Failed Politician Turns Sex Tourist in Africa

One former congressman has been arrested.  Shockingly, the others have not.

Mel Reynolds has been arrested in Zimbabwe.  He has been living there since November, apparently without filing the correct immigration paperwork.  In those four months, Reynolds has rung up a $25,000 unpaid hotel bill.

Reuters also mentions that he was found to possess pornography, which is a crime in Zimbabwe.  The report does not specify what kind of pornography we are talking about.  A few dog-eared Playboys, for example, would hardly shock most of Reynolds' erstwhile constituents.

But we don't think that's it.

Reynolds was, again per Reuters, "a rising star in the Democratic Party" until

... he was forced to resign in 1995 after being convicted of sexual assault, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography.

Ah.  Now we get it.

Yesterday, we'd never heard of Congressman Reynolds, perhaps for the good reason that he only served one two-year term, in the early 90s.  He has spent more time in prison than he ever did in Congress, first following a conviction for statutory rape and then following a separate conviction for bank fraud.

Ick.  Just ... ick.

It almost seems cruel to add that, in 2004, Reynolds attempted to regain his seat, the Illinois 2nd, and was crushed by the incumbent -- Jesse Jackson, Jr.  When you can't beat Jesse Jr., it's time to get out of the game.

Anyway, we point out Rep. Reynolds' problems only to observe that there is somebody, somewhere, who has less integrity than we ourselves.  Small victories, people.

Noo Yawk 4evah

In last night's Democratic primaries, the people of New York City gave Anthony Wiener the metaphorical finger.  The disappointed candidate responded in kind, except without the "metaphorical" part.

As reported at Gawker (and all over Twitter, and a million other places on the web), Wiener's campaign -- a train wreck from the beginning -- concluded with the kind of explosion that makes moviegoers groan "Now the f/x people are just showing off."

Wiener got about 4% of the vote.  His wife wasn't at the party, and his long thank-you speech pointedly omitted mention of her.  (Interpretation:  Divorce imminent.) Entrapment-queen-cum-porn-star Sydney Leathers, however, did show up, inspiring Weiner to make a mad dash through a McDonalds to avoid meeting her.

A classy night up to that point, but Weiner wasn't done yet. 

As his limo pulled away, he not only gave the middle finger to a reporter, he managed to be photographed doing so.

Damning Brooks

Here at the Egg, we have often mocked David Brooks, a mysteriously-still-employed op-ed writer at the Times.  Our mockery has usually been restricted to snarky side comments and the observation that he is the sort of talking head who wears bowties.

If you've ever wondered just what makes Brooks so bad -- worse than Tom Friedman, not quite so heinous as Peggy Noonan -- read Tim Marchman's takedown at Deadspin.  It's mean-spirited, and therefore appropriate to the task.  

To be honest, our main objection to Brooks is that he is, as Marchman says, "a propaganzizer of discredited ideas," namely neonconservatism.  Marchman, however, goes deeper, picking on the contrast between Brooks' obvious rich-boy sense of privilege and his carefully-erected facade of modesty (he teaches a course in "humility" at Yale, for crying out loud).

Here's the best paragraph:

Brooks was a sheltered twit from his earliest years. He attended a fancy day school in New York, a fancy high school in the wealthy Philadelphia suburbs, and the University of Chicago. From there he moved on to comfortable sinecures at propaganda mills like National Review, the Hoover Institution, and the Washington Times. After a stint at the Wall Street Journal, he moved on to the Weekly Standard, where he worked under editor William Kristol, who damaged whatever chances Brooks had of becoming a normal human being.

Nice, huh?  There's more where that came from.

Cogito, Ergo Sugo

A well-known philosopher named Colin McGinn has resigned his post at the University of Miami after being accused of sexual harassment by a female student.  He is reported to have defended himself with a string of big words, linked together in ways that ultimately translate into "But I was her teacher, and teachers get to do this."  Lovely fellow.

This is all remarkable, we suppose, only because McGinn got canned; it seems certain that most sexual harassment in the academic world goes unpunished; much, indeed, unreported; and quite a bit, we expect, unrecognized even by its victims.

The truth is that many people, both male and female, still have not wrapped their minds around sexual misconduct in a university setting.  When is it love and when is it abuse?  Under what circumstances is something unacceptable even between consenting adults?

The Church has historically given narrower answers to this than the secular world, and especially the academy.  But even so, several of our own seminary professors married their own students -- in one case, serially.  In another case, the professor actually sat on the student's dissertation committee.  The faculty and administration were barely troubled by this, although many students -- reflecting a clear generational difference -- found the situation shameful.

A Harper's symposium at the time found that, at a table of college presidents, only Bard's Leon Botstein found faculty-student romances to be a de facto abuse of power.  We expect that today, the table would be more evenly divided.  McGinn has had few serious defenders, except for a few other philosophers.

And why philosophers?

L'affaire McGinn has led to several interesting comments on the practice of philosophy as an academic discipline.  One is by philosopher Nathan Schneider, at Real Clear Religion.  Schneider writes that

While working on my ... history of philosophical arguments about the existence of God, it gradually became clear that my undertaking was in fact a study of masculinity, so shot through were these arguments with gendered assumptions and ideals. And, as a study of masculinity, it was also a study of patriarchy. ... 

Philosophy serves as a domain in which men can imagine a world made up only of themselves and what goes on in their minds. 

As anybody who has attended a philosophy conference or been in a philosophy department knows, it remains a severely male-dominated discipline. And, according to one of philosophy’s chief commentators, Brian Leiter, “Sexual harassment, from the mild to the severe, is widespread.”

More viscerally, an anonymous Gawker commentator, himself a career academic with some philosophers in the family, writes that

It is my considered opinion that to a man/woman, philosophy professors are pond scum. Or, at the very least, they enable the pond-scumming of their colleagues. They are wanking little boys and scared little girls who justify their unconscionable actions with a dizzying amount of bullshit. And the abuse is cyclical: you only get tenure/published if you fuck so-and-so, which means that once you establish yourself, you're not going to vote for anybody's tenure/book unless they fuck you. It's quid pro quo on ugly nerd steroids. 

It makes it really hard for everyone else in the humanities... and believe me, the other humanities profs are no picnic, either. 

Philosophers are the worst of the worst. I don't know a single academic who disagrees with me. Some just haven't noticed it yet, but if you ask them point blank, they immediately say, "Oh, well, yeah... now that you mention it, there was that one time my GA got roofied by Dr. X. Wow. Philosophers are pretty yucky, aren't they?"

This is a striking assessment of people who are, at least in theory, committed to seeking the good and the true as well as the beautiful.

[Insert Weiner Joke Here]

In July of 2011, Anthony Weiner, an extremely fit-looking congressman from New York, resigned in disgrace.  After the revelation that he had been exchanging sexy text messages (including naughty pictures) with women other than his wife, Weiner had lied for more than a week in efforts to protect himself.  In May 2013, less than two years after his resignation, Weiner announced his intention to run for mayor of New York City.  This struck many of us as a remarkable display of chutzpah.

Now, in July 2013, he is embroiled in accusations of further sexting activity, with at least one woman to whom he is not married.  Then details are unclear.  Last we heard, Weiner's office had admitted that "some" of the messages were authentic; what remains to be seen is whether

Some people say, in essence, "This is between him and his wife."  We disagree.  The guy is a liar and a cheat.  Worse than that, he seems to lack the sort of self-discipline that is required for effective, long-term leadership, especially in a high-pressure position.

Yes, it is true that many effective politicians -- FDR, Ike, JFK and LBJ make four in a row -- were less than faithful to their wives.  And one takes for granted that politicians are liars as a class.  Still, Weiner looks like an addict to us, a man powerless over his own compulsions.  We predict that the sex scandals of a Weiner mayoralty would make those of Rudolph Giuliani's tenure pale by comparison.  (And Giuliani, lest we forget, announced his divorce to the media before telling his wife, whom he then kicked out of the house.)

Even if the serendipitous combination of his name and his most famous selfie were not a joke by itself, his campaign certainly would be.  Seriously, New York -- don't vote for this guy.

[P.S.:  Eliot Spitzer may not be quite as compulsive as Weiner, and comptroller isn't quite as tough a job as mayor.  But don't vote for him either.  Unless you're a high-rent hooker, in which case this guy is your best friend.]

Florida Jury Stands Its Ground

The truth is that we are not intimately familiar with the details of the George Zimmerman trial.  We've been busy repairing roofs and trailers in Appalachia, dodging copperheads, battling pinkeye and otherwise enjoying the first weeks of a new call.  So we didn't follow the trial, and don't know much about the evidence.

Moreover, neither we nor anybody else has a precise understanding of what happened between Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin.  We know how it all ended, of course, and we know about critical events on the way to the horrible denouement.  But what one may have said to the other, how they perceived each other, who was on top at what juncture in their supposed brawl -- only Zimmerman knows these things.  Memory being what it is, even he may not know the truth.

Still, since nobody else in America seems to be allowing mere ignorance to keep them from venting an opinion, neither shall we.

And here is our opinion, in a nutshell:  "stand your ground" laws are a travesty of justice.  They allow the discretionary use of deadly force by untrained civilians, based on nothing more than an emotion -- the feeling that is that one's life is in danger.  They remove proportionality from the traditional understanding of self-defense, and this removal is, by the standards of Christianity, evil.

Remember, if you will, the structure of the "just war" theory which has long guided our discussions of violence, at least among those Christians who admit that violence can ever be theologically legitimate.  A just war requires both ius ad bellum, meaning a righteous cause, and ius in bello, meaning a righteous conduct of the conflict.

Self-defense, on its surface, sounds like a righteous cause, and that is as far as the SYG laws seem to go.  But the elements of ius ad bellum include (a) provocation, (b) lack of other alternatives, (c) possession of proper authority, (d) right intention, (e) likelihood of success, and (f) a proportion between the means used and the end sought.  Each of these is problematic in its own way.  It is difficult for nations to determine what provocation is a just cause of war -- when North Korea sinks your fishing boats, do you respond, or do you grind your teeth for the sake of peace?  Proper authority is elusive -- America routinely sends troops into battle without the declaration of war supposedly reserved for its legislature.  Do those troops have proper authority to fight, and if so for how long and by what means?

Each of these elements and problems has its parallel in SYG laws.  As it is hard for a nation to identify the precise line at which war is justified, how much harder is it for a frightened individual to identify the moment at which his or her life is legitimately in danger?  But the real problem, especially with SYG laws, are the question of alternatives.  If you can run away without harming anybody, shouldn't you be obliged to do so?

Proportionality ad bellum may not be a factor in SYG laws, so long as the goal is in fact to save one's own life.  But when we consider ius in bello, the question of proportionality becomes extremely important.  If attacked by a boy with a slingshot, one cannot morally respond by nuking his entire city.  (Another factor is "discrimination" -- making sure you kill enemy combatants, not little old ladies walking their dogs.  This may apply in the Zimmerman case, but has a lot more to do with the drone war.)  Basically, the level of violence employed, and the number of people harmed, must be kept to the lowest level possible.  By parallel logic, it is wrong -- or at least deeply questionable -- to pull out a gun during a fistfight.

Here is how Fr. William Saunders, a Roman Catholic priest in our own neck of the woods, describes the teaching of his own church:

While affirming the right of a country to defend itself, the Catholic Church condemns indiscriminate "total war": the state of war between two parties does not justify or make fair the use of any means to wage the war. Vatican Council II therefore asserted, "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation" ("Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, #80). 

As among nations, so among individuals -- conflict may be inevitable, but from a moral perspective, violence must be (a) a last resort, (b) directed against the right opponent, and (c) proportional to the opponent's own use of violence.

Even if we accept, charitably, the jury's finding that Zimmerman did not stalk Martin, and purposefully provoke a violent confrontation based on the difference in their skin colors, it is still difficult to see how laws that permit him to have used a gun in this case can possibly pass the scrutiny of moral theology.

"I Truly Despise the Episcopal Church"

Here is television host and noted bow-tie wearer Tucker Carlson, describing his faith in an interview with Marvin Olasky:

We still go to the Episcopal Church for all kinds of complicated reasons, but I truly despise the Episcopal Church in a lot of ways. They’re for gay marriage because it’s trendy. It’s another way to express how hip they are. They don’t care at all what God thinks of it, because they actually don’t believe in God. And then the fact that they sanction abortion. Are you joking? A church is for abortion? What?

Q:  You said you and your family go to an Episcopal church for all kinds of complicated reasons. Could you un-complicate that for us?  

A:  Part of it’s inertia. Part is we really like the people. Part is that’s the world I grew up in. I love the liturgy. I can recite it without looking at it. Dumb stuff like that. Am I going to defend that? No. It’s totally indefensible. I’m a shallow guy! That’s why I still go to the Episcopal Church. But I like it! I just don’t want to think too hard about my money going to these pompous, blowhard, pagan creeps who run the church!

Well, at least he's honest.

Garbo Speaks

Justice Clarence Thomas has broken his seven-year silence in Supreme Court arguments.  More exciting yet, it was to disagree with the ventriloquist who controls him his friend and colleague, Justice Scalia.

Was it to ask some sharp question of an overreaching attorney?  To argue some fine point of law, or to shed light upon an obscure corner of the matter at hand?  Sadly, no.  It was to bash his alma mater.

In the course of an argument about whether a particular person had received adequate representation at his trial, Scalia proposed that, since one of the the fellow's attorneys had gone to Harvard and another to Yale , his representation must have been good enough.  And then, per the Wall Street Journal,

Amid crosstalk among the justices — all of whom attended either Harvard or Yale — Justice Thomas made a remark to the effect that if the lawyer went to Yale, the defendant must not have received competent counsel, according to several people present.

Oh, Clarence.  You really don't get this clubhouse jocularity thing, do you?  The idea is to poke fun at the other guy's school.

Thomas, the Journal reminds us, has long been publicly and viscerally hostile to the place that trained him for his profession.  In that sense, this was just a predictable jibe from an unpleasant and unhappy man.

On the other hand, however, this is a bit like the paradox of Epimenides, adverted to in Titus 1:12, about prevaricating Cretans.  If, that is, lawyers trained at Yale are good for nothing, and if Clarence Thomas was trained at Yale, then logically ....

Thomas has raised an interesting question here.  perhaps he will address it further the next time he opens his mouth.  On the current schedule, this should be about January, 2020.

Ragin' Buddha

I don't care if it rains or freezes
Long as I got my plastic Jesus
Sitting on the dashboard of my car. 

--Attributed to George Cromarty and Ed Rush

At the moment, Father A. drives around the suburbs in a great big gas-guzzling pickup truck.  It isn't the sort of vehicle he would choose for himself, but he's damn glad to have it on loan. (Thanks, Dad!)

Funny thing about this truck is that it has a little spring-mounted Buddha glued to the dashboard.  Not the sort of thing we necessarily want old Mrs. Gothilfjar to notice when we pull into the parking lot of St. Thorlak's for a potluck, but whatever.  On road trips, we entertain ourselves by singing:

I don't care about would, coulda, shoulda
Long's I got my plastic Buddha
Bouncing on the dashboard of my truck.

(We've got twenty more stanzas, suitable for molded icons of, e.g., Shiva, Dagon, Atargatis, and Mohammed.  We doubt we'll ever much call for that last one.)

But here's the thing.  The most interesting factoid over which we have stumbled in the past few months is that people who put bumper stickers on their cars are most likely to experience road rage.  No surprise, when the bumper sticker is frankly aggressive, on the lines of "my fifth grader can beat up your honor student at Herbert Hoover Middle School."  Not too shocking when the sticker is political and/or confrontational -- "Vote for Obama," or "It's not a choice, it's a baby."

But the link to road rage is just as strong when the bumper sticker says "Visualize World Peace."

All this comes from a 2008 study by William Szlemko and other psychologists at Colorado State (summarized here in Nature).  They theorize that bumper stickers are a way of marking one's territory -- yes, just like dogs and fire hydrants.  People who have marked a private "territory" that then travels in public space -- such as a highway -- will then defend it with extra zeal.

What we had not grasped, when we first heard about this, was that it isn't just bumper stickers.  Personal knicknacks in an office cubicle may work the same way.  And so do automobile interiors customized with things like seat covers, fuzzy dice and -- yes -- plastic Buddhas.

So, as you are driving down the highway, remember that it's not just the SUV with a gun rack and NRA stickers of whom you should be careful.  Keep an eye out for the soccer mom advertising her kid's recent achievement, or the hippie asking you to imagine something.  Or, of course, the Lutheran pastor with a little yellow Buddha bouncing around.

They are dangerous, people.

Stubborn Things

Do you remember "the reality-based community"?  The phrase, horrible in its resonance, emerged from a press interview with an anonymous member of the Bush administration -- who used it as a slur against those who argued for political and military calculation based on facts, rather than pure ideology.  The phrase came to serve as a bitter example of how arrogance and fantasy were combined in the catastrophic excesses of neo-conservatism.

In the years since, as the world has come to terms with the singular destruction wrought by the Bush years, there has been a modest retreat from the strategy of inventing one's own facts.  Despite the liberal bias attributed to it by Stephen Colbert, reality has come to enjoy a bit more credibility.  Even the former Bushies -- Dick Cheney notably excepted -- have come to take a muted tone, generally expressing some regret for their most delusional decisions.

Well, says former intelligence chief Stephen Cambone, count me out!  According to Wired's Danger Room blog, Cambone, who served from March 2011 forward as Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, "shocked" the Aspen Security Forum recently by declaring that, far from an ill-considered foreign adventure sold to the general public and the international diplomatic community alike with a tissue of misdirection, misinformation and outright fabrication, the Iraq invasion was in fact "one of the greatest strategic decisions of the first half of the 21st century."

Now, at first we assumed Cambone meant "great" in the strict sense of "large," which the decision certainly was.  It committed a vast military force -- and a vast treasury -- to a vaguely-defined cause.  It created a region-wide political and humanitarian crisis, the latter particularly savage in the way it has endangered and driven into exile so many Assyrian Christians.  However stupid and expensive it may have been, this was indeed a big decision.

But no.  Cambone apparently believes that the Iraq invasion was a brilliant "victory" -- his word -- and is the spark that ignited the Arab Spring.  (We wonder whether anybody asked him about the Islamist undercurrent that has come to shape many of the Arab-sprung nations.)

Whatever.  It's a free country, the guy can say whatever he wants.  We can't imagine that anybody is listening; Danger Room has a list of juicy quotes from Bush and his team describing Iraq as their signal mistake, and warning successors not to repeat it. Still and all, it is sweet to know that even when the captains defect from their cause, a few bold foot-soldiers remain faithful, waving the banner and declaring their eternal opposition to the rule of facts.

Getting Jefferson Wrong

David Barton is a strange fellow, who has built is reputation on the dubious platform of telling lies about the Founding Fathers -- as well as the more conservative-friendly strategy of bashing college professors.  (Hey, it was how William F. Buckley and Dinesh D'Souza got started.)

Apparently, some college professors are fighting back.  Not the relativist /deconstructionist/ poststructuralist types against whom Barton fulminates, but rather a pair from Grove City College, a Christian school conservative enough that its mission statement explicitly rejects "secularism and relativism."

Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter have recently published Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims About Our Third President.   Here's a review by RD's Paul Harvey; here's a link to the book.  Here is Throckmorton and Coulter's website.

Our own life has been blessedly unimpaired by the likes of Barton; we like our history reality-based, and so do most of the people around us.  But if you've had to deal with this guy's acolytes, you may want to check out Throckmorton and Coulter.

That's Why They Call It "Dope"

These things just make us want to cry. The East Greenwich (Rhode Island) Patch reports:

... a plow operator clearing the parking lot of the Washington County Veterinary Hospital on Tower Hill Road notified [police] that a car with a flat tire almost struck him.

When police arrived, they found a white Volvo with ... the driver's side front tire missing from its rim.

The driver was identified as [State Representative] Robert Watson [D-30]. According to Buckley, police saw a pipe of the type often used to smoke marijuana on the floor of the front driver's side. In addition, police found a clear sandwich bag containing what turned out to be marijuana near the driver's seat.

The Patch further informs us that Watson was picked up in nearby Connecticut last year for DWI and marijuana possession. He claims to indulge in the interests of pain management, but does not possess a medical marijuana user's card.

And, we may add, it is our understanding that causing car crashes is more likely to cause pain than to cure it.

The Least Safe Way

Old Father A. has never actually shopped at a Safeway supermarket. Now it appears he never will.

Last week, a former USAF staff sergeant and her husband moved from California to Honolulu. They went for a walk, got lost, and stopped into a supermarket to buy some food -- and eat a sandwich, planning to scan the wrapper at the checkout counter. (She's 30 weeks pregnant, so you can imagine how hungry a getting-lost-in-your-new-neighborhood walk made her). Although they bought $50 worth of groceries, they forgot to scan the wrapper, and so failed to pay for the sandwich.

So, when the security guard dragged them away, they were pretty embarrassed, and offered to pay for the sandwich. But it seems that Safeway's policy wouldn't let them do that. Do you know what Safeway's policy required the store to do?

Have the couple arrested. And put in jail. And have their 2-year old daughter taken away by Child Protective Services.

Obviously, Safeway supermarkets are going to fold all over the country, because from now on nobody in his or her right mind will ever shop at one. But the story (here, here, here) does raise another question: what sort of half-wit police officers do they hire in Honolulu? Because it is one thing for some lardass mall cop and his pimple-faced management trainee boss to follow this policy; it is another thing for the actual police to make it happen.

Hardest Working Muscle

Scientists have now grown a working anal sphincter in a petri dish. (Thanks, i09!). This is big medical news. And -- strangely enough -- it reminds us of a story.

One of our colleagues is a retired Army chaplain, with the aggressive style and blunt manners that you might expect from a soldier-priest. He also has a mouth so filthy that it even makes Father Anonymous blush from time to time. Another pastor once sat at a table during a clergy Bible study and quietly made a hash-mark each time Fr. Falmouth dropped the F-bomb. He eventually lost count, but assures us that the number was very high. At a Bible study.

Anyway, Fr. F. himself likes to tell a story about his years on active duty. His superior officer, in the course of chewing him out, called him -- well, that thing that just got grown in a petri dish, but using the more conventional Army term. So Chaplain F. pulled himself up to attention and said, "Thank you sir. I consider that a great compliment."

"A ... compliment?"

"Yessir. The anal sphincter is the hardest-working muscle in the body."

The story has been told and retold around many a clerical campfire in our synod. By now, its punchline has a life of its own. And so, in honor both of our friend Fr. Falmouth and of the crack research team at Wake Forest, Emory and U. Mich., we are introducing a new hash tag for the blog: the Hardest Working Muscle.

We have needed a term like this for some time. After all, many of the people about whom we find ourselves writing -- ministers who steal Christmas presents, biologists who mock women as severely as they mock religion, members of Congress and terrorists (if indeed the two can still be classified separately) deserve to be called ... well, that thing. And so they are, in our private conversation. But a few readers have suggested that more decorum is called for in public, and they are surely right -- so we shall euphemize.

Still, we think this expression will get a lot of use.