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Sunday, February 29, 2004

I wish my brother George was here

Last week-- on February 26, to be exact-- the Penn State Young Americans for Freedom sponsored a talk by one Reginald Jones, entitled “Betrayal:  Sold Out by the Civil Rights Movement.” The YAF flyers posted on the Penn State campus promised that Jones would deliver the home truths that “your liberazi professors won’t tell you.”

Now, you can check out the Penn State YAF speakers series for yourself-- a pretty high-priced lineup, all told, which is something you might want to keep in mind next time the local wingnuts complain that the campus right doesn’t have enough money to counterbalance all those far-left lectures by Katie Couric.  I took particular delight in the YAF’s description of Suzanne Fields’s talk in 2000-- “As she explained, the title of her speech poked fun at the stuttering of actor and effeminate male, Hugh Grant.” That seems like something the liberal campus community really needs to hear more about.

But I have a more specific question about Reginald Jones’s talk.  What, precisely, is a “liberazi” professor?  Are the Young Americans for Freedom suggesting that campus liberals are close kin to Nazis, or-- as I have reason to suspect-- are they saying that we dress in sparkles and sequins, capes and furs?  That we drive outrageous cars and have a thing about huge rings and candelabras?

Write to the Liberace Foundation today and let them know that people like Reginald Jones are slandering a great American culture hero by associating him with the anti-American campus left.

Posted by Michael on 02/29 at 04:05 AM
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Friday, February 27, 2004

Nailbiting

Henry Farrell of the powerful Crooked Timber collective writes in with a word about Virginia Postrel . . . and what appears to be her obsession with nail shops.  It seems that I was quite wrong to suggest, back on Tuesday, that Ms. Postrel came up with her “prettier jobs picture” argument suddenly and cavalierly.  No, she’s been making this argument for the better part of a decade now.  Check out “The Nail File:  The economic meaning of manicures,” from a 1997 issue of Reason magazine:

[W]ith all due respect to Silicon Valley, one of my favorite places, that’s not all there is to the U.S. economy. So I would like to add another California-based growth industry to our set of touchstones, one that captures most major trends in American economic life: nail salons.

Twenty years ago, manicurists mostly worked in obscure corners of hair salons or catered to the wealthy. Cher got her nails done; the rest of us did not. Today, free-standing nail salons dot the commercial blocks and strip malls of cities from Southern California to South Carolina. Nails magazine pegs the market at $6 billion in 1996 for salon services alone, up from $5.2 billion a year earlier. About 239,000 people work as “licensed nail technicians.” (By way of comparison, the Business Software Alliance counts about three times as many people employed in the software industry.)

That’s the industry hidden in plain sight. There’s also the business you don’t see as you walk down the street: the manufacturers and distributors that supply the salons. Nailpro, another trade magazine, lists nearly 400 manufacturers in its 1997 Gold Book directory. These companies make everything from polishes, nippers, and acrylic nail-sculpting compounds to manicure tables, polish racks, and toeless pedicure socks. Says Nailpro Executive Editor Linda Lewis, with little exaggeration, “Everything you see in that Gold Book was developed over the last 20 years.” Nail salons aren’t the biggest business in America, but they’re a growth industry that sprang up without much notice.

The first lesson they teach is: Take government statistics with a shaker of salt. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will tell you that “manicurist” is a fast-growing profession-- impressively so for a job the BLS didn’t even track in 1979. It claims there are 35,000 manicurists, a number it projects will grow to 55,000 by 2005. Now this is a business that supports three trade magazines, including Saigon Nails in Vietnamese; Nails alone has a circulation of 55,000. It is also a licensed occupation in all but a few states, and the licensing boards track active nail techs, which is where that 239,000 figure comes from. The BLS head counters have misplaced an awesome number of jobs. If they can be that wrong about licensed manicurists, imagine what they can do with gardeners, car washers, or nonunion construction workers.

The first lesson this teaches is:  Don’t read Ms. Postrel on the economy unless you are fully immersed in a great salt lake. 

Posted by Michael on 02/27 at 02:32 AM
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Thursday, February 26, 2004

Thousands of heterosexual couples descend on Indianapolis

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, February 26, 2004-- In an apparent response to the swell of gay marriages in San Francisco in the past two weeks, hundreds of married opposite-sex couples lined the streets of Indianapolis today in search of “civil disunion” and “common-law divorce.”

“I’ve had enough,” said Margaret Gallagher of West Lafayette.  “My husband had been fooling around for the past few years-- and he put the moves on the babysitter last Saturday.  But I can live with that.  What I can’t live with is the idea that gay couples are getting ‘married’ two thousand miles away from me.  Once I heard that, I lost all faith in the institution of marriage.”

Gallagher’s sentiments were echoed by community activist Gary Bower, who remarked that he’d long wanted to run his hands along “the strong, supple, naked thighs” of another man but had been restrained by his marriage vows.  “For twenty-five years,” he said, “I’ve expressed my sexuality in the forms approved by the state.  Basically, I closed my eyes and thought of America.  But now, if the state is going to recognize same-sex relationships as the legal equivalents of marriage, well, hell-- it’s the sailor’s life for me!”

The fallout from gay marriage appears to extend even beyond currently-married men and women seeking divorce.  Renowned men’s-rights advocate Lionel Train, for instance, has announced that divorced men with children need no longer pay child support.  “If a bunch of fruits on the Left Coast can get themselves hitched,” Train said recently, “why should fathers cough up good money to ex-wives and their kids?  Listen, if marriage goes down the tubes, alimony and child support go with it.”

Sandy Rios of Concerned Women for America agreed.  “It’s just like queer theorist Michael Warner wrote in his book The Trouble with Normal,” Rios said at a press conference.  “Marriage is built on a structure of exclusion, requiring the abjection of unmarried and gay/lesbian people.  The bundle of legal and social privileges accruing to marriage is significant only if other people can’t have them.  And if you shake that foundation, the whole ideological apparatus comes tumbling down.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

(Inspired, of course, by the matchless Tom Tomorrow).

Posted by Michael on 02/26 at 04:32 AM
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Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Nader goes over the edge

I received an email today that just made me furious:

RICHARD NADER’S SUMMER DOOWOP REUNION XV
CONTINENTAL AIRLINES ARENA
MEADOWLANDS
Saturday, June 19 at 7:00 pm
Tickets: $50, $40, $35, $30

Starring: The Duprees - “Have You Heard”
Kenny Vance and the Planotones - “Looking For An Echo”
Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge - “Sixteen Candles”
Larry Chance and the Earls - “Remember”
The Teenagers - “Why Do Fools Fall in Love”
The Dubs - “Could This Be Magic”
Special Guest Star: Gary Puckett - “Woman Woman”

Don’t miss the exciting summer tradition of DooWop memories as Richard Nader’s Summer DooWop Reunion returns to Continental Airlines Arena. The fun starts with a tailgate party outside the arena beginning at 3:00 PM. There will also be a 1950’s and 60’s classic car display, outdoor a-cappella stage from 4:30 to 6:30 PM and autographs and pictures with the artists as they visit the outside party before the concert.

I can’t believe he’s doing this again-- after practically everyone asked him not to.  Not only will this draw thousands of people and all kinds of press attention away from John Kerry’s “Summer Rhythm and Blues / Roots Rock Reunion” in Boston that week, but it betrays Nader’s own history of consumer advocacy and progressive activism in the doo-wop sector.  I mean, come on, Gary Puckett?  Gary Puckett is about as doo-wop as the Monkees.  Are these the depths to which Nader has sunk?  What’s next, Paul Revere and the Raiders?

And why do this in New Jersey?  Because it’s a “safe state” that can’t possibly be picked up by George Bush’s “Country Celebration Featuring Toby Keith”?  Think again, people.  New Jersey is completely up for grabs-- I hear they’re even having ska, twelvetone, and Latin jazz festivals this summer.  Nader’s “doo-wop reunion” is sheer opportunism, and doesn’t deserve a single progressive’s support.

Gary Puckett, indeed.

Posted by Michael on 02/24 at 02:12 PM
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Postrel postscript

I am not making this up:  within 15 minutes of my putting up the previous posting, someone wrote to me to ask me for the details about my exchange with Postrel two years ago.  I tell you, this Internet, it’s almost like conversing sometimes.  OK, here goes.

The context was Postrel’s critique of Francis Fukayama’s Wall Street Journal essay on libertarianism and biotechnology, originally posted here (some scrolling required).  Postrel argued on libertarian grounds against all restrictions on cloning-- that is, she favored both therapeutic cloning (or what the Kass Report called “cloning-for-biomedical-research"), as do most people who aren’t guided by fundamentalist beliefs about the ensoulment of nine-day-old embryos, and the cloning of humans (what the Kass Report called “cloning-to-produce-children"), which is far more controversial.  (I myself support the former and not the latter.) But what was amazing about her “it’s all good” approach to cloning was that she drew the line at the birth of children who . . . well, you know, who might be social inconveniences, drains on the public till, that kind of thing:

As it happens, in various interviews over the years, I have specifically raised the problem of deaf parents who want to have deaf children as a potential example of the abusive use of genetic technology. Given attitudes in some quarters of the deaf community, that desire was predictable. I agree that genetic intervention to create a deaf child would constitutes a form of child abuse that would in theory justify state action to protect the child. . . .

So what to do about deaf parents who want deaf kids? I’m not sure. It’s extremely dangerous to give state authorities power over reproductive decisions, and prohibiting parents from introducing genetically abusive traits in their children would require prenatal screening that could easily lead to mandatory eugenics. Ample historical experience, the kind conservatives generally value, tells us that it’s wise to err on the side of preserving familial autonomy rather than looking for reasons to expand government regulation of family life. Respecting the family is a good general principle, even if in some cases (e.g., Andrea Yates) that respect has awful results.

The best approach is probably an indirect one, such as some sort of liability for the doctors and others who perform prenatal genetic alterations. If the doctor who deliberately creates a deaf child has to pay for the youngster’s special education, I don’t think we’ll see a lot of medically assisted child abuse. It would also help in the long run (though at the cost of considerable pain in the short run) to eliminate the many protections and privileges accorded disabled individuals.

So I wrote to Ms. Postrel to say, basically (and politely), just what “protections and privileges” are you talking about?

Her reply, in part:

The privileges include such things as open-ended payment for private-school education through public funds and state provision for medical care that is not provided for non-disabled children. I’m not saying that these children have privileged lives-- certainly they don’t-- but they have access to resources that even poor children without disabilities do not have.

The point about the long run is that, in a world where genetic intervention is possible both to cure and cause disabilities, the lack of state provision for, say, special education would create incentives for curing and disincentives for causing disabilities via genetic intervention. It wasn’t a point about the world we live in today (the occasional deaf lesbian couple aside) but the world Fukuyama is arguing we should never reach.

My response:

First paragraph:  There are two problems here.  One: since the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (written and passed by Republicans who rightly saw it as a means of decreasing the dependence of the disabled on public assistance, just as C. Boyden Gray supported the ADA 15 years later) mandates only a “free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment,” it is hard to grant you your first point absent further evidence.  Two: it is sometimes the case that children with disabilities have access to resources that poor children with disabilities do not have.  But these would be, of course, resources that poor children without disabilities do not need, like physical therapy.  Now, if you want to argue that poor children without disabilities should have access to resources that enable them to make the most of what they were born with, great.  We welfare-state progressives would love to sign you up.

Second paragraph:  Fair enough, but the lack of state provision for special ed would create incentives for curing and disincentives for causing disabilities via genetic intervention only in a rational-choice Utopia in which (a) people knew in advance what disabilities their offspring might bear, (b) infallible treatments in utero and in the germline would prevent “anomalies” like Down syndrome within hours of fertilization, (c) cerebral palsy, autism, pervasive developmental delay, and catastrophic illnesses could be predicted with reasonable assurance the moment fertilization happens, and (d) everyone was completely rational (in a sense that you’d approve of) about (a), (b), and (c), and made their reproductive choices accordingly. 

--OK, so you see what I mean?  You’d think, from reading Postrel on “disincentives,” that there are plenty of libertarian couples out there who consult the tax code before they hop in the sack.

“Honey, when the government takes one-third of our money to prop up its outmoded welfare-state apparatus, does it give us any reason to try to have a child with disabilities?”

“You bet, snookums!  Look here-- it’s all paid for in advance, except for medical costs and child care!  All we have to do is have a child with cerebral palsy or autism, and finally the government will be working for us!”

Posted by Michael on 02/24 at 07:43 AM
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The emperor’s new jobs

Shorter Virginia Postrel (from this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine):

I was getting my facial, manicure, and massage the other day, and it occurred to me-- you know, a lot of people work in these “aesthetic” industries!  I don’t have any real data or anything, but I bet there are a lot of jobs out there that the government just isn’t counting because we just don’t think creatively and dynamically about what “jobs” are!  I bet I can sell this to The New York Times Magazine!  Wow, I’ve already generated more wealth in the New Dynamist Economy, just by thinking!

“Mad Max” Sawicky and Brad DeLong have more substantial responses to Ms. Postrel-- they’re great, in the sense that they show what a libertarian fantasy-land she’s living in, but then again they take her seriously, which is a mistake I made two years ago when I corresponded briefly with her about disability, cloning, and prenatal screening (in the course of working on a paper for a conference on disability and deafness at Gallaudet University), and found that despite writing volubly on these subjects, she hadn’t thought very long or very well about any of them.

Details on request, of course.

Posted by Michael on 02/24 at 07:09 AM
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