Ranthropologist

Category: Daily Reads

  • Daily Read: Tolerating the Intolerant

    Daily Read: Tolerating the Intolerant

    I struggle with deciding what to post as a Daily Read sometimes because I want the articles I highlight to have relevance beyond what may be in the news at the moment I post them; at the same time, current events are good opportunities for talking about more generally applicable issues.* To wit: I have written before about intolerance in a broad sense, and today I have an article to post about it that is specific. It relates to Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis and her refusal, even after a court order, to issue marriage licenses to anybody so she can avoid issuing them to gay couples. Davis claims she is acting under “God’s authority,” as gay marriage conflicts with her religious beliefs. I have zero sympathy for that argument for obvious reasons: religious convictions are not grounds for violating the law or refusing to serve the public in your capacity as a public official; we have a separation of church and state; and she is issuing a civil, not a religious, license, so issuing that license creates absolutely no personal religious conflict (I continue to be baffled about why people find it so hard to distinguish between civil marriage as recognized by the government and religious marriage as performed and sanctified by clergy; the government does not give a rat’s ass about how or where your ceremony is performed, but they still require a civil license if you want  your marriage to be recognized for the purpose of the legal rights and responsibilities it confers. No religious ceremony is necessary for that). So make no mistake: I think Kim Davis is legally wrong. I also think she is ethically wrong, but that’s really not the issue. I disagree with her religious beliefs, but I respect her right to hold them as an individual; however, she has crossed the line by illegally imposing her religious beliefs on others in her function as a public official.

    I could go on about why I disagree with Davis but that is not the point of today’s Daily Read. Although the article does not use the word tolerance, I think it is relevant, because it pinpoints an insidious and shameful side effect of Davis’ new-found notoriety: the punishment and intolerance of the internet. Many people who disagree with Davis, rather than making rational and legal arguments about why she is wrong to deny the marriage licenses, are instead making fun of her appearance. She is being mocked for her plain, old-fashioned clothing. She has been urged to learn to use and wear makeup. She has been called horrible names. She has been taken to task for her hypocrisy, given that she has been married multiple times and had a child out of wedlock (I agree that this is indeed hypocritical; however, Davis claims that her religious conversion occurred after her multiple marriages. Be this as it may, her history is still irrelevant to the legality or lack thereof of her actions. In other words, even if she had only been married once, was still married, and had her child within that marriage, it would still have no relevance to the legal question at hand).

    This has gotten long for an introduction to a Daily Read, so let me get to it: this article from Julie Compton in The Advocate points out the hypocrisy (and, not incidentally, the misogyny) of those who support gay marriage and likely see themselves as tolerant turning on Davis with ad hominem attacks and luxuriating in schadenfreude over her plain looks and checkered past. Again, I disagree strenuously with Davis and find her position to be legally, ethically, and logically untenable, but attacking her looks and personal life is just as intolerant and hypocritical as people are claiming Davis is – and I wish, fruitlessly, that we could be better than this.

    Op-Ed: Kim Davis Deserves Criticism But Not For Her Looks

    *Related: I am pondering a name change for this feature since it is rarely daily any more. I’m open to suggestions!

  • Daily Read: Ban the Box

    Daily Read: Ban the Box

    Today’s Daily Read covers a topic that I think is very important, but you don’t hear a lot about. It involves the little box on job applications asking if you’ve ever been convicted of a crime. That box was never more than a blip to me as I checked “NO” and moved on – but then I met someone who had a criminal record. This guy didn’t even serve time, yet he had a record, and so he had to check the box… and I have no doubt that it contributed to the fact that he struggled mightily to find employment, in spite of submitting a blizzard of applications over the course of several months.

    In theory, once a person has paid their debt to society for a crime, they should start with a clean slate. Obviously there are certain crimes, and certain jobs, that require more care; e.g. I can’t blame an accounting firm for not wanting to hire an embezzler. And banning the box does not mean that employers can’t ask about criminal records or run background checks. But once a person has served their time, if they are unable to find meaningful employment (by which I mean a way to support themselves, not necessarily a dream job), then what do you think the chances are that that person will stay out of trouble with the law? Obviously, being unemployed is not justification for committing a crime, but based on the experience of my friend, who only had a misdemeanor and yet had the door slammed on him again and again, I can’t imagine what the struggle is like for someone who served time for more serious crimes. If we want the system to be rehabilitative and to serve the cause of justice, then I fully support banning the box and giving folks with a record a better chance of staying out of prison.

    Pressure Mounts for Obama to Ban the Box

  • Daily Read: Food Animals

    Daily Read: Food Animals

    I’ve been working on keeping most meat out of my diet for the past six months or so. I was a full time, fairly militant vegetarian in my early twenties but gave it up for good after college. I’ve been trying again for a couple of reasons: I want to eat a healthier diet, and I am concerned about the environmental impact and ethics of factory meat farming. I am not against meat eating, but I am against the conditions that pertain in most large-scale commercial meat farms, even when they are operated under lawful conditions. Last week, I read an article that makes a cogent, if heavy-handed, argument that if you are horrified by the death of Cecil the lion but you eat factory-farmed meat, then perhaps you should examine your position on meat eating. Even though I found the article to be written in a way that is likely to provoke a defensive reaction in a lot of meat eaters, it still reinforced my conviction to keep up with my mostly vegetarian diet. I’ve been doing pretty well but I’m going to get stricter with it – for myself, for the animals, and for the earth. Maybe this article will make you think about doing something similar – even if it’s just instituting a meatless Monday habit.

    Eating chicken is morally worse than killing Cecil the lion

  • Daily Read: Mob (In)justice

    Daily Read: Mob (In)justice

    When I saw the reports about the killing of Zimbabwe’s beloved Cecil the lion, I was as disgusted as I always am when I hear about someone taking pleasure from deliberately killing an animal as a trophy. I am not opposed to all hunting, but I do find trophy hunting to be distasteful at best. So as the reactions to this particular lion’s death at the hands of US dentist Walter Palmer made the rounds of social media, I felt the same sense of sadness and moral outrage as many of my friends. Still, it wasn’t long before I became uneasy as news that the hunter’s personal information was being made public began to circulate. Known as “doxxing,” releasing personal details like work and home addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers is a method to exact a perverse form of internet mob justice.

    Writing for Vox, Max Fisher explains why the internet mob outrage over Cecil the lion is something that should make us all uneasy. Whether or not you think Walter Palmer is a scumbag for killing Cecil is irrelevant, since this form of internet vigilantism can be linked to many different controversies, including the nauseatingly misogynistic Gamergate movement, in which doxxing, threats of violence, and horrific personal attacks against women are the norm. No matter how you feel about Palmer, you should take what Fisher says in this article to heart. Internet mob justice is just the modern equivalent of the pitchforks and torches of yore – in other words, it is not justice at all. Fisher puts it well: “What Palmer did was wrong, and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. But it’s easy to forget just how dangerous and unjust ‘mob justice’ is while it’s targeting someone you despise. The more this behavior is normalized, the more likely it is to be deployed against targets who might not necessarily deserve to have their lives destroyed — including, perhaps one day, against you.”

    From Gamergate to Cecil the Lion: internet mob justice is out of control

  • Daily Read: Matters of Taste

    Daily Read: Matters of Taste

    If you are like me, you struggle daily with the temptation to eat food that you know isn’t good for you. I have a terrible weakness for sour cream and onion Ruffles; Mother’s taffy cookies; and just about anything chocolate, fried, or both! I have done a good amount of reading on nutrition science as it relates to obesity, and the focus is usually on the big three offenders: fat, sugar, and salt. But as we all know, fat, sugar, and salt don’t tempt us if they aren’t delivered in a package that tastes good. That’s where today’s Daily Read comes in. Julia Belluz of Vox interviews Mark Schatzker, a journalist and author of the book The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor. Schatzker makes a connection that should be obvious: if it doesn’t taste good, we aren’t as tempted to eat it. And food manufacturers know this, which is why foods like the titular Doritos did not become wildly popular until they were dusted with flavor enhancers. I’m amazed that such a simple idea hasn’t garnered more attention, but the focus on fat, sugar, and salt has sucked all the air out of the room. Schatzker’s conclusions aren’t necessarily going to help me resist my cravings – I already know how good sour cream and onion Ruffles taste! – but knowing how taste affects our appetites, cravings, and choices may help us find ways to make food that’s actually good for us more palatable.

    The Dorito Effect: Healthy food is blander than ever — and it’s making us fat

  • Daily Read: Uncriminal Immigrants

    Daily Read: Uncriminal Immigrants

    I really shouldn’t have to point this out, but after a few days of seeing the primacy of the Kate Steinle killing on Fox News (as seen from the treadmill at my gym), I am compelled to share the data. Here’s the deal: Steinle’s killer was an illegal immigrant. The shooting took place in San Francisco, which is a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants – a designation that means the city will not use municipal funds to enforce federal immigration laws; nor will they routinely question people about their immigration status. Here’s the part I shouldn’t have to point out: Steinle’s killer, Francisco Sanchez, did not kill her because he is an illegal immigrant. Being an illegal immigrant did not cause him to shoot her. There is no causative element between his immigration status and his actions. Granted, if he wasn’t in San Francisco, he couldn’t have killed Steinle; but it is a massively fallacious and illogical cognitive leap to assert the proposition that being an illegal immigrant is causative. Correlated, yes; causative, no. Here’s the basic assertion: Sanchez killed Steinle. Sanchez is an illegal immigrant. Therefore, illegal immigrants are killers. This is like saying that all fish swim. I also swim. Therefore, I am a fish.

    I realize that I’m simplifying this – I don’t think any rational person is actually proposing that all illegal immigrants are killers or criminals. But the sensationalizing of this story and the framing of it as a consequence of illegal immigration gets to me, because the data do not support the proposition that illegal immigrants are more likely to be criminal. That’s where we get to the Daily Read for today. This article from The Economist gives the data, which show clearly that Latin American immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. It’s a brief but illuminating read that, among other things, reports that “America’s major cities, and the country as a whole, have seen a significant decline in rates of violent and property crime over the past 30 or so years. Crime has fallen even as the proportion of Americans born on foreign soil has grown, and as rates of unauthorised immigration have gone up.” So as far as I’m concerned, it’s irresponsible and disingenuous for Fox News and other media outlets to claim that Steinle’s death is a direct consequence of illegal immigration and sanctuary cities, and worse, that immigrants to this country are more likely to be criminals.

    Not Here to Cause Trouble