Day: December 13, 2001

Letting It All Hang Out

A couple weeks ago Wendy McElroy wrote an article about an extremely odd series of events involving the Boulder Public Library in Boulder, Colorado.

The controversy started when library refused to fly a large flag outside its entrance. The library claimed it was for safety reasons, but an official with the library also made comments that the flag might be offensive to some patrons. Eventually the library flew a smaller flag.

And then Colorado resident Robert Rowan became so incensed at the library for an art installation at the exhibit, that he swiped the exhibit, and then called a local radio station to confess and explain why he stole the art.

The art exhibit in question was put up by artist Susanne Walker and was titled “Hanging ‘Em Out to Dry.” It consisted of 21 ceramic penises on a clothesline which was meant to make some statement or another about domestic violence (the installation was part of an exhibit for the Boulder County Safehouse, a domestic violence center).

The display was accompanied by signs which repeated myths about domestic violence such as, “Abuse by husbands and partners was . . . the leading cause of injuries to women” (despite being repeatedly debunked, that myth always seems to turn up on domestic violence literature).

McElroy does an excellent job of summing up the argument that this sort of artwork is simply the latest in a long line of anti-male messages. She recounts a recent incident in Tennessee where the YWCA took out ads featuring a blurred photo of a young boy with the caption, “One day he’ll own his own house . . . drive his own car . . . beat his own wife.” McElroy writes of the ad and the exhibit,

The “Hanging ‘Em Out to Dry” exhibit provides the same sort of “awareness” as done an a priori indictment of all boys as wife beaters. It is hate speech directed at a category of human beings. If you doubt this, imagine a display of black penises strung up. It would be condemned as racist in an instant. Why is it less hate speech to expand the category from “black men” to “all men”?

Which is not to say that Walker shouldn’t have right to make such a piece of art, but that people should not be forced to subsidy such bigoted messages. McElroy notes that Rowan said he wouldn’t have had a problem if this art had been displayed at a private gallery, but didn’t think his tax dollars should go toward supporting its message.

Sources:

Hang male-bashing out to dry. Wendy McElroy, Fox News, November 27, 2001.

Man faces charges for phallic art theft. The Associated Press, November 13, 2001.

Is Gray Davis Endangering Californians for Political Gain?

The San Francisco Chronicle had an interesting report about how even what should be a fundamental job of the California state government — protecting that state from the effects of earthquakes — is subverted by the political process.

In 1997, flexible gas pipes were approved for use in California. According to The Chronicle flexible gas pipeline is used in all 50 states as well as several other countries including earthquake-prone Japan. The idea is that during an earthquake, the flexible pipe will be less likely to fail than its more rigid counterpart. Since fire is a major hazard after earthquakes, this could potentially save lots of lives. California’s Seismic Safety Commission publishes a guide that says, “Flexible pipes for gas and water lines are safer in an earthquake than rigid pipes.”

Despite that, California is on the verge of making it illegal to use flexible pipes in new home construction. The California Building Standards Commission is currently in the process of choosing a new building code, and the current front runner is a code that does not permit the use of flexible pipes for gas lines.

Representatives of the California BUilding Industry Association believe that this is political payback from California governor Gray Davis to the California Pipe Trades Council — a labor group that donated more than $1.1 million to Davis. The Pipe Trades Council wants to eliminate flexible gas pipe. It argues that the pipes can puncture more easily than the rigid steel pipe, but another possible explanation is that unlike rigid steel pipe, the flexible pipe more quickly — potentially costing union jobs.

The union, of course, says that is nonsense and insists that the building industry is acting in a heavy handed manner by trying to keep flexible gas pipe legal (presumably the building industry also bought off the Seismic Safety Commission).

California residents must sleep well at night knowing their lives are in the hand of this kind of process.

Source:

State may ban flexible gas lines. Robert Salladay, The San Francisco Chronicle, December 3, 2001.

Wall Street Journal Nails Terrorist Apologias

James Taranto of OpinionJournal.Com (which is owned by the Wall Street Journal) takes just a few sentences to show the complete and utter absurdity of those who ventured that American foreign policy or poverty or oppression or [insert excuse here] was the “root cause” of the 9/11 attacks.

Taranto is writing about the arrest last night of two Jewish Defense League members who allegedly were planning to blow up a mosque and other targets. After outlining the basics of the arrest, Taranto writes,

Watch for the root-cause crowd to come forward with the usual explanations: The poverty and oppression under which L.A. Jews live makes this sort of thing understandable, if not inevitable; they did it as a protest against U.S. foreign policy; their alleged targets need to ask themselves: Why do they hate us? Yeah, we expect to hear this stuff any minute now.

They’re Praying for Me

Sometimes I write something and I know people are going to run across it and send me nasty or bizarre e-mail. Other times, I am surprised at how much people have personally vested in things that I have dismissed or slammed.

For example, John Edward turns out to have fans who are almost as dedicated as animal rights activists in coming to his defense. I’ve written a couple of things about Edwards, and received quite a bit of e-mail.

Several of his fans demanded that I either prove to them that it was impossible to communicate with the dead or else apologize to Edwards. A couple folks rather impolitely suggested that I was simply jealous of Edwards’ abilities and should get a life (that’s my G-rated version of their missives).

But the real kicker was the one I received yesterday from a person who said that she is going to pray for me to overcome my “doubtful mind” and insists that once I “cross over” I’ll understand where Edwards was coming from (and she did reassure me that despite my doubts, God will still accept me in the hereafter).

No Bow Hunting on Sundays?

One of the most ridiculous appeals this writer has seen from an animal rights group was issued recently by the League of Animal Protection Voters which wants to make certain that bow hunters in New Jersey cannot kill deer on Sundays.

Apparently, at the moment it is illegal to bow hunt on Sundays in New Jersey, which is absurd. I’ve heard of places where you can’t buy alcohol on Sundays, but hunt? Stuart Chaifetz, a co-founder of the League of Animal Protection Voters, claims that the ban on Sunday bow hunting is needed because Sunday is, “The only day in which they [families] have to walk peacefully on our woods.” Chaifetz notes that two people were recently killed in hunting accidents in New Jersey.

But if the goal is to save the lives of innocent people just trying to enjoy themselves, New Jersey would be better off banning a truly dangerous activities like swimming on Sundays, rather than bow hunting.

The League of Animal Protection Voters’ real agenda, of course, is an outright ban on hunting, period. In its press release opposing a bill that would eliminate the no hunting on Sundays rule, the LAPV argues that,

Bow hunting is barbaric entertainment that best deserves to reside in the dark ages, not in the 21st century and not in a country that deems itself humane. We must not only defeat the Sunday hunting bill, but we must as a people turn our eye and conscience to this most bloody and unnatural ‘sport’ and defeat it as well.

Source:

League exposes brutality of bow hunting, opposes bill that allows bow hunters to kill on Sundays. League of Animal Protection Voters, December 6, 2001.

Harvard Study: Risk of Mad Cow Disease in the United States is Low

On November 30 the U.S. Department of Agriculture release a study concluding that the risk of a Mad Cow disease outbreak in the United States is very low. The three-year study, conducted by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, concluded that current regulations governing the import of cattle as well as bans on feeding meat and bone meal to cattle make it extremely unlikely that U.S. cattle will become infected with the disease.

According to the report,

There appears to be no potential for an epidemic of BSE resulting from scrapie, chronic wasting disease or other cross-species transmission of similar diseases found in the U.S.

The current major debate over Mad Cow disease in the United States is whether or not cattle herds should be tested for the disease. So far, the United States has test only 12,000 head of cattle out of an estimated population of 100 million. In 2002, the USDA plans to expand that testing to 12,500 more animals.

In its coverage of the report, The New York Times quoted Mad Cow researcher Thomas Pringle as saying that such limited testing was a mistake. Pringle noted that nations claiming to be BSE-free had, in fact, found cases of the disease after ordering testing of cattle herds. Japan, for example, recently discovered several cases of Mad Cow disease after believing the disease had not reached its shores.

Still, American Meat Institute president J. Patrick Boyle argued that, “America’s B.S.E.-free status is not luck. The U.S. is free of many animal diseases that plague other nations, testaments to the success of government-industry efforts.”

Sources:

U.S. Mad Cow Risk is Low, A Study by Harvard Finds. Elizabeth Becker, The New York Times, December 1, 2001.

Report has final word on mad cow disease. Kay Ledbetter, The Amarillo Globe News, December 9, 2001.