Category: ZT & PC

Wow. On first blush, this one’s outrageous, then it gets a bit tricky, then, maybe, it will end by being outrageous at the end.

The students in a high school broadcasting class in Washington are responsible for reciting the Pledge of Allegience over the PA, while the monitors in various rooms show the pledge text and a fluttering American flag in the background.

(Doesn’t that seem a little goofy? I mean, given the controversy, making the pledge be part of a class assignment, removing it from the venue of “voluntary,” seems unwise. In fact, since the Supremes have said that nobody can be compelled to say the Pledge, it seems illegal.)

Anyway, one of the students decided that the “under God” bit was wrong, so he recited the pledge without it, and altered the text on the screen to omit the offending words. And now faces punishment.

Hess, an avowed atheist since sixth grade, thinks he’s forced to listen to a religious statement when he hears the pledge. Last week, his world current events class debated Newdow’s case. After one student said, “Christians are forcing us to listen to this,” Hess vowed that he could make students not listen to the words. The phrase “under God” was added to the pledge by congressional vote in 1954, during the Cold War.
“I took it out to prove we don’t have to hear it,” Hess said.
On Wednesday, school officials told Hess he would be permitted only to read books during his broadcasting class. Hess, 18, plans a career in broadcasting and wants to finish his assignments. “I want my privileges back,” he said. “It’s not right to take them away.”
[…] Administrators said Hess’ actions put the school out of sync with state law, though lawyers note that there is no criminal or civil penalty for not saying the pledge. State law allows students to remain silent during the pledge.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that “under God” is unconstitutional. But that ruling is on hold while the the U.S. Supreme Court considers the matter.
“Our interpretation as a school district is that the law says we say the pledge,” said Greg Eisnaugle, Spanaway Lake principal. “‘Under God’ is still in it. If the court says it comes out, that’s what we’ll do.”

On the one hand, it sounds like oppression of free speech and imposition of religious duties. But, then, there’s this:

The student, Kenny Hess, removed the words “under God” from the pledge, which is shown with an American flag background on classroom TV throughout the school. Hess also declined to recite the phrase and, instead read, “one nation … indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
School officials said they’ve punished Hess for misusing school equipment to deliver a personal message.
[…] School officials said Hess should have chosen to write an article for the school paper or produce an opinion piece for the school newscast.

Was that an option? If Hess wanted to dissent from the offending phrase, was there a way he could do that without losing class credit or having his grade affected?

See, the problem here isn’t so much that Hess dissents from the Pledge as currently constituted, but that he altered it, in text and speech, during an assignment. What he was supposed to say on the school-owned equipment during a school-organized period, wasn’t what he actually said.

If Hess had, for example, decided to leave out other words, or change some around, or change the picture on the monitor to a picture of Kurt Cobain, or add in his own editorial comment (“with liberty and justice for all, except for the prisoners down in Gitmo, locked away by the fascist Bush Administration!”), nobody would argue that he had a free speech right to express his opinion — but it would be more clearly (if still analogously) an act that the school could censure for not being what was assigned.

Again, this isn’t the Free Speech moment, or a political rally. It’s a school assignment, on school equipment, being piped around to classrooms. That the school believes it has a statutory requirement to do this adds to the case, even if there’s some question as to the accuracy of taht interpretation.

If Hess had the opportunity to decline the assignment without adversely affecting his grade, then his actions were improper. If there were no such opportunity, then the assignment would, indeed, be illegal (though certainly broadcast students should learn that broadcasters sometimes have to cover material in a way that may not match their personal convictions).

The situation still makes me a little uncomfortable, but I’m inclined to back the school on it, with the above proviso.

(via Les)

The Michigtan Lawsuit Abuse Watch (M-LAW) highlights the costs of goofy lawsuits on society. They’ve announced the winners of their Wacky Warning Label Contest this year. While the Grand Prize winner was fine, I have to give the nod to the Fourth Place winner, a five-inch fishing lure with three steel hooks, which has the following warning on its packaging:

Harmful if swallowed.

‘Nuff said.

(via BoingBoing)

The ends can sometimes indict the means. But indictment is not, as we all should know, conviction.

Neilson is changing their methodology in major markets from using viewer logs and older monitoring devices to using just PeopleMeters. These measure what you’re really watching, vs. what you record in the manual viewer log.

But recent results in some test markets have some folks alarmed over this. Why? Because the results show that, as far as I can tell, when you actually monitor what people really watch, vs. what they say they watch, “minority-oriented programming” doesn’t seem to be watched as much..

THE N.A.A.C.P. and leading members of Congress from both parties, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, have added their voices to the growing number complaining that the proposed changes in how Nielsen gathers local television ratings will drastically undercount the number of black and Hispanic viewers.
Mrs. Clinton, in her letter, cited concerns that the new system was “undercounting minority viewers.” Why this is so is unclear. But the senator cited results of a test of the local people meters during the winter, during which “virtually all top-rated shows among African-American adults witnessed significant declines in viewership, in some cases by more than 60 percent.” Among the shows affected are “The Parkers” and “One on One,” both on UPN.
“Similarly, large declines were seen in the ratings for top Spanish-language networks,” Mrs. Clinton’s letter continued. “Without a thorough investigation into these statistical aberrations, I think it is fair to say that Nielsen would be remiss in pushing forward with its rollout plan.”
In a separate letter to Ms. Whiting, Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, expressed similar concerns, saying Nielsen’s plans could imperil the “future of programming aimed specifically at African-American and Latino audiences.”

Now, obviously, a differential result going from testing method A to testing method B raises some concerns. The problem is, nobody (who’s complaining) seems to be interested in whether the old method was actually more or less accurate than the new method. They’re just concerned about the results being different, and different in a way they don’t care for.

Or, perhaps, it’s just obvious to them that, well, naturally, Hispanic and African-American audiences are most interested in watching programming that is “oriented” in their direction (regardless, say, of its quality), and so if there’s a drop in the measured audience, then Neilson must be disenfranchising minorities. Right?

But Nielsen Media Research, whose ratings have been used for decades to help set TV advertising rates, takes issue with the critics, asserting that the number of households sampled with African-American and Hispanic viewers will actually increase under the proposed changes. Senator Clinton, Democrat of New York, in a letter yesterday to Susan D. Whiting, president and chief executive of Nielsen, urged a delay in plans to adopt, effective April 8, the new methodology in New York. The change involves adopting locally the so-called people meters Nielsen has used since 1986 to gather national ratings data.
The people meters would replace the paper diaries Nielsen has provided to viewers in local markets since 1950, as well as set-top boxes that are not as technically sophisticated. Nielsen intends to switch New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to local people meters as part of plans to have all the 10 largest local markets using them by next year. One big market, Boston, shifted to people meters in 2002.
[…] The African-American households will compose 21.2 percent of the sample, compared with an estimate that such households make up 17.3 percent of New York households. And Hispanic households will make up 16.8 percent of the sample, compared with an estimate that such households currently account for 16.1 percent of the total.
Also, Mr. Loftus said, during the test in January and February, total viewership among black men ages 18 to 49 in New York increased 4 percent from the viewership total obtained by using diaries and set-top boxes.
Among the networks that gained viewers in that coveted demographic Mr. Loftus listed CNN, Cartoon Network, VH1, and WNJU, a Spanish-language station.

So, WNJU aside, one reason for the changes in results is that cable stations are being better monitored. Which means that UPN and Fox, which schedule a lot of “minority-oriented programming” lose share.

That UPN and Fox’s “minority-oriented programming” consists of craptacular sitcoms that would be craptacular even if the faces were all-white or all-green or all-blue seems to make little difference. Minority viewers will obviously prefer programming that has minority faces on it, end of story, so …

… well it means something’s wrong, dammit! Something’s rotten in the state of Neilson!

Again, it’s certainly possible that the new PeopleMeter system is frelled up in some fashion. If critics wanted to harp on the discrepency in results, and drive for some answer as to why that was happening, I’d have no objections. If there’s analysis of that sort going on, it seems absent from the article, at least. Which is a shame, because that seems like basic … well, science.

Instead, the answer seems already predetermined by the critics. Neilson is undercounting minorities, because minority-oriented program viewing is down. QED.

Which strikes me less as science than as politics. And, frankly, racist politics at that.

(via BoingBoing)

The Georgia state legislature House has passed unanimously a bill to make female genital mutilation (a/k/a “female circumcision”), a particularly brutal form of sexual repression against women in some cultures (which, unfortunately, has been brought into the US among some groups). All fine and well.

But at the last minute, someone happened to mention to one of the sponsors something about female genital piercing — which, while it give me the wiggins, is, after all, a voluntary act by adults, and is arguably not substantially differerent from, say, ear piercing or navel piercing or other less-shuddery sorts of things.

Well, we can’t have that sort of thing going on amidst the flower of Georgia’s fairer sex!

Amendment sponsor Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, was slack-jawed when told after the vote that some adults seek the piercings.
“What? I’ve never seen such a thing,” Heath said. “I, uh, I wouldn’t approve of anyone doing it. I don’t think that’s an appropriate thing to be doing.”

So they made that illegal, too. Because, after all, the law is there solely to keep people from doing inappropriately outlandish things that make legislators go “Eewwww” …

The bill still has to be compromised with the previously passed Senate version, in particular over the piercing amendment. Since it’s limited to a voluntary adult activity and only applies to women doing it, it likely wouldn’t stand up to constitutional review, but let’s hope that folks get over their wiggins and keep it from distracting from a real problem.

(via MeFi)

A fine essay on tolerance, and how it’s never an easy process — nor one that magically happens without pushing the envelope.

It bears reminding that for most, tolerance in its first stages is a laying down of arms, not an extending of hands. Like democracy itself, it is not about enjoying harmonies but about enduring dissonance. It does not, at least initially, create community, but rather sets forth a kind of DMZ — a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” writ large — in which differences are no longer deemed a casus belli or justification for discrimination.
Tolerance begins as an exercise in forbearance, a gritting of teeth. It is how we deal with each other’s differences. Talk of religious conviction and threats to marriage, earnest though it may be, does not account for the deep visceral reaction underlying the current opposition to same-sex marriages. For that, one must go back to the earlier meaning of tolerance, and the anguish suffered when confronted with differences that appear as abominations and therefore are threatening. Our responses are tribal, our lexicon rife with words expressing aversion and suspicion. Only with time does the alien become the immigrant, the stranger the neighbor, the outsider the newcomer.

Good stuff. Thanks, Les.

In Australia, which has seen a growing number of swords used in street brawls and the like — including katanas and machetes — the answer seems to be simple: ban swords. Period.

From July, anyone found possessing or selling a sword without a permit will face up to six months’ jail and fines of up to $12,000.
Existing sword owners must surrender their weapons to police, sell them to a licensed dealer or apply to the Chief Commissioner for specific approval.
Collectors and people with legitimate cultural, religious or military reasons to own swords will be exempted from the ban, but must store them under lock and key and have a burglar alarm.
[…] The new laws will make it illegal to sell swords to anyone who does not have a permit. Sword sellers will have to keep a register of buyers’ details and make it available for police to inspect.
Mr Haermeyer said groups such as highland dancers, historic re-enactment groups, bonafide collectors and people with family heirlooms could apply for an exemption from the licensing services branch of Victoria Police.
“Legitimate sword owners understand the importance of ensuring that their swords do not fall into the wrong hands,” he said. “The vast majority of the community would say, ‘Look, there’s no place for people just being able to go out there and buy these things and carry them around the street’.”

I’m pretty certain we have the sword problem taken here of here in the States, largely by preventing people from carrying around swords in public. I suppose it’s easier just to out-and-out ban them, though, unless you get special permission and have them all registered and stuff.

As someone who actually owns a sword, it’s kind of funny to think of it as illegal contraband.

Gonna make things a lot more difficult for Duncan MacLeod, though, katana-space jacket or not.

(via Volokh)

All hail the bold, swift governmental action taken by the City of Aliso Viejo, California, to battle a pervasive chemical hazard in our lives!

City officials were so concerned about the potentially dangerous properties of dihydrogen monoxide that they considered banning foam cups after they learned the chemical was used in their production.
Then they learned that dihydrogen monoxide – H2O for short – is the scientific term for water.
“It’s embarrassing,” said City Manager David J. Norman. “We had a paralegal who did bad research.”
The paralegal apparently fell victim to one of the many official looking Web sites that have been put up by pranksters to describe dihydrogen monoxide as “an odorless, tasteless chemical” that can be deadly if accidentally inhaled.

The city had been prepared to ban Styrofoam cups at city-sponsored events, since they were made with a substance that could “threaten human health and safety.” The measure has been pulled from next week’s agenda.

(via Volokh)

I see the House passed, 276-139, the “cheeseburger bill” to protect fast food manufacturers for frivolous law suits. I’m not sure that’s a good idea.

Why not? You think those sorts of law suits are stupid, right?

Well, yeah. They’re a perversion of the justice system, and only discourage personal responsibility.

So why not this bill?

I worry when I see particular industries getting a bye on liability. Seems like a recipe for disaster.

You think tobacco companies should be sued?

Tobacco companies sell a demonstrably and manipulatively addictive product. They also, for decades, stonewalled any scientific effort to show that the product is harmful to you. The only thing addictive about french fries is that they taste good, and not even Ronald McDonald says they’re harmless for you.

So why not this bill?

If the suits are truly frivolous, they’ll get tossed out. That’s what’s happened before.

Though it costs these companies money to defend themselves. And money for insurance against the off chance that some yahoo judge will actually let something like this go by.

Yeah, but it’s … inelegant. I’ve disagreed with taking court action “off the table” in other contexts, too.

But that’s money that could go toward jobs — not just flipping burgers, but restaurant management, suppliers, constuction workers, folks at the home office …

I know. Though it’s a bit disengenuous to claim that the 12 million jobs in the restaurant industry are at stake with these sort of suits.

So what’s your beef (so to speak)?

It just seems like, even if it’s a good idea to forestall such suits here, it sets a further precedent for blocking them in far less defendable areas.

So you’d rather let unelected judges …

Well, judges in a lot fo jurisdictions are elected. But even where not, they tend to be more immune to either populist grandstanding …

… a funny thing for someone who believes in representational democracy to say …

… or campaign-coffer stuffing, at least compared to legislators.

Well, what does the bill actually block?

The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., would:
– Prohibit many obesity or weight-related claims against the food industry.
– Still allow claims to go forward if state or federal laws had been broken and as a result a person gained weight.

Given that there’s been increased emphasis on these sorts of suits — both by lawyers hungering for some big crap-shoot wins, and by Nosey Nelly “food activists” who want to legislate nutritional morality, don’t you think it’s appropriate to draw those sorts of boundaries?

Maaaaaybe. I just don’t know. It rubs me the wrong way. I mean, if it’s true in principle, maybe what we need is a general “personal responsibility” clause in the legal system, rather than one that cherry-picks just one industry at a time. If the law is broken, then they’re liable. If not, then they’re not.

Except that would get back to the tobacco industry.

Except they’re rat bastards.

Right. Well, there you go.

(Yes, I have these sorts of conversations with myself in the car.)

A study funded by funded by the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund and the National Cancer Institute suggests strongly that smoking in films ought to draw an R-Rating.

Never mind violence, even slap-stick violence. It’s more important to keep cigarettes out of the view of kids, suggest the authors.

Nearly 80 percent of movies rated PG-13 feature some form of tobacco use, while 50 percent of G and PG rated films depict smoking, said Stanton Glantz, co-author of the study, which examined 775 U.S. movies over the past five years.

Without the study in front of me, it’s unclear how rigorous they’re being in judging that. Is anyone, anywhere in the film smoking counted? Does that make sense?

“No one is saying there should never be any smoking in the movies,” Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said Tuesday at a press conference at Hollywood High School. “What we’re simply asking for is that smoking be treated by Hollywood as seriously as it treats offensive language.”

It’s a lot easier for kids (the ones we’re trying to protect here, of course) to pick up swearing than smoking.

He’d like to see more PG-13 movies that feature smoking — like “Matchstick Men,” “Seabiscuit” and the Oscar-winning “Chicago” — get slapped with an R rating.

I didn’t see the first two, but … well, let’s see. Chicago is based in the Depression Era, when a lot of folks smoked. Oops, sorry, historical realism is not (much) of a defense. Okay, Chicago is full of implicit violence and mocks the justice system, the press, and the public. Oh, well, not enough to earn an R there. But smoking — well, heck, if only we got rid of that, it would be perfectly suitable for kids!

Since R-rated films typically earn less money because they are not open to most teenagers, Glantz said he hoped such a policy would discourage filmmakers from depicting unnecessary smoking, such as the nicotine-addicted worm aliens in “Men in Black.”

Right. Because so many kids are going to take up smoking because they saw creepy little nicotine-addicted worm aliens doing it. Of course. We need to watch out for kids being indoctrinated into thinking that the National Inquirer is full of real news, too.

A gracious exception is offered for films that include historical figures that smoke. As long, I suspect, as only those noteworthy folks did so, not others around them.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think smoking is a horrid and icky habit. I will do my damnedest to dissuade Katherine from ever taking it up.

But, jeez, people, what next? R-Ratings for movies where people drive dangerously, or without seat belts? For movies where folks eat fatty food? Or drink a beer? Or carry a gun?

When I see Brittney Spears starring in When My Boyfriend Smokes It Sure Makes Me Hot at the local AMC, I’ll reconsider. In the meantime, just … don’t.

(via ASV)

An article in this morning’s Rocky sent me over to the Understanding Prejudice site, which includes a survey to determine your degree of sexism along two axes: hostile sexism (women are vile, deceptive bitches who seek to rule over men) and what they call benevolent sexism (women are lily-pure alabaster spirits that should be cherished and protected and sought after for moral and cultural guidance) — whore and madonna imagery, respectively.

I came out, in a scale of 0-5, as 2.00 on hostile sexism, and 2.18 on benevolent sexism. Oink. This makes me actually better than the world-wide results for both genders, but, in the US, only better than the average man (see standard disclaimers for self-selection and all that).

Still, it would seem that I have a ways to go before I am wholly unsexist. Maybe. The survey instrument itself has a few, to my mind, glaring problems that keep it from working the way I think it’s intended to:

• There are a couple of questions on whether the love of a woman is necessary for a man to be fully actualized. I think that love of (with, toward, from) another is part of that for most people, but I’m also aware that, in some cases, that love might be from/with/toward another man. So I expressed only moderate agreement.
• There were some statements along the lines of “men should cherish and protect women.” I think that’s true. I think women should cherish and protect men, too, but that wasn’t asked for.
• There were a lot of universal statements like “Women claim sexual discrimination when they lose in fair competition with a man.” Well, I don’t think most women act that way, but I think some women do. So if I disagree with the universality of the statement, but think it applies in some cases, should I utterly disagree (it’s not universal), or should I only somewhat disagree (it happens)?

As a result, I think I come up higher in both axes than is probably fair. I do acknowledge that there are some manipulative, scheming, and/or oversensitive women out there — but I think the same’s true for men. I think that love and intimacy and partnership with my wife has made me a better person than I was or was likely to be, and, with large caveats, am willing to generalize from that and other cases I’ve seen in my life.

And I’ll admit to a chivalric prejudice toward “women and children first,” so I guess that gives me a frisson of benevolent sexism, regardless. Though I hold the door open for anyone who needs it.

You be the judge.

In 1912, Rep. Seaborn Roddenberry (D-Georgia) proposed an amendment to the US Constitution, banning interracial marriages. Similar bills were introduced in 1913 in half of the twenty states where such laws didn’t already exist.

In introducing the bill to Congress, Roddenberry declared:

Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant. It is subversive to social peace. It is destructive of moral supremeacy, and ultimately this slavery to black beasts will bring this nation to a fatal conflict.

Compare to some of Dennis Prager’s comments. I find the similarity in apocalyptic tone and appeal to the “true American spirit” more than a bit disturbing.

(via BoingBoing)

The province of Nova Scotia has issued a list of words it wants banned from use by the news media because it considers them offensive to the mentally ill. It’s offering a bounty to citizens who report use of the terms in newspapers of radio and TV news broadcasts.

The “outdated, negative, inappropriate” terms include: “madman,” “nutcase,” “fruitcake,” “kooky,” “mental hospital,” and “nervous breakdown.”

“Stigma against people with a mental illness often involves negative labels, or inaccurate and offensive representations in the media, portraying this population as violent, comical or incompetent,” said a government statement this week.
Added the province’s health minister, Angus MacIsaac: “This initiative will show us if and how media need more guidance and education.”

Do not for a moment think that I don’t have a tremendous amount of sympathy and support for the mentally illl. Mental illness is a serious, and stigmatized, problem in both Canadian and American society.

But, damn, can anyone read that last paragraph without getting a little chill down their spines?

(via Daimnation)

After receiving complaints from teachers, the principal of Marshall High School in Portland, Oregon, emptied out the display case used by the Chess Club to advertise its presence to the high school population. District officials said they felt the display gave the impression that the school was endorsing chess.

No, wait, of course, I got it wrong. It was the Hispanic Club’s display that was taken down. District officials were concerned that ethnic tensions might be increased by advertising a club that fostered pride and solidarity for a particular ethnicity. After all, with the many ethnicities in the Multnomah school district, the district can’t be seen as supporting one over another.

No, hold on, I made a mistake again. It was the Gay & Lesbian Alliance‘s display that was taken down, after district officials feared that students and parents might think it meant that the school was supporting a homosexual lifestyle. They noted that GALA members had been given places to exercise their free speech, but that display cases were not one of these places.

Continue reading “Some speech is more equal than others”

I have to wonder when we’ll hear calls for the resignation of this congressinal representative due to racist remarks?

U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown verbally attacked a top Bush administration official during a briefing on the Haiti crisis Wednesday, calling the President’s policy on the beleaguered nation “racist” and his representatives “a bunch of white men.”
Her outburst was directed at Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill. Noriega, a Mexican-American, is the State Department’s top official for Latin America.
“I think it was an emotional response of her frustration with the administration,” said David Simon, a spokesman for the Jacksonville Democrat. He noted that Brown, who is black, is “very passionate about Haiti.”
Noriega later told Brown: “As a Mexican-American, I deeply resent being called a racist and branded a white man,” according to three participants.
Brown then told him “you all look alike to me,” the participants said.

Noriega did note that he would pass on Brown’s concerns to (Secretary of State) Colin Powell and (national security adviser) Condoleezza Rice the next time I run into them.”

(via InstaPundit)