That's the top-rated comment at "How to create a pet-friendly office that everyone can tolerate/Here are some best practices for companies who want to welcome pets at the workplace" (WaPo).
Time to rethink that word "everyone." Unless... to quote another comment:
"They’re watching makeup tutorials and recipes and lip sync videos and funny dances. But that would make it all the more powerful a propaganda outlet, if deployed. And because each TikTok feed is different, we have no real way of knowing what people are seeing. It would be trivially easy to use it to shape or distort public opinion, and to do so quietly, perhaps untraceably. In all of this, I’m suggesting a simple principle, albeit one that will not be simple to apply: Our collective attention is important. Whoever (or whatever) controls our attention controls, to a large degree, our future. The social media platforms that hold and shape our attention need to be governed in the public interest. That means knowing who’s truly running them and how they’re running them. I’m not sure which of the social network owners currently clear that bar...."
From "There Is a TikTok Challenge We All Need to Face Up To" by Ezra Klein (NYT).
I can't help seeing this argument: Speech is "powerful... if deployed," therefore it must "be governed in the public interest."
Klein isn't just talking about TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company and therefore subject to the Chinese government's idea of "govern[ing] in the public interest." He's talking about all of social media, because he's "not sure" whether they are "governed in the public interest." Who gets to decide what's "in the public interest" and how to "govern" the way to "the public interest"? I look around at the Americans who talk about governing social media in the public interest, and I don't trust them with freedom of speech any more than I trust the Chinese government. That is, I don't trust them at all.
Of course, propaganda is bad, but censorship makes propaganda worse. And I'd say Klein's article is propaganda in favor of censorship. Step #1: The Chinese!!!
"... urban and rural areas and the socioeconomic divide.... 'Young people are more educated; less likely to get pregnant, use drugs; less likely to die of accident or injury,' said Candice Odgers, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine. 'By many markers, kids are doing fantastic and thriving. But there are these really important trends in anxiety, depression and suicide that stop us in our tracks.'... The crisis is often attributed to the rise of social media, but solid data on the issue is limited, the findings are nuanced and often contradictory and some adolescents appear to be more vulnerable than others to the effects of screen time. Federal research shows that teenagers as a group are also getting less sleep and exercise and spending less in-person time with friends — all crucial for healthy development — at a period in life when it is typical to test boundaries and explore one’s identity. The combined result for some adolescents is a kind of cognitive implosion: anxiety, depression, compulsive behaviors, self-harm and even suicide. This surge has raised vexing questions. Are these issues inherent to adolescence that merely went unrecognized before — or are they being overdiagnosed now?"
"... a new conception of art museums as places peddling 'wellness,' promoting the appearance of wokeness and finding institutional purpose in the culture of therapy. 'Philip Guston Now' frames Guston’s profound and complicated oeuvre with patronizing wall labels. At the entrance to the exhibition and on the museum’s website, we are offered an 'Emotional Preparedness' statement by health and trauma specialist Ginger Klee, MS, LMFT, LPCC. Patrons are also offered an opportunity to exit the exhibition ahead of the gallery showing some of Guston’s cartoonlike images of crude, deliberately pathetic figures with Ku Klux Klan hoods.... Only on my second walk through the show, when I made a conscious decision not to read anything, did I remember how much I love Guston and his hectic, overbearing, goofy, maudlin, self-mocking, mute and reliably perverse view of the world. In a time of cant, where almost every cultural product is advertising something and defending preemptively against something else, Guston’s generous art is liberating."
From "In long-awaited Philip Guston show, great art comes with a warning The ‘Philip Guston Now’ exhibition, controversially postponed in 2020, has opened at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts" by Sebastian Smee (WaPo).
Here's my post from September 26, 2020: "4 major museums have postponed a retrospective for a highly respected painter — Philip Guston — because some of the paintings have images of the KKK." My reaction at the time:
The sentence is from "Studio Theatre’s ‘John Proctor Is the Villain’ rethinks ‘The Crucible’/A new play imagines contemporary high school students considering the classic work through the lens of the #MeToo movement" (in The Washington Post).
Here's your final clue:
CORRECTION
An earlier version of this story misquoted playwright Kimberly Belflower. Recounting a conversation she had with her father about “The Crucible,” Belflower recalled that it was she, not he, who said that “John Proctor is the villain.” The article has been corrected.
I have an idea for a play about a woman whose desire for credit is her downfall. A theater critic in a big newspaper makes much of her new play because he loves what he sees as a charming scene in which the father — a beef farmer — says the line that has become the title of her play....
1. If you combined Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, and The Doors into one voice, how would it sound?
2. Never seen an adult male cry? It's "weird"?
3. Imitating rock stars by their walk.
4. The inside of one of those twee cabins.
5. Nominees for the Dad Award for Food-Related Fails.
7. The "My dog stepped on a bee" meme. (Don't worry: No dogs stepping on bees — or even any dogs or bees — in this video.)
Said Justice Clarence Thomas, quoted in "Clarence Thomas says he worries respect for institutions is eroding" (WaPo).
Some of the people who think think about the way stare decisis preserves respect for the Court.
Thomas worried about the "different attitude of the young" and how they bully the Court when they don't get the outcome they want, but how deferential to authority should young people be?
When you impugn stare decisis as a "mantra," you call for more analysis and criticism and less passive obeisance to authority. I would say that's inconsistent with a demand that we accept the outcomes handed down by the Court from on high. That too is obeisance.
The Court seems to be withdrawing a right that was in place for 50 years. You can't expect people to humbly receive the new version of what the law is. Did you think we'd all sit quietly reading a hundred pages of careful reasoning and be impressed by the cogency of it all? There's a good chance that no one has dutifully read every word. We jump into guesses and theories about what's really going on.
It's not just these kids today. People have never regarded the Supreme Court as an oracle of truth. We can and should criticize the Court. It's not bullying!
When I hear the phrase "How dare you!" I think of Greta Thunberg — at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit— famously orating:
"This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"
How dare you steal from the future lives of the children. But now "How dare you!" has been deployed in the abortion debate, by the pro-abortion rights side:
"Some Republican leaders are trying to weaponize the use of the law against women. How dare they? How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body? How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?"
Politico — the publisher of the leaked Supreme Court draft — calls that Kamala Harris speech "the Biden administration’s most forceful defense of reproductive rights."
Technically, to say that is not to call the speech forceful. The "most forceful" thing could be quite weak. What was the competition? But I think praise was intended.
What an opening for critics! All they have to do is answer the question: "How dare they?" Look back at the iconic Thunberg speech. Greta demanded that the adults of today make sacrifices for the children of the future. The anti-abortion rhetoric springs quickly to mind.
“I say with the lives of 62 million unborn boys and girls ended in abortion since 1973, generations of mothers enduring heartbreaking and loss that can last a lifetime: Madame Vice President, how dare you?”
ADDED: Andrew Sullivan's new column is titled "How Dare They?" Subtitle: "The left's attitude problem when it comes to democracy."
Wrote Charles Caleb Colton in "Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words : Addressed to Those who Think," in 1820:
That's quoted at the OED definition for "etiolate," which means "To lessen or undermine the strength, vigour, or effectiveness of (a quality, group, movement, etc.); to have a weakening effect upon."
That's the second meaning. The oldest meaning is about plants: "To cause (a plant) to develop with reduced levels of chlorophyll (esp. by restricting light), causing bleaching of the green tissues, elongated internodes, weakened stems, deficiencies in vascular structure, and abnormally small leaves."
You take the plant out of the sun to etiolate it, but the woman needs to be kept out of the sun, lest she etiolate. So said Colton, anyway. He was one of the "boys" referenced in the more recent aphorism: "Some boys take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world/I want to be the one to walk in the sun...." The sun, Colton.
But C.C. Colton is long gone. He died in 1832 — forever excluded from the sun — died of suicide, committed because, we're told, he had an illness that required surgery, and he dreaded surgery.
I'm reading about the word "etiolated" because I used it yesterday: "I'm collecting examples of this avoidance of the word 'woman' and the resultant etiolation of speech."
"I was playing the leading role of Roderick Usher in Edgar Allan Poe’s classic The Fall of the House of Usher, modernized as an eight-episode series for Netflix. It is a glorious role, and I had come to regard it as, most likely, my last hurrah... On March 25 of this year, I was performing a love scene with the actress playing my young wife. Both of us were fully clothed. I was sitting on a couch, she was standing in front of me. The director called 'cut.' 'He touched my leg,' said the actress. 'That was not in the blocking.' She then turned and walked off the set, followed by the director and the intimacy coordinator.... [Someone from Human Resources contacted him a week later and said] 'Before the love scene began on March 25... our intimacy coordinator suggested where you both should put your hands. It has been brought to our attention that you said, "This is absurd!"' 'Yes,' I said, 'I did. And I still think so.' It was a love scene on camera. Legislating the placement of hands, to my mind, is ludicrous. It undermines instinct and spontaneity. Toward the end of our conversation, she suggested that I not contact the young lady, the intimacy coordinator, or anyone else in the company. 'We don’t want to risk retaliation... Intention is not our concern. Netflix deals only with impact.'"
Writes Frank Langella in "Fired By Netflix, Frank Langella Refutes Allegations Of 'Unacceptable Behavior'" (Deadline). Langella is 84 years old.
It's a "human issue"... compared to what? What's the unspoken other sort of issue? The first alternative I thought of was: legal issue. But it could also be considered a matter of natural science. And it could be considered a matter of religion.I think a lot of America is where @JoeRogan is. https://t.co/wXDbbA2TV2
— Greg Pollowitz (@GPollowitz) May 5, 2022
From "Aspirations/As an abortion provider, what I give my patients is not just a procedure but the space to make their own decisions about their bodies" by Christine Henneberg (NYRB).
That corresponds to the sentiment expressed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which I've quoted many times on this blog:
"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State."
"Justice Harry Blackmun’s private papers, which are now public, show that members of the Court found the case to be highly technical and difficult to decide.... Revealingly, Chevron had hardly any influence on the Supreme Court in its first years. Everything changed after Justice Scalia joined the Court in 1986 and became Chevron’s champion, urging that it inaugurated a new approach for courts to apply in reviewing the interpretations of administrative agencies. Justice Stevens repeatedly disagreed with him; he insisted that Chevron did not make any big change in the law, and that questions of law were for courts, not agencies. By the early 1990s, Scalia had prevailed: whenever an agency’s interpretation of a congressional enactment was at issue, Chevron was widely understood to give the administrative state a lot of room to maneuver. If you worked at a federal agency at the time, Chevron was your best friend."
Writes Cass Sunstein in "Who Should Regulate?
Cass R. Sunstein
The question of whether federal agencies or the courts should have the right to interpret legislation may seem technical, but it significantly affects the power of the government" (NYRB)(reviewing
"The Chevron Doctrine: Its Rise and Fall, and the Future of the Administrative State"
by Thomas W. Merrill).
For those who are uninitiated and yet not utterly bored — a small group, I'm thinking — the Chevron case provides — in Sunstein's words — "that when the language of statutes enacted by Congress is ambiguous, federal agencies are entitled to interpret it as they see fit, as long as their interpretations are not unreasonable."
Don't miss this casual phrase: "Justice Harry Blackmun’s private papers, which are now public..." Was that treacherous leakage? The leakage was by Blackmun, of course, but I'm still asking if making all those notes and drafts public was an example of "the gravest, most unforgivable sin." Shouldn't we have access to these materials to understand why these decisions come out the way we do? Why should we be controlled by the careful wordings and omissions of the final version?
And I see that Chief Justice Roberts referred to Blackmun's papers in the oral argument about overruling Roe last December!
Joan Biskupic wrote about it last December, right after the oral argument, in "Why John Roberts cited the private papers of the justice who wrote Roe v. Wade" (CNN):
संदेश
