I like ‘Star Trek.’ I love my child more.

This isn’t abuse, exactly, but it’s probably not good parenting:

With the birth of his son 15 years ago, dedicated linguist d’Armond Speers embarked on the ultimate experiment: He spoke to him only in Klingon — the language of the alien race of “Star Trek” fame — for the first three years of his life.

“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers said. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”

I’ve been a dad all of, oh, nearly 15 months now. I’m still a novice, it feels like, and still exhausted because the precious lil’ woogums has started waking up in the middle of the night, every night, all over again. So sometimes my parenting judgment is clouded.

But I think I can safely make this call:

Parents, your child is not a science experiment.

Parents, your child is not a freak flag to be flown at the fanboy conventions.*

Parents, your job is to raise your child to deal with the world as best as he/she can with the resources he/she has. If you start their lives by equipping them only with tools useful in a fantasy world, you are not doing your job.

*Twitterfriend Jason Snell points out Speers is a linguist, not a fanboy. Duly noted.
That is all.

Abortion, gay marriage and American dhimmitude

Ever since 9/11, conservatives of the “clash of the civilizations” stripe have had a favorite word they like to casually toss at appeasing lefties: “Dhimmi.” It’s an Arabic word that applies, basically, to lesser status of non-Muslims in Muslim lands. Any time public officials wrestle with how to accommodate Muslims in America — say, when Muslim cabdrivers say they don’t want to carry passengers toting alcohol — cries of “dhimmitude” go up all along the right, with dreary consistency, an alarm that any accommodation with religious zealots whatsoever will surely result in the fall of Western civilization.

I suspect the same folks who scream “dhimmi” with some regularity, though, will have no real problem with this:

Citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to civil disobedience, 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.

They want to signal to the Obama administration and to Congress that they are still a formidable force that will not compromise on abortion, stem-cell research or gay marriage. They hope to influence current debates over health care reform, the same-sex marriage bill in Washington, D.C., and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Ostensibly, these religious organizations don’t want to be forced to provide abortions, host gay marriages or even provide benefits to same sex partners of their employees. But it seems unlikely that any proposals on these issues would end up with that result. “Conscience clauses” largely prohibit physicians from being forced to provide medical services they find objectionable, and the First Amendment pretty much ensures no Catholic Church will ever be required to perform a marriage ceremony between Adam and Steve. It should be pretty easy to resolve these concerns, right?

Probably not. The churches don’t just want to abstain from what they believe to be immoral practices; they’re trying to influence policy and legislation so the rest of us must also abstain. I don’t really like that, but I suppose that’s their right.

But it’s interesting to me that the same folks who get the vapors when Muslim women want to use a gym separate from men are more or less the exact same folks who will defend to the death the right of a Catholic pharmacist (say) to refuse to dispense birth control pills.*

We’re expected to defer to and accommodate religious sensibilities in the public square, it seems, except when we’re not. We’re all dhimmis now.

*Christopher Hitchens, of course, is the exception to this. He thinks all of you are crazy.

“The Blind Side” was a great book. I won’t see the movie.

Michael Lewis’ “The Blind Side” is one of the better nonfiction books of the last few years. It tells the story of Michael Oher, an all-but-orphaned young man from the wrong side of the tracks in Memphis who was accepted into a private Christian school, adopted by a wealthy white family and set on the path to success. And oh yeah, his redemption roughly coincided with his emergence as a likely future NFL prospect. (He’s now a rookie with the Baltimore Ravens.)

It’s a fascinating tale that implicitly raises questions about race, class, privilege and whether Oher — barely literate — would’ve been able to graduate from high school, let alone attend college, if he hadn’t had an army of people who became invested (in multiple meanings of that term) in his success. You spend the book rooting for Oher, even as a growing sense of unease sets in that maybe he’s being used, that he’d still be languishing somewhere in West Memphis if not for the accident of his genetic gifts. It’s a complex and sometimes subtle story, inspirational but not cheaply so, thanks to the issues it raises. (The New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy excerpt in 2006, if you want a taste.)

And this is the movie we’re getting out of it:

There’s no subtlety here. Just a hammer to the face.

Let’s be clear: “The Blind Side” book isn’t just about Oher. It’s also about the Tuohys, the white family that took him in. But it is not about Sandra Bullock. That is, however, what “The Blind Side” movie is apparently about. And I cannot take the idea of this marvelous book being reduced to a Michelle Pfeiffer “Dangerous Minds” white-woman-saves-the-black-kid story, because it’s real life. And the real story is more complicated than that.

PW’s Sean Burns gave the movie a savage review:

What I object to is that the movie is about nothing more than the coronation and sanctification of Mrs. Leigh Anne Touhy. Oher barely registers as a character in this film—he’s a prop. He has no inner life or story of his own, just an exotic pet adopted by a bored housewife.

Turns out I can argue with a true story. Because there are issues of representation at stake here, and The Blind Side isn’t just awful and boring. It’s actively evil. F

In truth, one voice you don’t hear very much in the book is Oher’s. He’s presented through the eyes of just everybody else who crosses his path. I don’t know the reason Lewis wrote the book that way, though I have my guesses. Even so, the Michael Oher of the book is a real human being. I’m not interested in seeing him — or his story, or his family — reduced to two or fewer dimensions.

Bush Administration officials defend KSM’s New York trial

Why do these people hate America?

One reason commissions have not worked well is that changes in constitutional, international and military laws since they were last used, during World War II, have produced great uncertainty about the commissions’ validity. This uncertainty has led to many legal challenges that will continue indefinitely — hardly an ideal situation for the trial of the century.

By contrast, there is no question about the legitimacy of U.S. federal courts to incapacitate terrorists. Many of Holder’s critics appear to have forgotten that the Bush administration used civilian courts to put away dozens of terrorists, including “shoe bomber” Richard Reid; al-Qaeda agent Jose Padilla; “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh; the Lackawanna Six; and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was prosecuted for the same conspiracy for which Mohammed is likely to be charged. Many of these terrorists are locked in a supermax prison in Colorado, never to be seen again.

Grannies for Peace: The Iraq War isn’t over

What I saw at Rittenhouse this afternoon.

Sarah Palin, sexism and how the LA Times flushed Elizabeth Snead’s rape remarks down the memory hole.

You’ll remember that a few days ago, I wrote about how LA Times blogger Elizabeth Snead had suggested Sarah Palin should “lie back and submit” to sexist coverage of her book campaign. It was a crassly vulgar image to use, and it incensed me so much I left a comment at Snead’s blog to that effect. I wasn’t the only one angered. Several people in the comments highlighted the “lie back and submit” language.

And then something interesting happened: The offending paragraph disappeared. As did every comment on the blog criticizing Snead’s choice of words. Gone down the memory hole, with no explanation whatsoever. At this point you’ll just have to take my word that Snead made the offensive comment; I assure you she did. (Update: I wasn’t the only blogger who noticed.)

(Second Update: Here’s the Google cache of it. You can see the “lie back and submit” statement and many of the comments — including my own — calling Snead out for making it.)

Here’s the good news: Somebody at the LA Times — maybe Snead herself, maybe one of her editors — realized that she’d said something way beyond the bounds of good taste and decided to withdraw the comment. Fine.

Here’s the bad news: It was done without any transparency whatsoever. Reputable bloggers and journalists, when they make an error of taste or fact, highlight the error and offer apologies. Even if you think Snead was right to quietly edit the blog post, however, there’s still a problem: The deletion of all the comments that criticized her choice of words.

Having worked at newspapers awhile, and with their comments specifically, I can tell you it is generally considered bad form to delete a comment that merely criticizes the content on display. You boot a comment for making racist or libelous comments, for posting private information about other people or for just being too big a jerk. But you don’t delete comments that criticize you, because it’s fundamentally dishonest.

Which is why Snead and the LA Times were wrong to merely unpublish her inflammatory remarks without offering a public explanation. They didn’t just quiet her; they silenced all the people who pointed out what a poor choice she made. And that deeply undermines the credibility of the LA Times. As it should.

UPDATE: And I missed this. Here’s Snead yesterday chiding Sophia Vergara’s rape joke on The View. Cough. Cough.

Did Texas outlaw marriage?

Heh:

Fox News’ troubled relationship with the truth: Sarah Palin edition

Sean Hannity’s apology last week for using misleading footage seemed more smug than sincere, and now we know why: It’s apparently standard operating procedure at Fox News:

Today, FOX News host Gregg Jarrett was talking about Republican Sarah Palin’s book tour and the crowd she is drawing at the start of it – no small turnout, with some 1,500 people lining up early this morning for a chance to get into this evening’s premier book-signing for Going Rogue in Grand Rapids.

“Sarah Palin continuing to draw huge crowds while she’s promoting her brand new book,” FOX’s Jarrett told his viewers. “Take a look at — these are some of the pictures just coming into us… The lines earlier had formed this morning.”

But it turns out that Happening Now had pulled some video of something that happened last year: Displaying video today from Palin’s campaign for the vice presidency, on the ticket with the GOP’s Sen. John McCain – which also drew considerable crowds, as shown today in video of a smiling Palin before an adoring campaign crowd.

“This was a production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn’t alert the control room to update the video,” Michael Clemente, senior vice president of news at FOX, sad this evening. “There will be an on-air explanation during Happening Now on Thursday.”

I wonder if the explainer will smirk like Hannity did, hand-in-the-cookie-jar style.

In any case, the second incident in two weeks tells us one of two things about Fox News:

• That caught last week by The Daily Show in an error that cast doubt on its professional ethics, Fox News responded by doing absolutely nothing to prevent a repeat of the error. Which makes the organization sloppy and arrogant and undeserving of the respect accorded other news organizations — at least until it can transparently and publicly discuss how it’s fixing the problem.

• Or this is the kind of stuff Fox News pulls on purpose all the time.

Me, I strongly suspect Option No. 2. But I’m open to Option No. 1.

(UPDATE: I neglected to give Ben a hat tip for this post. Apologies.)

Prediction: Obama has already lost the climate change battle

Why do I say that? Because of this:

Bad news for polar bears: The Senate has delayed taking up climate-change legislation until “some time in the spring,” according to Majority Leader Harry Reid. It will first tackle job creation and financial regulation—signs that the body is reluctant to address the environment at a time of economic uncertainty. The White House, meanwhile, encouraged lawmakers to move as quickly as possible. It is moving ahead with plans to have the EPA declare greenhouse gases a danger to public health, which could trigger regulation.

I can’t say I dispute Reid’s priorities. But I can’t imagine that anybody in Congress is going to want to touch such a politically volatile topic in spring of an election year. This issue gets punted to the next Congress, and perhaps beyond if Republicans make significant gains. Meanwhile, the problem ain’t fixin’ itself.

Obama: Gitmo won’t close on time

I guess this means I officially lose my bet with Ben Boychuk:

BEIJING — President Obama directly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay will not close by the January deadline he set, but he said he hoped to still achieve that goal sometime next year.

Obama refused, however, to set a new deadline.

When Obama took office and immediately pledged to close Gitmo within a year, I was — to put it mildly — thrilled. I thought it was a bold declaration of values and intent. But boldly declaring your intent makes it pretty easy to fail.

For what it’s worth: I still think closing Gitmo is a net plus to America. In a war against lawless, stateless terrorists, it seemed to me we ceded some necessary moral high ground by trying to create a lawless, stateless base to contain them. It told the world that we didn’t really believe in our own civilization. In a battle that is just as much about ideas as it is about bullets and bombs, it was a crucial concession by the Bush Administration. Reversing that concession, it turns out, is more difficult than I thought it would be.