Temples Of Our Times

My weekly column in the Daily Standard reviews the connection between the Minnesota Vikings’ Love Boat cruise last week and the ongoing worship of self-obsession in American society:

What temples do secular societies build? Lately in America, cities and states have increasingly found themselves funding and building vast offerings to professional athletes and the games they play, even though the owners and participants of these games make enough money to house themselves quite handsomely. Why do communities foot the bill for this, and what does it say about the people who support the practice?
That question moved from a vague philosophical debate to practical and uncomfortable introspection for many in Minnesota last week. The Minnesota Vikings have long demanded a new venue in which to play their games–one funded by taxpayers and from which the proceeds almost exclusively support the privately-owned team. …
ACCORDING TO allegations aired in the local news media and confirmed in the main through player interviews, team members flew in high-priced prostitutes from Atlanta and strippers to accompany them on a two-boat cruise on Lake Minnetonka. The partying quickly got out of hand, with players having sex with the prostitutes while the cruise boat personnel had to stand by and continue serving the athletes. The cruise ship personnel alleged that some of the players harassed female staffers and others forced their way behind the bars to ensure that the booze flowed freely. Forty minutes into what was supposed to be a two-and-a-half hour cruise, the two captains compared notes about the activities on both boats, and then informed the cruise company–which ordered them to return immediately to shore.

I also discuss the connection between this incident and that from Kellenberg High School and their canceled prom. Hopefully, CQ readers will find the column an interesting perspective on the issues.
One final note — I will be interviewed by Mara Liasson early this morning for NPR about the conservative debate on Miers and spending, but I do not know when the interview will air or whether she will use it for a column instead.
UPDATE: The interview will get aired on Friday morning on NPR. Mara Liasson couldn’t have possibly been more gracious during our brief period together. She does a fine job as an interviewer, and I think that many in the audience will get pleasantly surprised.

Brother Hoagland Takes A Stand

Brother Kenneth Hoagland, the Marianist monk who serves as principal of the Catholic Kellenberg Memorial High School, has decided to cancel this year’s prom rather than give passive acceptance to the debauchery that attends the dance of late. He defied parents who appeared more interested in enabling their children’s exploration of sex, booze, and drugs than in teaching them how to conduct themselves ethically:

Brother Kenneth M. Hoagland had heard all the stories about prom-night debauchery at his Long Island high school:
Students putting down $10,000 to rent a party house in the Hamptons.
Pre-prom cocktail parties followed by a trip to the dance in a liquor-loaded limo.
Fathers chartering a boat for their children’s late-night “booze cruise.”
Enough was enough, Hoagland said. So the principal of Kellenberg Memorial High School canceled the spring prom in a 2,000-word letter to parents this fall.
“It is not primarily the sex/booze/drugs that surround this event, as problematic as they might be; it is rather the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity’s sake — in a word, financial decadence,” Hoagland said, fed up with what he called the “bacchanalian aspects.”

The students have protested the decision, calling it unfair and judgmental, but the cancellation came after an initial warning that Hoagland meant business. After he found out about the $20K rental in the Hamptons, he forced the seniors who made the arrangements to cancel the party house in order for the prom to stay on the schedule. Once he confirmed that the rental was canceled, he put the prom on the schedule.
So what happened?
The parents decided to rent the Hamptons party house for the seniors instead.
Does anyone remember when parents used to stand up to their children and insist on responsible behavior? I went to two proms, in 1979 and 1980. I spent around $50 for a tuxedo rental, drove my parent’s car on both occasions, bought dinner for about the same price as the tux, and paid about $20 for the tickets to the dance. We went to elegant venues for these dances: the Golden Sails Restaurant in Belmont Shore and the Airporter in Newport Beach. After both, we went to the houses of friends for the rest of the night.
Total cost: somewhere south of $500 for two proms. Parents willing to let their kids get juiced up and endorse an evening of sexually exploiting each other: zero.
Hoagland remembers that Catholic high schools exist to endorse the moral teachings of the Church, and that a night of Golden Calf-like bacchanalia seems a bit out of place, even if the average student’s allowance exceeds my monthly salary. Brother Hoagland deserves credit for insisting on sticking to those moral standards, even when the parents seem to think that surrender is their only option.

Doctor Reprimanded By Board For … Honesty

In what may become a classic case of political correctness run amuck, a medical board has reprimanded a doctor for diagnosing a patient as “fat”, ordering him to take a sensitivity course as a remedial step:

Dr. Terry Bennett believes in being honest with his patients, but one woman was so offended about the way he spoke to her about her weight, she filed a complaint with the state Board of Medicine.
The New Hampshire state attorney general launched an investigation, asked Bennett to take a medical education course and admit he has made a mistake. …
The case has some medical professionals concerned.
“We are really walking on thin ice when we have the legal system coming into a doctor’s office and saying what we can or cannot do,” said Dr. Mark Fendrick, a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan.

I’d say that Dr. Fendrick’s concerns come about four decades too late in general, but I agree with his point of view. Bennett did apologize to the patient in writing for offending her, but he points out that mild, politically-correct language offers too many excuses for people to disregard the medical advice. His bedside manner may be a bit too blunt for some patients, but that gets addressed by the market and shouldn’t cause the medical board to reprimand him for his honesty. Getting the New Hampshire Attorney General involved is far more ominous, and far more ridiculous.
On the other hand, perhaps the doctors and government in New Hampshire have nothing better to do than to act as speech police. If so, the state’s residents should cut funding for such efforts so that both waste less of the taxpayers’ money.

Dafydd: Contiguationness

I think I think too much.
Or maybe everyone else thinks too little. For instance, John “Hindrocket” Hinderaker of Power Line (and the new news and blogs blog Power Line News — check it out!) added a codicil to a post by Scott “Big Trunk” Johnson (or is that Scott “Big Johnson” Trunk?). The post was about the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) voting to condemn the Israeli security fence, presumably on the grounds that it might give Israel some security. John added more information which included the following statement from the ELCA:

This Churchwide Strategy for ELCA Engagement in Israel and Palestine… describes the fragile hope for a just and peaceful solution that is growing in the region following the recent Palestinian elections. It also expresses a sense of urgency, calling for strong and concerted action so that: 1) the possibility of secure, contiguous, and viable Israeli and Palestinian states is not eroded by the placement of the separation wall and Israeli settlements in the occupied territories….

Contiguous?
I have been hearing for years now the demand by Palestinians and their buddies in America and Europe that the Palestinian land be “contiguous.” Contiguous, of course, means “connecting without a break,” as in the contiguous forty-eight states of the continental United States.
What the Palestinians mean by a “contiguous” state of Palestine is that they want to be able to walk from Ramallah in the West Bank to the beach in Gaza City without ever having to set foot inside the hated Zionist Entity.
But nearly everyone — even the Lutherans — agrees that Israel needs contiguity as well, so that Ariel Sharon can waddle from Nazareth in the north to the Negev Desert in the south without ever having to learn Arabic to order some matzoh ball soup.
Here is where I’m having a difficult time. Take a look at this map of Israel and the territories. What is wrong with this picture?
The most obvious problem is that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are inconveniently in two lumps, east and west, separated by Israel. But the only way to make Gaza and the West Bank contiguous would be to add a Palestinian corridor connecting the two… say, from Gaza City to Hebron. And of course, if you do that, then Israel is sliced in two, north and south, losing all that great contiguity stuff.
Thinking topologically, the problem is solvable. For example, Israel could create a V-shaped corridor that rolls down the southwestern border between Israel and Egypt (from Gaza to Elat), then bends sharply upward past En Yavah and Hazeva (can you tell I’m just reading off the map?) to the Dead Sea, then bending around the western shore to just touch the West Bank at En Gedi. It could be about ten feet wide, which wouldn’t take too much land from the Israelis but would still leave plenty of room for columns of trekking Palestinians to pass each other, provided they all marched in single file.
But I’m not exactly sure that the Egyptians would appreciate seeing their border with the Palestinians increase from about forty feet, or however wide the Gaza Strip is, to a solid 140 miles; the Egyptians don’t tend to like the Palestinians very much, which is why Egypt refused to take back Gaza when Israel tried to practically give it away (such a deal!) And the Jordanians, despite being mostly Palestinian themselves, as far as the British were concerned, don’t want such a large border with the West-Bank Palestinians either… the East-Bank Palestinians having always looked down upon the West-Bank Palestinians as country bumpkins who don’t even know how to throw a good gunfire-in-the-air celebration.
The alternative route to connect the West Bank and Gaza, up north past Syria and down south past Lebanon, is right out: Hezbollah has already staked out that territory, and they wouldn’t cotton to any rival gangs horning in on their racket. Besides, the Golan Heights would require significant hiking skills, unless they built a chair-lift.
Of course, we live in a three-dimensional world, not on a 2-D map. Let’s not forget the possibility of a really, really long bridge arching up from the West Bank, rising gently to a thousand feet or so (escalators can relieve the Palestinians of the necessity of learning how to mount that chair-lift) then drifting back down to ground level inside Gaza. But here, the Israelis would surely object, worrying that fun-loving Palestinian youths might lean over the railing and drop brickabats or burning bags of doggie-dirt on the heads of unsuspecting tourists.
The penultimate possibility is a tunnel underneath Israel, connecting the two pieces of the new state of Palestine. The Palestinians have much recent experience with tunnels, having dug one from Gaza into Egypt not too long ago. But the danger is that, in their excitement at contiguizing their new state, they may overshoot the Gaza Strip, which is quite narrow, and tunnel all the way into the Mediterranean Sea. The resulting gush of water could turn the Jordan River into the Jordan Swamp, and the Palestinians would lose a fortune on all the sand-colored camouflage they’ve prepared (for hunting purposes only, of course).
This leaves only one solution that would be acceptable to Israeli and Palestinian alike; it involves remembering that we not only live in 3-D but in particular on the surface of a sphere: the Palestinians could build a land bridge east from the West Bank all the way around the Earth to Gaza. But as this is the only option — the final solution, one might say, to the contiguity problem — then they had better get cracking: at that latitude, and deducting the 70 miles or so from the west edge of Gaza to the east border of the West Bank, they still have another 21,496 miles to go… and they haven’t even poured the first hundred yards of concrete yet.
I hope you see my point: with just a little bit of thought and creativity, even such a seemingly impossible condition as mutual contiguity can be solved. At least in theory; the rest is just engineering details.

A Lack Of Commitment

My new Daily Standard column is up today, titled “Exit Strategies”. It looks at the lack of commitment in evidence today in what used to be our most basic social model — marriage — and how that lack of commitment gets reflected in our politics.
This started as a post last week (“Sometimes And Whenever”) about the increasing popularity of vows that avoid lifetime commitments. We covered this topic on the Northern Alliance Radio Network last Saturday as well. We had a lot of fun trying to predict the next variation of marriage that would lower the commitment level even less than that of today. Some suggestions:
* One-year contracts with mutual renewable options (sports fans would love these)
* Pre-paid marriage cards — if things are going well, just put some more time on them
* Cell phone minutes — sort of like the pre-paid cards, only you get your weekend minutes for free. (Big penalties for roaming, however.)
If you have any other suggestions, leave them in the comments!

Dafydd: Come One, Come All, and Have a Ball!

Bear Flag League Conference coming up soon!
(The primary category for this post should be Log Rolling, but the Captain inexplicably failed to set that one up.)
Where: CalTech (that’s in Pasadena, California — hence the “bear flag” reference)
When: 17 July 2005
How much: $50 if you’re a schlemiel who pays full price; $40 if you contact Patterico (see link) and pretend that you listen to Hugh Hewitt or that you read Captain’s Quarters. Oh, wait, if you’re reading this, I guess you qualify legitimately!
Link: Bear Flag League Conference
Why: I dunno… good conversation, rubber chicken, who could ask for anything more? Speeches by Ted Costa (conservative activist and one of the originators of the recall petition that booted Gray Davis back into the Outer Darkness); Daniel Weintraub (Sacramento Bee columnist who operates the SacBee corporate blog California Insider); and Bob Hertzberg (unsuccessful mayoral candidate in the recent Los Angeles elections, likely would have been better than either the clod who won the runoff, Antonio Villaraigosa, or the incrumbent who was crushed in the runoff, James K. Hahn).
Come to the party, and you’ll get to harass Patterico mercilessly! He promises to help every one of you out for free on all of your petty, personal legal problems. Just call him anytime; ask him for his home phone number.

In Defense Of Home Schooling — In The Strib?

The Minneapolis Star Tribune recently hired Katherine Kersten as a featured columnist, a major step for the far-left Twin Cities daily. Long reviled for its outrageous bias and intellectually bankrupt editorials, the Strib has recently attempted to balance itself as more critics discover their shortcomings — critics with voices of their own, such as Power Line, Shot In The Dark, Fraters Libertas, and other Twin Cities bloggers who regularly point out their inconsistencies. They hired D. J. Tice as an editor a few months back in order to demonstrate fairness in their news reporting, and Kersten now joins the Strib to give better balance to local columnists.
Kersten is no middle-of-the-road commentator, either. She provides some of the driving force behind the Center for the American Experiment, a local conservative, free-market think tank that has grown in stature and influence tremendously since its founding 15 years ago. Kersten lends the Strib real diversity in thought, and her column today on home schooling is a great example. While the media has always treated home schooling as a danger to children, a process that has the potential to churn out undereducated and maladjusted children, Kersten shows that the process works better than public education:

In 1990, the state had about 10,000 home-schoolers; today, there are more than 17,000.
Most of these kids do well academically. Studies show that home-schoolers, as a group, score well above average on standardized achievement tests.
It’s not hard to see why home-schooling succeeds. Home-schooling parents, unlike classroom teachers, can focus on exactly what their children need.
They’re also free to ignore the shifting and time-consuming educational fashions of the day. (Remember the recently deceased Profile of Learning, with its fuzzy-minded “performance packages”?)
Home-schooling parents can emphasize literary classics over contemporary children’s fiction, which generally features a simplistic style and a narrow, adolescent mind-set. They can nurture their children’s minds and hearts free from the alienated, heavily conformist youth culture.
Is home-schooling a luxury available only to the well-to-do? Not at all. A study released by the National Center for Educational Statistics in 2001 found that home-schooling families’ average income is similar to that of other families. The study also found that 25 percent of home-schoolers are minorities.

Of course, these numbers threaten the public-school monopoly that the state and its unions in which they have such vested interests, and not just for money. The failed programs that Kersten mentions also involve social engineering, some of it less subtle than others. A proposal in front of the legislature at the moment would require three-year-olds that enter the public education system to get psychiatric evaluations to determine what “socioemotional issues” need attention.
Home schooling avoids all of these intrusive, objectionable treatments and processes that turn normal children into lab rats and Ritalin-induced zombies. Kersten homeschooled her own child and discusses others who have done the same, and the support groups and resources available to those who choose this route for their children’s education. The cost for this education is around $400 per year — probably less than one would pay for supplies, fees, and transportation with public schools in a typical year.
Congratulations to Kersten on an auspicious start in her new position — and at least two cheers for the Strib for listening to their audience and hiring Kersten.

Parents Without A Clue

This story pops up every once in a while, proving that stupidity and cluelessness has a strong streak of repetition. A Nashville mother is the latest parent to get arrested for hiring strippers for a minor child and his buddies to celebrate a birthday:

A mother faces criminal charges after she hired a stripper to dance at her 16-year-old son’s birthday party. Anette Pharris, 34, has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and involving a minor in obscene acts. The boy’s father, the stripper and two others also face charges. …
Anette Pharris took photos at the party and tried to have them developed at a nearby drug store. Drug store employees notified authorities, police said.
“Who are they to tell me what I can and can’t show to my own children?” the mother said.

Where to start with Pharris? Let’s establish some baseline assumptions. I’m not that much of a prude that I think a naked body corrupts everyone who sees it. However, I do think that teenagers who already struggle to understand sexuality and their own urges are not helped by having parents provide writhing strippers and lap dances to their 16-year-old sons. And while Pharris may have more of a voice in determining appropriate entertainment for her own child, she certainly doesn’t have the right to determine it for his friends.
This is what happens when parents decide that being buddies with their kids and indulging every impulse they have is more important than parenting. Parents are the primary teachers of their children, and while it’s important to keep lines of communication open, that doesn’t mean that parents have to capitulate on every urge their teenagers have. All Pharris taught her son was that she has no judgement or morals at all, and that it’s perfectly OK to indulge every hormonal impulse no matter what the circumstances.
Last lesson: if one really insists on being this stupid, buy a digital camera.
ADDENDUM: The First Mate had me in stitches this morning after I told her about this story. When she calmed down, she casually asked me what kind of birthday cake would go with that particular party theme…

Jerry Lewis: Sinatra Was Mob Bagman

An upcoming biography of Frank Sinatra includes recollections from Jerry Lewis that appears to confirm the rumors of Sinatra’s involvement in Mafia business. The Guardian (UK) reports that Lewis offers an anecdote revealing that Sinatra nearly got caught while muling $3.5 million through New York customs in the 1940s:

In an interview for a new biography of Sinatra, Lewis is quoted as saying of the Rat Pack member: “He volunteered to be a messenger for them. And he almost got caught once … in New York.”
As he passed through customs, Lewis says, Sinatra was stopped by officials who started to open the suitcase he was carrying. Inside, says Lewis, were notes to the value of “three and a half million in 50s”. But the customs officers were distracted by the crowds of people trying to catch a glimpse of the singer and aborted their search.
Had they not, claims Lewis, “we would never have heard of him again”.

Sinatra had long been suspected of such ties to organized crime by American law-enforcement agencies, especially by the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover. His Las Vegas holdings intertwined with known mob bosses in an era where such connections only existed by invitation, and Sinatra socialized with such high-profile Mafia figures as Sam Giancana and Lucky Luciano. However, Sinatra and his people have always denied any illegal activity took place as a result of these associations, claiming that Sinatra viewed the bosses only as devoted fans of his music.
Having Jerry Lewis go on record with such stories is quite a coup for Robbyn Swan and Anthony Summers. Sinatra’s contemporaries have always remained mum on the subject out of respect for Sinatra, or perhaps for other reasons. The Guardian reports that other sources have further corroboration of Sinatra’s Mafia aspirations, practically guaranteeing that the book will fly off of bookshelves once published. As for me, I’ll pass. I never really understood the reverence displayed for Sinatra, who may have been a sensation in his youth but whose expert style couldn’t quite cover up a weak voice and an ever-present arrogance. At least now we know the source for the latter.

The AP Misses The Point

The NFL delivered a much classier halftime show yesterday than its MTV-produced fiasco of last year, choosing the more elegant option of just having a truly talented singer perform instead of the crotch-grabbing bondagefest that climaxed in Justin Timberlake’s pantomime rape that “inadvertently” released Janet Jackson’s decorated breast. Somehow this seems to have offended David Bauder of the AP, whose satirical look at the performances of the acts before the game and Paul McCartney during halftime makes clear his preference for less mundane fare:

It was strange seeing the former Beatle, a bold and shocking performer for another generation, now presented as the sedate option. NFL censors were probably hoping the “California grass” reference in “Get Back” slipped by unnoticed, or figured people would think he was simply referring to a football field. …
The closest thing to a wardrobe malfunction during all the performances were courtesy of country singer Gretchen Wilson’s guitar player. His jeans had a strategically placed rip in the crotch. …
Although with the NFL watching so closely, it’s a wonder how Wilson’s “Here For the Party” managed to slip through.
“Gonna have a little fun,” she sang. “Gonna get me some.”
One can almost hear the small voices in living rooms across the country: “Daddy, what does ‘get me some’ mean?”

I know Bauder can’t be that dim, and so I can only assume that he wanted another MTV-produced shlockfest, where performers lip-synched while either gyrating while simulating masturbation, or lip-synching while simulating bondage-rape fantasies. Bauder would consider that relevant to the new generation. Apparently, having people with talent regardless of age actually play music and sing is just too old-fashioned for Bauder and the football fans of today.
Well, I disagree, and so did the fans of Jacksonville who showed up at the stadium. McCartney delivered what fans wanted to hear in a very short set — his standards, the songs that made the world stand still for moments and against which Justin Timberlake is revealed as the substanceless nobody he is. Alicia Keys gave us a tremendous remembrance of Ray Charles with her remarkable voice, reminding us what a has-been a tired and semi-naked Janet Jackson has become.
Perhaps the Super Bowl entertainment lacked a certain amount of relevance. However, it had class and talent by the boatload, apparently two commodities that Bauder cannot recognize. If so, I recommend he continue to watch MTV and write on other topics.