Scoping Out The Situation

In the spirit of Juvenal, the first century A.D. Roman poet and satirist whose Tenth Satire provided the name for my blog, I can't help but let news as momentous as the announcement that Jersey Shore resident musclehead Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino will make upwards of $5 million this year pass unremarked upon. You've got to hand it to the guy - whether by luck, persistence, or some pea-brained form of self-promotional genius, the man has managed to turn great abs, an excessive fondness for hair gel, and a personality that effortlessly marries malignant narcissism and mild mental retardation into a marketing force worth seven figures annually. It's not true that America is a uniquely shallow, materialistic, and intellectually bankrupt society - other countries pay pop singers, actors, and sports stars far more money and attention than they deserve as well, and likewise undervalue teachers, engineers, doctors, and scientists. But we're still ahead of the game, because only in America is it possible for someone to become famous for being famous. Europe, Asia, Latin America - until you can start turning knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing troglodytes like The Situation and vapid, painted-up sluts like Paris Hilton into cultural icons, and not just people who actually have some talent (no matter how overvalued), you've still got a long way to go to catch up in the race to the bottom. Get cracking.

News Flash: Life Ain't Fair

Courtesy of Stanford law professor Deborah L. Rhode comes this jaw-droppingly stupid editorial from the Washington Post on "beauty bias". Certain people, shockingly, are considered more physically attractive than others by society, and this, equally shockingly, advantages them unfairly in their professional and social lives:

Just like racial or gender discrimination, discrimination based on irrelevant physical characteristics reinforces invidious stereotypes and undermines equal-opportunity principles based on merit and performance. And when grooming choices come into play, such bias can also restrict personal freedom.

The solution? We must, of course, include people who are ugly, fat, bald, and the like in the category of victims of discrimination and extend the umbrella of civil rights legislation to cover them. Don't worry, Rhode assures us, this will not result in a spate of frivolous litigation or the undermining of popular support for legitimate civil rights claims:

Such bans have not produced a barrage of loony litigation or an erosion of support for civil rights remedies generally. These cities and counties each receive between zero and nine complaints a year, while the entire state of Michigan totals about 30, with fewer than one a year ending up in court.

That, of course, might change if lawsuits based on this sort of claim ever gained any traction in the courts, or if we actually instituted the kind of legal apparatus that would be necessary to enforce a society-wide ban on discrimination based on appearance. As Andrew Sullivan (quoted in the article) succinctly put it:

By the time you've finished preventing discrimination against the ugly, the short, the skinny, the bald, the knobbly-kneed, the flat-chested, and the stupid, you're living in a totalitarian state."

I know that unattractive people are disadvantaged by their looks, and I sympathize, I really do. But all the evidence science can muster suggests that our preference for interacting with individuals we find attractive rather than those we find unattractive is a biological reality hard-wired into the human psyche. Progressives are very fond of arguing that certain things of which conservatives disapprove (homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, youthful irresponsibility, etc.) are ineradicable artifacts of human nature, often with justification. Why can't they accept that that's also quite likely true of things they don't like, such as behavioral gender differences or the tendency to judge others on the basis of appearance? How can a woman with a law degree and a teaching position at Stanford not have learned the elementary lesson that life isn't always fair?

Every totalitarian state in modern history got its start by assuming that human nature could be changed and the imperfections of our existence legislated out of existence if we only had enlightened enough leadership and instruments of social control well-designed enough to do the job, which ought to persuade any rational person of the folly of such assumptions. We can ensure, to an extent, equality under the law, and perhaps even equality of access to opportunity. But there's no way to ensure that absolutely everyone gets a fair shake in every situation. Unless I'm wrong. Perhaps we should give Rhode's proposal a try? And if civil rights legislation fails to correct the problem, we can always push for ratification of the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments.

Put Your Hands On Your Head And Step Away From The Pale Ale...

Pennsylvania state police have raided three popular Philadelphia bars in order to seize sixty gallons of unlicensed beer - the bars, though they had purchased the beers legally and had paid all the necessary taxes on them, had failed to register them under their proper names with Pennsylvania's state Liquor Control Board. The fact that the bars were in possession of contraband suds became known to the police via a "citizen compaint". As it turns out, several of the beers were registered, albeit under somewhat different names than they were being sold under, and were mistakenly confiscated due to "clerical error" (read: bureaucratic incompetence); now their owners will have to go through a lengthy (six-to-eight month) process to prove that the beers actually are legal in order to get them back, by the completion of which the beer will have no doubt spoiled. There are a few key questions in this case, as I see it:

1.)How stupid and/or beholden to bureaucratic procedure are state employees if they can't tell that "Monk's Cafe Sour Flemish Red Ale" (the name under which one of the confiscated beers was being sold) just might be the same thing as "Monk's Cafe Ale" (the name under which it was registered with the PLCB)?

2.)As bar owner Leigh Maida asks, how can a government organ be responsible for regulating a product if it is not even aware of that product's actual name?

3.)Shouldn't these state troopers have been out writing traffic citations or doing something else of at least marginal benefit to the people of Pennyslvania? How does an amateur hour production of The Keystone Kops Meet The Untouchables "serve and protect" the citizens of the commonwealth?

4.)If it takes more than a dozen armed troopers to safely raid a couple of sedate, high-end Yuppie brewhouses, how many are necessary to secure, say, a crack den? A meth lab? A mob hideout?

5.)Given that these state troopers were not defraying the expense of their salaries by issuing revenue-enhancing fines to motorists, how much money did this operation cost the taxpayers of Pennsylvania?

6.)Who was responsible for the "citizen complaint" against the bars? Because whoever that person is, he or she really, really needs to be punched in the face, hard.

Have no fear, citizens of Pennsylvania. Your government can't necessarily protect you from crime, and they most certainly can't keep the roads you drive on in good repair or ensure your children a good education, but you can go to sleep at ease in the knowledge that they will never allow you to experience the horror of unknowingly ordering an unregistered microbrew when you go out to the bar. No doubt William Penn is looking down from heaven and smiling right now, knowing that the inhabitants of his land are able to live in such security.

To Be Fair, "Irony" Is An Awfully Big Word For A Guy Like That

Andrew Sullivan notes that one of the perpetrators in an assault on a gay man in Queens who has the "thou shall not lie with a male" quotation from the Book of Leviticus tattooed on his arm apparently couldn't be bothered to read the next chapter of it:

“You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead or tattoo any marks
upon you; I am the LORD”

You can't make this shit up.

God's Cosmic Joke

Gotta love yet another "family values" blowhard Republican getting busted (or, in this case, busting himself) for cheating on his wife in a decidedly unwholesome fashion. While some foreigners may question Americans' preoccupation with our politicians' sex lives, I've got to say I love it, and hope it continues, because it's fantastic entertainment. There's no better farce than the spectacle of a cheating pol getting caught with, so to speak, his hand in the cookie jar, and the Kabuki ritual that inevitably follows. Vehement denials, uttered in mock outrage, followed by weasel-worded spin doctoring, followed finally by ritual confession and serial apology, in an attempt to gain absolution and a return to the voters' good graces, all of it unfolding in a narrative arc with the predictability of a Hollywood genre film. In this case, you can throw in a nice dash of graft and cronyism for seasoning. The shit practically writes itself. Tom Wolfe once referred to sex as "God's cosmic joke". I'd say that's a pretty good assessment. Nothing punctures the myth of the rational animal quite like a man with wealth, power, and connections (or, in the case of Bill Clinton, the fate of the world literally in his hands) setting it all on fire for the sake of smearing himself in another primate's smelly body fluids for fifteen minutes.

If there are any socially conservative politicians out there who don't multitask preaching self-righteous horseshit with having deviant extramarital sex with women of low virtue, would they please come forward?