “what the children think” of them. That’s absurd. If they primed the children with stories about race cars and fast driving instead of how bad speeding is they would say something entirely different. These children are being used as mouthpieces to deliver moral lectures that couldn’t stand on their own two feet. You can resent the police man for being an idiot or blowing up speeding into something more than it is but it’s not the children’s fault so you can’t resent them and you surely can’t point out to them that cost-benefit analysis really doesn’t support their position. Frankly, I think it’s despicable to hide behind children so people can’t respond to your moralizing bullshit.

But sure if we have to go this way: won’t someone think of the children? Isn’t anyone worried about underhanded emotional tricks being held up to our children as the right way to confront those who disagree? What about the effect of substituting feel good emotional appeals for real cost-benefit analysis? Shouldn’t we be teaching them the virtues of an objective evenhanded justice system that enforces the law rather than moral prejudices? This case might be harmless and silly but this is the same kind of thinking that causes the unjustified exaggeration of anti-smoking laws, laws against fatty food not to mention attempts to legally persecute the overweight as well as our stupidly moralistic rules about sexual content and intoxicating substances. If out society is going to remain free we need to do more than mechanically enforce certain legal guarantees; we need to cultivate the attitude that the law is an impartial means of punishing people who break the rules not a means of perpetuating your moral preferences on others.