Overly Dramatic Useless Gestures

[Posted by reader_iam]

All those fine minds at Yale University, and when faced with the tragedy at VA Tech and how to respond to it--because, of course, they must do something, anything, to prove that they're considering the issues seriously and taking immediate steps to address them--they decide to restrict the use of weapons in theatre productions.

Students involved in this weekend’s production of “Red Noses” said they first learned of the new rules on Thursday morning, the same day the show was slated to open. They were subsequently forced to alter many of the scenes by swapping more realistic-looking stage swords for wooden ones, a change that many students said was neither a necessary nor a useful response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

According to students involved in the production, Trachtenberg has banned the use of some stage weapons in all of the University’s theatrical productions. While shows will be permitted to use obviously fake plastic weapons, students said, those that hoped to stage more realistic scenes of stage violence have had to make changes to their props.
...
“Red Noses” director Sarah Holdren ’08 said she first heard about the changes in a phone call from a friend as she arrived at the Off-Broadway Theater on Thursday morning. At the theater, technical director Jim Brewczynski told her about the new regulations. The pair then met with Trachtenberg, who initially wanted no stage weapons to be used in the show, [emphasis added] Holdren said, though she later agreed to permit the use of obviously fake weapons.
...
Berger also said he finds the ruling inconsistent because forms of stage violence that do not involve weapons — such as hangings — are still permitted.

Everyone feel safer now?

I'm not sure why Trachtenberg thinks infantalizing her university community and making Yale a laughingstock is supposed to combat violence and Make The World A Better Place. It's probably not worth asking her, since the incoherence of the decision and its implementation makes clear that she's one befuddled person. And the fact that she would seriously suggest that the production in question be staged without essential props--what, the actors were supposed to wave invisible weapons in the air, like 6-year-olds at play during recess?--brings her basic intelligence into question, and that of any other administrators involved.

Just what we need now: More hysterical thinking and overly theatrical responses, and from our supposedly elite Institutions Of Higher Learning.

What a joke.

Sigh.

Think Twice, Post Once

[posted by Callimachus]

If you're peeved by the legal shenanigans in the Duke (non)-rape case, because "three college boys are (possibly) falsely accused of sexual assault," that could well be because you're a "garden-variety racis[t]".

Because I know you were wondering about that.

So if you're peeved about the improper detention of (possibly) non-terrorists in Camp X-Ray, that could make you ....

Why not just send your resume to Ann Coulter? If you're already constructing her arguments for free, that is.

There's an other half to the poster's "you might be a racist if ..." equation. Which is, in addition to being aroused by potential prosecutorial malfeasance in North Carolina, you also think "It's okay to falsely accuse an entire country, try it and convict it." I confess I don't recognize what that refers to. Perhaps because I don't live in that particular bubble where the overthrow of Saddam was always and only ever about the WMD and it's OK that our intelligence on that topic was wrong. Who does live there? [And here the cassandra chorus shrieks: "Shrubbie McChimplerburton the Death Merchant!"]

Allow it, then, for the sake of the argument, then reverse it: If you were assertively opposed to the overthrow of Saddam in 2003, even though you, like everyone else (including possibly Saddam), weren't sure at the time whether he had WMD in defiance of the 1991 terms or not, yet you are more irked by the people who are all worked up over potential prosecutorial malfeasance at Duke than you are by the miscarriage of justice itself, doesn't that make you just a garden-variety enabler of totalitarianism?

Straw men who live in rhetorical bubbles shouldn't throw stones.

Idle Question

[posted by Callimachus]

Even if you have an hour and nothing else to do, is it worth it to try to respond to people like this, meaning blogger/commenters? I'm inclined to think not.

Damned Fools

[posted by Callimachus]

This, if the popular reading of it is correct, is how you not only lose a war, but rot your honor in the process.

A U.S. soldier is captured; we're pretty sure we know who did it and where they are. We make a visible show of force to tighten the noose on the district that shelters them, and then the politicians pull the wires and the military stand down.

In a showdown for control of Baghdad, the Iraqi prime minister took orders from Moqtada al-Sadr, and instructed the U.S. military to withdraw from Sadr City. The American forces were trying both to stabilize the city but also to find a missing American serviceman. He is still missing.

Who won? Just look at the picture in the N.Y.T. story. And they know it. Sully is absolutely right here. This is shameful, humiliating, and far mor disrespectful of the real people who serve in the military than any John Kerry fumble-mouth play.

Stabilize the city and find the missing man? Probably impossible to do at the same time. Probably the problem with the whole operation. Petraeus months ago described it as trying to repair an airplane while it is in flight and under fire.

So when the contradiction forces you to the fork in the road, which way do you go? We took the Fallujah option, again. The worst of all options.

Never make battlefield-level military choices for political reasons.

Rather than sit down outside that neighborhood (and cordon it off as tight as Hillary Clinton's pursed lips) and say, "hand him over, tell us where he is, or suffer the consequences" and let the non-militia residents inside decide whose side they choose to be on, we sent a clear signal that the Americans don't really mean it.

Yes, babies would have gone hungry till it was settled. Yes Al-Jazeera and the BBC would have plastered the world with the images. But if you ever really want to stop the babies from going hungry, you have to break the power of the thuggery that runs that slum. You don't break something by negotiation. This was as good a chance as any we'll get.

That's the message: Americans don't really mean it. About anything. We won't back up even our most cherished principles if we can make them miserable enough. Even our honor. You don't think that counts for anything in the world, just because we jaded civilian suburbanites have outgrown such outmoded ideas? Think again.

Why would anyone in the Mideast who sees this man's fate (he's apparently Arab-American) take a risk to take our side? Anyone from Pervez Musharraf down to the curbside tea vendor in Najaf. Why should they?

What's just as bad is the message it sends to every person who puts on a uniform here in the U.S. "We won't abandon you ... unless we decide to. And try not to get your sorry ass captured in the month or so before an election, will you? It just causes us here at home no end of difficulties."

Sullivan's dudgeon has a hair trigger, but this one deserves everything it gets.

The U.S. military does not have a tradition of abandoning its own soldiers to foreign militias, or of taking orders from foreign governments. No commander-in-chief who actually walks the walk, rather than swaggering the swagger, would acquiesce to such a thing. The soldier appears to be of Iraqi descent who is married to an Iraqi woman. Who authorized abandoning him to the enemy? Who is really giving the orders to the U.S. military in Iraq?