"I think that children are like animals that don't have any natural predators left and they're just not afraid of anything...."

"I was in London not long ago and there were these boys breaking the branches off a tree and this woman said, 'You boys stop doing that,' and they said, 'You can't talk to us,' and they were right. You know what I mean? What she was doing was bullying, you know, according to the law, and they knew it."

Said David Sedaris, in conversation with Bill Maher.

Maher added: "That's a sea change from when we were kids when... not only could your parent hit you, the neighbor could hit you.... It was like it takes a village — that was the mentality like any adult could — maybe that's going a little too far — but — I don't know — I think that's better than what we have now.... I mean, I I don't have children, you don't have children and some people say to me, you know, like, 'How do you know?' I'm sentient!..."

Sedaris: "I'm always surprised I meet a teenager and I say... you have to have an after-school job, and the parent, always: "This is Atticus's time to be Atticus.'"

"As the only Asian American woman on the academic faculty, I can’t imagine any other faculty member would be treated with this kind of disrespect and utter lack of due process."

Writes Yale Law School professor Amy Chua.

Some of you may have seen the YDN hit job on me, full of false allegations. I did not violate any agreement, nor have I been hosting wild parties during COVID. On the contrary, what I HAVE done is comforted a small handful of students who reached out to me in moments of crisis... pic.twitter.com/9tOoOu9p6G

— Amy Chua (@amychua) April 8, 2021

Megyn Kelly reacts:

Now they’re trying to cancel @amychua for absolutely nothing. Make no mistake: this is retribution for her support of Bret Kavanaugh, & it is disgusting. If @YaleLawSch has any backbone, it will stand up for one of its most beloved teachers & tell the damn whiners to sit down. https://t.co/2vwLGWmI9w

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) April 8, 2021

At Lawyers, Guns, and Money, lawprof Paul Campos goes on the attack in a blog post that begins "Rules are for the little people, chapter infinity":

Meanwhile Chua and [her husband lawprof Jed] Rubenfeld continue to get paid collectively close to a million bucks a year to basically not do their jobs any more, but apparently being asked to at least avoid getting drunk around the kiddies is just too much to ask of our best and brightest.

I can't possibly know exactly what the facts are. I've read Chua's letter, and I don't think the law school has put out its version of the facts. As a law school professor, I was never someone who invited students to my home, so I tend to admire the lawprofs who do extend this kind of sociability to their students. I would find it very difficult to do, and I assume that, generally, students would love this kind of festivity. 

But I could imagine professors inviting students into their home for the wrong reasons. There could be the Harvey Weinstein of law professors. I visualize a continuum of motives for professorly parties, from unselfishly magnanimous to utterly monstrous. But where's the line on the continuum where the professor should know this isn't right and the law school should intervene and say no more parties for you? Why did Yale intervene? I think it intervened and entered into some sort of no-parties agreement with Chua and Rudenfeld, and now, it seems, the question is whether the agreement has been violated. That's the basic factual question here. I'm not looking at the agreement, but Chua does seem to say that she has continued to have students over to her house. 

In her letter (embedded in the tweet, above), Chua justifies what she did based on anti-Asian violence and racism. She's the Asian-American female law professor, and students in her diversity category need support, so... there's an implied exception to the agreement? Or... interpret the agreement properly, and there's no violation? I'd have to see the agreement and know what, exactly, she did. 

Does the agreement refer to "parties" and define parties? Is the law school dean following the students' interpretation of the agreement? Do the students even have the text of the agreement?

IN THE EMAIL: Tank writes:

Why is Taylor Swift on Time's "Silence Breakers" Person of the Year Cover? And why is Rose McGowan not?

Quite a few people are asking this question, e.g., Vox:

Swift does have grounds to appear on the cover: She was at the center of a sexual assault trial this summer that in retrospect seems like a precursor to our current post-Weinstein moment.... In 2013, Taylor Swift was groped by radio DJ David Mueller, who grabbed her butt during a meet-and-greet photo session. Swift told Mueller’s boss, who fired him following an investigation. Mueller then filed a defamation suit against Swift, saying that he never touched her and that she ruined his reputation and cost him his job. So Swift filed a countersuit, claiming assault. She sought — and won — an award of just $1, saying through her lawyer that she wanted to “serve as an example to other women who may resist publicly reliving similar outrageous and humiliating acts."...

Swift’s appearance also raises the specter of those not included on the Time cover who were arguably more central to the #MeToo moment. Rose McGowan, who led the charge against Harvey Weinstein and his associates, is relegated to the interior....

It might have something to do with who was willing to sit for the portrait Time wanted for the cover. Maybe McGowan didn't want to be in that group or didn't like the words Time wanted to use or the strange aesthetics of the cover — with the women all draped in black and looking grim.

Notice that the names of the women do not appear on the cover, and I'm sure that caused many people (including me) to say I know that one's Taylor Swift but who are these other women?

I can see why Time was eager to include the very famous Taylor Swift on the cover. Swift was in the running for Person of the Year in her own right as an individual, and she did very well on Time's poll to find out who readers wanted to see.

I can think of all kinds of things that may have caused McGowan to decline to participate. Maybe she's just angry that the silence-breaking has taken so long. Why didn't Time Magazine apply its journalistic resources to breaking the silence itself long ago? Now that others have done the work, Time wants to reap rewards from doing its traditional end-of-the-year cover. I can see resisting that.

But let's see what Rose McGowan herself may be saying. Ah!

Ronan Farrow. Investigator of the Year. Writer of the Year. #MyTime

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) December 7, 2017

She thought Ronan Farrow deserved it. That's something many of you were saying in the comments to yesterday's post about the Person of the Year:

Bacon.

I'd said I was going to to step away from the computer to cook up a second pre-breakfast. Tank said: "Second pre-breakfast?... What are you a Hobbit? Or perhaps feeling a little eleven o'clockish? (It's always eleven o'clockish somewhere)." And I said:

All those commenters who wanted me to read "The Fountainhead."

All I did was buy the ebook "Atlas Shrugged" so I could blog about things Ted Cruz — "Political anarchist or genius?" — said in his (not a) filibuster yesterday. Having riffed on and sniffed at some bloody metaphors in the Ayn Rand tome, I was beset with comments telling me the Ayn Rand book I really must read is "The Fountainhead."

Surfed started it:

The Fountainhead was a better read, a more cogent and focused book and you get the same dose of the philosophy....

Addendum: In the movie Dirty Dancing (1987) Baby confronts Robbie to pay for Penny's abortion. Robbie refuses to take responsibility and preaches “Some people count and some people don’t” and then hands Baby a used paperback copy of The Fountainhead saying, “Read it. I think it's a book you'll enjoy, but make sure you return it; I have notes in the margin."