Interesting Times

I read the New York Times online just about everyday. They have various readers' forums. I noticed the other day that they have a science forum with questions that are just ridiculous for an online forum. For instance, the question right now is "How predominant do you think rock-ice planets are in the cosmos?"

There are only a handful of people in the world who can actually offer anything resembling an intelligent response to that question. Why are they posing this to the general public?

I want to talk a bit about the question of whether it's an attack on Christianity when stores have "Holiday Sales" instead of "Christmas Sales" and in the process to address funky dung's response to my statemetn that "never in my life have I read the headline "man battered after wishing someone a 'merry christmas." To which he responded "Niether have I, but I have heard of people being threatened by employers, particularly in retail."

As I see it this is not a question of people trying to be PC, it's a question of concepts of politeness. My personal standard of politeness makes me not wish a Merry Christmas someone I know to not be a Christian. And while others might not agree with that standard for themselves I don't think anyone can really argue that it is an unreasonable standard.

Correspondingly, a store which is hanging banners, which are by their nature indiscriminate in their targets, is reasonable to deem it impolite to not put up a "Merry Christmas" banner, when s/he knows that many of his customers may not be Christian. This is no different than me not wishing a Merry Christmas to my Jewish friends. It is not caving to some vast secular conspiracy, but rather simply adhering to a particular sense of etiquette.

Lastly, as it applies to employees, it is standard practice for employers, and especially retail employers, to set standards of conduct for their employees, and the core of such standards is what constitutes polite and impolite behavior. Is entirely reasonable for an employer to tell his employees not to wish customers a Merry Christmas while they're on the clock.

Well, we've reached that time of year again when the inevitable debate over what exactly is the reason for this particular season rages.

There's a new wrinkle this year that's been well repoted on: the push to demand that stores and other establishments say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays". If you haven't seen anything about it yet here's a bbc article: Line Drawn in Battle Over Christmas. This raises a whole host of theological historical and political questions, which I'll probably write about soon. But there's a particularly aggravating aspect of it which I want to look at first. There is a quote from one of the groups that sums up the basic argument they make very well

"We just wanted to encourage Christians to have the courage to say 'merry Christmas' instead of 'happy holidays'"-Jennifer Giroux

How on Earth does it take courage to say that? I have heard of people being attacked for being gay, for being Jewish, for being Muslims, for being black, and for a myriad of other reasons, but never in my life have I read the headline "man battered after wishing someone a 'merry christmas'"

It is part of an underlying cult of the oppressed majority that is developing within our country. This should be bothering to Americans a variety of levels:

Firstly, that your countrymen should be so intellectually vapid as to believe such garbage. That Christians living in an overwhelming Christian nation that is the most openly religious country in the first world AND is in one of the more religious fervent periods of its history should think that they are being oppressed is simply ridiculous. A cursory glance shows that this is not the case.

But this is more than just silliness. This cult is potential dangerous. Mythologies of oppression have always been dangerous. As it stands now it's just a collection of fringe people making ridiculous comments, but there is always the potential for a political group to seize on that mythology and take it to the natural extension of demanding action against the "oppressors".

We must remember that in 1920 there were fringe groups saying that the German army had been triumphant in the field and that their loss in the Great War was the result of being "stabbed in the back" by the leadership, and it was a patently absurd statement. But that only made it more dangerous.

This has been a crazy semester so I kinda trailed off on my blogging. And then I forgot my username and password. But I'm back now.

So keep on rocking!

David Brooks, one of the prime pieces of evidence that the New York Times needs to get better conservative editorialist (Safire was their last non-hack, and wasn't even that great, but at least not a hack), wrote an article saying that the drop in statistics such as teen pregnancy, drunk driving and such is the result of a "moral revival" in the country. The Virtue of Virtue

It strikes me that, while applying the word Virtue in a broad sense to these developments, it's innaccurate to cite this as evidence of a "moral revival". Teenage pregnancy has dropped because teenagers have realized that if they have unprotected sex, they'll get pregnant, and that's a bad thing.

People have realized that if they drive while drunk, they'll kill themselves or others.

These are good realizations and good developments, but they are grounded in awareness and sound judgement not any system of morality in a conventionaly theological sense. This fact is underscored by the fact that the Bible belt states are the states in which most of these indicies are highest.

Various things have been making me move towards a more dynamic conception of unions that is grounded less in Marxist analysis. One of these influences has been moving to New York.

My family has moved many times and we've always had reasonably good experiences with moving companies.
This time we used Graebel because that's the service that my father's new company contracted with. This was the first Non-union moving company we'd ever used.

They destroyed several walls in the place we were moving otu of, and broke a tremendous amount of stuff, including my computer, which is a source of rage.

But this brought to mind one aspect of union labor which is often true, but should really be universally true. Unions should really do all they can to gaurantee the quality of their laborers.
For one thing, it's the moral thing to do. If you're an organization that exists to demand a fair day's pay for its members, you should also ensure a fair day's work from your members.
It would also be helpful to the union movement because it can solidify a branding for the Union labor as being a quality good.

Again, this is already often the case. For instance, my brother is a project manager for construction companies and has been on union sites and non-union sites and the union employees tend to be more competent. Also, Unions are very often intertwined with accrediting bodies.
But it should be expanded to being a core principal of the Organized Labor movement.

Fair pay for superior work.

I visited my brother in Baltimore a couple weekends back and got to see a "family friendly atmosphere" run amok at a ball game.

My brother was wearing a Red Sox T-shirt which on the back for the player's name had "Yankees Suck" written.

They made him turn his shirt inside out. This is taking "family friendly" entirely too far.

My family has just finished moving to New York, so that's why I've been out of commission for so long. But now I'm back.

So to the three of you who read this. Sorry for the delay.

Brian McGrory wrote an article in the Boston Globe that aptly responds to the dishonorable Senator from Pennsylvania's comment about boston:

In sanctum Santorum

Also, it's a clever article title.