Yesterday I was looking at our traffic on Woopra and noticed a huge surge of searches for Ashton Lundeby. Who, you may ask? You know, Ashton Lundeby, the kid who was arrested for interstate telephone threats and became the subject of an internet propaganda campaign suggesting that he was being detained without charges under the PATRIOT ACT, possibly in a FEMA dungeon someplace. They Greys may or may not have been involved.

In fact, Lundeby was not detained secretly under the PATRIOT Act; that was propaganda sourced to his mother. Rather, he was arrested and charged as a juvenile under pre-9/11 statutes, indicted and prosecuted as an adult once the relevant U.S. Attorney's Office secured a court order allowing them to do so under preexisting law governing federal juvenile defendants, and later entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to 22 months time served. His mother later admitted she had made the PATRIOT ACT stuff up.

So why are people Googling him again?

Well, probably because another set of folks whose political agenda is served by the OMG BLACK HELICOPTERS routine — this time various folks who identify with the Occupy movement — have been pushing, uncritically and without even minimal due diligence, the bogus Lundeby-as-PATRIOT-ACT-victim story, two years after it was conclusively refuted, and even though the most minimal search reveals many sources showing it isn't true.

Now, you might criticize the Lundeby prosecution if you don't like seeing juvies prosecuted as adults, though quite frankly I think that as someone who staged multi-state bomb hoaxes he got off quite lightly. But making this about some sort of PATRIOT ACT abuse is willfully ignorant sloganeering. We criticize post-9/11 excesses and government abuse here all the time at Popehat, but we've also argued for years that badly-researched and credulous stories about government abuse are counter-productive and do not help the cause of vigilance against government excess.

Have I ever posted a story without doing my due diligence, or fallen for an exciting-sounding hook, or been credulous? Of course I have. But I am a blogger, and that gives me an unassailable right to pontificate about other people doing it without removing the mote from mine own eye. And therefore:

Part One: Lowe's Decision

This week home improvement mega-chain Lowe's pulled its advertising from the TLC channel's show All-American Muslim. TLC describes the show like this:

All-American Muslim takes a look at life in Dearborn, Michigan–home to the largest mosque in the United States–through the lens of five Muslim American families.

Each episode offers an intimate look at the customs and celebrations, misconceptions and conflicts these families face outside and within their own community.

To some Americans — for example, the Florida Family Association — this portrayal was unacceptable. Does "All-American Muslim" portray Hamas suicide bombers sympathetically? Does it glamorize calls for the destruction of Israel? Does it suggest that honor killings are a rational method of maintaining good family order?

No. All that "All-American Muslim" does is fail to depict such issues. The quarrel of people like the Florida Family Association is that "All-American Muslim" portrays a group of Muslim-Americans as regular folks, faced with regular challenges, with blowing people up and imposing Sharia Law on the West not among them. This, to the Florida Family Association, is necessarily propaganda:

The Learning Channel's new show All-American Muslim is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law. The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.

One of the most troubling scenes occurred at the introduction of the program when a Muslim police officer stated "I really am American. No ifs and or buts about it." This scene would appear to be damage control for the Dearborn Police who have arrested numerous Christians including several former Muslims for peacefully preaching Christianity. Dearborn Police falsely arrested Nabeel Qureshi and Paul Rezkalla in 2010 and Sudanese Christian Pastor George Saieg in 2009 for preaching Christianity at the Annual Arab International Festival. Information on these two arrests are posted below.

The first two episodes start off with Muslim youth complaining about non-Muslim Americans’ perception of them as extremists after 911. The show then reports on these youths’ daily, weekly and monthly prayer rituals. Many Imams who are at the head of these prayer rituals believe strongly in Islam and Sharia law. This TLC show clearly failed to connect the dots on this point but then again that appears to be their intent.

In other words, the FFA believes that it is propaganda to portray some American Muslims as regular people without mentioning that there are also some Muslims who are extremists. Imagine, for a moment, applying this logic to other religious groups. Imagine arguing that it's propaganda to portray a Jewish family without mentioning Baruch Goldstein or Irv Rubin or the USS Liberty "for balance." Imagine attacking any of the many television shows portraying Catholics on the grounds that they do not depict clerical molestation of children. Imagine saying that "Big Love" is propaganda not because of its portrayal of polygamy but because it fails to spend enough time depicting Mormons like Ron and Don Lafferty. Imagine saying that it is propaganda to portray conservative Christians (like those in the Florida Family Association) without mentioning people like Eric Rudolph.

Well, actually, it's not too hard to imagine any of those. America is full of nuts saying stupid, stupid things about popular entertainment.

But it is hard to imagine a major company like Lowe's caving to such an argument about other faiths other than Islam. And make no mistake — spin as they might, Lowe's did cave here:

While we continue to advertise on various cable networks, including TLC, there are certain programs that do not meet Lowe's advertising guidelines, including the show you brought to our attention. Lowe's will no longer be advertising on that program.

Our goal is to provide the best service, products and shopping environment in the home improvement industry. We appreciate your feedback and will share your comments with our advertising department as they evaluate future advertising opportunities.

Lowe's is now desperately trying to pretend that it didn't cave to the FFA, and that it just sort of coincidentally decided that "All-American Muslim" is unsuitable:

Lowe's spokesman Katie Cody clarified, insisting that the reason why they stopped their ads was not solely the Florida Family Association.

'We understand the program raised concerns, complaints, or issues from multiple sides of the viewer spectrum, which we found after doing research of news articles and blogs covering the show,' she said.

'It is certainly never Lowe's intent to alienate anyone,' she continued.

The Florida Family Foundation, triumphant, can wander off to pester other advertisers for buying ads on shows that fail to portray homosexuality as an E-ticket ride to Hell. Lowe's, having caved to the FFA, is now reaping the whirlwind and trying desperately to please everybody:

It appears that we managed to step into a hotly contested debate with strong views from virtually every angle and perspective – social, political and otherwise – and we’ve managed to make some people very unhappy. We are sincerely sorry. We have a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion, across our workforce and our customers, and we’re proud of that longstanding commitment.

Lowe’s has received a significant amount of communication on this program, from every perspective possible. Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.

Lowe's apologia merely hands a roadmap to anyone who wants them to pull advertisements from shows in the future. It's also bringing out the attitudes of their supporters, and the supporters of the Florida Family Association. The comments on their Facebook post show off the folks who support them and the FFA. Take Dr. Dan S. Gilliam, Sr., apparently a psychologist in Wildorado, Texas, who says "I guess it is time to return to Lowe's. At least they can hear and analyze what customers say about promoting a race that would like to kill Americans. If you don't believe that, then you have your head in the sand." Personally I wasn't aware that Muslims are a race, but then I'm not licensed in Texas. There's Billie Jo Connor of Berwyck, Pennsylvania, who is either confusing Muslims with Latinos or is trolling me: "Welcome to america everyone comes from different backgrounds but i for one believe if u come here u should learn english and we should not press 1 to hear someone who i can understand im not gonna learn another language to live in the good ole USA! Merry Christmas!" Or there's Mary Calkins Malone of Yelm, Washington, who has grasped the core message of the FFA that Lowe's has endorsed through its action: "Yay, Lowe's! I don't think All-American and Muslim should be in the same sentence."

Part Two: Americans Living From the Outside In and From the Inside Out

The Florida Family Association is wrong. Lowe's was wrong to yield to it.

Earlier this year, when I wrote about the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I discussed a theme our pastor emphasizes that has become very significant to me:

A life lived from the outside in is a life defined by what has happened to me. A life lived from the inside out is a life defined by how I conducted myself in reaction to what happened to me. We should not define ourselves as the nation that was attacked on 9/11. We should define ourselves as the nation that stood up again, dusted itself off, looked to the injured, honored its dead, and persevered after 9/11.

It is beyond question that some Muslims are violent religious extremists who will kill Americans if they can. It's even beyond question that some such Muslims are here in America. It's clear that some Muslims favor imposition of Sharia law — antithetical to American values like equality and freedom of expression and worship — upon societies, and that some harbor a grand ambition to impose Sharia law here in America.

But those Muslims — however many of them there are — are powerless to change America's nature by themselves. The most horrific terrorist act, the most aggressive campaign to impose their religious values upon us — none of that can, by itself, alter fundamental American traditions and values. Those traditions and values were born in rebellion and deprivation, raised on the frontier, toughened through slow and painful progress from wrong towards right. They include hard work, fair play, due process, equality before the law, liberty, and individuality. Terrorist bombs cannot quell them.

But Americans' reactions to terrorist bombs could.

Americans could live from the inside out — we could define ourselves as the people who defend equality and free expression and freedom of worship and freedom from government interference no matter what, in good times and bad, come what may. Our we can live from the outside in. We could define ourselves as "the country that was attacked by Muslims and now is at war with Islam." God knows that's how people like the Florida Family Association wants us to see ourselves — a fond wish they share with both actual Muslim extremists and lip-service-paying dictators in Muslim countries, who dream of the power they would reap from America declaring war on all Muslims. By doing that, we'd not only commit ourselves to total and endless war, we'd change what America is in response to the threat of Islamic extremism. Muslim fanatics wouldn't have to destroy America — we'd do it for them by turning it into something different, something else, something small and ugly and inglorious. We would abandon consistent and ordered liberty for the vain hope of safety. "Liberty," said Learned Hand, "lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it." (Thanks to Mike for reminding me of that quote.)

We've flirted with doing this, after 9/11. We've allowed the government to assume much broader powers, unreviewable powers, upon the premise that "9/11 changed everything." That danger is not past. And the mindset displayed by the Florida Family Association and endorsed by Lowe's threatens to push us much, much closer to the abyss. People like the Florida Family Association believe that there is no such thing as an "All-American Muslim" — that "Muslim-American" is an inherently contradictory term. They might agree in theory that America is a land of freedom of expression, but they will employ some categorical dodge to explain their position on Islam — like the increasingly popular "Islam is a political agenda, not a religion." (Note that this appeal to the categorical is exactly how the government convinces us to hand it more and more power over us — by saying things like "this belongs in the 'terrorism' box, not the 'freedom' box.")

So, such people want to affix an asterisk to "Muslim-American." That asterisk is indelible and stains us all, as surely as if we agreed "there is no such thing as a Jewish-American, because Jews have divided loyalties to Israel" or "there is no such thing as Catholic-Americans, because Catholics have divided loyalties to the Pope." No doubt there are some Muslims divided between American values and the values of Islamic extremists, just like there are some Jews divided between American values and the best interests of Israel and some Catholics divided between American values and papal edicts. But it is a central tenet of the mighty American experiment that we should treat people as individuals based on their abilities and acts, not based upon their origins or creeds. If we accept the proposition "we welcome all religions except Islam" or "we recognize freedom of religion for everyone except Muslims" or "we treat everyone equally except for Muslims, because of what some Muslims have done or want to do to us," or even the milder "any Muslim must be viewed with suspicion; no Muslim can be portrayed without a reminder that some Muslims are grave threats," we become a nation that lives from the outside in. We re-define ourselves based on wrongs done to us, rather than continuing to define ourselves by what we are capable of doing in the face of any challenge or any wrong.

It's fashionable, in some quarters, to call words like these naive. Islam is different, we're told. Sharia law is on the march, they cry. You're a fool to extend protections to people that they would never offer to you. But if hewing to these values is naive, I'll live with being naive. Frankly, I think that the mindset of the Florida Family Association and their ilk offers far more fertile soil for Sharia law than tolerance. I'm not worried about secular humanists (or "liberal" Presbyterians like me) yielding to Sharia law some day. I'm far more worried about the sort of people who invoke "America is a Christian nation!" to every social, cultural, legal, or political issue. These are the people, I fear, who are already susceptible to the belief that dogma trumps everything.

Make no mistake: the Florida Family Association and its members have the freedom to call for boycotts of anything they want. Lowe's can cave to the advertising-related demands of any cultural group they want; they're a private entity and they have rights too. But the rest of us also have freedoms. I submit we should use those freedoms to criticize Lowe's and defy the mindset of groups like the Florida Family Association. Let's define ourselves by continuing to defend core American values even when facing tremendous threats. Let's live from the inside out.

I've decided to get into the Christmas spirit by framing what sort of spirit I should have about Christmas.

More specifically, I've decided not to get agitated about "War on Christmas" nonsense this year. So — even though the usual suspects are still agitating for people to berate minimum-wage seasonal employees for not properly shaping the religious nomenclature of their employer's marketing campaigns — if you want to see me lose my cool over it, you'll have to go with a rerun.

I've also decided, to the possible detriment of the global economy, to advocate for a more non-material, non-plastic approach to Christmas. I could do that in a preachy and grim way, but I'd far rather let someone else do it in a hilarious and subversive way. So I'll turn it over to The Bloggess (whose propensity for cheerfully inappropriate generosity is well established for some avenues of holiday giving. The Bloggess' post poses a conundrum for the ages: if I donate the rear half of a goat in honor of someone who annoys me, does the passive-aggressive nature of the act outweigh the inherent help-somebody quality of the act?

(And hey, if you are looking for good causes in this season, don't forget this one.)

Via Instapundit comes the tragic lament of "Rebecca Chapman, who has a master of arts in English and comparative literature from Columbia University" and who "hit bottom professionally last summer when she could not even get a job that did not pay."  In the company of "Willie Osterweil, 25, an aspiring novelist who graduated magna cum laude from Cornell in 2009," and "Rachel Rosenfelt, 26, who graduated from Barnard College in 2009," and other like-minded young'uns, she formed an echo chamber for the palaver of "overeducated, underemployed postgrads willing to work free to be heard on subjects like Kanye West’s effect on the proletarian meta-narrative of hip-hop."

This meditation on optimism from the NYTimes comes on the heels of widespread mockery from rightward pundits of poor, dream-chasing Joe Therrien, who only wanted to be a puppeteer and is now regarded in some quarters as a misfit toy. (Note, though, that Michael Barone, a man of dexter sentiment, defends Therrien, noting that "he presumably felt that he could be a good enough puppeteer to make a living at it and could find a job doing so. That’s the sort of thing the late Steve Jobs told Stanford graduates that they ought to do." The Anchoress also has a thing or two to say in defense of pursuing puppetry, if not paper.

The broad cultural question at stake is whether China has the right idea: to phase out majors and programs that consistently produce graduates who prove unemployable on the basis of their education.

The issue, as always, is the legitimacy and scope of state subsidization. What stake does the government have, in behalf of its citizens, in perpetuating the production of puppeteers (taken as a proxy for the entire class of overrepresented, underemployable domains of interest)?

It's by no means a new theme. Roll back a hundred thirty-odd years, and you'll find Thomas Henry Huxley and Matthew Arnold arguing against and for the humanities with greater eloquence and insight than any of today's pundits. Later, Dewey wanted to regress toward the mean for the sake of making or half-baking a compliant, progressive workforce. His ideas still prompt controversy among Arnoldites, even if Huxleyites and cynics regard the issue as moot.

Do we want to be pragmatic above all else? Is it unwise for the ideal to temper the real? Folks who discern that they're puppeteers or poets, calligraphers or critics, artisans or artists, shouldn't bear blame and suffer disdain for rolling the dice on their dreams. They only merit mockery when, failing, they whine about how their society's public policies didn't long indulge them.

The pursuit of a culture of literary salons is not a path orthogonal to hard-nosed capitalism; when successful, it's a symptom or index of thriving capitalism. And although taking the risk when times are lean may be ill advised, the humanistic goal of chasing a cultural dream isn't inherently wrong or risible. To the contrary, the humanistic goal is the point not only of the risk, but of capitalism itself, rightly construed.

This is a post about Marian Call, and especially about her lyrics and her new double album Something Fierce.  The second in a series, it follows this one: http://www.popehat.com/2011/10/05/shell-sing-for-you-part-1/. Take a moment to read that one if you'd like this one to make more sense!

Continue Reading »

In taste and disposition, we at Popehat are a diverse lot. For example, Ken is on record as an avid aficionado of opera. Patrick, a former college dj to whom the young'uns still turn in a pinch, is known for his enigmatic and challenging sets. After our comrade Ezra withdrew to his special place, Patrick took up the mantle and now offers sporadic and stochastic coverage of the audial scene. Yes, Patrick even covers symphonies and opera to placate Ken. As for me, I'm a fan of John Dowland and Yma Sumac and Radiohead and Ravi Shankar and Fred Astaire. Eclectic, we.

There must be some overlap among us, though we haven't mapped it out. But this much we already know: we are all fans of Marian Call.  Even Ezra, peace be upon him, was a fan of Marian Call.

So my next post will be a deepish dive into Marian's music or, more accurately, her poetry. And in a third post, perhaps we'll have a secret toy surprise. But if you have no patience for close reading and texty-feely artgeek stuff — if you're the Shut Up And Sing type – then this post right here is for you. Here's the Executive Summary/tl;dr version of the Minimum You Oughtta Know™ before venturing forth:

• Marian Call is an independent folk-funky, heartfelt, humorous, jazzy, torchy, quirky singer-songwriter currently thriving in Anchorage, which is really just North-North-North Seattle and thus a super natural fit for a Washington girl with a strong sense of place.
• We at Popehat have a colossal (aggregate) IQ, and yet we're pretty sure she could lap us.
• While majoring in choral composition at Stanford (the axe, the axe), Marian realized that her inner vector was driving or drawing her otherwhere. Recognizing that digital distribution had altered the fundamentals of the music industry, she decided to embrace a newly feasible unsigned, try-before-you-buy, pay-from-the-heart business model. Next thing you know, she's crankin' out compelling music and hoping to roll a hard six on her gamble that educated and motivated consumers of art will sustain the art(ists) they like (and thereby not let her starve).
• Marian Call is a word nerd, but has become the preeminent Geek Chanteuse to a wide and motley array of awkwardly obsessive acolytes. She's more than this, of course, but clearly no less. Her saintly attributes include exotic percussion equipment (a rainstick, a manual typewriter named Madeleine, a tea can containing the cremated remains of Zippy, a story-laden family cat) and measured quantities of dark, malty beer. Her superpower is recognizing paradoxes or antinomies in human experience and distilling them to heart- and mind-moving simplicity without pretending to resolve them.
• Taking seriously the business of enjoying close communion with her fans, Marian successfully completed within the 2010 calendar year a seat of the pants, fan-semi-coordinated tour of all 50 states, several Canadian provinces, and a selection of realms in cyberspace.
• During and after her tour, she worked on her third fully-fledged production piece: Something Fierce. She released this double album into crit-space just a few days ago (fancy lyrics, plain lyrics, music). Give it a listen! If you enjoy it, give it a purchase! (Cool cuts: 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 18, etc!)
• If you are a MacArthur nominator, I would like to point out that Marian Call is just, verdant, and peaceful.
• ProTip: You can also still listen to/enjoy/buy her album Vanilla and her commissioned Firefly/Galactica album Got To Fly.

That's the wakizashi; the katana comes next time.  Meanwhile, listen to Marian Call. She'll sing for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIO8nI2C8Z8

… And here's Part Two.

Of course 9/11 was a tremendously important event in our nation's history.

But our reaction to it is important as well. Such adversity can make us stronger, or it can make us weaker.

Some people seem to want to see 9/11 make us weaker. I'm not just talking about the people with a professional and political interest in making our liberties weaker. I'm talking about people who use 9/11 for the general wussification of our discourse.

Take, for instance, people who comment on the the Washington Post blog and complained because the paper ran a photo that had a building and a plane in the same frame.

Commenter Icemanchills said: “Do not like photo, and that should not require explaining. The plane in the background of the monument is insensitive and needlessly evocative of a horrible day in contemporary American history.”

I know that bullying is extremely unpopular right now, but don't you think that America is a weaker place because no one is pushing Icemanchills down, stealing his lunch money, kicking sand in his face, and generally deterring him from breeding?

A nation full of people like Icemanchills is a nation full of people who agree that we ought to censor speech that doesn't make weaklings feel welcome, safe and secure. A nation full of Icemanchills never accomplished anything, except possibly the growth of the freshwater-pearl and fainting-couch industry.

Edited to add: Is it perhaps irrationally curmudgeonly to make a point based on one comment on a paper's blog? Maybe. Curmudgeonliness makes America great. Don't make me go Google other examples, damn you. (Or, for that matter, cite the far more incendiary one I was thinking of.)

Bob Oschack is apparently a comic, of sorts, and until very recently worked for a Fox Sports online video series called "The College Experiment," billed as a "comedy-driven, weekly cocktail of hot co-eds, non-stop partying, sophomoric humor, and a dash of college sports."

You know how this turns out, right?

Apparently Oschack and the College Experience team thought it would be hilarious to do a piece with the premise "lame Asians at USC have funny accents and don't know anything about college football, hyuck hyuck!" You might find it funny — if you are twelve, or have a very low threshold for amusement, or think that Mickey Rooney was hilarious in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Pretty much everybody else thought it was douchey, unfunny, and really kind of insipidly racist. I share that view, even though as a matter of principle I strongly support ridiculing USC students at every opportunity.

As a result, Fox Sports apologized and cancelled the show.

All of that — asshole acts like asshole, gets treated like asshole — is banal. The backlash, as usual, will be more interesting. Let's anticipate some arguments:

1. "OMG what about Bob Oschack's free speech rights?" What about them? How are they relevant? Bob Oschack isn't being prosecuted or sued. His free speech rights aren't at issue. Rather, his private employer decided that (a) it would be bad business to be associated with his douchiness and/or (b) it was distasteful, as a matter of branding, to be associated with his douchiness, and canned him. That's Fox's right, as a matter of its own free speech and economic freedom. Just as it's not necessary to genuflect towards "my God that person is an asshole" when we defend someone from official censorship, it's not necessary to genuflect towards "naturally he can't be prosecuted for this" when we call someone out as an unfunny choad.

2. "OMG political correctness is run amok!" Oh, whatever. The sort of political correctness I care about is the kind backed by official action — like the sort of stuff FIRE documents. I really can't bring myself to care about "political correctness" in its modern, moral-weakling, watered-down sense, which seems to be "boo hoo, I can't act like a dick without people treating me like a dick." Speech is not tyranny, and only weenies think it is.

3. "OMG people don't have a sense of humor!" Meh. There's a great part in one of P.J. O'Rourke's books where he covers a dispute at a college newspaper over whether to run an advertisement by a Holocaust denier. One side argues that freedom requires it, the other argues that it's offensive. "Nobody considered whether it should be rejected because it was a piece of shit," P.J. observes. I think that "edgy" humor gets what I will, in politically-incorrect fashion, call affirmative action treatment: people get caught up in whether it's offensive or not, and what that means, without considering if it's a piece of shit whether it's offensive or not. This explains the greater part of Bill Maher's career. Here? Belabored, smirking, badly paced, badly shot. Piece of shit — even before we get to whether it's obnoxious. Which it is. Sorry, Bob.

Yesterday my eight-year-old daughter schooled my sorry ass at Mario Kart Wii. She did so even though her strategy mostly involved deliberately crashing into hazards. The word "pwnage" was invoked. By her. Against me.

That's what my life is like now.

Evan's already a dedicated gamer. Abby's less hardcore, but with a family with so many gamers, she's bound to become one. But her experience will be different than Evan's, or mine. That's because she's a girl.

To illustrate what difference that makes, I offer you two sites: Fat, Ugly, Or Slutty, a blog that collects the sort of messages that women get online (as well as the sort of hate mail sent by people upset that women are collecting and posting such things), and Go Make Me A Sandwich, a blog that explores how women are depicted in gaming art, particularly fantasy gaming art (and, again, exploring how certain men react to anyone talking about such things).

So that's what Abby is looking at. Fortunately she's strong enough to handle it.

A couple of nights ago, after a disappointment in a hockey game, a number of folks in Vancouver rioted. They smashed windows, looted stores, and overturned and torched cars. This was not a crowd of the dispossessed. This was a crowd of hockey fans.

I confess that I'm quite surprised that Canadians riot. I was under the impression that they were too polite. Riots involve rudeness. There's an unacceptable risk that someone might say something cutting that could hurt someone's feelings based on social condition or ethnic group membership or something.

Anyway, regrettably for them, these were not practiced rioters, and few came equipped with masks. In the age of the cell-phone camera, misbehaving in public carries with it a grave risk of worldwide exposure (as Hermon Raju, our friend from yesterday's post, might tell you). The rioters did not heed those risks; they capered for the cameras.

Now come the modern consequences.

Within hours, people on the internet began collecting the pictures and identifying the rioters, particularly those who were doing notably obnoxious things like setting police cars afire. With the aid of such identification, police have already arrested some. As I said, these were not the dispossessed — they were people like Air Cadets on their way to college and water polo stars with scholarships. Many of these were Canada's privileged. They had Facebook pages.

Now, thanks to the magic of Google, any inquiry into their names yields evidence of their bad public behavior.

How should we feel about that?

The comments in the posts linked above are a microcosm of the public debate over this phenomenon. Some advocate deliberate public shaming of people who engage in bad public behavior. Others accuse shamers of vigilantism, judgmentalism, and failure to respect the presumption of innocence, and assert that modern Google-fame is a disproportionate punishment that will follow bad actors for too long, because such people "just made a mistake."

Here's my take, which is not terribly different than what I've been writing about this phenomenon for three years:

Vigilantism: Exposing people to the social consequences of their misbehavior is not vigilantism. Subjecting them to physical danger is. That's why decent people involved in this process don't post home addresses or phone numbers, and delete them when they are posted.

Proportionality: The proportionality argument is at least somewhat misguided. First of all, bad behavior doesn't go viral on the internet unless it's really notable. Garden-variety assholes don't get top Google ranking. You've got to be somewhat epic to draw this modern infamy — by, say, being a water polo star on a scholarship trying to torch a cop car because your hockey team lost. Second, lack of proportionality is self-correcting. If conduct is actually just not that bad, then future readers who Google a bad actor's name will review the evidence and say "meh, that's not so bad. Everyone acts up now and then." Saying that bad behavior should not be easily accessible on the internet is an appeal for enforced ignorance, a request for a news blackout. It's saying, in effect, I'm more wise and measured than all the future people who might read about this; they can't be trusted to evaluate this person's actions in the right light, like I can.

"They Just Made A Mistake": The argument that bad actors shouldn't become infamous because they "just made a mistake" is a riff on proportionality. The same criticisms apply: it takes a hell of a mistake to go viral, and future viewers can make up their own minds. Plus, this argument is often sheer bullshit. Trying to torch a cop car because your hockey team lost is not a mere faux pas; normal and decent people don't do it.

Can internet shaming be disturbing? Of course. Threads about Hermon Raju are filled with racist and misogynist drivel. Threads about the hockey rioters are filled with calls for murder. But that's not too different from the way any thread on the internet goes — the trolls are always with us. Moreover, bigotry-driven shaming is self-defeating. Shaming depends on shared values; if communities don't share the values, the shaming doesn't work.

One of the criticisms of modern society is that we're indifferent and best and rude at worst too each other because we're anonymous. We get away with things in big-city life that we couldn't in small-town life because the consequences of our behavior don't follow our name. Can the internet be the antidote for that phenomenon, at least for epic bad behavior? Can it be an effective deterrent to bad behavior in public? Can cell phone cameras be the arms in the catchphrase "an armed society is a polite society?"

What do you think?

Yes, this has been done to death. And it would be easy enough just to say that I agree with quite a bit of what Megan McArdle has to say.

But I can't resist a few points:

1. A scandal, however petty and stupid, is a crisis. If a politician demonstrates utter incompetence in handling even a petty and stupid crisis, it's reasonable to question whether he'd be able to handle a more important one competently.

2. With political power comes vast temptation. Politicians have opportunities to do bad things for bad reasons in their official capacity, and their bad choices can have an impact on millions rather than just their family. If a politician demonstrates an inability to resist personal temptation — even when yielding to that temptation poses obvious and disproportionate dangers to his reputation and family — then I question whether he can resist temptations brought to bear in his official capacity.

3. If Anthony Weiner and his wife had an open relationship, I wouldn't criticize it. If Anthony Weiner and his wife had an understanding that he could send pics of his dick to coeds, I wouldn't care. However, if Anthony Weiner betrays his wife, then I don't trust him. I don't buy the notion that private and public fidelity are separate; I think it's reasonable to question whether someone who breaks his word to his wife may also break his oath of office. Does that make me judgmental? Maybe. I'm not saying I would shun anyone who committed adultery (of whatever sort). I'm not saying I'd stop being their friend. I'm not saying that I'd judge them evil. I'm certainly not saying I'd assert that because they committed adultery and I didn't that I'm a better human being than they are. I'm just saying that not everybody has to be given the launch codes or the Treasury's purse strings. Significant political power carries with it significant temptation and significant occasion for dishonesty, and that dishonesty can impact the many rather than the few. I'd rather people without a proven record of oath-breaking exercise it.

As a rule, I don't sing where people can hear me. It's a vestige of humanity that I cling to, along with liking dogs and despising the Yankees.

If I'm in my car, however, all bets are off. Can you hear me from the next car over? That's your problem. I know it's bad, but try not to drive into a bridge abutment, please.

My habit of singing in the car — together with my awful singing voice and my eclectic taste in music — has led to awkward moments. Take for instance the time one December when a neighbor pulled up next to me at a stoplight and caught me singing along with Handel's Messiah, specifically the part that quotes Isaiah 53:6. Since Messiah is an oratorio, bits and pieces repeat quite a bit. So the neighbor pulled up to witness me singing this at the top of my lungs:

All we like sheep
All we like sheep
All we like sheep

Which comes out sounding like "Oh, we like sheep!" The light turned green before she could hear the next verse, "have gone astray," which takes the quote firmly out of the bestiality-celebrating context. Her expression suggested that her children would not be trick-or-treating at our house any time soon.

Anyway, I'm not new to humiliating myself by singing in the car. But I got a new car last week, and with it a new way to humiliate myself.

The car has a high-tech stereo system that offers, among other things, a way to connect and control one's iPod or iPhone or other overpriced Apple device, a hard disk drive on which one can store music, and most dangerously, a voice-recognition system to instruct the car which music to pay.

Here we encounter my problem. My wife enjoys country music, which tends towards songs with simple words in the title like lost and truck and dog and beer and tractor, arranged in simple declarative statements and the occasional plaintive question. My tastes include some modern stuff, but runs mostly to classical music, particularly opera.

The designers of the voice-recognition system on this car apparently did not foresee that someone would be trying to tell it the names of operas, or bits therein, in their original language. The car responds by suggesting other songs, apparently at random, or possibly in an ironic way to mock me.

I have tried better enunciation. I have tried varying among Italian and German and French operas. As in all difficult foreign language situations, I have tried raising my voice and, eventually, losing my composure.

As a result, these are some of the things I have spoken in an unkind tone of voice to my car this weekend:

"No, NOT JOHNNY CASH. What about LE NOZZE DE MOTHERFUCKING FIGARO sounds like Johnny Cash to you, bitch?"

"JESUS CHRIST, you piece of shit, how do you get from TANNHAUSER to the Beach Boys? They don't sound alike at all. PET SOUNDS DOES NOT HAVE FALLEN KNIGHTS HELD AS SEX SLAVES TO GODDESSES."

"dongiovannidongiovanniDonGiovanniDonGiovanniDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNI I'M GOING TO KEEP SAYING IT UNTIL YOU GET IT DAMN YOU TO HELL!"

And so on.

I try not to do this at stoplights, but I've seen people on the freeway staring at me, so I may be getting kind of loud.

When I use the dial on the stereo to select particular music manually, the car reads it in a monotone bereft of all pronunciation beyond a faint dull twang, sounding like a cross between a circa-1980 voice synthesizer and a teen who has just been asked how school was that day. When I revert to trying to select music by voice, the infernal thing stubbornly reverts to suggesting completely inappropriate alternatives, using a tone of voice that conveys why don't you pick something a little less pretentious, asshole?

It's possible I'm not ready for the digital revolution.

I could go into iTunes and rename all the operas by their English translated names, and even rename all the tracks. BUT THAT WOULD BE SURRENDERING.

. . . ask yourself — could it all be utter bullshit?

Sheena now says British tabloid The Sun—which published the first Botox Mom story—orchestrated the whole thing. "I was provided with the story, instructions, and a script to follow for a recorded interview." She made $200. "The truth is I have never given my daughter Botox, nor allowed her to get any type of waxing, nor is she a beauty pageant contestant."

There are plenty of genuinely outrageous things going on in America, and in the world, that we ought to be outraged about and that the media ought to focus on. But those things tend to be uncomfortable, controversial, complicated, and difficult and/or expensive to cover. Why spend $50,000 on a long-term investigation of government corruption when you can spend $10,000 to get some jackass to tell the world she Botoxed her eight-year-old, and get ten times the eyeballs that the corruption story would have gotten?

How can you tell the bullshit from the genuinely outrageous? Well, when the media makes shit up, blows it out of proportion, or plucks it from deserved obscurity to crowd out serious stories, it tends to follow certain familiar themes:

1. That pretty white girl is missing!
2. Holy shit! This product will incinerate/decapitate your kid!
3. He is not married to her, and yet they had intercourse!
4. How could that celebrity have said that?
5. This small-chinned child is in peril!
6. HOW CAN YOU DO THAT TO A LITTLE BABY DUCK, YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD!
7. Eeeeeew, gross.
8. Ha ha! He totally had his schlong out!

By contrast, if the media reports on one of the following stories, it is generally not made up, because the media doesn't particularly give a shit, and thinks you don't either:

1. Lies by politicians that require more than two sentences to explain;
2. Corruption of a sort that cannot be understood by a five-year-old;
3. Culturally deified groups (cops, firefighters, etc.) misbehaving;
4. People accused of crimes being mistreated;
5. Political leaders making stupid decisions that cannot be described at a sitcom level (e.g. "Ha! He totally choked on a pretzel!")
6. Generally, reality failing to function as TV suggests it should.

THE TERM "FEMINAZI" WOULDN'T PROVOKE SUCH OUTRAGE if it didn't hide more than a grain of truth. If the shoe fits, wear it proudly!

CANADA'S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS. Canadian State Department cables, courtesy of Wikileaks, show diplomats opining to one another that Canada's notorious hate speech laws provoke "little public debate or public interest," and that Canada is crawling with white supremacists. It's as though our elites live in a bubble.