At the time, some justified leaking Bork’s rental history to the press, and the media’s willingness to publish, on the grounds that Bork had himself not been a terribly strong advocate of privacy.  A move intended to embarrass Bork instead scared Congress, many of whose members no doubt patronized niche video rental stores and had built up truly scandalous rental histories.

In response, we got the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act, a piece of direct legislation forbidding video renters from disclosing a customer’s checkout history without explicit consent.  At one point, it would have fair to say this was something of a misstep down the road of favoring painfully specific laws over common sense.  Libertarians, such as I, would have said that service providers who sell or give away their customers purchase history would be punished efficiently through market mechanisms.

Things, to put it lightly, are changing.  Our personal information is worth more and more and to ever greater numbers of people – often strangers and discrete data-mining companies.  Technology allows integration of that data to a level inconceivable in the late 80s.  Back then, the fear was that the reading and movie-watching habits of public figures would be publicized to humiliate those people.  Today, the reality is that each and every one of us is a monetized prize; sold, resold, and bundled to the highest bidder.

Enter Netflix.  Streaming movie providers have run up against VPPA before.  In 2008, Blockbuster got into hot water over violating customer privacy via a partnership with FaceBook Beacon.  The next year, Netflix was answering questions over its practice of divulging user data as part of a contest to improve the algorithm by which the company recommends films.  And now, the inevitable is here.  Netflix and FaceBook would like to fully integrate their services, with every film you watch shared with your ‘friends’ for the purpose of fine-tuning movie picks.

Uh-huh.

The problem with the collision of technology and privacy concerns is very much about ostensibly ‘free’ services actually being an exchange of online services for personal information.  Make no mistake, we pay for everything we get one way or another.  That’s fine if it’s an agreement with informed consent.  As well you know if you pay any attention at all to privacy issues, this is a vanishingly rare thing when it comes to social media.

Under VPPA as it stands, Netflix may not be able to legally share that data on an ongoing basis.  More accurately, Netflix is afraid that VPPA doesn’t give it as much protection from angry users as it would like to enjoy.  Obviously, both Netflix and FaceBook would like to share as much data as possible and to do it all as an obscure opt-out, if they can.  To that end, the former company has gone before Congress, asking for a ‘clarification’ of VPPA, along with asking users to urge their Representatives to support that position.  The proposed legislation here is H.R. 2471, which would explicitly make it legal for a company, such as Netflix, to get a one-time consent from a user to share data indefinitely, until that consent is revoked.

Here, again, I make my objection that more and more laws will make some people feel safer, but won’t actually improve the grace with which private data are handled by third parties.  VPPA originally had language banning magazine publishers from disclosing subscriber data, something that fell prey to lobbyists.  Between 1988 and today, the PATRIOT Act has gutted much of heft behind laws we may think protect our privacy.  Why is the answer to the quagmire of legally protected user data yet another law, and an absurdly precise one at that?

On that note, the mere fact that companies with perfectly dreadful privacy records are backing H.R. 2471 ought to raise eyebrows ad questions.  Too, why does a company that has enacted two painful price hikes in the last sixteen months, all while the quality and selection of its offerings decline, now need Washington’s blessing to make more money off the data of people who are already paying customers?

What Netflix is really doing here is pushing for a highly specific law that will render it immune to the complaints of users down the road.  If the extent of Netflix’s planned expansion is to get an informed and explicit consent and then share data only for the purpose of delivering better movie recommendations to users, it’s hard to imagine why they would require federal legislation with such narrow focus.

Patrick Leahy, author of VPPA, described, “an era of interactive television cables, the growth of computer checking and check-out counters, of security systems and telephones, all lodged together in computers….”  That was 1988.  Last week, he neatly summed the problems with HR. 2471; “A one-time check off that has the effect of an all-time surrender of privacy does not seem to me the best course for consumers.”  He’s right.  However, let’s take it a little further.  A law like this comes too close to making peoples’ privacy decisions for them, and flirts with giving Congressional benediction to unethical data-mining.

I go back to my position that people should be their own first privacy guardians.  That means common sense, skepticism, and scrutiny of any bid to share their information ‘for their own good’.  I dislike laws that infantilize consumers, that make dangerous behavior seem harmless with the veneer of legal acceptability, that distort the market.

Netflix wants customers to waive privacy now and forever and just trust that things will turn out hunky-dory.  Yet they want a law essentially guaranteeing they won’t have to answer for their behavior in the future.  To me, that says they anticipate angry customers over the proposed data sharing.  And it says they don’t want to play by the same rules they are suggesting for the rest of us.

Across the pond, its football players, shadows ministers, and drunk Windsors, but the same theory applies.  The recent kerfuffle over widespread phone hacking has focused keen eyes on British tabloid and their excesses.  Which has led to the Levenson Inquiry on Press Standards (why start now, say I).  Editors of ‘celebrity magazines’ have apparently been receptive, coldly as that may be, to the Inquiry’s idea that a ‘Privacy List’ be established, on which the famous who do not wish to be photographed might enroll.

Hmmmm.

It seems that the U.K.’s motley crew of sensationalist papers have their own  board, and they (sometimes) abide by the rules of something called the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).  The PCC is itself a nascent creation, brought about last summer in the wake of the News of the World scandal.  Now, to my American mind, the British (nay, the European) attitude toward celebrity privacy is, at times, goofy.  If you don’t want to be famous, you don’t need to be.  Wash your soiled linen in private, keep your own counsel, and behave yourself in public.  If those of us with personal entourages can manage it, so can you, darling.

Be that as it may, I will also admit journalists are, not infrequently, vicious.  But what is noteworthy here is that the action that so incensed people involved hacking into the phone of a dead girl and, by showing activity on her voicemail, leading police and her family to falsely believe she was alive.  Why is it that fallout of such horrific intrusion on private citizens is being met with chatter about how better to suit the whims of celebrities?

Overall, the U.S., in law and in culture, gives a lower expectation of privacy to the famous; the reasoning being that people can hardly expect to selectively refute the trappings of a life they chose.  Americans see the major threat to privacy as the government and tend to give shorter shrift to starlets who willingly live in public and then attempt to take back the past only as it becomes inconvenient.  Perhaps this is a noble expression of our expectation that you ought to have some dignity in public and that you are the first person responsible for your reputation.  Or perhaps it is a justification of our deep appetite to bathe in reflected starlight and see our demigods brutally knocked to earth.

Contrarily, Europe sees government as a protector of privacy, privacy that is at gravest threat from the people around you.  Accordingly, those with a higher likelihood of coming under media attention have a higher expectation of privacy.  Sensible application of theory or still-extant vestige of Ancien Regime reverence for the cultural elite?

Back to something that might be addressed at less than book-length:-what will happen if celebrity magazines agree to abide by a ‘Privacy List’?

We might spend the entire day with questions of the state creating a privileged class and effectively legislating what citizens might be interested in.  Let’s not.  The British state does not consider truth as a defense against slander or libel – giving rise to ‘libel tourism’ –  and still censors films.  We may assume for the current article that there is an appetite to restrict press freedoms.  However, it does bear pointing out that the only reason tabloids are at all willing to discuss self-regulation is a bid to head off that very threat of government oversight.

First, tabloids sell because human nature is voyeuristic and often prurient.  A so-called ‘Privacy List’ is more apt to trigger black market broadsheets full of uncredited photos and scoops than to achieve its stated aim.  The truly gossip obsessed are not going to pay with their dollars or their eyes for a publicist-vetted puff piece about whatever that happened three days ago.  Also, given how many celebrities do conduct themselves, only publishing verifiable misbehavior is not going to do anyone’s reputation any favors.

On the other side, huge swathes of material in the glitzier publications is already done in close agreement with the celebrities featured.  Might this proposed List really only be formalizing a tacit agreement?  Then again, if the beautiful people are already hand-in-hand with the tabloids and are still getting bad press, they’re bad businessmen, pure and simple.  The solution to unfavorable news ought to be a better publicist before seeking new law.

Heck, is the proposal anything other than a flimsy way for both journalists and politicians to be seen to be doing something?  If this itself a choreographed media ploy being played out for the benefit of credulous citizens?

Second, how sound an idea is it to sponsor a culture where a blind eye is turned to poor conduct, provided those involved enjoy sufficient fame?  What on earth will this do to a generation of celebrity-addled kiddies looking to these ill-bred people as roll models?  Be that as it may, why is it the media’s task to provide positive roll models?  Might we expect at least some children to understand that intoxicated, indolent, and indicted is no way to go through life?

Ultimately, do we not punish the tacky and the gauche with shunning and shaming?  Do we not hold the right to refuse to interact with people we find ill-mannered?  Dare we still hope for policy makers who are wise enough not to legislate what is best left to culture?

Similarly, is  this something that would effectively allow a certain set of people to seek out and revel in attention when it suited them and to forbid anyone from looking when it did not?  Is it right to allow the fame hungry to play that game?  How complicit are celebrities in having fostered a tabloid culture that has utterly no boundaries?

This is, perhaps, hinging on the difference between respect, the simple decision not to intrude upon another’s private life, and deference, allowing another person to command your attention one moment and send you scurrying away the next.

Too, we are right in asking how it comes to be that existing laws were insufficient.  Between trespassing, harassment, stalking, tortious privacy claims, interfering in police investigations, and so on, it’s staggering that the state lacks the means to deal with actions that do represent actionable irresponsibility on the part of the press.

This trend is, in my opinion, unlikely to wash up on American shores.  Here, the press enjoys broader freedoms.  Nor has our Fourth Estate, yet, plumbed the tawdry depths of British tabloids.  The American worry, I would caution, is a government that withholds, censors, and denies the existence of information regarding its own activities.  That, sadly, presents a much tougher fight.

I will start by sharing some of my thoughts on the alleged intellectual majesty and mystery of the shenanigans currently gripping America.  One thing I must give the OWS monkeys right off the bat is that they have nicely demonstrated that irate protest may thrive in the total absence of coherent motives.

However, Eric Hoffer long ago noted that mass movements don’t need a God but they absolutely must have a Devil.  Did you catch what I was doing there?  That’s right, kids; I was being intellectual.  I have proved that I read books, and understand at least some of them.  If my bet, that most people accept what they see in print and don’t do their own research, is correct (and it is), I could just as easily have claimed that Hoffer’s real assertion was that politically confused naifs will sell out their cause for Starbucks on a chilly day.

Such blather makes up the article I am keen to lambaste.  Author Dan Berrett basically noticed that pseudo-Marxist polemicists have decamped from faculty lounges and alternative book stores to preen and squawk over a walking, talking, sign-waving sociology dissertation.  Wherever two or more petulant lefties of average intellect are gathered, so also is an academic leftie with dreams of being first author.  (When right-wingers congregate in similar numbers, the academy maintains a healthy distance and remotely diagnoses psychological maladies.)  

Berrett’s giddiness over all the academic celebrities flocking around OWS is not, as he maintains, a purely abstract meditation on what it all means.  It is an entirely predictable market function.  Academics live on what is called “Publish or Perish”.  By nature and by need they are always looking for something interesting enough to make it past peer review and get a few citations.  The attendance of the Ivory Tower set at a prolonged anti-Capitalist screed event betrays the market realities of everything humans do far more than the titular ‘intellectual roots’.

However, I did not read through Barrett’s entire piece in order to agree with myself about how pompous most intellectuals are, or how they are endlessly pretending it’s all about knowledge and not at all about ego or paycheck.  Though Berrett tosses in some ideas about OWS properly being a grassroots phenomenon, he spends most of his effort of crediting professional intellectuals for the spread of the protests.  Berrett favorably cites the ethnography of one David Graeber, who spent time in the jungles of Madagascar studying the Betafo people.  Graeber noticed that, without a strong, central government, the Betafo were still capable of cooperating and completing projects.  It took him 20 months to figure this out and he trumpeted it to the world as a watershed idea, the entire millenia old body of libertarian though having apparently escaped him.

The Betafo are descendants of slaves left behind on Madagascar when the state bugged out, having more of less decided it had better things to do then pester humans.  This, I would like to tell Mssrs. Berrett and Graeber, is not a vindication of far-left anarchy.  It is a libertarian fantasy come true.  The success of the Betafo also testifies to the validity of many small-government, market-dominated ideas.  According to Graeber, it never occured to the Betafo to seek out or create a top heavy state, nor did it occur to them they were somehow deprived without such an apparatus.  They just figured out what they needed and took care of it.  That humans are capable of such spontaneous order, self-direction, and granular level planning is a key free market argument.

What Graeber calls “consensus decision making” is really just Spontaneous Order with a new name.  No self-respecting wonk could, of course, use such a term as it implies the ghastly idea that people can do plenty without intellectuals thinking it up first.  Much of Berrett’s article is, in fact, just that – an attempt to find direct academic ancestors to the OWS protests.  Why it would be so awful to admit that people took to the streets for some reason other than the dense prose of Ivy League luminaries is beyond me.  These are angry people with some legitimate complaints who are pursuing a remedy to a felt need.

Yes, the sort of real brains who define entire eras and movements develop truly new ideas or effect a near miracle by capturing something amorphous and nascent already in a lot of peoples’ heads.  But a great many of the scribbling class are actually analyzing, synthesizing, explaining, and cataloging.  I believe all that has benefit, but it is reactionary stuff; it comes after people (some of whom don’t even have one advanced degree) are already engaged in something.  I will also concede that there are feedback loops; as much as intellectuals get grist for the mill from observing, so people are influenced by what they read.

What has me ticked off is Berrett’s assertion that OWS must somehow be consciously acting on some scholar’s brilliant words and his subsequent mission to figure out who that might be.  Obviously, he likes Graeber, who returned from Madagascar to organize some of the first anti-globalization stunts in London.  This, Berrett holds, is sufficient to credit Graeber as something of an academic sperm donor to OWS.

Who else, though, he wonders.  It surprises Berrett to find a growing ‘Peoples’ Library‘ at the Zuccotti Park protest site in New York.  People have contributed their own titles and someone has taken the initiative to keep the books in boxes with plastic sheeting to block water, a verified instance of organic cooperation that could only ever surprise a socialist.  OWS even has a librarian, who delivers a vicious backhanded compliment when he purrs, “I really am amazed for the respect they have for the word”, as if it should be expected that the protesters are all bumpkins.  He adds, “There’s a real reverence for what has been written that has surprised me, since they eschew whatever came before, all the thought that came before.”

No, you blustering twit.  OWS members are not contemptuous of all that came before.  They are perfectly happy to recreate all sorts of mayhem that fizzled out long before they were born, and more than a few of them get off on that execrable 19th century German economic rat.  Hearing such a pandering quote from someone who, I think it’s fair to say, supports the protests, was a bit surprising.  Then again, it does indicate that same intellectual haughtiness, the blithe certainty that the little people don’t read and must be given their ideas.  Why someone like Berrett, hell-bent as he is on assigning academic ownership of OWS, quotes this befuddled librarian, who seems shocked that average people still like books, is the real oddity.

One can’t conceive of unwashed souls, souls without tenure, kickstarting something.  The other marvels to see them seek out ideas.  I say OWS could stand to clarify whatever ideas it has a bit more.

Such a disconnect does still encapsulate something I’ve noticed in the rapidly growing body of commentary on OWS.  Observers praise the natural, grassroots flavor, the welcoming and participation by all comers, the lack of an obvious leader.  And, with the next breath, they trot out the old argument about central planning being so bloody crucial.

If anything, it seems that OWS’ problem is that the people camping out don’t really have a fully developed message, but that plenty of self-congratulatory men with unhealthy power lust have fully crystallized ideas about what to do with the great huddled masses.

Oh, heavens, where does one even begin?

The details are in the original article and I think there’s plenty to be concerned about, but I have a few major ideas.  (I am also not linking directly to the blog or naming the people involved, who are utterly candid about their real names, by design.)  Specifically, it’s not so much that this bout of stalking happened as it is that no one immediately involved seems worried. I am also left deeply unsettled about a young woman who accepts this intrusion by a man she doesn’t even know.

I think the immediate concern is that a generation is coming of age without any meaningful sense of privacy. 20-somethings feel entitled to so much, so why isn’t privacy on the list? The man thinks what he did is funny, in a throwaway sense. The woman allows she was initially “shocked” but has no real feelings aside from that. Neither regards this as anything worth considering. The images are simply a young woman walking about in public; there’s nothing lewd and no images were taken anywhere she had a legitimate expectation of privacy.

I, however, am of the school that recording someone without their consent is problematic in itself; it doesn’t need to be up-skirt photos and cameras hidden in physicians’ exam rooms to be a problem. For me, the attitude of dismissing privacy violations so long as they aren’t too humiliating is a discomfiting step.

In this case, the man went to the trouble of following the woman on several occasions and of setting up a blog specifically to share those surreptitious images. His choice of blogging platform, Tumblr, is largely a way to share images and certainly has its share of narrowly focused, perhaps obsessive, blogs. Street photography and images of people who may not have aware they were being photographed abound. Some Tumblrs openly suggest that people send in intimate photos, to be posted ‘anonymously’. That’s fine for adventurous couples, but what if one person unilaterally decided to share a bedroom snap or if such photos find their way online courtesy of vengeful ex-lovers? Among the less salacious images, even when the subject is clearly posing, I sometimes get the idea some of those images were never intended to be freely available to anyone with Web access.

As is usually the problem with technology and privacy best practices, the former develops much faster. Underlying that is, in turn, the simple truth that technology’s ability to violate privacy wouldn’t be a topic if it weren’t for the distasteful matter of prurient curiosity and the human proclivity to dream up dirty uses for any new invention almost immediately. Is it, perhaps, a little gross that we have made it so easy to be a voyeur of strangers’ lives? Is it good for us that erase a sense of shame in peeping?

A blog where the entire point is that the subject of every post is wholly in the dark makes a troubling next step. The particular Tumblr gained nearly 400 followers for 15 posts. Clearly, the idea of partaking in stalking, stripped of any pretense of art or cultural study, caught on. The blog began ‘trending’ on Tumblr, and the subject found out what was going on. The author immediately abandoned the project, simply explaining that it became boring when it was no longer a shady joke. That worries me. Most bloggers would drool to have 400 followers and to be highlighted. But this young man was really only interested in the fact that he was shadowing a woman he barely knew without her even suspecting.

I think we can safely say he’s a very sick young man. I don’t think his fetish can end anywhere good. What, however, of everyone who thought this was such a clever idea? Strangers made a point of watching. People who were friends of the woman, at least in name, kept the blog’s existence from her. And she isn’t bothered. For now, anyway. Let’s hope her lackadaisical attitude never truly compromises her.

For my part, I’d like to see more rage from this woman. As the linked article notes, men invading the privacy of women for their own amusement has a long and sorry history. Some types of privacy violations are largely targeted at women, usually done with the aim of reducing a woman to a sexualized object.

American law doesn’t really have a remedy for this. In public, people have little legally recognized expectation of privacy. Yes, it may be gauche to photograph and record strangers without asking, but the most any of us can do is ask the offender to delete the images.

U.S. Courts have held that even in cases of intentionally lewd photographs, it’s uncouth but not illegal. At the same time that a woman who becomes an unwilling porn star thanks to a man with cameras on his shoes is told she has no legal recourse, American citizens are getting the shakedown for turning their camera on the wrong buildings. That is worthy of a rant in and of itself, but here it serves to exemplify a point.

I don’t believe that the answer is to expand laws against taking pictures in public and I am, as ever, wary of allowing the state to determine what is and is not good taste. Rather, I, like all good right wingers, believe the answer needs to come from culture. The ‘it’ that staunches the flow of creepy little men turning technological marvels into tools for degradation should be primarily rooted in social norms, with the law serving as the last resort for truly egregious cases.

Let me be very clear that I do not hold any delusions about just how much pornography is out there. I am solidly against censorship. I don’t support banning pornography, either – provided everyone involved knew they were being recorded for distribution. And I know the images in this particular case aren’t pornographic in the strictest sense of the word; they’re just really, really creepy.

Creepy is something that cultural opprobrium can treat. However, culture is viral; it requires hosts and those hosts can profoundly change culture. People who really don’t see what’s so bizarre and worrying about stalking as fun and games are the germ seeds of a cultural turning away from privacy. I don’t support making what this man did illegal, but I am sickened that anyone at all accepts it.

And he illustrated it with a Venn Diagram.  Which I kind of loved.  (Venns are basically infographics for people who understand basic statistics but not graphic design.)

Could both sides have a valid point?  Capitalism is groovy.  Corrupt business practices, rent seeking, protectionism, and deliberately distorting the market to block competition are not capitalistic.  Just because men in business suits are doing it doesn’t make it true capitalism or good business.  Hell, it’s possible for registered Republicans to be bad people.

We all seize on quotes when an avowed lefty admits the government may have gone too far as proof that we really were right.  Is it maybe time to admit that an obsessive and all-encompassing defense of large corporations isn’t so smart a strategy?  I don’t see a problem in reconciling this with being an aggressively free-market type.  Governments protecting existing businesses isn’t capitalism, and I think it’s a little disingenuous to pretend that isn’t going on.

As Sinclair points out, the real threat to entrenched whores-in-power-suspenders* would arrive if these two groups considered what they have in common.  Of course, this means OWS needs to lose the romantic Marxist baloney and the Tea Party needs to spend some time apart from those beloved hardcore social values.  But hell, if those two annoyances were removed from political discourse, it would be a big improvement all by itself.

Eileen McGuire-Mahony still reminds you to spellcheck your protest signs, factcheck your soundbites, and make time for a shower with hot water at least once every 24 hours.  Hygiene isn’t bourgeois; it’s polite.  The world is a screwed up place and there will still be plenty to howl about when you rejoin the group.

* Actually, I somewhat like the look of suspenders, very ‘soaring-blue-chip-index’ without all the nasty S&L crisis associations.  Still, have cliche…will travel.

Electoral politics, by its nature, basically ensures the worst characters will win.  In the time it takes one candidate to balk at some amoral tactic, a dozen others will have rushed ahead.  It is a cynical and axiomatic truth that those who survive politics at the very top levels are not at all the best men.  Governed as we are by ethically dubious egomaniacs, we owe it to posterity to record the character and disposition of the jackals we’ve been foolish enough to elect.

Obviously, this makes us look bad.  It makes the politicians look worse.

Lèse Majesté, the French term for ‘injured majesty’, refers to laws criminalizing anything deemed offensive or derogatory to the dignity of a sovereign.   We have no such nonsense in America.  For one thing, the majority of the Congress would soon be hanged for violating lèse majesté against itself.  Though, come to think of it, wouldn’t that be nice?

A relic of hereditary power, lèse majesté is usually found in the remaining pockets of monarchy.  In some places, people can actually earn prison sentences for nasty remarks, including those made privately.  It’s been used against foreign nationals who made unflattering comments while in a country with lèse majesté, including a Coloradan who “defamed” the King of Thailand.

In practice, those states that have such statutes often expand their use of lèse majesté to go after people who malign the sovereign’s main squeeze, rugrats, and assorted grasping relatives.  For instance, a man was fined several hundred Euros for saying rude things about Beatrix, coronated git of The Netherlands, and describing some rather intimate things he’d like to do to the old dame.  I pulled up her picture.  Quite frankly, in passing judgment, I’d prescribe therapy or, perhaps, corrective eyewear.  Even better, I’d recommend that the delicate little snowflakes at the royal court grow a pair.

The proper response to an insult is, if it was witty and well-aimed, appreciative laughter, and, if it was gauche and unimaginative, cold silence.  Decent people have better things to do than bring the power of the state to bear on irreverent words.

Refining the dialogue and punishing the most ill-bred cretins among us is the work of culture; it is not a fit task for the government.  While we must, so as to preserve civil rights and private life, abide a certain level of vulgarity in the arena, we are under no obligation to stand for such behavior privately.  In fact, it is precisely because we allow such freedoms in public life that we may maintain our own standards in our own personal spheres.

It is one thing to allow some behavior legally and another altogether to smile upon it in polite society.  Trying to legislate manners is as stupid and dangerous as trying to lower the murder rate via cotillion lessons.

The state that proposes to regulate barbed speech wherever it is found is, make no mistake, proposing to regulate private life.

When a state does not quite outlaw the act of tittering at the political class but goes about obsessively collecting information on sharp-tongued critics, it’s a dire sign.  In the era of the Absolute Monarchs, this sort of spying was, I imagine, down by mustachioed cads who went bopping about in run-down neighborhoods, probably wearing long capes and velvet masks.  These days, such stuff is relegated to a number of Foggy Bottom cosplay groups while the work of collating data on dissenters gets done via the Web; that, of course, is infinitely more frightening.

Modern technology has allowed levels of surveillance and intrusion once unimaginable.  Even thoughtful people, with keen grasps of policy and ethics, admit that theory lags far behind technology here.  Hypothetically putting such marvelous machines and gizmos in the hands of Potomac troglodytes who never think and have no morals is a formula for crisis.  Worse, we won’t be able to say rude things about the inevitable screw-ups.

A state that chases down each insult and every aspersion is necessarily an exspansive  police state, a society that recognizes no free speech and respects no privacy.  The paranoia and malice of such a government infects the citizens, making them reproachful against one another, turning them into unpaid spies who work by a sort of ‘Denounce your neighbor lest he denounce you first’ logic.

Ironically, by the time any state could be well along the path to such dystopia, it would too late to do much fighting back.  The increase of government surveillance strikes at the root of the ability to effectively resist the overreach of the state.  It is for this reason  that I have some sympathy for immediate and pronounced reactions when some facet of the government announces plans for one or another asinine program.  Just think, if we’d all flown into timely, apoplectic rage back in January 2010 when Homeland Security began rolling out backscatter x-rays, it might still be possible to fly with dignity.

Alright, fine, there’s my theory and pontificating.  How does this apply?  Do I think the United States is on the brink of upending the First Amendment and assigning the political elite to a special realm where no one may dare criticize them?  No.  For one thing, American free speech protections and American slander and libel laws give wide latitude to speech that might be upsetting and unkind.  Especially compared to some states, we have a way to go before even getting close to criminalizing insults.

But, I stand by the idea that the strongest way to fight off attacks on civil liberties is to push back immediately, not to belittle the threat.  Happily, if applied soon enough, a few belittling insults can work wonders in cutting down the sort of pompous twerps who might like to shroud themselves in some sort of artificially polite aura.  In free speech matters, one must remember that the First Amendment protects the rights of those advocating to restrict free speech, paradoxically putting legitimate champions of unrestricted speech at something of a disadvantage.  So, say I, mock early and mock often.

Of course, the op-ed calling for this hideous policy came out in today’s New York Times.  The facts are these; a man, a friggin’ economics Ph.D, thinks the ugliest people in the population – the 1-2% of the population who look like they’re half badger – ought to have a right of action to sue for unfair employment practices.  According to un-footnoted numbers, Daniel S. Hamermesh claims the “homely” (yes, that’s his research term for the mutants among us) earn $230,000 less in the course of a working life than the “strikingly handsome or beautiful”.  Whether or not that is in real dollars, we are not told.

Elsewhere, Hamermesh goes on to point out that, according to “a Korean study”, plastic surgery is a net loss in earnings for the lumpy mole-men.  Specifically, for decidedly unattractive people who undergo plastic surgery, their income rises less than $1 for each dollar spent on procedures.  Never mind that  few people list ‘higher pay’ as a top reason for seeing a cosmetic surgeon.  Don’t believe me?  Fine, you send me an ad for a cosmetic procedure that entices people with promotions and raises rather than, say, multi-orgasmic sex with demigods and the ability to wear sample sizes.

Before I go any further, allow me to stipulate.  Average beats plain.  Pretty beats average.  And beauty is a power unto itself.  Infants show measurable, positive reactions to attractive people.  Starting in third grade when the pretty girl gets a verbal warning for the same misbehavior that sends her plain friend to the principal’s office, we all know it.  Hamermesh is right that the more attractive someone is, the easier her career.  Job searches are shorter, starting salaries are higher, raises are bigger and more frequent.  And he would know.  It’s been his research area, and (my snarking aside) a truly interesting area at that, for close to two decades, now.

Bottom line: while equality is a theoretical right, no power on earth can make it a reality.  Life is unfair.  Deal.

He does admit that our preference for beauty is involuntary.  We don’t choose to prefer good looking people any more than we choose to prefer fresh milk over spoilt.  The pathetic carping of relativists aside, beauty is in the eye of the beholder only within a range – a narrow range.  We might differ on who we think is #1 and who is #5, but we will overwhelmingly agree on who makes the top five.  Be that as it may, enshrining the obvious into law is, in this case, well-nigh impossible.  Hamermesh concedes the point, writing that even if remarkably ugly people know how bad they look, they’ll be reluctant to have that codified in a court decision.  He thinks that $230,000 more over a career will be enough to sway them.  I wonder about that.  Even when our self-esteem is based on wildly false premises, we attach a lot of value to it.

But, let’s pretend for a paragraph or so that Hamermesh’s policy gets passed at the federal level.  What does this look like?  Certain industries are either going to get an exemption or collapse.  Who wants to look at ugly fashion models and movie stars, to buy cosmetics from swamp creatures, or to get their evening news from some unfortunate fellow who would actually look better with a bag over his head?  And what then of professions in the gray area?  I’m thinking of high-end sales or PR, for instance.  If you can measure the economic benefit to the individual of being beautiful, you can also measure the economic benefit to the company of having beautiful people in public roles.  Hamermesh’s entire idea is justified by saying beautiful people earn more and do better professionally.  The same argument applies if I reply that certain businesses clear higher profits and do better with exceptionally handsome people working for them.  We would be both asking companies to commit economic hari-kari and indulging in a logical paradox.

One of his claims is that discrimination against the ugly costs U.S. businesses $20 billion a year.  Again, I wonder how he derived that number.  Do businesses really lose that much money by passing over well-qualified trolls and putting up with unreliable beauty queens?  Does that number account for, or even try to determine, how much various industries make off the comely?  And what of indirect benefits?  Hamermesh himself argued that students pay more attention to attractive professors.  Shall we deny all those idiotic kids who supposedly represent our future the full measure of pedagogic pulchritude?

But…thus far, we have been chatting about the baboons and the swans.  Hamermesh estimates these groups are, respectively, 1.5% and 2.5 % of the population.  In other words, 96% of the workforce is, in our fictitious world, obliviously sitting at their desks, unaware that we’re in the conference room, mocking them.  By the way, I am watching The Office as I write – the episode where they argue over whether or not Hillary Swank is hot.  Not kidding.  Anyway…I have got a point, here.

Hamermesh’s data sketch out a normal distribution; he divides people into five groups and calls 12% “quite plain”, 55% “average”, and 29% “good looking”.  Yet, he calls for his affirmative action to benefit only the fraction at the absolute bottom.  Sooo…the few at the top go through life being gorgeous, the equally tiny group of bottom-feeders get legally mandated hand-outs, and 96%  look average and pay for all those settlements.  The vast majority lose out twice to benefit so few on something so painfully stupid as “affirmative action for the ugly”?

Somewhere, the Utilitarians, all rather plain men, are retching in disgust.  And, as god is my witness, if such an asinine policy ever goes into effect, I will counter-sue for emotional distress endured over having to spend so much time around ugly people.

Eileen McGuire-Mahony excoriates stupid ideas for fun.  She gets to put it on PPC because she’s on the board.  The entire board is so ferociously good-looking that it cannot be seen in public lest mere mortals be blinded.  She once analyzed Hamermesh in a econ. course; had the professor been hotter, she’d have gotten more out of it.  She is legitimately aware that there are footnotes, references, and regression analyses in the actual scholarly versions of Hamermesh’s work.  That doesn’t mean his latest idea isn’t awful.

Atlas Shrugged it ain’t, but it’s funny that the premise of this show was a private consortium creating a luxurious new transcontinental line as a for-profit venture rather than the government establishing a massively- and permanently-subsidized passenger rail service as a state-owned enterprise. Even so, the businessmen articulate some similar reasons for the venture to those offered for the Obamatrain boondoggle, with the notable exception of environmental benefits — but on the other hand, SuperTrain is powered on its 36-hour coast-to-coast crossings by clean nuclear steam turbines, so it was green before green was hip.

(Obamatrain boondoggles aside, the sexism, stereotypes, and racial condescension on display in this one ten-minute clip are both jawdropping and hilarious at the same time. You couldn’t write a parody of such outmoded attitudes this funny/cringe-inducing. Anyone who believes that sexism and racism are worse today than ever needs to watch this and the other nine clips from the pilot movie for a taste of how things were thirty years ago, even in something as mainstream as a splashy prime-time event on NBC.)

What is good for the goose is good for the gander.  Just because it is “legal” to protest the mosque does not make it “right.”  In fact, my impression is that the mosque’s “immorality” is solely based on the idea that it is “offensive.”  Maybe I’m missing something, but haven’t we conservatives and liberty types been fighting against the notion that rights should be suppressed in the court of public opinion due to another’s ideological/racial/religious offense? And isn’t this “the Mosque is immoral because it is offensive” argument just another form of “political correctness?”   If so, aren’t we being hypocritical if we criticize political correctness but then carve out an exception for stuff about Islam that offends us?

In other words,  the so-called “moral” argument against the mosque is in fact just a dressed up “that mosque offends me” argument.  Elevating a right “not to be offended” to a moral right is a dangerous precedent to set. You accept that and shortly any criticism of Mohammad would then be “immoral” as well. Let’s be consistent on this point…even if doing so makes us queasy.

CLARIFICATION – I am not calling opponents of the Mosque “bigots” as I think that is incorrect.  Rather, I just think they are walking down the dangerous road of “political correctness.”

A number of other significant gender lessons are imparted in the film.

First, on men and masculinity:

1. Men don’t cry, they scream, as Ivan (played by Mickey Rourke) does when his dad dies. Not only am I a wise Latino, I am also a writer. Trust me lady, nobody wants a weepy pansy villain. Plus, Ivan was a RUSSIAN. Badass Russians only have three emotions: Revenge, depression, and vodka.

2. Men like power tools, technology, welding and weapons. Talking, not so much. Duh. Ironically, my wife also prefers tools, tech, and weapons. Which is one reason I love her so much. And men do talk. We talk a lot. Just not about the stupid crap that people like you enjoy. Go watch Sex in the City 2 for that boring *ss sh*t. Iron Man 2 was too talky. Hell, there were only two action sequences in the whole damn movie.

…

This article was just an example of why the “feminist” movement died a pathetic death as a shell of its once important self. True feminists are women who are proud of who they are, and who take responsibility for themselves. My wife is an example of a woman who truly takes no crap. However, since she’s a conservative, she is evil incarnate to the imbeciles at Ms Magazine. The feminist movement as it stands today is just another democrat shill organization that exists primarily to whine, feel picked on, and look for excuses to cry racism.

Amen, brother. Amen.