It’s official: we’re having a girl!!!
This week on The Hero Report podcast, we discuss the heroism (or lack thereof) in the blockbuster, The Avengers. Did the “hit them over the head with a hammer” technique work for the heroic themes, or did it render them useless?
Tell us what you think about this episode, discuss these issues with us on Twitter (Matt Langdon / Ari Kohen), and join us every Friday at 4pm Eastern on Google+ for our live broadcast (where you can chat with us while we’re on the air and contribute to the conversation).
Want to make the podcast portable? Subscribe via iTunes (audio-only).
Both Glenn Loury and Ann Althouse have gay sons. And, in this clip, both of them argue that we shouldn’t consider opposition to same-sex marriage to be akin to bigotry. Loury goes a few steps farther, in fact, and claims that a charge of bigotry really amounts to demagogic politics and that people who oppose same-sex marriage on religious or cultural grounds are morally serious and ought not to be dismissed out of hand.
But it’s never entirely clear why Loury and Althouse believe that the views these people espouse are so morally serious or why we ought to refrain from referring to their condemnation of homosexuality as bigotry. From listening to them, my sense is that their argument rests on the presumption that religious people are morally serious and, as such, they reflect on the tenets of their faiths before coming to their conclusions about matters like same-sex marriage.
That’s all well and good, if it’s true. But it doesn’t explain why we shouldn’t think of it as bigotry. That someone believes something to be true and arrives at his or her belief in a serious manner doesn’t exempt him or her from being challenged on that belief, especially when that belief might impact the lives of others.
Let’s go a few steps down the religious path and see what happens. After all, I attend a weekly religious service, I associate with many of my co-religionist, and I observe many of the strictures of my religion in my daily life. And my religion, Judaism, is one that seems to explicitly condemn homosexuality; indeed, it’s the Hebrew Bible to which people turn when they’re looking for a religious justification for their opposition to same-sex marriage and homosexuality more generally (even though the majority of these people don’t pay much attention to any of the other dictates of the Hebrew Bible).
But Jews are divided on the question of same-sex marriage, with most Orthodox authorities opposing it and most Reform authorities supporting it. Conservative authorities are divided, with some in support and some in opposition. The Hebrew Bible says that one should not lie with a man as one lies with a woman … but the Hebrew Bible also says, for example, that the death penalty should be employed as a punishment in hundreds of circumstances (from homicide to children who curse their parents) yet the vast majority of Jewish authorities oppose capital punishment. After much study and debate, religious authorities have found that the text can be read in more ways than one. And that’s why it seems to me that we can take issue with anyone who claims that their religion mandates their opposition to same-sex marriage or their condemnation of homosexuality. The Orthodox, after all, are not agitating for the ability to resume stoning their children.
In other words, Jews have options (and I presume that Christians and Muslims do too). Despite the injunction against homosexuality in Leviticus, there is no need for a Jew to join a congregation that condemns homosexuality or even makes gays and lesbians feel in any way unwelcome. And so, as a Jew, I gravitate toward congregations that are welcoming to gays and lesbians and toward rabbis who speak out in favor of equal rights and equal treatment.
Religions aren’t monolithic; if people really are involved in deep spiritual reflection on the matter of homosexuality, then they will surely be able to find an interpretation of their religious texts that allows for the kind of evolution that President Obama described. This doesn’t mean I’m not serious about practicing Judaism; it means I’m serious about finding a way to reconcile my belief in the teachings of Judaism with my belief that people should be treated equally. But, obviously, one must actually have both of these beliefs.
What do we call someone who either fails to consider the alternative teaching of his or her religion or rejects that teaching because it doesn’t lead to continued condemnation of gays and lesbians, someone — in other words — who doesn’t actually have both a religious belief and a belief in equality?
With apologies to Loury and Althouse, I think I have to call it bigotry.
I’m incredibly excited for one of the University of Nebraska’s most recent political science graduates, Justin Green, who jumped on a plane to Washington two weeks ago and yesterday snagged a fantastic internship with Matt Lewis at the Daily Caller.
Justin started blogging in earnest because it was a requirement for my human rights class last summer, but over the past year he really focused on American politics and staked out a philosophically sophisticated conservative position on a wide variety of issues.
Here’s his first post at the beginning of my class, about a year ago. Here’s the post, from about a week ago, that Matt Lewis referenced in the tweet above.
I’ve been fortunate to encounter many excellent students in my eight years of teaching at the collegiate level. So when new students visit my office to inquire about what political science majors are doing with their degrees, I often talk about those who are working on their PhDs or finishing up their JDs; those who are overseas on Fulbrights; those who are working for NGOs, or in the local or federal government; and those who are Peace Corps volunteers or working somewhere in the U.S. with AmeriCorps.
But I have to say, next year I’m looking forward to telling students about how Justin landed his current job.
(Source: jgreendc)
As always, we’re recording a new episode of the Hero Report podcast today and you can watch the live broadcast here … days before the podcast is officially released.
Today, we’re talking with Drew Jacob, who is in the final planning stages of a grand heroic adventure. The last time he joined us, my son woke up early from his nap and demanded to watch Elmo videos on YouTube.
Since we’re live from approximately 4-5pm Eastern, you can comment here or head over to Google+ and comment on the live feed there; we try, as much as possible, to answer questions and integrate comments in real time. If you’re seeing this after we’ve finished broadcasting, you can still comment and ask questions, of course, and we’ll be do our best to bring them into next week’s show.
And, if you don’t like watching your podcasts, you can always subscribe via iTunes (audio-only).
Update: Due to technical difficulties, Drew Jacob wasn’t able to join us today so we’ll reschedule for next week. Instead, we talked about the Avengers movie for about forty-five minutes!
I have a stalker! A bona fide, no-foolin’, internet stalker!
The first few times that this sad clown wrote about me on his Tumblr blog or wrote to me on mine, I attempted to engage him in discussion. But he doesn’t want to have a discussion about the issues he thinks are important, he just wants to shout at and about me. You can check out the comments on this post of his if you want to be sure. In his own words:
So I ignored him.
But now he’s taken to responding to people on Twitter when my name or my blog come up, no matter how unrelated the topic might be to the two things in this world he cares about: the evils of warfare and the virtues of Ron Paul. In this case, he clicked on a link to my post yesterday about Trayvon Martin and, reading it, thought to himself, “I hate Ari Kohen’s position on Syria.”
This is very weird and very sad behavior, but I suppose I should be flattered that someone out there is paying this much attention to everything about me. I’d pay him some attention right back, but he hides behind a fake name so it’s tough for me to do it.
Go with God, “Jayel Aheram,” you mighty warrior for truth and freedom. Whenever I worry about the state of the world, it helps to know that someone out there — someone who disguises himself when he attacks other people — is paying so much attention to me.
It seems that a bunch of people either somehow find it amusing to take pictures of themselves posing as a deceased Trayvon Martin or else they just don’t understand the difference between getting good attention and bad attention for your actions.
As my friend who blogs over at The Noob Yorker rightly points out:
When you mock and belittle the death of Trayvon, you reinforce the racism that underpins our social institutions and in the process produce more events akin those in Florida.
I understand that everyone wants to make the next hot meme and get the internet to pay attention to them for a minute. But, seriously, stop behaving this way. It is awful.
That thing where a politician says about himself exactly what you were going to say about him so that now you don’t have to say it and sound snarky.
Schizophrenia, Homophobia, and Political Disagreement
Several days ago, I wrote about the viral video of Jane Svoboda, a mentally ill woman testifying against an anti-discrimination ordinance in Lincoln, Nebraska. I thought it was clear, the moment I saw the video, that the woman was mentally ill and not simply someone who was railing against homosexuality. And a lot of the bloggers who passed along the video focused on how crazy her screed seemed and how funny it was that she seemed so crazy.
In short, the video went viral because people thought it was funny, not because they were disturbed by the woman’s homophobia. Lots of people say homophobic things on video and those don’t go viral, but very few people say these sorts of things and in this manner.
And so I quoted the woman’s brother, who commented on how this incident said a lot about our society’s understanding of mental illness.
Of course, a number of people wrote comments that pointed out their disagreements with my assessment of the situation and, in doing so, they highlighted a crucial misunderstanding about mental illness and about how we talk about politics.
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Today is my son’s second birthday!
That this little baby is becoming a big kid would ordinarily be pretty hard to believe, but he’s been helping us adjust to our new reality by singing “Happy Birthday” — alternating between his own name and the names of his friends from day care — for the past couple of days now.
So, happy birthday to this extremely sweet, funny, and loving kid whose existence alone makes so many people happy. We love you!
![According to a report yesterday on WFTV, the FBI may charge George Zimmerman with a hate crime:
Zimmerman admitted to killing Martin in February during a confrontation. However, he claims the shooting was in self-defense. He’s facing a second-degree murder charge, which carries a maximum possible sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. But if Zimmerman is charged and found guilty of a federal hate crime involving murder, he could face the death penalty.
When the “Justice for Trayvon Martin” Facebook page reported this news, in two separate posts, the excitement was palpable. At the time I sat down to write this, last night, their initial post that linked to the news story was shared 270 times, drew 1,455 Likes, and was commented upon 306 times. The second post, with its shares, Likes, and comments, is screencaptured above.
The Tumblr community reacted as well, with one post linking to the story drawing nearly 1,500 Likes and Reblogs as of this writing.
The reaction from those who have commented is largely supportive of killing George Zimmerman and, more often than not, the language that’s employed is positively dripping with brutality.
[[MORE]]
Here are some responses from Tumblr to the question of whether another death is really the answer:
First:
F*%k you.
Because yes. It is the answer.
Then this one:
This isn’t the f*%king 40s anymore. Anyone who kills a black child should have the full brunt of the law smashed down on their d&$k
And this:
My humanity does not diminish for my wanting of this man’s death. All I want is justice. In this case, an eye for an eye is not enough. I need limb for limb and blood for blood. Because this is something bigger than Trayvon. While this is about getting him his justice, there are so many others who have never, and will never, get theirs. Make an example of Zimmerman. Show these white supremacist douchef*%ks that if you kill ours, you’ll get yours, and it will not be by vigilante justice but by the very system you uphold, that always protects you. It will come for you, too, because you should no longer hide behind your privilege and racism. So, no, I do not care if it seems callous that I wish death on a person. Zimmerman did what a lot of you apologists would do, and he deserves proper punishment. Time will not change him. He had time. He chose to hide. He chose to play the victim. He chose to play all the angles to pain his victim as the antagonist. I have no care in this world for this mans health, happiness, sanity, or redemption. Let the pits of Hell swallow him whole.
This one:
I don’t necessaily wish Zimmerman the death penalty, but I couldn’t bat an eyelash if that’s where his fate lead. What a disgusting, vile stain on the lineage on mankind. This man stalks a child, lies about the events that ensued later that night, runs away, cutting off all contact from his family and lawyers, capitalizes off of his heinous crime and has the audacity to look a mother in the eyes and say “I’m sorry about the loss of your child”, a loss .. (as if Trayvon is an expendable commodity, which is probably what he thought when he killed him), instead of “I’m sorry I killed your child”. I can’t even begin to describe to sheer horror that runs through my soul when I think there are people that could be that hateful. How can I feel sympathy for such a monster? Take him away, alleviate the world of such a horrid individual.
Here’s another:
kill him! kill the piece of s^$t, he doesn’t deserve to live.
And this one:
i’d save the state some money and do it for them
And this:
I’m pretty much an eye for an eye type of person but I don’t care what happens to him. You can kill him or throw him to the wolves doesn’t really matter
Or this:
f&#k yes. off with his head and put that b#%ch on stake to make an example of him. make him the sacrifice! just like he did Trayvon, and then pray the devil back to hell.
And, of course, this:
yep he doesn’t get to breathe, he doesn’t get to live, unless your alternative is a life time of actual toruture and not throwing his ass in a cell, unless you plan on starving him to death, or trying to get him the closest he can to dying by doing some insanely cruel punishment, then my answer stands the mothaf%#ka should die.
This is all disturbing enough to warrant comment. But it gets really interesting when a few people step in and voice opposition to the carnival of vengeance proposed by people who claim they want justice. Anyone who opposes the idea that Zimmerman is a monster who needs to be tortured and/or killed is immediately accused of derailing the conversation or of being a racist who supports Zimmerman.
But this is just a way of shutting out ideas that might be challenging or difficult.
I’ve devoted a lot of time on this blog to the argument that all of our triumphalism about justice isn’t much more than a very thin veneer covering our real feelings about getting our revenge on someone who hurt us. This, then, is one more example in a long line.
If there’s one thing on which most Americans seem to agree, it’s that a celebration is in order when people are killed. Of course, it’s not just any killing that we like; it’s executions. In the past year, in person, in print, and online, we have come together to publicly rejoice at the deaths of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, and Muammar Gaddafi. But we’re not only interested in the executions of terrorists and tyrants overseas; a crowd also vigorously cheered the hundreds of executions over which Rick Perry has presided in Texas. There’s just something about death that makes us stand up and applaud … or worse, as those who crave George Zimmerman’s blood helpfully highlight.
There is, in short, something distinct and distictly unpleasant about the way in which Americans think about justice.
When I think about justice, I tend to reflect back on something Socrates said in Plato’s Republic:
[I]f someone asserts that it’s just to give what is owed to each man—and he understands by this that harm is owed to enemies by the just man and help to friends—the man who said it was not wise. For he wasn’t telling the truth. For it has become apparent to us that it is never just to harm anyone (335e).
I recognize that this makes me somewhat unusual, both because I turn to a text written thousands of years ago when I think about contemporary issues and because the vast majority of people seem to think exactly the opposite about justice. For most people, justice involves some sort of gut feeling rather than the sort of reasoned argument that Socrates uses to arrive at his position. It tends to involve someone getting what he deserves and so, when it comes to George Zimmerman, this means exacting vengeance. Thus, when Americans see someone getting what he deserves, being paid back in kind for the harm he has done, they rejoice.
But, of course, I think it’s a mistake to simply equate justice with vengeance, both because I have yet to hear a persuasive argument against Socrates’ claim and because vengeance elevates the worst in us at the expense of what is best.
Instead, I am reminded of Portia’s speech to Shylock in The Merchant of Venice:
The quality of mercy is not strain’d, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; / It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: / ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes / The throned monarch better than his crown; / His sceptre shows the force of temporal power [….] It is an attribute to God himself; / And earthly power doth then show likest God’s / When mercy seasons justice (IV.1).
Even though Shylock believes that harming his enemy accords with both justice and his own best interest, Portia argues that any understanding of justice that is bereft of mercy or compassion can never, ultimately, be in one’s best interest:
Though justice be thy plea, consider this, / That, in the course of justice, none of us / Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; / And that same prayer doth teach us all to render / The deeds of mercy (IV.1).
At bottom, then, it’s the distinct lack of compassion that’s bothering me when I see our increasingly ghoulish displays of glee at the prospect of someone’s death (even when that person has done something terrible). They highlight either an inability or an unwillingness to see the humanity in others and, consequently, yield a diminution of our own humanity. It would be easier for us if there were evil people in the world, rather than normal people who do terrible things. But this is a fiction, one that keeps us clinging to our occasional use of the death penalty despite the fact that it doesn’t accomplish much, that it’s bad public policy, and that it brutalizes us as a society.
When people ran into the streets and cheered Osama bin Laden’s death as if their hometown team had won the World Series, I wrote that the singing and flag-waving demeaned us by highlighting the extent to which the culture of vengeance pervades our society. When a crowd of people cheered about the deaths of more than two hundred of their fellow citizens, I wrote that the justice they were cheering could only be the kind that was done to someone else: “Never to them, never to anyone they care about or have even met.”
And now, when so many people have prematurely tried, convicted, and sentenced George Zimmerman to death with such joy, I’m reminded once again how far removed we are from a time when we might conceive of justice as more than simply the paying back of violence with violence. When we gloat over the dead bodies we’ve managed to pile up — regardless of the reason that led to those deaths — we’re really celebrating the basest part of our nature. As Socrates reminds us:
Leontius, the son of Aglaion, was going up from the Piraeus under the outside of the North Wall when he noticed corpses lying by the public executioner. He desired to look, but at the same time he was disgusted and made himself turn away; and for a while he struggled and covered his face. But finally, overpowered by the desire, he opened his eyes wide, ran toward the corpses and said: “Look, you damned wretches, take your fill of the fair sight” (439e-440a).
The problem for Americans today, of course, is that we’re not even having this struggle with ourselves. We immediately lamented the fact that we weren’t given any pictures of bin Laden’s body, we passed around pictures of Gaddafi’s corpse like they were actually pictures from a dinner party, and we positively thrill at the prospect of tearing Zimmerman limb from limb for his crimes.
Personally, I’d like to imagine what our country might look like if it was populated by a citizenry that approached the deaths of others with a certain solemnity rather than one that celebrates the corpses produced by our government, to paraphrase Salon’s Glenn Greenwald.
Personally, I’d like to see Americans reflecting on the idea of justice and the proper role of compassion, on why corpses are the only possible validation for so many of us, on what a society that applauds a body count is ultimately missing, on the prejudices and privilege that allow us to cheer and sing when others die … but we’re so very far away from doing any of those things right now because, despite all the killing that’s happening all around us and in our names, our bloodlust somehow still hasn’t been sated.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m43bhuO9aF1qzy2emo1_500.png)
