The Argument From Pornography

The arguments against the federal legalization of prostitution can be generalized into two distinct but complementary classes; those that seek to establish a causal connection between it and some undesirable consequence or another, and those that simply contend in various ways that personal ethical objections to it are sufficient for prohibition. As intuitive as they might initially appear, however, neither class should be convincing to anyone with more than a passing interest in sensible democracy.

Every argument from the first class can be classified as possibly dubious and certainly vacuous, regardless of its specific content. Some argue that prostitution serves as an impetus to slavery, some argue that it promotes criminal behavior, and some argue that it leads to a greater incidence of sexually-transmitted infections, but even if these are true, not only has prohibition not effectively solved the problem, in removing prostitution from under the aegis of regulation it may have actually exacerbated it. (More sophisticated opponents respond by smuggling into the argument even subtler concepts like wage slavery and familial dysfunction, but those moves in this class just continue to get progressively slipperier.)

The arguments of the second class are the far more dangerous, in any case, because rather than present neat, falsifiable claims about consequences, they instead rely on cherry-picked abstractions and loaded emotional appeals. Our natural (and probably correct) intuitions that prostitution is demeaning to women or that it is guilty of degenerating sexual culture can lead us to favor prohibitions of a categorical sort, even when such action is ultimately self-defeating. (We find ourselves in the same kind of conundrum when justifying silencing obnoxious groups like the Klan and the Westboro Baptist Church.) Some of the arguments in this class can be quite superficially compelling, too. For instance, it seems at least plausible that even if the practice of prostitution is not itself immediately assumed to be immoral in some objective sense, its attraction is due primarily to its taboo, and it thus can be taken as a kind of antisocial deviance. This is not sufficient cause for prohibition, but it's certainly suggestive of it, and it frames the grounds on which the opponents must in turn frame the issue: the law doesn't track the precepts of morality, it tracks the norms of pragmatism.

But the argument against legalization fails even on pragmatic grounds, because it suffers an inconvenient counterexample: all the relevant problems with regulated prostitution arise in identical form during the creation of pornography, which similarly commodifies sex and raises similar regulatory concerns but is able to take sanctuary in the First Amendment. Outside of this consideration (and apparently, according to California v. Freeman, the arcana of the payment scheme), there is no legitimate distinction between them, and thus, a opponent of prostitution is left in the awkward position of having to explain why commodified sex prearranged for broadcast should somehow be endowed with a legal permissibility denied to ordinary prostitution. Legal pornography more than just necessitates legal prostitution—it analytically entails it. The opponents got this right—and, I concede, they have from the beginning—but unfortunately for them, we can't sensibly ban pornography.

You might have noticed, I omitted an old standard; perhaps its merely a matter of semantic squeamishness, but it seems crass to label a crime “victimless” when at every commission, there are at least two victims. Does this change our intuitions about the subject? It shouldn't. Rather, it ought to prompt us to realize that as usual, we've stressed the trivial and left the profound unanswered; rather than ask “How do we fight prostitution?” we ought to have been asking “Why has there emerged a market for victims in the first place?"

This Year's Parking Garage

When the Senate’s Privilege Fee Committee yanked the pin from this year’s most explosive piece of legislation and forwarded it to the general Senate for approval, it didn’t seem, contrary to their suggestions, as if they were prepared.

It’s not believable that this committee could have thought they didn’t have any reason to prepare a press release; without some kind explanation, this maneuver couldn’t possibly be construed as anything other than a phase out, regardless of whether the athletic department ultimately rescued the abandoned marching band. It’s not believable that they were honestly surprised when the band, the student body and the media at-large didn’t make the same assumptions they did. And it’s least believable of all that the massive controversy this committee manufactured was actually a deliberate method of raising consciousness for the band. This entire situation was a disaster from beginning to end, and they didn’t mean for any of it to happen.

But in spite of my own loyalties and in spite of all this unnecessary tumult, I still have to commit a certain amount of sympathy to our senators: they were then and continue now to be only students trying earnestly to do their jobs, and they continue to not be a single monolithic unit. So I will assume–charitably and perhaps wrongly–that the rest of the Senate had nothing to with the legislation. And furthermore, the band’s victory was swift and absolute; this committee’s intention, regardless of whether they theoretically continue to maintain influence, is no longer of any relevance. (Nor, for that matter, are the marching band’s hurt feelings.) The administration has spoken: at least $140,000 per year is secure for the foreseeable future, and the possibility remains open for positive changes in funding. If this is our principal concern, then the emails should have stopped. But they haven’t. And why not?

Because the war being fought the arts in general is much more important than this proxy, and it raises a larger and more interesting question: how exactly does one explain the importance of the arts to people to whom it isn’t self-evident? The burden seems to be on the artist to justify his pursuit, and this furthermore seems to be reasonable! “Leave the athletic department out of it,” some more radical critics assert, “and just find your own funding. Show me the money.”

It’s an onerous problem, and it’s one that the Facebook coalition of ten thousand has yet to settle. Other than citing the obvious logistical problems, the common response to this objection has been the following: if we exclude the band from funding, we can’t very well include similar programs like Student Publications, can we? The Reductio ad absurdum works until the interlocutor either simply agrees to cut both, or argues that only the band’s funding should be cut, and for some unique reason. The first–the conservative, categorical objection–is actually somewhat easier to handle: while many might see a reason to deny funding to the band specifically, most don’t want to see the fee abolished completely. The second, however, is trickier: it isn’t difficult to demonstrate the need for something like a daily newspaper or student health services, but to what can one appeal to demonstrate the importance of music and the arts? “Music makes kids smarter,” we retort. “It’s in the data.” “Probably,” they return immediately, “but you’ve reversed the causality. I bet you wanted to distribute the Baby Mozart cassettes, too.” Around and around, we go.

This is the battle we should wish to fight, and this is the battle worth fighting. But how? How do we show them the money? If someone has an answer, at least ten thousand are listening.

Public Service Announcement

Have you ever been trying to park your vehicle in one of the campus parking lots, and somehow had a space you rightfully deserved stolen by someone who was ignorant of our wordlessly evolved protocol? Have you ever wondered exactly what the rules are? Here are some helpful tips:

• When you arrive at a fully-occupied lot, protocol dictates that you select one row in which to wait, one with at least one unoccupied entrance. If no such row exists, the parking lot can be effectively considered closed. Find another lot, or just continue floating around this one like a transient. Your choice.
• If vehicles are already parked at the end of both rows, there is no acceptable reason to enter it. No reconnaissance missions, either; even if the drivers of both vehicles had somehow both neglected an open spot, you are certainly not entitled to it.
• Once you have settled in the right lane at the entrance of one row, you are queued in that row. If there was already another vehicle waiting at the opposite end, you are queued second, and if not, you are queued first and are thereby entitled to the first space that becomes available in that row.
• If you leave the row after having been queued to pursue a newly-opened space in a different row, you forfeit your place in the queue.
• One's temporary proximity to a given space has no bearing on entitlement, and if, for instance, you are queued second in a row and a space five feet in front of you becomes available, it is your obligation to allow the other vehicle to park. Furthermore, if that vehicle is not signaling or otherwise indicating its intention to park—which should always be done in such situations to avoid unnecessary confusion—it is also your obligation to extend your hand out the window and invite them to park. If they then respond to this gesture by inviting you to park, then they have acknowledged the protocol and are for whatever reason giving you precedence, anyway—in this case, the space is yours.
• Friends don't let friends cut in the queue; the fact that the person leaving happened to be that guy whose stoichiometric equations you always ripped off freshman year endows neither of you the right to make some kind of transaction that transgresses the protocol. A sufficiently angry and observant person will forget neither of your license plate numbers.
• Obviously, during full-occupancy, even if one is temporarily granted through some double coincidence of luck the ability to “pull through,” this maneuver is strictly forbidden.
• No one is entitled to park and wait for spaces that lie off of the main thoroughfares of the lot; these spots are wild cards. If one should happen to open up during a period of full-occupancy, the vehicles that at the time happen to be traveling on said thoroughfare—not vehicles already waiting in a nearby lane—have first rights to it. Otherwise, the lots would frequently be subject to all kinds of ill-advised Dukes-of-Hazzard-style maneuvers.
• If someone elects not to follow these procedures, do not just overreact. If one space has opened, another is likely to follow. This also gives you an opportunity to pen an especially eloquent missive reminding them of their civic obligations that you can then place on their windshield. Be sure to write legibly.
  

This has been a public service announcement, made possible in part by a special grant from some douchebag in a dilapidated blue pickup, last Friday morning.

"Does that look like spit to you?"

Of all our cultural folkways, the most awkward one might be that which dictates we must nestle even more of our hard-earned bills under our plate after we've already paid. How does such a practice begin? And ought we actually to feel any sense of prompting to follow it?

With only a bit of microeconomic conjecture, one can see not only how it came to be standard practice, but how it was entirely unavoidable that it did. Patient zero of the phenomenon—a tired Patriot at some bar in colonial Massachusetts, I prefer to imagine—probably had no idea exactly what he had started when he first flipped the barkeep a penny for his care. But once he began to tip, he could hardly just stop without an explanation, and moreover, likely had no reason to do so; words between the staff are always loose, and thus, chances are that he was always the first militiaman in all of Boston to get his beer. Customers were not the only ones who benefited from the practice, either, nor were they the only ones who noticed. Businesses, too, probably began to notice a sly opportunity to shift at least part of the business of wage negotiation to their servers, with social politesse serving as the arbitrator.

And why will it never, ever disappear? Label it typical American hubris if you must, but embedded in our claim to personal liberty is our need to have control over the economic incentives of our service providers; even if it didn't originate here, gratuity is paradigmatically American. And if we honestly wished to discourage the practice, how exactly would we proceed? Probably by creating some kind of wage structure that shifted some of the burden back onto the business owner, and minimized the role of customer gratuity, right? This would satisfy Mr. Pink, the character in Reservoir Dogs who, as it must be said, was not against tipping for the extraordinary but against tipping for the ordinary. Unfortunately, this creates a different problem of incentives; if tips constituted only a trivial portion of a server's income, that bottomless iced tea would suddenly effectively become a lot less bottomless. We are trapped between our desire for wage control and our abhorrence of wage responsibility.

But should we follow this practice, or do we have a principled responsibility to end it? Certainly, one should never say “tips” are “to insure prompt service;” not only does this false acronym confuse “insure” with “ensure,” it doesn't even seem to actually be the case. Gratuity does not any longer ensure speedy or careful service at all, but has rather become entirely absorbed as a necessary and expected portion of service sector wages. And it is often said—and not just by absurd characters in Tarantino movies—that we should “rebel” in response. But this maneuver is only wanton self-interest masquerading as some kind of civil disobedience. If someone makes the claim to have an ideological objection to gratuity, they've essentially asked to stop being taken seriously.

But there is, perhaps, also a more final and pragmatic reason to tip: to adopt the non-tipper's stance is only to be cavalier with the livelihood of those who behind closed doors prepare your food, and thus, to be cavalier to your own. (Throwing an economic tantrum might temporarily alleviate one's righteous indignation, but it certainly won't actually do you the slightest bit of good; for a broader discussion of this, just read Steve Dublanica's thoughtful and captivating weblog “Waiter Rant.”) Like our frightening discovery of microscopic bacteria in the nineteenth-century, the servers are our bosses and they always have been, rather than the other way around.

Why Vote?

As I completed my ballot last week—absentee from Leawood, mostly but not entirely for Democrats, with many minor elections left blank—I began to mull over whether I was fulfilling a genuine obligation or just engaging in a kind of civic masturbation. Do we, as responsible members of this republic, have a citizenly duty to vote? And if we do, on what grounds ought we to feel compelled to exercise it?

One justification often given by people of a vague righteousness is that we must “uphold the process.” Of course, this is strictly true; someone must vote, or the notion of functional democracy vanishes. But this isn't actually much of a systemic concern, because someone always does. In fact, certain constituencies (the financially interested, the policy wonks, and the culture warriors) always vote. And why wouldn't they? Their unique diligence usually allows them to have it their way. It's a curious idiosyncrasy of our collective political personality that we require prompting to act in our own self-interest.

But those notorious demons haunt us—especially those who find themselves electorally disenfranchised—with words of discouragement. “You have no voice, and you never will,” they whisper in our ears, or perhaps, “You're always voting for hegemony no matter which way you pull the lever.” (The latter, of course, is only the paranoid version of the omnipresent “write-in” crowd.) They dare us to eschew the long lines and the propaganda and the misery, and to allow history to wash over us as observers, rather than participants.

Unfortunately, although these aren't sufficient excuses to stay home, their rejection doesn't exactly provide moral impetus to vote, either. We have been bestowed the option—in financial market jargon, the right but not obligation—to voice our opinion, and such an option includes the privilege of silence. But while there might occasionally be good reasons to abstain, we mustn't forget that this decision is itself a rational choice for which we can be held accountable. It's a right every American is free to exercise, but one he shouldn't thoughtlessly, for if he does, he has forfeited not his right to be a pundit—anyone with a bit of wit and a winning smile can become such a creature, admits your columnist—he has forfeited the right for his commentary to be taken seriously, both by others and by himself. Joseph Schumpeter was fond of saying that the ballot is stronger than the bullet, but why the separation? History is overrun with examples of one being used as means to the other. To these designs, we owe if not the pull of the lever for one shill or another, then an abstention rooted in care and decisiveness rather than a yawning laziness and apathy.

But we should, further, positively desire to lend our voices to the chorus. We should never allow our faculties of opinion to atrophy. We should never allow the capricious cultural zeitgeist built on the shoulders of others to command our own whims. We should never stifle or mute our outrage and indignation at injustice. We should never tire of persecuting our leaders, holding them to the fire and enjoying watching them burn; it's good for us, but it's not bad for them, either. And perhaps most of all, we should never forget what it felt like to be without a voice, without the right to protest for one, and without the hope that we ever could.

These aren't the virtues of a contrarian; they're those of a democrat. Vote or don't—it won't be the worst reason you've ever skipped class—but do so not for the process, but for yourself.

Conservatism Lost

For the 1999 philosophical thriller Being John Malkovich, the eponymous actor decided to accept credit for his role in the film as “John Horatio Malkovich” rather than “John Gavin Malkovich,” his real name. His justification for this quirky little gesture is understandable: in building emotional distance from his doppelgänger, he was able to wink at the audience and preserve his identity. But even if he hadn't done it, Malkovich still wouldn't have been required to perform his citizenly duties as an absurd caricature of himself; he only had to play one on TV. In contemporary American politics, the conservative has not been so fortunate.

This disaffected person certainly cannot in good faith cast a ballot for either the Republican or the Democratic Party; neither represent his ideological interests. But alas, he also cannot help but feel that his vote and time are equally wasted proselytizing for faceless, nameless third-party candidates who haven't the slightest political purchase. So unlike Malkovich, the conservative actually is compelled to answer to the bastardization of his own name, and face misjudgment. The end effect of such brutal disenfranchisement is that although he might pull the lever as he has always done, he can now only do so with angry disinterest. (It might surprise you, however, or it might not, to know the type of people for whom he's lately been pulling it.) The conservative has lost both his home and the language to protest it.

But not for much longer, I suspect.

The disclaimer, of course, is that I don't speak from the personal experience of any kind of conservatism; my preference is strong for the Left, I find my political beliefs refreshingly well encapsulated by Senator Obama, a liberal Democrat, and I have no fetish for the traditional institutions, especially when they confound societal progress. But a simple observation cannot be denied: the marginalization of conservatism in this country, the metamorphosis of libertarianism into authoritarianism, has been an incredibly destructive force. Our fiscal policy offers corporate welfare egregious enough to turn Marx over in his grave; our civil liberties have been seized, without much of a struggle and without collateral; religious fanaticism and proud ignorance have cleared their throats and claimed seats at the round-table. As ideologically divided as we are, the juxtaposition of such partisanship with the likely results of this election season does not merely suggest a slight change in the zeitgeist, it suggests widespread dissatisfaction with the GOP from the left and the right. (In what kind of universe does Christopher Buckley endorse a Democrat?)

If the GOP wishes to survive, they must make several paradigmatic changes, and they must make them now: they must leave evangelical pretenses to fringe parties, lobbyists on the White House lawn, and interest groups. They must regain moral jurisdiction on the economy, the arena they might have ideologically in their favor. They must start behaving a lot more like Bob Barr, and a lot less like Rick Santorum. They must fight to reduce the sprawling hand of government everywhere, not just in the arena of social welfare. They must abandon neo-conservative foreign policy, and rejoin the global diplomatic community. In other words, they must abandon the silly cult of Ronald Reagan, and return to Barry Goldwater. It's astonishing how few people see it, but it was Reagan, through both his personality and his politics, who provided the foundation for this collapse. Thankfully, the demagogic faction in his wake is in its final throes, and I suspect that within the next ten years or so, we'll see either a collapse or a return to roots. Conservatives—and everyone else, for that matter—had better hope so.

An American Tragedy

Not a single night in Aggieville elapses without the occurrence of at least two kinds of culinary injustice: consider the person in a crowd who edges meekly up to the bar, requests a “Bourbon County Stout” and is denied, and also consider everyone else at every other bar, slamming their fists upon the counter and accepting or even demanding some horrid, yellow swill. The sin is not in the denial or acceptance itself, but rather in the mechanism by which this travesty comes to pass.

I'm not “writing one on corporatism,” so to speak; Sierra Nevada, one of the biggest craft brewers in the country, produces in a factory in California several world-class brews. Craft brewery market leader Boston Beer is continually adding new and exotic varieties to its extensive stable, and its famous flagship “Samuel Adams Boston Lager” is available nationwide. Goose Island, out of Chicago, seems unable to produce anything but excellence and its offerings are available to most of the Midwest. These breweries and many, many others produce superb products, ship them all over, and do so at only trivially higher prices. No, craft beer commands only a four-percent market share for a different reason: because of our credulity and susceptibility to slick propaganda. Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors don't really even try to argue, and historically have responded by quietly swallowing up the smaller breweries like whales and minimizing them in their stomachs. They always win, and we always lose; this isn't a meritocracy, it's hegemony.

These shameless profiteers have intentionally contributed to the erosion of our faculties of discrimination, and they have succeeded both in the way we conceive of our beer, and the way we conceive of ourselves.

We are wont to describe beer—as my former roommate and I half-facetiously observe—as possessing only four characteristics: “light,” “heavy,” “bitter,” and “smooth.” No wonder so many are convinced of their distaste! In this does, in fact, lie a good indicator: if these terms are sufficient to describe a given beer, you've learned everything you need to know about it. But this set of adjectives is hardly complete; a quality beer doesn't just have a laundry list of characteristics, it has an entire dynamic landscape to be explored. A pale ale is not just a “beer with more hops,” it's a prickly frolic in a sunny, summer orchard, an India pale ale doubly so. At the other end of the spectrum lives a dance of a different kind, the stout; dark and sometimes brooding, it's a midnight ballet deep in a forest of oak, sherry, and dark chocolate. The Oktoberfestbier sings breezy notes of toffee and autumn, the nut brown of roasted malt and molasses, the golden ale of bubbly and velvet and the ballroom waltz. Our palates should have to rise to meet the imaginations of the brewers, not the other way around.

Equal dysfunction lies in the careless invention of “beer snobbery.” This notion is misleading, for there need be nothing exclusionary about it; the term “beer geek” is more precise. After all, nobody thinks the burgers served at McDonald's are as good as the ones at So Long Saloon, do they? And furthermore, does making this observation require any kind of real elitism? The subtleties begin to become more readily apparent, between different species of beers and eventually between brewers themselves. But one can never forget that Joycean epiphany; that first sip, the thoughtful emergence of that understanding.

To paraphrase: let the brewers of yellow beer tremble at a revolution. We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world to win. BEER CONNOISSEURS OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!

The Implosion of the GOP

In the span of only a single tumultuous month, the entire landscape of the election has been transformed. Following the Republican National Convention, John McCain found himself enjoying his first lead in the popular vote since before the end of the primaries and basking in the meteoric glow of his new lieutenant. The two were able to finagle victories on the issues of offshore drilling and the Surge, and amidst all the flying rhetoric, it seemed that the GOP might grab yet another election from the jaws of defeat. The battle cry was sounded, and the base, as they say, was energized.

But now, only a month later, the senator finds himself in a dark political wasteland: he has earned himself an insurmountable deficit in the polls, an even larger massacre scheduled for the Republicans in Congress, an economy rushing swiftly toward bankruptcy, and a running mate whose hypocrisy and utter ineptness have embarrassed her into silence. In short, I can only reiterate a position of mine from about six months ago: Senator Obama will almost certainly win, probably by about five points.

Mind you, the GOP hasn't exactly been left shaking its head, just trying to understand this sudden spate of misfortune; they already know what happened. Kathleen Parker certainly does, as does Karl Rove. This recent rapid erosion of support was not simply a natural abatement of euphoria following the RNC, but rather, a distinct and discrete phenomenon. In my reckoning, the blame can be approximately divided down the middle: half for Sarah Palin, half for the economy.

The economy's role is obvious: when a country's finances go south, the sitting bureaucrats always take the blame. The fault on the side of the governor, however, yields more tragedy, because it could have been so easily mitigated.

Troopergate is a good example: the controversy rests entirely on the fact that she shouldn't have used every avenue available to her to rescue her family and the public from an armed, psychopathic civil servant. (Whether or not this is actually a fair appraisal makes little difference, because a base credulous enough to accept her at face value usually doesn't bother to beleaguer how issues come to be framed.) But since she was evasive, disingenuous, and outright obstructive about it, rather than being given an overwhelmingly sympathetic and charitable response by the public at large she is going to be left only with some kind of ethics demerit.

Her aloofness with the mainstream media is another: she has tried to paint their obviously innocuous behavior as “gotcha” journalism, and thanks to Tina Fey and Saturday Night Live, has managed to become a literal self-parody in the process. Her lack of intellectual curiosity is stunning—this is a woman who could not name a single Supreme Court case with which she disagreed, and who seemed unaware of the particulars of the Bush Doctrine, the overarching philosophy that has for the past decade guided the foreign policy of her own party. And she seems unable to answer even the simplest questions in a straightforward way; one must ask, when an interviewer asks which newspapers one reads or has read, what kind of person answers, without irony, “all of them?”

She did, of course, channel a few badly needed volts through the far-right base—which I'll admit I simply didn't predict—and they continue steadfastly optimistic. But thankfully, her idiocy has not gone uncondemned, and in pandering to the gullible, anti-intellectual faction of the electorate, McCain and Palin are not only losing, but losing for all the right reasons.

Karma: O.J.'s 100th Problem

June 17th, 1994—I shall never forget it.

I was only a little boy, but the memory is electrically vivid: my family had taken a weekend jaunt to Omaha, and through the fuzzy television set in our hotel room we joined the rest of the country in watching the “slow-speed chase,” the opening narrative of a thriller so surreal and excessive that it parodied parody itself.

It began conventionally enough: a woman and her close friend had been the victims of a grisly double homicide, and the perpetrator—a scorned-lover-turned-cold-blooded-killer—was preparing to strike himself from the record in grand fashion. The main characters themselves were a perfect exercise in archetypes, too, the murderer a powerful and sinister black man, and his victims a beautiful, wholesome white couple. After having left behind something of a suicide note, he had summoned a close friend and together they tried to flee Los Angeles on the freeway. (Famously, of course, this silly little getaway only proceeded at only thirty-five miles an hour, drawing the annoyed relief of the authorities and the amusement of their audience.) But very best of all, the murderer was a famous football hero and public icon! Could we possibly ask for more?

Apparently we could, because the ensuing trial soon metamorphosed into a high-profile theater for hucksters, thrill-seekers, attention whores, and other opportunists. Between camera flashes and via the front pages, more characters became distinct: the prosecution, the woefully under-prepared, unqualified and overwhelmed antagonists; the flamboyant defense, a legal “Dream Team” with a plethora of charisma and a thousand alibis to spare; Mark Fuhrman, the disgraced detective whose stupidity and thoroughgoing racism damned the prosecution; Kato Kaelin, the irrelevant idiot jester who never saw a couch he wasn't willing to crash on; and the hapless Judge Ito, the only member of the circus who seemed to have less control of the court than the prosecution. And what of our protagonist? O.J. himself sat quietly for the duration of both trials, smugly chitchatting with his lawyers and occasionally grinning.

This was a marvelous and grotesque epic, perverse enough to enthrall even the hardened American imagination; it had sex, violence, voyeuristic intrigue, socioeconomic and sociopolitical commentary, comic relief, celebrity fetishism, boatloads of theatrics and melodrama, and a pair of heartbroken children trapped in the middle. Rightly so it was dubbed “The Trial of the Century,” but in hindsight, we were the ones really on trial. And although American tribalism was acquitted, our national dignity still ultimately found itself at the scaffold, because everyone knows what happened next.

The astonishing acquittal handed down from the exasperated jury sent a shock wave through our culture and gave us a collective judicial midlife crisis. How could our system have failed us so miserably? How could we—through the proxy of twelve of our own—have allowed ourselves to be distracted by and give sanction to the defense team's outrageous dog-and-pony show? And how else could we view such a situation, other than as yet another embarrassing snapshot in the photo album of American race relations?

The latest (and hopefully last) chapter in this drama almost seems like a hasty afterthought, doesn't it? Last Friday—on the thirteenth anniversary of his acquittal, coincidentally—he was convicted for kidnapping and armed robbery in connection with some shady memorabilia dealings, a crime for which he might just spend the rest of his life in prison. To label this anticlimactic little epilogue “karmic” is to betray my opinion, but schadenfreude aside: justice needn't be poetic to be satisfying.

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good."

Amidst the collapsing scenery of Wall Street, we seem to have lost sight of just about everything.

Secretary Paulson's now-infamous original bailout proposal is actually only three pages long, free of financial and economic jargon (with the possible exception of the possibly ambiguous “Mortgage-Related Assets”), and freely available online at a number of sources. But for those still not inclined, Sections 6 and 10 contain the money shots: “The Secretary's authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time,” and “[The subsection of the US Code concerning the Public Debt] is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $11,315,000,000,000.” Although the proposal is mundane, there is something valuable to be learned by reading the relevant US Code itself; observe the many incremental amendments made over the past quarter-century, each a stark reminder of the government's wholesale willingness to increase its own line of credit.

Socialism? In my United States? Surely not. (This is not entirely sarcasm; in a situation like this, successful democratic socialism would have at least managed to nationalize the profits, too, rather than just the risks.) But if we excoriate the bailout, we should probably offer a proper defense, too.

The much-discussed $700 billion figure is itself an arbitrary and manufactured figure; all the remaining sub-prime mortgage in the country still left uncovered post-Fannie and post-Freddie are collectively only worth half a trillion dollars, so unless Paulson plans to expand to beyond the sphere of mortgages, the figure is also necessarily too high. The bailout is also not an ordinary cash outlay, but rather what might be considered a very large and very poor investment funded by the public debt, and depending on the determined value of the mortgages, the taxpayers will likely receive some return for their investment. In fact, depending on the valuation, a slim chance remains that the government might ultimately realize a profit. The deepest argument in favor of some kind of intervention, though, is that the bailout may simply be unavoidable to avoid catastrophe.

But not only is this not necessarily true, the bailout in its current iteration is rather just reinforcing the existing problem by presenting a terrible moral hazard. In bailing out the bankers, we're giving them an incentive to continue—and more importantly, we're not offering them an incentive to stop—their cavalier lending, positively ensuring future misbehavior. Just as important as the fact that millions of Americans are caught up in web of bank deceit and their own stupidity is the fact that millions of Americans are not; millions sought to live within their means, took out responsible loans, are in the process of paying them back. Why should we punish the prudent and responsible by rewarding the disingenuous and irresponsible, at the cost of the former? It seems that we self-evidently shouldn't. And what about inflation? What about the debt? What about corruption?

The bailout will pass through in some form—with some oversight and strict limits on executive pay for rescued lenders—and hopefully, we've at least learned that if a corporation becomes so large that our national interest is significantly aligned with its own, it has become too large. Wall Street is just lucky it didn't ask me for my opinion; cold fronts in Hell aside, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer seems to share my sentiments. “Capping executive pay is piffle,” he wrote in a Friday op-ed, “What we need are a few exemplary hangings.”

Well put. Burn, baby, burn, I say; sometimes chemotherapy is the only choice.

Gullibility

Every so often, one is given a gentle reminder of why hucksters, frauds, and snake-oil salesmen continue and are able to continue to ply their trade, and why the Randians not only claim to be rational in their egoism, but also claim to know why and how. As a race, we are credulous, impetuous, transparently self-serving, thoroughly forgetful, and sometimes all of the above. A while back—time and setting withheld, for everyone's protection—I found myself second in a long and impatient line. The customer in front of me, presumably a middle-aged professional of some kind, had just handed over his credit card when the clerk asked: “Are you a member of our platinum preferred program?” The customer answered proudly in the affirmative and surrendered this card, too.

“I'm sorry, sir, you're only a gold member, not a platinum one,” the clerk then said, without a trace of irony.

“Well, what's the difference?” Humiliation emerged.

“More privileges...in general,” he replied tersely.

“Um...how exactly does one enroll for such a program?” Humiliation threatened.

“You have to qualify,” he answered, more loudly.

This was the sounding of dignity's death knell; the customer tried to backpedal, mumbling “well, if only I'd sooner known about it...” reddening and glancing throughout the growing line behind him, almost apologetically, “if somebody had simply told me...” His wincing expression admitted a dual realization of both embarrassment and an embarrassment about this embarrassment, a pain everyone in line shared and understood but did not attempt to assuage. His eyes searched the crowd for validation, but no one offered it; this membership hierarchy business was clearly nothing more than a revenue-raising racket. Everyone knew this. But how many of us knew it only with our own platinum membership cards already secure in our wallets? After a few silent, awkward moments, the clerk returned the system's result: he did, indeed, qualify. Relieved, the customer upgraded his membership without the slightest hesitation or knowledge of what that actually entailed, collected his sparkling new platinum card, and hurried away.

How had they reduced this presumably distinguished man to such a gullible fool? After admitting I didn't have a card of any kind, I posed this question to the clerk, to which he responded: “After a certain amount of time, you naturally become more efficient at it. No one wants to be a second-class citizen, especially not when he thinks he's sitting in the middle of first-class.”

“And is this how you get them not to use their coupons, too?” I couldn't help but ask.

“You know, if you're really so concerned, why don't you just go start a customer's union?”

In 1899, economist and enfant terrible Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class, a book-length critique of American-style consumerism. And although economic thought has ultimately moved beyond him, even in modernity his famous concept of “conspicuous consumption” remains a part of the lexicon. The expression describes a social phenomenon in which rational consumption habits are deliberately undermined for the purpose of displaying wealth or status, and allows for the existence of a “Veblen good,” a theoretical entity named in honor of the economist that contravenes the law of demand and whose demand actually rises alongside its price. These maneuvers, even when they're performed with hands above the table, still seem like a magic trick. The question is apparently not what we will sacrifice in the name of peer pressure, but rather, what we won't. Petty sarcasms aside, I would still never dare start a customer's union; I know I can't even count on my own support.

Honor Among Thieves

In light of the fact that most individuals in our society abide by our laws and pay their taxes, doesn't our approach to copyright infringement seem a bit surprising? The fact that our ordinary behavior constitutes robbery is not really debatable—an artist has his or her product for sale, we procure it through electronic back channels and use it without offering any reciprocation—yet inexplicably, the majority of people do not consider this to be wrong. How exactly do we live with this contradiction?

The first and most common way is by making extralegal emotional appeals, pairing Robin Hood ethics with a side of blame-the-victim: “of course it's 'theft,'” such a person might say, air marks and condescension in full force, “but the RIAA are greedy, blood-sucking corporatists,” and if they're feeling economically self-righteous, they might append “and we're teaching them a lesson.” I'm sorry, but “I just have to get that Jonas Brothers' cover of “Hello Goodbye” out of my head” is not cause for vigilante justice. (And what are you doing listening to that garbage, anyway? Your mother would be doubly embarrassed.)

The second way is cleverer, and denies the immorality of it outright: “of course it's 'theft,' but in downloading music, I'm not actively denying anyone else the right to listen to that same music, or denying anyone revenue.” The fact that it has become a liquid kind of “club good”—in economic jargon, a excludable but non-rivalrous good—does not make an essential difference. If you haven't paid for the good or service, you don't very well deserve to benefit from it, do you? No one accepts such transparent arguments when they're given by someone trying to justify stealing similarly-taxonomized cable television. There is nothing paradoxical about the results of everyone refusing to pay their dues: the club goes bankrupt or cuts back accordingly, and if you think this won't or couldn't happen, you obviously haven't turned on the radio recently.

The third way is the easiest to handle, and certainly the easiest to understand; “of course it's 'theft,' but there are a nation of us, and we don't care. Condemn us at your own risk.” Fair enough, but the RIAA has proceeded to do just that, and I wouldn't expect the “honest thief” rhetoric to convince anyone, least of all the judge.

Now, some of the RIAA's positions are incomprehensible and absurd—for instance, their simultaneous approval and disapproval of ripping one's own CDs—and they've done a terrible job in lobbying their cause. They've earned themselves a reputation for sparing supernodes while litigating grandmothers, and intentionally inserting malware into their products. All of this predatory behavior, meanwhile, has been largely futile: illegal downloading has ascended into the mainstream from its inception, and their proponents have been almost universally ridiculed and ostracized. But what has Lars Ulrich done, other than fight for his and others' right to get paid for their own work? Acts like Radiohead are only willing to fight from the other side because they already have—with the help of the industry infrastructure, mind you—a legion of devoted fans who were going to buy In Rainbows regardless of its price.

The zeitgeist holds the key: the record industry is changing its tune, slowly drifting from the album-single paradigm and toward a faceless, loveless polluted sea of singles and YouTube clips. We get what we deserve; we see those who steal cable as sitcom fodder, but we see music pirates as defensible, because we do so with our index fingers primed.

A Man's Right to Choose

Some kinds of arguments are best introduced as thought experiments: suppose there existed a painful, unnecessary, possibly injurious rite-of-passage that has persisted purely by way of its constant reiteration as a social institution. Would you elect to have such a procedure done on yourself? On your friends? On your family? In the United States, we laugh with pity at the savages who thrust their hands into mitts filled with fire ants or “elongate their necks” with rings. And everywhere else, they laugh at us when we circumcise our boys.

The affirmative arguments form a fittingly short list: there are no genuine points for non-therapeutic circumcision in the United States other than the artificial one that most American males have traditionally gotten one. But this point is tremendously robust, and an entire discipline—sociology—speaks to it.

The list of inherent objections looms much larger. Not only is the procedure itself painful, there’s a chance of sustaining injury, disfigurement, infection, or any combination thereof. In being uncircumcised, there isn’t much risk of serious infection in our hygienic, antibiotic-enlightened modern society, and there is a marked loss of sexual sensitivity and pleasure for both parties. (The preceding is a piece of evidence that those of fundamentalist persuasion once used as justification and might actually commute to the paragraph above.) The procedure itself is quite irreversible, which is apparently an important consideration for some men; a simple Google query yields an entire foreskin restoration subculture, with detailed instruction on how to—I mention with a shudder—set the weights. And the most pressing argument: surely in this freedom-loving country, the value of consent is worth the price of adulthood circumcision. About the nature of his own penis, does it not stand to reason that a man should be allowed to argue his own case?

But honestly, the case doesn’t even need to be proven at all; circumcision in the developed world does not usually have its basis in medicine. Even the AMA now discourages it as a matter of routine, and throughout most of the rest of the world, it has all but vanished. Thus, it remains an prominent institution in the United States only because of a silly but strong norm. So how can we rid ourselves of it? The tempting solution, of course, is to lean on tort law or to criminalize the practice entirely, but because of lobbying and Establishment Clause concerns, even with religious exemptions this isn’t plausible. And moreover, for two reasons it’s not even necessary: not only is it disappearing on its own, it’s difficult to argue that it’s even traumatic.

On the first, even twenty years ago—when our parents had to make the decision—circumcision was still practically universal, but a change in the zeitgeist has come; the data are in, and the practice is dwindling, a trend that seems likely to continue in light of immigration and our increasingly globalized culture. And on the second, even those in the circumcision-as-mutilation camp are hard-pressed to conflate it with something as vile as female circumcision, its grisly cousin; aesthetics aside, a properly circumcised penis remains perfectly functional. Speaking anecdotally, it just hasn't made much of an impact on my own life, and I suspect in moments of similar candor most of my peers would probably agree.

What can be extrapolated from such mixed conclusions? A simple maxim; non-therapeutic circumcisions are clearly unnecessary and somewhat barbaric, but—and of course I would save this for last—we must not make a mountain out of a mohel.

The Fairest Vice

What exactly can one make of the vice presidential candidates?

Joseph Biden is a logical, if slightly conventional selection. Due to his long and illustrious career as a senator, he carries a good deal of automatic name recognition, has diverse experience in foreign policy, and is a fearsome debater. He does, of course, also occasionally have lapses in tact; most recently, he made headlines by memorably describing—of all people—Senator Obama as an “articulate and bright and clean” African-American, a slippery kind of qualification which although strictly true probably had racial overtones. To some, this is precisely Biden’s charm; he’s an ordinary, plainspoken guy with a degree from a state school, a conventional upbringing, and the manners to match. And as far as proper political affairs are concerned, his inclusion does shore up support in some critical areas, namely among those who were concerned about Obama’s lack of experience in foreign policy, those who were concerned about his lack of experience in general, and those who had concerns about his so-called “elitism.” On the balance, Biden completes the ticket as well as did anyone else in the selection field.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is something of a baffling choice. One’s immediate analysis is almost embarrassing in its simplicity; is it actually possible that the GOP has blown its vice president pick to pander to disenfranchised women angered by what they saw as Hillary’s active exclusion from the process? It’s always important to remember the immense sophistication and nuance of the GOP political machine and their proven track record, but what else could it possibly be? Ms. Palin’s dossier certainly doesn’t suggest otherwise; she’s inexperienced, nullifying their own mantra, and she’s a governor sequestered in a non-contiguous state with little influence over national policy in an election of senators with national experience. And although she is rather popular in her home state, she has virtually no name recognition in the rest of the country and is currently under investigation. So supposing the vagina gambit to be the case, this stupid and transparent maneuver fails for two reasons: not only will Hillary’s supporters never flock to McCain en masse, he has lost his own critical opportunity to rally his native constituency.

On the first, neither McCain nor Ms. Palin represent the political interests of Clinton’s prospective voters. No woman who considers herself a Clinton feminist will cast a ballot for a duo who don’t favor coverage for contraceptives and don’t support abortion rights. The so-called “disenfranchised” will continue to complain vociferously, and a few might even abstain in November, but those who cross the aisle will do so in small numbers. With her gracious Wednesday night speech, Clinton herself saw to that. And on the second, he has lost his only opportunity to mute the objections of his detractors on the far right, who remember his moderate, “maverick” rhetoric. Selecting someone with strong conservative credentials was the only way to avoid a severely depressed evangelical vote, and he effectively sealed it. Palin has some conservative positions, certainly, but not all of the correct ones, and not in the preferred tradition. The ticket remains without genuine credibility.

Based on all of this, I can only make the following conjecture: Palin was obviously not a departmental selection, and was certainly not the choice of the mainstream GOP consortium. Senator McCain must have made this choice largely—if not entirely—by himself, relatively free from outside influence. Romney, Pawlenty, Ridge, Lieberman, and a host of others, despite their weaknesses, are much better and more qualified choices. Palin is at best an unorthodox choice, and at worst a fatal mistake.

The Great Leap Forward

Farewell, Beijing. Farewell, and good riddance.

I do, of course, acknowledge that that it was a kind of success, especially for us. Depending on the figures one uses—that is, depending on the person asked—we earned either first or second place, not taking the most gold medals but winning the most medals overall. In Michael Phelps, we had an athlete so dominant that he completely marginalized the rest of the field, set an astonishing seven world records and did not fail to win the gold in any event in which he competed. A few events were marred with atrocious officiating—and in the case of the uneven bars, also nonsensical and arbitrary algorithms—and frequently, we still managed to win. And as usual and most encouragingly, many other teams from around the globe emerged from their apparent obscurity to provide us with that characteristic and timeless sense of excitement. Even the opening ceremony was a marvel—which, at $100 million USD, it certainly ought to have been—and for four hours, it captured the imagination of the world.

But our hosts? Disgraceful, in a word.

This was to be their glorious debut, the pivotal moment at which they would symbolically join the rest of the developed world, but instead, it’s just been yet another indicator of how backward they are.

The Chinese authorities, of course, rebuffed all objections on the grounds that the Olympics must be free of politics. This is mostly disingenuous, but also downright stupid; how could it be? And, for that matter, why should it be? Should the crowd in attendance at the opening ceremony have fallen silent upon the entrance of the Iranian team, or not? Should the United States and others have boycotted the Games altogether, or should we have not? The Olympics are highly political, always have been, and always must be, from before the host is decided until the extinguishment of the eternal flame. And the Chinese government handled it in a predictably political way.

They promised not to engage in the electronic surveillance of their guests, and they did. They promised to clean up their air, and they didn’t. They forged official documents to circumvent important official regulations, and now they’ve conscripted the IOC into covering their tracks. Now, these are all standard fare as far as evil machinations go, but what is indicative is the sad little controversy which surrounded the opening ceremony itself.

It was later revealed by Chen Qigang, the Olympics’ music director, that the adorable little girl who appeared to have sung the Chinese anthem Ode to the Motherland was not actually the vocalist. Yang Peiyi—the true vocalist—was originally to have performed it live, but a party official objected to her appearance, so Yang’s wonderful voice was used and the more “photogenic” Lin Miaoke was used as an actor. Now, the problem with these Milli-Vanilli-inspired shenanigans is not the sheer superficiality of it, of course; for better or worse, everyone makes decisions on that basis. The problem is their callousness, and the fact that they didn’t make the slightest attempt to either apologize or explain. “The audience will understand that it’s in the national interest,” Chen told Beijing Radio. Indeed.

Why, in light of legitimate human rights violations, is this important? The short answer is simply that it isn’t. After all, Yang, Lin, and everyone else in the “People” part of “PRC” probably had no part in it. And even if they did, it’s unlikely they had a choice.

Actually, as it turns out, the long answer is exactly the same.

Uncontrolled Spending, In My SGA? It's More Likely Than You Think.

The recent increases in tuition at Kansas universities have in recent years become something of a cautionary tale in public finance, but the data from this season is downright encouraging: although the final arbitration on the Board of Regents proposal isn’t to occur until tomorrow, it will likely amount to an increase of about six percent, the lowest nominal bump in tuition any current student will have ever enjoyed during his or her tenure. (By comparison, due to budget cuts in Topeka, our tuition has doubled since 2002.) The Regents’ modest proposal is even more remarkable given the collapsing scenery of the economy; depending on the source, this paltry increase might not even cover the damage dealt by our unfettered inflation. The managers of the university’s appropriations have clearly done their homework this year—on paper, at least.

But nonetheless, are we, as our financial advisors suggest to us in boiler-room parlance, making our money work for us, or is the cost of college simply yet another avenue in which we are being taken for a ride? (The Princeton Review has a reassuring response, continuing to include K-State as one of its highly respected “Top Five Best Bargains.”) Anyone with a soupçon of common sense knows how progressively more critical the imperative is for a college degree in the professional arena; the wage gap between college graduate and non-graduate is at $20,000 per year, and it shows no sign of settling down. And if I may argue with my tongue only slightly in my cheek—and as always, I relish the opportunity—I will submit the following claim: especially in light of the current fiscal landscape, this tuition increase is not only predictable but wholly inescapable, and furthermore, precisely what we deserve.

At a time when the dollar buys a third of the fuel it did only a few years ago, and unemployment sits at over five percent, our student body just recently—via the “democratic” method of the general referendum—approved of a $24 million addition to the Rec Center. And, of course, we mustn’t forget the $30 million with which we parted ways the year before last, when we authorized the construction of a parking garage in front of the student union. Are these prudent uses of our resources? Of course not. And never mind how our senate and the tyrannical majority sanctioned such self-evidently foolish expenditures, how did they ever survive long enough to reach a ballot in the first place?

Because the student body, for all its whining and white noise, doesn’t actually care. How much time has the average student spent examining the proceedings of our student senate or state legislature? Clearly not enough. (This ostensibly boring activity reaps considerable dividends—the frivolity of some of the resolutions are alone worth the price of admission, and the bills themselves raise the question of exactly which groups don’t get funding, rather than vice versa. As discomforted as I am to be channeling Rep. Ron Paul, the fact every legislative body up to and including the U.S. Senate engages in such misbehavior is certainly not any kind of license for our own legislative bodies to do so. All official SGA documents, including the minutes, are available for your perusal at http://www.k-state.edu/osas/sga/documents.htm.)

I don’t often speak for the conservative, but it must be said: any person who supported of either of the two aforementioned major expenditures—or others like them—has forfeited his or her entitlement to complain about the costs of tuition, and it’s the job of the conservative to continually reassert that rule. And for once, his job is essential; our paychecks really do lie in the balance.

An Analytic Defense of Waffle Fries

One cannot take the particulars of potatoes too seriously.

To establish a hierarchy is necessary; to crown the waffle variety king of that hierarchy is obvious; to offer a defense of such a position is effortless. And why should that be? The manifest weakness of the competition? We could distract ourselves with a drawn-out discussion of third-party candidates—the road too well-traveled—but most of the lot can be summarized in the space following the semicolon of a single sentence; steak fries are mushy, shoestring fries are gritty, and almost everything else is either too trivial or too ordinary.

Curly fries do deserve their very own special rebuttal, if only for their startlingly effective frivolity. Why have so many bought into the curly cult, anyway? “They’re curly,” the apologists lamely assert, as if novelty alone could serve a legitimate function. “They’re so spicy and peppery, so savory; how could one fail to appreciate that?”

And what should be said about this seasoning? As is the case with tasteless little outfits like Arby’s, this so-called seasoning isn’t anything more than a crude preparation of paprika and onion powder glued onto a flash-frozen product. So why engage in this unashamed debasement of their fries? What have they to hide? Need one wear a flamboyant necktie if the suit is Savile Row? Need a scrumptious porterhouse from a Michelin three-star be saturated in A1? Need a thirty-year Balvenie ever be found in a highball glass cavorting with cola—or even ice cubes, for that matter? (And if your answer to any of these is “yes,” fine, insist on having it your way; murder the steak, machine-wash the suit, mix the scotch, who cares what you do?) The implication here indicts itself.

But even if one were still to be concerned or convinced by the seasoning thesis, one mustn’t allow one’s opponents to suggest that it is truly any kind of point in their favor; just because curly fries often happen to be seasoned does not preclude waffle fries receiving the same treatment. And indeed, wonderful seasoned waffle fries are extant in proper restaurants across America. And while we’re on the subject on versatility: unlike their inferior cousins, waffle fries can also serve as delightful substitutes for tortilla chips with queso, and they are more solidly structured to hold ketchup or mayonnaise. They’re not only the greater canvas, but the greater brush as well.

But one still might have reservations about it, about the superiority of the form. Thus, we have left the most profound and most devastating point for last; curly fries must, by nature of their structure, be either chewier or mushier than waffle fries. If a curler doesn’t fry his wares long enough, they are damned to a rubbery, underdone fate, and if he fries them too long, they exchange their characteristic bounciness for a mushy, dry, and separated existence. And there is no happy medium, but rather only an intermediate wasteland in which the hapless consumer is treated to the consequences of both weaknesses. Contrast this to the rather stable nature of the waffle fry, which remains solid and palatable even when overdone. And of course, when they’re prepared properly, their high surface-to-mass ratio ensures a crispy shell with a buttery, molten center, something that by its physical nature, the curly fry could never hope to attain.

So whether in application and practice, it seems we can regardless observe the superiority of the waffle paradigm. In all, we are fortunate to have a Chik-Fil-A—the industry leader in the waffle style—in our student union, and for those who have weaned on stale, chewy fare like that served up routinely at ordinary fast-food joints, hand-cut waffle fries are a revelation, and nothing else will ever suffice.

Reefer Sadness

He’s often demonized as existentially lazy, obtuse, and prone to erratic fits of violence. Although he might look just like one of us—and indeed is a great number of us, probably with a family and a stable job—he was recently described by John P. Walters as a “vicious criminal terrorist,” and he and his forsaken friends litter our penal system, their lives and careers forever ruined on account of their victimless pastime. What could an honest, tax-paying, otherwise law-abiding citizen possibly do in this country to earn such a fate?

He need do nothing more than be an occasional user of marijuana.

Immediately after his appointment as the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in late 2001, Walters began his fanatical campaign against marijuana, declaring it to be “America’s most dangerous drug” and spreading sensational folklore like the notion that modern marijuana is twice as potent as it used to be and that it has no more medical value than crack cocaine. He proceeded to spend the next two years touring the United States, encouraging more draconian penalties and stifling any measure which might serve to reallocate money from punishment to rehabilitation. But even though by the ONCDP’s own admission, a trillion and a half dollars have thus far been wasted on all of this disgraceful propaganda over the last decade, after half a century of acquiescence the rhetoric is losing its luster. How could this be? Because despite the moral panic the disingenuous Drug Czar and his cohorts wish to foment, the empirical facts are different.

In almost every controlled clinical study, marijuana doesn’t actually cause mental or physical illness, long-term memory loss, sterility, or any other impairment of the immune system, nor does it seem to cause lung cancer or emphysema without concurrent tobacco use. It hasn’t been proven to contribute to crime—other than marijuana possession, of course—and users don’t even seem to be more likely to be involved in automobile fatalities. (This is, of course, in stark contrast to the havoc alcohol wreaks on our faculties of common sense and our bodies, and its own considerable contribution to the commission of crime.) Marijuana doesn’t appear to be a gateway to hard drugs to a greater extent than any of its legal counterparts, it doesn’t cause the average college student any academic trouble, and wages among working adult users are actually higher, on average, than those of nonusers. As to whether or not cannabis has any practical application, the answer is clearly a resounding “yes;” clinical studies have repeatedly demonstrated that THC could serve a valuable role in therapeutic medicine as a nausea-reliever, analgesic, and antidepressant.

All of the above is more than one needs to prove the constitutional case, anyway. When have such things been a constitutionally sufficient condition for prohibition? (To that end, one cannot help but wonder how many tireless opponents of marijuana have given testimony on the subject only with the aid of a certain addictive stimulant percolated in almost every American household.) What kind of democracy is this, anyway? Is it not the very point of our elegant constitution to protect the interests of the minority from the tyranny of the majority?

The War on Drugs has been perhaps the most embarrassing failure in the history of modern American public policy, and as Reuters reported back in 2006, marijuana has officially become the nation’s largest cash crop. Obviously, prohibition is not the answer, and as always, this is merely an aside to a more interesting and profound conversation; rather than "How do we lower drug usage?" it seems we actually ought to be asking "Why is it so high in the first place?"

(Note: if you wish to see a source for any of my empirical data, I do have them readily available. There simply isn't enough room for proper citation in the newspaper.)

Brave New Art

Arguments concerning art tend to proceed in the following way: two people first discover their disagreement on a given piece; they engage in dialectic of a progressively larger scope; they ultimately find their differences to be of some non-foundational nature; they agree to disagree. This is not always the sequence and relativism is not always the necessary result, but it seems to be the standard. Since the inception of postmodernism, however, the architecture of artistic expression itself has been challenged; the notes decided arbitrarily, the colors painted indistinct, the words shrouded in ambiguity. Must there be colors, sounds, rhythm? Must there be a canvas? Must there be an artist? Does “proper” art even exist?

Moving from generalized abstractions to concrete examples is straightforward: is the serialism of Schoënberg too radical, or do we draw the line at his student John Cage’s out-and-out aleatory? Or must we, as Ludwig Wittgenstein asserted, journey all the way back to Brahms to find anything of value? Is Picasso the final frontier, or do we permit everything up to and including Jackson Pollock? Does Joyce’s Ulysses represent the awakening of modernism, or rather a terminal disease reaching metastasis? It’s an easy escape to do as the relativists do, after all—eschew these questions altogether and endorse an artistic mandate of laissez-faire. This capitulation, exasperating as it can be, does serve as a constructive prelude to the crucial thesis; while it is and always has been difficult to properly define what art is and when it succeeds, it seems somewhat easier to delineate what art isn’t and when it fails.

Examples abound: in Nicaragua, Guillermo Vargas put on exhibit a dog tied to a wall without food, supposedly until the poor creature starved to death. Aliza Shvarts, a senior art student at Yale, repeatedly artificially inseminated herself, induced a miscarriage, and harvested the products of the abortions for use as her final senior project. Some examples have achieved greater fame and longevity; Andres Serrano’s photograph "Piss Christ," first exhibited in 1989, portrayed a crucifix inside a beaker allegedly filled with the artist’s own urine, and remains notorious two decades later.

But is there anything artistic to be admired or appreciated in this lot? Never mind a skill or a beauty—is there even a sense of intellectual courage? And while they have certainly produced their predictable and desired results, has any ever established its use as an expression of creativity? None of these performances demonstrate any of that, nor philosophical insight either. In fact, unlike their nineteenth-century predecessors Goya and Manet, they don’t even set a pretense of artistic ambition at all; these demonstrations are simply hollow manifestations of controversy for their own sake, degenerate mechanisms by which self-important iconoclasts can demonstrate their rebellion. They generally say much more about the performer than the subject of the performance. Unfortunately, this is precisely their point.

Perhaps I am mistaken; perhaps smeared embryos, tortured animals, and debased crucifixes are high art. But then one must admit, the membership of such demonstrations rather debauches the entire party, does it not? These displays serve more reasonably as Reductio ad absurdum arguments for what art is not. Someone, for instance, who doesn’t love Beethoven as I do—or conversely, who loves Chopin as I cannot—at least treads with me a common ground. I can appreciate and acknowledge the gestures of the latter’s Études and Preludes without admitting their transcendence. But as for someone who sees artistic merit in the meaningless vulgarities above? The antithesis of art is not kitsch, apparently, but profanity, and with such a person—one who exalts the profane—I share nothing at all.

The Election: IV. Barack Obama

This article is the fourth in a four-part series.

I submit the following principle: any election review which claims to be comprehensive is decidedly not if it fails to offer the reviewer’s forecast. If political commentators won’t divulge their favorites – in both the personal and the speculative sense – then they shouldn’t be in the business of punditry, should they? Yet it’s a paradoxical symptom of the entanglement of American politics and media that talking heads, who are paid entirely on the basis of their opinions, are forced to maintain an artificial and castrated neutrality. (One might, as an aside of an aside, ask “How did this come to be?” In modernity, pundits are only an endorsement or two away from political office themselves – and vice versa – and they are more aware than anyone that their commentary never occurs without consequence. Deniability is even more valuable to a certain kind of ambitious pundit than it is to a politician.)

But notwithstanding its actual incidence, since when has political neutrality been a virtue? Could any informed person be said to be without political persuasion? No, of course not, and I’m no exception; I’m to the left of most Collegian readers, and in fact, probably to the left of most people. But this bias is hardly crippling, and it allows me to urge without reluctance that if any pundit ever tries to stake a claim as a disinterested observer, it is one’s own power, right, and furthermore, obligation as a rational consumer of information to ignore this person. That being said:

Senator Obama will win the election, and handily. And moreover, he should.

The first point does require a disclaimer: to win a presidential contest “handily” is a different notion now than it once was, even in the recent past. In the election of 1984, almost twenty points separated Reagan and Mondale, whereas in the most recent election, only a little over a tenth of that separated Bush and Kerry. The acrimony and partisanship of the last few years will exclude the possibility of an outright landslide, but my suspicion is that Obama will still win by more than five points. The reasons are diverse; four thousand American lives and three trillion dollars have been spent in Iraq, and Americans and Iraqis alike have ultimately gotten little in return. Meanwhile, on the domestic front, one bureaucratic scandal after another have emerged, each more disgraceful than the last, jobs and capital are fleeing for terra firma, and our healthcare system continues to be an international embarrassment. The largest liability of all, of course, is the bankrupt economy, and not only does the GOP continue to support its disastrous fiscal policy, McCain – in contrast to Obama – unabashedly vows to continue it.

The second point is somewhat more contentious. While Obama’s politics are far more sensible than those of his opponents’ and his strengths are monumental, of equal prominence are his flaws. His relationship with Trinity United and Reverend Wright has always been his most devastating blemish; the United States is not prepared to accept a president who is an apologist for racism, and while his own rhetoric has always sang of unification, his motley crew of associates have the unfortunate habit of speaking for themselves. He has lesser faults as well: among others, he does lack the traditional sort of experience, and he also seems to have developed a disturbing cult of personality around him, a cancerous overgrowth of his charisma. But these objections simply won’t be enough. He has too much support, and too much momentum, and he’ll have his chance to prove his thesis on an international stage. If he’s successful, that reserved little boy from Hawaii could very easily become the most important black man in the history of the United States. He has certainly done his part; now we must do ours.

The Election: III. John McCain

This article is the third in a four-part series.

For many who have found themselves disillusioned or driven to indifference by politics, their cynicism can be attributed to some singular event. In my mother’s age cohort, the transformative episode was Watergate; in mine, it was Lewinsky. In moments such as those, the façade of glamorous and prestigious respectability slips from the proud portrait of American politics, revealing the ugly Darwinism and constantly collapsing scenery of Washington underneath. For most, the death of the noble politick is only a private sadness in the childhood of our adulthood, but for John McCain, the realization seemed to occur tragically too late: February of 2000, in South Carolina.

Senator McCain and Governor Bush were embroiled in a close race for the nomination, McCain had just decisively won in New Hampshire, and the upcoming primary in South Carolina offered him an opportunity for checkmate. But Bush, sensing danger, launched an appalling smear campaign against the senator. Among the innuendos and outright suggestions made by the then-governor’s surrogates and proxies were that McCain had abandoned his fellow veterans, that his wife was a drug addict, and most famously, that he had illegitimately fathered a black child. McCain’s own feeble retaliations backfired, he lost the primary and his support, and never regained his footing in the race; less than a month later, he had quietly withdrawn. Now for Bush and his disgraceful associates – and for the rest of us, too – this was merely an entr’acte in a ballet we had all seen many times before, and would see many times again. The particulars were uncharacteristically hideous, but the theater itself was familiar. However, for the senator, who had promised his legion of supporters a campaign of amity, this was enough to send him into the throes of an existential crisis. And eight years later, the calluses of that affair have left him as different as did his captors in Vietnam.

He still boasts the most diverse array of political weaknesses. At seventy-two, he would be the oldest man to take office for the first time. He still has that legendary penchant for rudeness, impetuousness and occasionally, outright stupidity. And now, unfortunately, any political support for him requires a defense of the war as a prerequisite. By his own admission, he knows little about economics, and judging by some of his recent blunders, he doesn’t seem to know a lot about geopolitics, either. The truth is, in this election, Senator McCain is just intellectually outmatched by his opponents.

But he is also a genuine patriot, one of the noblest and most inspiring breed. His personal account of his experience in Hanoi is still stirring and inspirational, and without the slightest hint of disingenuousness. Four generations of military service – his own children included – stand as testimony to their sincerity, and swiftboating of any kind should be met only with our absolute condemnation and dismissal. And regardless of his current rhetoric, what makes him palatable to moderates and Democrats is precisely what has always made him the opposite to his own party; he is not a reliable conservative. He’s just an honest, plainspoken man who doesn’t ultimately wish to answer to the bureaucrats of either persuasion. But his politics will forever be overshadowed by the legacy of his heroism, a fate to which he seems rather comfortably resigned. Perhaps he should be; the important question now is, when the charge is leveled on a national stage – as it will be, by everyone – that Mr. McCain is the most dignified candidate, the most fitting, the most honorable, what will be the response of the beloved junior senator from Illinois?