"I think what’s getting people talking — or rather, why everyone was watching these TikToks obsessively over the weekend and picking them apart — is how regressive the ads seem."

"The line about her having great jeans — several people are suggesting in the comments on Instagram and TikTok that this is a 'pro-eugenics ad.' Whether or not that’s the case, it is part of a wave of imagery of influencers, pop stars and musicians that feels tethered to the values of another time."

From "How American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ‘good jeans’ ad went wrong/A provocative new denim campaign featuring the actress leans into retro sexiness — and it’s sparking debate about eugenics and ‘wokeness'" (WaPo).

That's a gift link. My last of the month. In case you want to see the ads people are so worked up about. I've avoided talking about them because I don't want to help make them go viral. But they've obviously gone massively viral, so expect more of the same.

It's a pun: "good genes"/"good jeans." You'd think it would have been noticed, used, and groaned over decades ago and that it would be completely uncool to bring it up now. But what if it's cool precisely because people are sensitive and fearful about a perceived rise in enthusiasm for white supremacy. It's needling those poor souls. It's transgressive. Is that where we are?

By the way, Deepika Padukone used the pun 3 years ago, for Levi's jeans:

"Concern for posture, as a matter of etiquette, has been around since the Enlightenment, if not earlier, but poor posture did not become a scientific and medical obsession..."

"... until after the publication of Darwin’s 'On the Origin of Species' in 1859. He posited that humans evolved through natural selection, and that the first thing to develop was bipedalism; in other words, standing upright preceded brain development. This idea was controversial because convention taught that higher intellect distinguished humans from nonhuman animals, and now it appeared that only a mere physical difference, located in the spine and feet, separated humankind from the apes.... With the rise of eugenics in the early 20th century, certain scientists began to worry that slouching among 'civilized' peoples could lead to degeneration, a backward slide in human progress. Posture correction became part of 'race betterment' projects, especially for white Anglo-Saxon men but also for middle-class women and Black people who were trying to gain political rights and equity. Poor posture became stigmatized and defined as a disability. As I show in my book, people with postural 'defects' were regularly discriminated against in the American workplace, educational settings and immigration offices..."

From "Beth Linker Is Turning Good Posture on Its Head/A historian and sociologist of science re-examines the 'posture panic' of the last century. You’ll want to sit down for this" (NYT).

This made me think about the way, back in the 1950s, we girls were encouraged to train ourselves in good posture by walking with a book on one's head. I see there's an entry at TV Tropes, "Book on the Head."

And here's a random poster (from 1946):

"Human remains collections were made possible by extreme imbalances of power."

"Moreover, many researchers in the 19th and 20th centuries then used such collections to advance deeply flawed scientific agendas rooted in white supremacy — namely the identification of physical differences that could reinforce models of racial hierarchy."

 
Said Sean M. Decatur, president of The American Museum of Natural History, quoted in "Facing Scrutiny, a Museum That Holds 12,000 Human Remains Changes Course/The American Museum of Natural History said it would address its collecting of remains, which stretched into the 1940s and included practices now viewed as abusive and racist " (NYT).

"[T]he 'Lebensborn' program — meaning wellspring or fountain of life... created in 1935... provided luxurious accommodations for unwed, pregnant women."

"Part of the program’s attraction was that unwed pregnant girls could give birth in secret. In 1939, about 58 percent of the mothers-to-be who applied to the program were unwed... by 1940, that number had swelled to 70 percent. Often, the homes were converted estates decorated by Himmler himself, using the highest quality loot confiscated from Jewish homes after their owners had been killed or sent to camps. Girls who were already pregnant or willing to be impregnated by SS officers had to prove their Aryan lineage going back three generations and pass inspections that included measuring the size of their heads and the length of their teeth. Once accepted, they were pampered by nurses and staff who served them delicacies at mealtimes and provided a recreational diet rich in Nazi propaganda...."

From "A new novel tells the story of Nazi birthing farms" by Kathleen Parker (WaP).

The new novel is "Cradles of the Reich" by Jennifer Coburn.

Here's the article in the Holocaust Encyclopedia about the Lebensborn program.

I found that as I was looking for photographs showing how a place "decorated by Himmler" would look. Here's a propaganda photograph with a caption that translated into "Everything for the healthy child":

 

 

From the Holocaust Encyclopedia article:

"By invoking a story about valuing disability, abortion opponents can connect abortion to the dark practice of eugenics, or..."

"... the systematic removal of unsavory traits in a population to achieve genetic supremacy. If they can liken ending a pregnancy for a fetal abnormality to genocide, they can liken their advocacy to protecting disabled lives. They are forgetting, however, that pregnancy can endanger disabled people. Removing abortion access is not protecting our lives; it is putting them in danger. Growing up in a conservative town, I became familiar with this story line: 'No one should have an abortion, even if there is something wrong with their baby,' my high school friend would say. 'Kendall, you’re a miracle baby. Surely, you are happy you are alive.' I was already firmly pro-choice then, but my disability was used as the evidence in her argument, the gotcha in our debate. What my friend didn’t understand was that disabled fetuses grow up to be disabled people with their own reproductive needs. In some cases, these needs include access to abortion.... What chronically ill and disabled people need is autonomy to make the health care choices right for them. It’s what we all deserve."

 
From "Leave My Disability Out of Your Anti-Abortion Propaganda" by Kendall Ciesemier (NYT).

"The Georgia Guidestones, a 19-foot mysterious granite monument in the Peach State, was demolished on Thursday for safety reasons, after being damaged in a blast."

Newsweek reports.

The big mystery about the monument wasn't how it got there, but just who paid to buy the land and put it up. It looks a bit like Stonehenge, but it's not ancient. It went up in 1980, financed by someone who worked through a banker who was sworn to protect his anonymity. 

The stones were engraved with 10 principles (in 8 languages), and the first one is blatantly evil, once you penetrate the euphemism "Maintain":

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the Earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature

"The very term anti-Semitism, which casts Jews in racial terms, was popularized by a German anti-Jewish activist who wanted to give his hatred a scientific sheen."

"Race is a social construct, and this is how it was constructed in Nazi Germany and much of Europe.... [W]ell-meaning people... don’t know how to define Jews [because]... Judaism predates Western categories. It’s not quite a religion, because one can be Jewish regardless of observance or specific belief. (Einstein, for example, was proudly Jewish but not religiously observant.) But it’s also not quite a race, because people can convert in! It’s not merely a culture or an ethnicity, because that leaves out all the religious components. And it’s not simply a nationality, because although Jews do have a homeland and many identify as part of a nation, others do not."

Writes Yair Rosenberg in "Are Jews a Race?/Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust comments reflect how Jews don’t fit into Western boxes" (The Atlantic).

Another reason why it's "not quite a race" is that race was never good science. From "The Disturbing Resilience of Scientific Racism" (Smithsonian):

"Leaders of the British group LGB Alliance warn that lesbians are 'going to become extinct’ as individuals increasingly identify as trans..."

"... a fear echoed both by trans-exclusionary groups and by lesbian feminists who in other ways advocate for trans rights. Feminist writer Aimee Anderson frets about 'the extinction of an entire people,' and Cherríe Moraga worries that butch lesbians, self-actualizing as transmasculine, might 'become a dying breed.' Tomboys, too, have become a point of contention, seen by some as a 'rarer and rarer species' that is 'going extinct' as more tomboyish children identify as trans and/or nonbinary.... As a lesbian researcher of tomboyism trained in queer theory, I find claims like these at once absurd and frightening. Extinction anxieties have long fueled nationalist, fascist and white-supremacist movements and often beget eugenicist agendas. Indeed, tomboyism as we know it arose in concert with eugenics.... Child-rearing manuals began advocating for exercise and comfortable clothing, instead of the restrictive and harmful corsets then common, as means of making White girls fit to produce healthy White offspring.... Lesbians are not a species, and we feed existing racist, ableist and homophobic agendas when we invoke extinction...." 

From "The latest form of transphobia: Saying lesbians are going extinct" by Lynne Stahl (WaPO).

"On a plot designated by officials for the open-air school, builders installed a pavilion, gardens, activity areas and open sheds, some fitted with tables and benches for lessons."

"The school grounds also included a larger shed for meals, an enclosed shelter for rainy days and rest periods, a teacher’s room, a kitchen, toilets and a 'cure gallery,' a special structure designed to maximize sun exposure. In a departure from prevailing norms and in keeping with the goals of progressive educators, boys and girls were never separated. Whereas the average school in Prussia—Germany’s largest and most populous state—counted two square meters per pupil, students at Charlottenburg’s forest school enjoyed 40.... The forest school ensured a steady supply of fresh air to the children of workers. Half the school’s teachers were former patients at sanatoria, where they had already recovered from tuberculosis....  By 1908... the first outdoor school opened in the United States, in Providence, Rhode Island, in the dead of winter no less....

"To those who stand in judgment of her for getting a dog from a breeder instead of a shelter, why don't you shame her too, for having her own biological children rather than adopting a homeless teenager."

"She has 2 kids and a small living space with no yard, so they likely wanted a dog that's small, with no behavioral problems, one they can train, and not a ten year old, 100 lb German Shepherd with behavioral issues. So why don't you go shame someone else, rather than a mother doing her best to provide comfort to her family during a pandemic."

That's the second-highest-rated comment on "I hated dogs, but I hated the pandemic more. Would a puppy help? So what if he chews the furniture and shreds my papers. He opened up our locked-down world" by Lara Bazelon (WaPo).

I love the commenter's question, because I was just wondering the exact same thing. Why don't the people who think you should get a "rescue" dog when you want a dog also think you should get a "rescue" child when you want a child? In fact, isn't the argument for adopting an older child with special needs even stronger than the argument for adopting an older dog that hasn't had the advantages of a loving home and careful training? After all, many dogs are euthanized, but we strive to keep all our children alive even when they have terrible behavioral problems. And dogs are kept under the control of owners all their lives, while children become adults and are allowed to move about freely in the world even when they are quite dangerous. It's therefore especially important to take great care of all of the children who have been born into this world.

People will say that they want their own biological offspring, but what makes you think what you have to give genetically is so wonderful? Dog breeders have much higher standards selecting which dogs to use for breeding. People just decide to use themselves. When you have your own biological children, you're picking yourself because you are yourself. I'm not saying that's wrong. In fact, I think it's quite beautiful, making something out of your own body and the body of a person you love. So I'm beginning to see the answer to my question. When you have your own child, you're not being a eugenicist, looking for the ideal baby. You're accepting the randomness of who you happen to be and who you've found to love. The baby grows out of that is more like a rescue dog than a breeder's dog.

"[Margaret] Sanger still has defenders who say the decision to repudiate her lacks historical nuance."

"Ellen Chesler, a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a think tank, and the author of a biography of Ms. Sanger and the birth control movement, said that while the country is undergoing vast social change and reconsidering prominent figures from the past, Ms. Sanger’s views have been misinterpreted. The eugenics movement had wide support at the time in both conservative and liberal circles, Ms. Chesler said, and Ms. Sanger was squarely in the latter camp. She rejected some eugenicists’ belief that white middle-class families should have more children than others, Ms. Chesler said. Instead, Ms. Sanger believed that the quality of all children’s lives could be improved if their parents had smaller families, Ms. Chesler said, adding that Ms. Sanger believed Black people and immigrants had a right to that better life. 'Her motives were the opposite of racism,' Ms. Chesler said, citing Ms. Sanger’s relationships with prominent Black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the N.A.A.C.P....  As the story goes, Ms. Sanger treated a woman named 'Sadie Sachs,' who had given herself an abortion. Sadie asked a doctor how she could avoid having another baby, and the doctor recommended abstinence. A few months later, Ms. Sanger was called to treat Sadie again after she had given herself another abortion, and she died in Ms. Sanger’s arms. Ms. Sanger went on to start clinics, including one in Harlem. She pushed for reproductive rights, even after she was arrested and sent to jail for opening her first clinic, in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn."

From "Planned Parenthood in N.Y. Disavows Margaret Sanger Over Eugenics/Ms. Sanger, a feminist icon and reproductive-rights pioneer, supported a discredited belief in improving the human race through selective breeding" (NYT).

"It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would."

"It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology."

Tweeted Richard Dawkins at 1:26 a.m., and I think that's why "eugenics" is trending on Twitter this morning. He followed up, an hour ago, with this: "For those determined to miss the point, I deplore the idea of a eugenic policy. I simply said deploring it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work. Just as we breed cows to yield more milk, we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher. But heaven forbid that we should do it."

Here's #eugenics — in case you want to see what people are saying right now. It's a slog to get through all the many people who are saying I see eugenics is trending. I'll just cherry-pick some good substantive stuff (which sounds kind of eugenics-y!):

"The thing about people who believe in eugenics is that they always believe themselves to be the superior kind of human. No-one ever thinks that it could make *people like them* obsolete..." (Joanne Harris).

"I mean, the biggest problem with Richard Dawkins take on eugenics is that he'd probably consider his own traits to be superior and then the world would be full of insufferable assholes" (Nick Jack Pappas).

"While Richard Dawkins is a noted biologist, his science on eugenics is bad. We turned magnificent wolves into pure breed dogs with severe genetic defects causing joint and heart problems and cancer. In fact, many Cavalier spaniels develop mitral valve and neurological disorders"/"Eugenics does not create superior species. We turned mighty buffalo herds roaming the plains into factory farmed cows, the independent stallion into the pony, and the wild boar into the pig. We weaken the gene pool selecting for traits desirable for us but not for the subject" (Eugene Gu MD).

"All of Dawkins’ tweets make more sense if you add '... Mr Bond' at the end of them" (Ned Hartley).

"New York Times columnist accused of eugenics over piece on Jewish intelligence/Bret Stephens faces backlash after suggesting that Ashkenazi Jews are smarter than other people."

Yikes, the heat on Bret Stephens has zoomed up since I blogged about his genius-of-Jews column at 5 a.m. yesterday morning.

The Guardian says:

The rightwing New York Times columnist Bret Stephens...

Eh. I don't think the right wing deserves responsibility for whatever it is Bret Stephens is.

... has sparked furious controversy online for a column praising Ashkenazi Jews for their scientific accomplishments, which critics say amounts to embracing eugenics.

In a column titled The Secrets of Jewish Genius and using a picture of Albert Einstein, Stephens stepped in the eugenics minefield by claiming that Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent than other people and think differently.... [There were] furious accusations that Stephens was using the same genetics arguments that informed Nazism and white supremacist thinking.

The Guardian is simply collecting tweets. An editorial director at Vice says, "It’s hard to read this column as expressing anything other than a belief in the genetic and cultural inferiority of non-Ashkenazi Jews"; a NYT contributor says, "I don’t think eugenicists should be op-ed columnists"; a "journalist" says, "A Jew endorsing the idea that certain races are inherently superior to other, lesser races, what could possibly go wrong?"; a writer called it "eugenics propaganda" and urged subscribers to cancel.

This is what you get on Twitter: hot takes. There, Stephens is a eugenicist. I do see this mild-mannered correction:

"In any other area, the left would look at a history like this and ask whether those formal convictions are the only thing that matters, or whether the eugenic past..."

"... still exerts a structural influence on the present. And in any other area of policy [Clarence] Thomas’s point about how legal abortion appears, in the aggregate, to act in racist and eugenic ways would be taken as an indicator that something more than just emancipation is at work. Yes, in their theoretical self-conception, pro-choice institutions are neutral custodians of the right to choose. In theory the genetic-screening industry exists only to provide information. In theory the high abortion rate in black America is just the result of countless individual decisions. But in practice, liberal technocracy still has a 'solve poverty by cutting birthrates' bias inherited from a population-panic age, and abortion-rights rhetoric still has a way of sliding into Malthusian fears about too many poor kids in foster care. In practice the medical system strongly encourages abortion in response to disability, with predictable results. In practice... the disparate impact of abortion on black birthrates is shaped by that reality and others, not just by free choice."

From "Clarence Thomas’s Dangerous Idea/Does anything link the eugenics of the past to abortion today?" by Ross Douthat (NYT). There is this idea in constitutional law that you need to pick one approach to interpretation and use it consistently, across all the issues, and that's what keeps you deciding cases according to law and not policy preferences. An argument can sound completely cogent, but if it's not the kind of argument you always make, it's a lawyer's argument, not a judge's reasoning. Of course "the left" are political actors, entitled to make their lawyer's arguments, and they may not be embarrassed to find themselves switching approaches to constitutional law to use whatever works best to get the outcome they want. It's another matter to show that Clarence Thomas changes his interpretive method this way and that, but there's no practical need to reach Clarence Thomas on abortion rights. You only need 5 to win, and he's the least likely to be in the left's 5. They only need to keep 5 of the remaining 8 away from the Thomas position that — talking about eugenics — seems designed to lure lefties to the right on abortion.

"The Washington Post spoke to seven scholars of the eugenics movement; all of them said that Thomas’s use of this history was deeply flawed."

Does anyone read something like that and simply trust the "scholars" to give the true account of the eugenics movement and what today resembles it? I say no, because I'm not including the trust that skips a step and believes the the scholars because they want to preserve abortion rights and they need Clarence Thomas to be wrong. My question is whether scholars these days are trusted as a source of truth about a hot social issue.

WaPo has 7 scholars, and they deliver the conclusion — "a gross misuse of historical facts,"  "amateur historical mistake," "really bad history," "historically incoherent," "ignorant and prejudiced," "just not historical." That's the bottom line if that's all you need, but I need the article to quote Thomas, accurately and in context, and to have the historians specify what is bad, otherwise I don't know whether they are doing the same thing they say he's doing, using what they can find and making interpretations that serve their policy preferences. The fact that they're "scholars" doesn't work anymore (if it ever did).

“Eugenicists were initially hostile to birth control because they knew that the women who would use it were the type of women they would want to encourage to reproduce, so-called ‘better’ women — upper-middle-class women,” said Kevles, the Yale professor. “When they finally came around to it, they did it in the face of a practical reality — they caught up to what their constituency was doing.... I’ve been studying this stuff for 40 years, and I’ve never been able to find a leader of the eugenics movement that came out and said they supported abortion,” Lombardo said. 

Thomas cited high rate of abortion for fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome in developed countries (98 percent in Denmark, 90 percent in the United Kingdom, 77 percent in France and 67 percent in the United States, according to the statistics he cites), the practice of sex-based abortions in Asia (to eliminate female fetuses), and statistics that show higher rates of abortion among blacks than whites, to make his argument that abortion is akin to eugenics.

But many of the historians were quick to point out that abortion — a personal choice by an individual — differed significantly from the state-mandated programs foisted involuntarily on others by eugenicists.

That's not a disagreement about history, their area of expertise. That's an argument about how far to go in using history. I agree with the historians about the distinction — and said so when the case came out, here — but I didn't use historical analysis to arrive at that view. The historians are reaching beyond their area of expertise and doing legal analysis. That's fine. They're entitled to participate in the debate about the meaning of legal rights, but the idea that because of their scholarship their opinion trumps Thomas's fails.

WaPo quotes a historian whose book was cited by Thomas — "It was absolutely decontextualized" — and a reaction from Ed Whelan at the National Review — "just another in the sorry genre of 'you properly cited my work in the course of an argument I don’t agree with.'"

"The court said it was taking no position on 'whether Indiana may prohibit the knowing provision of sex-, race-, and disability selective abortions by abortion providers.'"

"It said that since the 7th Circuit is the only appeals court to have considered the issue, 'we follow our ordinary practice of denying petitions insofar as they raise legal issues that have not been considered by additional courts of appeals.' Justice Clarence Thomas, in a 20-page statement, said the court will eventually have to decide the question of what he called 'eugenic abortions.' 'The Court’s decision to allow further percolation should not be interpreted as agreement' with the 7th Circuit, Thomas wrote. He included a long history of the birth-control movement. 'Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement. No other justice joined Thomas."

Writes Robert Barnes in "Supreme Court compromise on Indiana abortion law keeps issue off its docket" (WaPo).

I don't agree that preventing the state from looking into the minds of abortion-choosers "would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement." It would only continue to constitutionalize the woman's right to make her own decision about going forward with a pregnancy and not impose an exception for when the decision is based on a reason that is legislatively designated as wrong. There are many bad reasons for having an abortion, and we could try to sort through what is good and what is bad, but the long-established right is to leave it to the one who is pregnant to go through the reasons and make a decision.

ADDED: I do think that the argument can be made that the case law establishes that there is one and only one reason that must be the reason for there to be a constitutional right to an abortion (other than to protect her own life or health): The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person.

"Dear Fellow Alumni, I write to you to address the recent controversy over our college’s long-standing mascot, Sir Racist Von Genocide."

"Clad in his flowing white robes and hood, he has been a traditional fixture on our campus. To my utter astonishment, after this year’s homecoming, many current students have called him 'culturally insensitive' and demanded we replace him. Yes, during Homecoming, he did erect a Confederate statue on the field while shouting a full-throated defense of eugenics into the loudspeaker. But what are we supposed to do? Buy entirely new sweatshirts?..."

The funniest part of this satire at McSweeney's is how over-the-top they thought they needed to be to mock the traditionalists.

"Sir Racist Von Genocide" reminds me of "Boaty McBoatface" — a name so repetitiously and heavy-handedly literal that it opens a door to devilishness.

Subtler humor, please. I'm afraid of "Sir Racist Von Genocide." I'm afraid people will love him.

"The [Trump] family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development."

"They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring."

Please watch the video at the link before commenting.

"'Idiocracy,' the most prophetic comedy of our time, is returning to theaters."

"Now, in a tribute to the film's visionary powers, the Alamo Drafthouse... is re-releasing the film in a number of theaters on the eve of what has suddenly become a nail-biter of a presidential election."

Okay, but:

"Idiocracy Is a Cruel Movie and You Should Be Ashamed For Liking It."

"Despite what you've heard, tenure is unchanged."

Explains Christian Schneider in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This piece begins with some funny — funny now — material:

A century ago, the American Association of University Professors issued its famous "declaration of principles" in response to several high-profile faculty firings. These principles, such as insisting that only faculty members may judge one another, were meant to protect academic freedom within university systems.

What immediately followed could be considered the Golden Era of Terrible Research. In 1916, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor Michael Vincent O'Shea developed a child development theory that said children shouldn't be scolded for having dirty hands and bad table manners, and that 16- and 17-year-old boys shouldn't be allowed to show interest in girls. University progressives were busy working their eugenics theories, which they believed would create a master race if the feebleminded were sterilized.

That same year, UW-Madison medical school professor H.C. Bradley gave a speech in which he extolled the nutritional virtues of cannibalism. Bradley said the "ideal food would be man flesh" and other meats are indigestible when compared with "human steak."

Schneider's key substantive point — which I've blogged already — is that "tenure will be alive and well, it just will be the responsibility of the regents, not state law." This protection at the state level (which goes back only to 1973) is unique in the nation.

Meanwhile, at Talking Points Memo, "Josh Marshall Says Goodbye To One Of America’s Great Public Universities" is the front-page teaser, going to a piece titled "Goodbye, Madison," which NOWHERE mentions that the change is only moving tenure from the state statutory level to the regent level, putting Wisconsin in the same position as everywhere else. This deceptive article is illustrated with a photograph of Governor Scott Walker looking like an idiot who doesn't give a damn.

You know, it was just a year ago that liberals were getting upset about Michigan taking a decision away from the state university's regents and putting it into the state law. If the level at which university decisions are made matters, which way does it matter?