Dear reader (and the leather-clad gimp in the footlocker at your feet),
One of my favorite TV conventions is the cameo appearance. If you try to look up the definition of “cameo appearance” on the interwebs, you’ll become hopelessly confused. That’s okay, you know ‘em when you see ‘em (but if you pedants would prefer to interrupt my stream of consciousness by calling it a “guest appearance” or a “walk-on,” that’s fine, just be glad I don’t have a big enough semi-frozen flounder to smack you in the face with from where I’m sitting).
I can’t remember if I mentioned it in here before (“Don’t worry, given how you’re so rarely sober, no one expects you to remember” – The Couch), but one of my favorite cameos comes from The New Scooby Doo Movies (1972-1973). Those meddling kids are driving their “Mystery Machine” – that creepy panel van that, today, would more likely be owned by someone wearing a sex-offender ankle bracelet – when all of a sudden they find a car broken down on the shoulder of the highway. Velma takes one look at the driver and exclaims: “The famous Don Adams!” Then the animated Don Adams (voiceover by Don Adams) explains that he’s taken over his brother’s pest-control business full-time to become “bug killer to the stars.” Who said writing for TV was hard?
The old variety shows – you know, Sid Caesar, Laugh-In, The Krusty the Clown Show, The Pappy O’Daniel Flour Hour, Lonesome Rhodes’s Cracker Barrel – they had a more casual attitude toward the cameo. One minute they’re in the middle of the show, and then suddenly the audience starts buzzing as someone “unexpected” walks on the stage: “Why, it’s TV’s Larry Storch! Give him a hand, everybody!”
“Thanks, Krusty,” Storch, an immensely popular TV star from 1953 to 1955, from 1965 to 1969, and in the spring of 1973, might respond. “I’m here today to talk to you about something very important to me – the famine in Biafra and U Thant’s heroic work to end it. But first, I thought I’d do a little juggling, and maybe tell you a few stories about my dear friend Forrest Tucker and his friendly contest with Milton Berle.”
Anyway, I bring all this up because the NyQuil frappe I’ve been drinking seems to finally be kicking in. But also because I got that distinct TV-cameo vibe last Friday when Bill Clinton just wandered by the White House press room to chat. If it had been better stage-managed, Obama could have stopped mid-sentence during a really partisan and divisive disquisition explaining how he hates partisanship and divisiveness to declare, “Why, it’s 1997’s Bill Clinton! Give him a big round of applause, everybody.”
“Thanks, Barack Hussein. I’m so happy to be here. You know, when Barack Hussein and I were talking backstage, we were laughing at how he used to talk about my presidency, like it wasn’t worth two ticks on a squirrel’s behind. [Cue laugh track] Now, look at poor old Barack Hussein. Well, I told him, ‘Don’t you worry Ba-rocky, you’ve got me in your corner now.”
The End of Taboos?
Okay that’s the wrong headline, because I actually believe we’ll always have taboos, but what is taboo will change – just not always for the better. Consider the case of alleged scumbag David Epstein. I’m going to forgo the usual “alleged” part because even his lawyer seems to be conceding that Epstein did in fact have a long sexual relationship with his own daughter. And while honest people can debate whether incest should be a crime (I think it should be), I have no use for anybody who objects to the taboo against incest. Call it my taboo against anti-tabooists.
It’s interesting, as a sociological matter, that the Epstein case has elicited a riot of “serious” talk about the incest taboo. Here’s Salon:
It has all the sordid ingredients to supply tabloid headlines for days, but far more interesting – at least in my nerdy universe – are the laws behind this case and others like it. After all, the relationship in this case allegedly began after Epstein’s daughter reached the age of consent. It isn’t a clear-cut case of child abuse, and there are no allegations that the three-year-long relationship carried on without the daughter’s consent.
A few points:
1. If I were a pro-gay marriage activist (“You mean you’re not?” – The Couch), I would be really pretty concerned with this argument going around. Epstein’s lawyer:
“Academically, we are obviously all morally opposed to incest and rightfully so,” he told ABCNews.com. “At the same time, there is an argument to be made in the Swiss case to let go what goes on privately in bedrooms.”
“It’s OK for homosexuals to do whatever they want in their own home,” he said. “How is this so different? We have to figure out why some behavior is tolerated and some is not.”
I love the modifier “academically” when he means exactly the opposite. It reminds me of that line from Irving Kristol about the phrase “in principle”: “In principle’ must rank among the saddest phrases in the English language. When someone says he agrees with you in principle, that is usually prefatory to his explaining that he disagrees with you in fact.”
For years pro-gay marriage advocates have understandably taken extreme offense at the mere suggestion that homosexuality is akin to incest. If they’re going to let these arguments slide from the left, let’s have a good deal less outrage when the Right uses them, hmm-kay?
2. The Left likes to claim that it is libertarian on “social issues.” I think this is sometimes true, mostly not. What left-libertarians believe in is more like radical self-assertion, the lifting of social and legal restraints on certain behaviors or lifestyles. If the Left were actually libertarian, it would stop shouting down speakers, stop implementing speech codes, and stop championing modern sumptuary laws regarding what you can eat, drive, or wear.
Indeed, if the Left wants to adopt the mantle of libertarianism, they need to understand that if government gets less involved in our lives, civil society must get more involved. That means more taboos, more stigma, more discrimination properly understood. That’s the difference between spontaneous order and childish chaos.
In a truly free society, people need to be free to discriminate. I don’t mean in the racial sense, I mean in the prudential sense. We all discriminate – i.e., make choices based on experience, data, and intelligence – in every facet of our lives. The man who doesn’t discriminate literally cannot tell shit from shinola (lighten up, it’s the G-File). And in a minarchist state, the regulation of social norms must of necessity be left up to society. That means employers, landlords, would-be fathers-in-law (!), neighbors, etc., can judge people by what criteria they find relevant. If drugs are legalized, I sure as hell better be able to discriminate against drug addicts when it comes to hiring babysitters. If incest isn’t a jailable offense, then I sure hope it will still be okay for Columbia University to fire skeeves like David Epstein.
What If This Had Been a Right-winger?
I think it is indisputable that, if this story weren’t about David Epstein, left-wing Huffington Post contributor, but about, say, Richard Epstein, University of Chicago free-market guru and National Review contributor, the Left wouldn’t bother with seminars on the legitimacy of sexual taboos and would instead proceed straight to the crucifixion stage of the debate. I’m not saying that the Left wants to defend David Epstein straight up. But the general tendency in these personal scandals is that when a lefty is the culprit, the issue becomes intellectualized. When a righty is the culprit, the Left goes looking for a good lynching tree. This is certainly true when it comes to sex and drug scandals. When a Republican gets jiggy with a younger staffer, he’s a “predator.” When a Democrat does the same thing, he’s merely trying to make a “human connection.”
One of the key ways the Left pulls off this double standard is by using the hypocrisy clause. Since conservatives profess to have principles, it’s okay to condemn them when they violate those principles. But since the Left embraces non-judgmentalism as its highest value, they are not guilty of hypocrisy. It is by these means that the Left uses our principles as loaners solely for the purpose of condemning conservatives. When Rush Limbaugh had his prescription-drug problem exposed, when Bill Bennett had his gambling brouhaha, the Left attacked them (implausibly) as hypocrites, even though they really didn’t have any real problem with the actual behavior.
The downside of this tendency is that it exults those who are consistently immoral while condemning those who are inconsistently moral.
Speaking of Taboos
Without getting into the whole “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” argument (I’m basically okay with repeal if the military can accomplish it without much disruption – I don’t think this is the best moment to be doing it, though). But I thought this passage from a pro-repeal piece in the Post today was both unpersuasive and amusing:
Repeal would undoubtedly produce some disruption, but if other nations’ experiences are any guide, it will be so minimal as to be essentially nonexistent. Consider what is likely to happen if and when “don’t ask” is repealed: Lance Cpl. Smith will be having a typical Marine conversation with Lance Cpl. Jones, and the topic will turn to women. Smith will remark on how much he enjoys their company. Jones will reply: “Actually, man, I like dudes.”
Smith: “Really?”
Jones: “Yeah, man, really.”
Smith: “Wow. I didn’t know that.”
Both will then go back to cleaning their rifles.
Maybe it’s just me, but “cleaning their rifles” sounds like an unfortunate euphemism.
Announcements!
1. Today (Friday) is the D.C. National Review Christmas lunch. I will say hi to everybody for you.
2. The AEI Christmas party is today as well. I will say hi to almost everyone for you (I’m still afraid of some people there).
3. I wrote what I thought was a pretty amusing column – certainly more entertaining than this G-File – on the omnibus bill. When I woke up, I learned that the bill had been killed and taken my column down with it. I stand by my totally groundless assertion that my column is what tanked the bill. If you want to read it, go here. If you don’t want to read it, you should still go here, because I need the page views, man.