Here we go:

My initial, emotion-driven evaluation, when I started seeing the ad (over and over and over and over, watching NFL football), was negative.  I think I was responding to the woman seeming sort of unsure of herself, maybe weak in some way — and her husband “saving her” by getting her the machine.  I think this got my feminist hackles up.  However, upon reflection, I don’t think the commercial is sexist.  I don’t think it is about a husband wanting his “116 lb wife to be a 112 lb wife.”  It is about an unsure or insecure or unhappy person find strength in accomplishment — and being helped to this by a loved one, by her partner (and, somewhat oddly to my tastes, documenting the whole adventure via selfie).  I suspect that the woman playing this role (unsure, insecure, needing support) made me uncomfortable (even though I bring no simple egalitarian ideals to the table).  For the images and story of the commercial, in addition to capturing a conventional gender reality (but perhaps also non-conventional psycho-sexual reality) that is not, in itself, obviously objectionable, also easily fits into or slides into representations of gender and marriage roles that are unjust and oppressive.  Danger, Will Robinson, danger!  My emotional reaction, but not my considered judgment, more or less line up with the negative evaluation of the commercial as sexist.  Thoughts?

The New York Times recently reported this case, involving a high school English teacher fired for tweets she sent President Trump:

A high school English teacher in Texas who was fired after she sent tweets to President Trump asking him to rid her school of undocumented immigrants should be reinstated or be paid a year’s salary, a state agency ruled this week.

This is a case where (assuming the truth of the accusations against her) I can see the merit in complaints that the teacher created a hostile, even dangerous environment for students. But the facts of the case are somewhat unclear or contested, so I’m going to bypass that issue. Continue reading →

I am colossally overdue in finally editing and posting the fifth installment in my supposedly five-installment-long series on character-based voting. Resolution: before the year is out. But here, at any rate, is a passing thought on that same subject, inspired by a New York Times article on Pete Buttigieg. In previous posts on this topic, I’ve tried to flesh out the ways in which character might be relevant to justified voting. An indirect route to that same end is to reflect on a case where it’s mostly (or largely) irrelevant. Continue reading →

Sometimes, my cynicism about our national holidays even starts to get to me. But not today. So here I am, bright and early, to crap on Thanksgiving. For most people, Thanksgiving is a feel-good holiday about gratitude for God’s plenty and the wonders of mutual understanding in a multicultural context. For me, it’s about theft, lies, self-delusion, and worst of all, football. So here are some downer, myth-busting pieces on Thanksgiving. Continue reading →

This article is (in most but not all respects) a useful corrective to the reflexive, unwarranted demonization of Scot Peterson over the Parkland shooting of 2018. The “chaos” to which the article refers arose because it was unclear where “the” shooter was, and how many shooters there were. Unfortunately, like so much journalism on this topic, the article seems to suggest that there was chaos for everyone but Scot Peterson, who infallibly knew that there was one shooter, and knew in real time exactly (or even approximately) where this shooter was. Just to be clear: there is no evidence in the public domain that indicates this. The evidence indicates the reverse: that he did not know how many shooters there were, or where any of these shooters were. Continue reading →

I seem to be revisiting a lot of things lately–first reparations, now this. Anyway, you may have noticed this down on the pingbacks, but there’s a long response here to my November 2 post (and exchange with Roderick) on the tensions between Aristotelianism and libertarianism. The post is called “The Shallowness of Secular Ethical Systems,” the blog is called Politics and Prosperity, and the author’s pen-name is Loquitur Veritatem, or truth teller. This last piece of information will come as a shock to anyone who (like me) thought Policy of Truth was the repository of all truths worth knowing. Continue reading →

There are times when I read a passage of Ayn Rand’s and find myself rubbing my eyes to make sure that what I’m reading is real. I take a perverse pride in knowing my way around the Randian corpus, but I just read a passage of hers that I somehow seem to have missed before today, and am having trouble processing what I’ve read. It’s excerpted in a piece on the ARI website on the “moral foundations of the Berlin Wall.” The two prefatory sentences are by Tom Bowden, the author:  Continue reading →