Capitalism Destroys Everything: What Are They Doing To Batman?

First, there was this movie:

Now, there are Batman car seats.

Is nothing sacred?

Quotations Of The Day: Stacks of Bibles And Graphic Novels Edition

From a Sara Beck article in The New York Times: Stacks of Bibles, and Graphic Novels,

To readers of philosophy, “logos” means reason and rational argument. To readers of the Gospels, it is the word of God made incarnate in Jesus Christ. But for seekers of all kinds on the Upper East Side, Logos is also a cozy bookshop with a lumpy recliner and a black cat named Boo Boo, who sleeps near a stack of Bibles.

“Really, we are two shops in one,” said Harris Healy, the owner, gesturing to a display table piled with Father’s Day books on grilling and graphic novels. “We have a religious side and a secular side.”

Later,

“I guarantee we’re the only nondenominational Christian bookstore in the world that hosts an interfaith sacred book salon led by an atheist Jew who was educated at a liberal Methodist seminary," [Ben Siegel, an employee,] explained, offering a hint of his own unorthodox background.

Scripture And Song Of The Week: Genesis 2 Edition

Genesis 2
KJV

¹⁸ And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
¹⁹ And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
²⁰ And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
²¹ And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
²² And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

A Minor Musing About Personality, Principle, And Civility

It's Saturday afternoon and I should be correcting final projects, but I'm cruising the blogophere and discovering all sorts of things that trouble me greatly. In light of my previous post, I suppose the theme for the day is pain and perversion.

Yesterday, Pat Powers asked a provocative question: Are intra-party political differences  basically personality driven or are they principle driven?

I used to teach Shakespeare's Julius Caesar regularly, and I thought the play described political disputes quite accurately. In the play, Caesar complains of Cassius's "lean and hungry look." Marc Antony responds that Cassius is a "noble Roman" . The noble Roman had earlier wondered "upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed?" and proclaimed "the fault . . . lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings." (Act I, sc 2) Shakespeare has lead me to believe that a desire for power or personal pride provides the fuel for most political squabbles. That belief put me in the "personality" camp.

I'm also in the personality camp because I believe the "how" is as important as the "what." If, in a weird alternate universe, I would agree with South Dakota blog bloviator Bob Ellis 100% of the time, I know that I would still take every opportunity to make him spit, sputter, and turn purple with rage because it would be fun. In that strange wonderland, he and I might vote for the same candidates in a general election, but never in a primary. It would be all about personality not principle.

Today, however, I came upon something that makes me doubt. Weekend blogging for The Washington Monthly, Kathleen Geier points to this Right Wing Watch Pete Santilli profile. Santilli hosts an Internet talk show that broadcasts conspiracy theories and attracts some high profile guests:

in the past couple of months, Santilli has attracted two major gun activists to his show: National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent, who used the opportunity to call President Obama a Nazi, and Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt, who worked with Santilli to flesh out his theory that President Obama is raising a private army to overpower the U.S. military. Pratt, in particular, is taken remarkably seriously among the GOP – he has been partially credited with taking down a background checks measure in the Senate last month.

Santilli recently said the following:

I want to shoot [Clinton] right in the vagina and I don't want her to die right away; I want her to feel the pain and I want to look her in the eyes and I want to say 'on behalf of all Americans that you've killed, on behalf of the Navy SEALS,' ... the families of Navy SEAL Team Six who were involved in the fake hunt down of this Obama bin Laden thing, that whole fake scenario - because these Navy SEALS know the truth, they killed them all - on behalf of all of those people, I'm supporting our troops by saying we need to try, convict, and shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina. Anybody opposed to that, you are a domestic enemy.

Although his calling Hillary Clinton “[t]his ‘C U Next Tuesday,’ Hillary Clinton” would indicate otherwise, Santilli apparently isn't a sexist when it comes to doing violence. Earlier in the show, he expressed his desire to shoot President Obama, former Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush along with former Florida governor Jeb Bush "in the loins."

I don't know if Santilli can be seen as someone whom one opposes merely because of his alleged personality. Remarks like his destroy the very civility that make political discourse possible; opposing Santilli and those who give legitimize him seems to be the most principled thing one can do.

If one wants to listen, the show can found here.

Is Consent A Lodestar? A Saturday Morning Musing About Football, Porn, And Responsibility

Big Boy Bloggers Rod Dreher, Alan Jacobs, Noah Millman, and Conor Friedersdorf have been having a long and interesting discussion about this n +1 essay about a reporter embedded with a company that produces BDSM porn. This Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry post has most of the links. The Friedersdorf post is here. 

Before clicking on the article that starts the exchange, be warned; Jacobs writes, "Witt [the author of the n+1 essay] is an acute observer with no moral compass at all, and I find both her inability to orient herself ethically and her rather placid acceptance of that non-orientation disturbing. I read her essay with care but wish I had never seen it."

Many of the posts discuss the moral implications people enduring pain for gratification. Friedersdorf views the crux of the argument as being about consent:

The ethos of consent is regarded as a lodestar because its embrace is widely seen as an incredible improvement over much of human history; and because instances when the culture of consent is rejected are superlatively horrific.

With an introduction that mentions BDSM, morals, consent, and something so "disturbing" that a well-read college professor wishes he "had never seen it," I have no choice but to write about the National Football League.

Yesterday's Washington Post has a Sally Jenkins, Rick Maese and Scott Clement article about a Post survey of National Football League players. The results are rather alarming:

• Nine in 10 former NFL players reported suffering concussions while playing, and nearly six in 10 reported three or more. Two in three who had concussions said they experience continuing symptoms from them.

• More than nine in 10 players reported suffering at least one major injury while in the NFL. More than half reported three or more; one in five reported five or more.

• Forty-four percent of former players said they have either had a joint replacement or have been advised they’ll need one.

The survey reports that most players played to make better life for themselves and their families. Most have no regrets:

The Post’s online survey of more than 500 retired players paints a rare portrait of the toll a career in the NFL has on the long-term health of those who competed in the bruising game. The results also present a striking paradox: Nine in 10 said they’re happy they played the sport. But fewer than half would recommend children play it today

The money doesn't seem to last as long as the pain, however.

A Washington Post survey of retired NFL players found that nearly nine in 10 report suffering from aches and pains on a daily basis, and they overwhelmingly – 91 percent – connect nearly all their pains to football.

The article continues the point about pain:

Few professions leave their work force with such lasting bruises and scars. The NFL and the league’s Player Care Foundation, an independent charitable organization, sponsored a study at the University of Michigan in 2009 that surveyed 1,063 former players. About eight in 10 reported suffering from pain that lasts most of the day. Among younger retirees, aged 30 to 49, one in three said he was unable to work or limited in work. And almost 30 percent of them rated their health as only “fair” or “poor.”

Ten percent of those under 65 in the Michigan survey needed surgery they could not afford, 16 percent needed dental care they couldn’t pay for and 8 percent could not afford prescription medicine.

With one breath these men claim to have consented to endure pain so fans watch them perform; yet in the next breath, many seem to indicate doubts about consent:

Nine in ten players surveyed by The Post reported playing while hurt during their careers, and 56 percent said they did so “frequently.” Nearly seven in 10 (68 percent) said they felt they had no choice in doing so.

“If you didn’t hurt while you were playing, then you weren’t playing,” [former linebacker Darryl] Talley said.

Forty-nine percent of the former players surveyed said they wish they’d played while hurt less often.

Dreher describes the events of the porn shoot as "torture" that the actress admits to having enjoyed. Enduring hits that causes three concussions sounds a bit like torture to me. So do the surgeries that Don Majkowski endured:

Seventeen years removed from his NFL career, ex-quarterback Don Majkowski says he can no longer hold down a job. He can’t stand for long periods, and sitting is also tough. He has undergone nearly 20 surgeries related to football, including 11 on his ankle, three on his shoulder and two on his back. He has a 12-inch scar on his stomach, and he can’t walk very far because his left foot is fused with his ankle by a pair of metal plates and 13 screws. “It’s like walking on a pirate peg leg,” he said.

There's a sexual component to BDSM that most people find far more repulsive than the gladiatorial nature of the NFL. Yet, it all seems to come back to the fact that performers in both venues consent to suffer pain and debilitating injuries to entertain others and earn a living..

I've been working with the high school young'uns a bit too long to put together a cogent philosophical conclusion. If I can get them to see The Odyssey as an illustration that being human is being troubled, I think I've done my job.

In the matter at hand, all I have is troubling questions that I'm not sure the original essay, the Post article, or the bloggers satisfactorily address: How much autonomy does one really have to consent? Further, is there a consequential moraldifference between watching an paid porn performer beaten and bruised for her own gratification and watching a paid NFL player beaten and bruised to win a football game?  More importantly, how much moral responsibility do consumers of pain for pleasure bear for the damage done to the performers?

Quotation And Tables Of The Day: What Does It Take To Get By? Edition

From this Gallup poll:

The federal poverty threshold for a family of four is just under $24,000; however, Americans believe such a family unit living in their community needs more than double that -- $58,000, on average -- just to "get by." That estimate reflects 29% of Americans saying these families need up to $50,000 in annual income, 47% saying they need between $50,000 and $99,999, and 10% saying they need $100,000 or more.

There are some regional differences of opinion, but in every region and communities of all sizes most Americans believe that a family of four needs more than twice the official poverty level to "get by."

Noem and Rounds: It's About Cards Not Balls

Last night Cory asked for the sports analogy that best fit Representative Kristi Noems's "conversations" about running for Senate. This move isn't copied from the gridiron, field, or court. It's straight from the poker table, and in this post Citizens United world, the game is Texas No Limit Hold'em.

In this heads-up match, Noem is in the big blind. Both players have been dealt their cards. I'm guessing Rounds is holding the equivalent of a pair of jacks, and Noem has been dealt  the equivalent of an unsuited ace 10.

Rounds has his early entry, endorsements, and some uneven fundraising so he can feel comfortable making a  small raise above the blind.. Noem knows conservative groups don't like Rounds, and she has had some successes with the farm bill and the cemetery act. These "conversations" are just a value-bet call that indicates she wants to stay in the came and see the flop.

(I definitely need to get out more. I'm watching far too much TV.)