Friday the 13th Forum

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FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. Flat Earth Luddite says:

    Life got really busy yesterday and I didn’t get to reading much until way too late in the evening. But a couple of randoms:

    1. I simply never understood why somebody else’s sexual orientation (vis-a-vis consenting adults) was any of my business. Never have, never will. Why people get their noses so bent saddens and confuses me.

    2. The great coffee kerfuffle. The reason the leftover coffee tastes way worse when you interrupt the pot and steal the first cup is because the first cup is much stronger. The remainder is simply warm water with a crayon dipped in it! Fortunately, at Casa Luddite I am the only one who enjoys 50 g of dark roast Turkish ground coffee suspended in 500 ml of filtered H20 just off the boil. This gives me the two cups of coffee that I need to start my day. I usually do that 2-3 times a day.

    But then again, I can also do a quad espresso and sleep like a baby. (Which doesn’t explain why I’m up at 4:00 in the morning responding to yesterday’s blog, except there’s too much blood in my caffeine stream.)

    9
  2. Jen says:

    JFC. Where do these people come from?

    Kennedy’s Lawyer Has Asked the F.D.A. to Revoke Approval of the Polio Vaccine

    […] Mr. Kennedy has privately expressed interest in having Mr. Siri serve in the Health and Human Services Department’s top legal job, general counsel. However, Mr. Siri has suggested he may have more influence outside the administration. At his law firm, Siri & Glimstad, he oversees about 40 professionals working on vaccine cases and policy.

    “Somebody on the outside needs to be petitioning them,” he said on a podcast in late November.

    Either way, it’s clear that his voice will be heard at the highest levels.

    “I love Aaron Siri,” Mr. Kennedy said in a clip played on a recent episode of a podcast hosted by Del Bigtree, who is Mr. Kennedy’s former campaign communications director and the founder of the Informed Consent Action Network, which describes itself as a “medical freedom” nonprofit. “There’s nobody who’s been a greater asset to the medical freedom movement than him.”

    7
  3. Kathy says:

    @Flat Earth Luddite:

    1. Back when the battle for marriage equality raged on, I heard speculation that straight men were afraid gay men would treat them the way straight men treat women.

    This does not explain everything, but it may be a part of it, if true.

    4
  4. Jax says:

    @Jen: We live in the dumbest timeline. It’s all fun and games til someone gets polio. I volunteer their kids first.

    8
  5. Kathy says:

    @Jen:

    If this person has not received a polio vaccine, I’d propose the following:

    Have him inoculated with polio virus and let nature take its course. If he doesn’t die, he can make the request again.

    He has a fair shot. The mortality rate is “only” 2-5% for children, and 15-30% for adults.

    Oh, and then there’s post polio syndrome.

    There’s no cure for polio. Supportive treatments offer better odds of survival, but the disease remains a horror show for those who contract it and their families. Vaccines prevent it. In fact, were there no antivax sentiment in many places, we might ahve eradicated the virus by now.

    5
  6. a country lawyer says:

    I’ve always considered Friday the 13th my lucky day. On Friday the 13th, 1968, after 12 months and 20 days, I left Viet Nam in one piece.

    18
  7. Kathy says:

    There is one issue with the polio vaccine.

    The oral (Sabin) vaccine makes use of attenuated virus. This can cause some polio symptoms in around one in every 2.7 million or so patients.

    Excretion of attenuated virus can also spread it to other people, especially in places with poor sanitation infrastructure. It can also mutate to a more active form and cause full blown polio.

    Overall this is not a big deal. It is a big effing deal for those affected, however. So there is a valid argument to phase out the oral vaccine in favor of the Salk vaccine, a dead virus shot. Dead viruses don’t mutate and don’t cause disease.

    But that’s the difference between, say, banning leaded gas and banning all gasoline.

    5
  8. Rick DeMent says:

    @Kathy:

    …straight men were afraid gay men would treat them the way straight men treat women.

    Anecdotally I have noticed this in my own life experience. I played in a punk Rock Band in the early 80’s. We played at a place called the Upstairs Downstairs in Champaign IL (I think it was), which was a punk rock live music venue upstairs and a gay disco downstairs. Because of weird liquor laws there at the time, the Live music venue had to close at 1 am while the Disco could stay open another hour.

    The other guitar player was a real piece of work when it came to women. He would hit on women aggressively many times bordering on outright harassment. The rest of us all tried to tell him he often crossed the line and we didn’t need the blow back from the locals. He was one of those assholes that felt there were no rules where the pursuit of nookie was concerned. A real “grab em’ by the pussy” type.

    We played there a few times and when we did, me and the others would go down to the gay disco and enjoy a few drinks to wind down. This guy was horrified at the thought of hanging out there and it was precisely because he was afraid of getting hit on by a guy. Now most of the workers knew we were just the band having a few and even the patrons just figured we were more or less straight because we weren’t dancing or really engaging with the other patrons. It was pretty chill. But he was terrified nonetheless to the point where he would sit in the car rather than join us.

    I asked him about it and he flat out said it was because he didn’t want any guys hitting on him. I told him to just chill out and tell them straight. He would say something like, “what if they touch me?”.

    So there it is, his whole worldview was that gay men would treat him exactly how he treated the women he would aggressively hit on. When we pointed this out to him he would just glitch out because in his mind his way of treating women was “normal”. This also parallels some conversations I have had with racist family members. My uncle actually told me one time that the reason we shouldn’t give black people equal rights is because “… they might get into positions of authority and they won’t give us the same rights we give them”. Pretty much a direct quote and a horrifying level of candidness.

    It’s a pretty lizard brain reaction, but that’s where we are.

    8
  9. Kathy says:

    Friday the 13th Forum

    Can’t let this pass. The word for today is Triskaidekaphobia. fear of the number 13.

    Tidbit: many buildings, especially in the US, lack a 13th floor. Most commercial airliners lack a 13th row. Both cases the numbering goes from 12 to 14.

    4
  10. Michael Cain says:

    @Kathy:
    Also fairly common practice in the US is to use the 13th floor for mechanical equipment, eg, heating and air conditioning. No leased space and passenger elevators don’t stop there.

    2
  11. Kathy says:

    @Rick DeMent:

    I’ve heard other anecdotes like that. I wonder if this plays into the rejection of trans women as well. It would make a twisted kind of sense, given the many wrong assumptions the public at large has about us.

    As to a minority gaining power and lording it over others, that is a real concern. Proof: Republiqan minority rule right now. This is why I favor all laws to be as inclusive and general as possible, and why they should be applied as evenly and fairly as possible. Not to mention why bigotry of all sorts should be condemned forcefully, why we should never tolerate intolerance, and why all segregation leads to resentment and mistrust.

    It’s not a sure fire way to avoid all such dangers, but it goes a long way to help.

    4
  12. just nutha says:

    @Rick DeMent: I moved to Korea just as KORUS was coming into affect. A big sticking point was beef imports. It happens that dining at hanwoo (Korean) beef barbecue restaurants is a big deal (I prefer duck restaurants, myself), and the effect of imports on the restaurant industry was a particular sore spot for people because of the premium price hanwoo beef commands–even at Lotteria, the hanwoo beef hamburger cost a dollar more than the premium foreign-sourced burger did and the difference at steakhouses is even more extreme.*

    In conversations with my adult students, I would ask why beef imports were such an issue. Every student who expressed concern cited a fear that hanwoo beef restaurants would substitute** inferior foreign beef for the same prices. 100% of students who cited that fear explained “because that’s what I would do.”

    It’s not always about sex, but it is always about who people see themselves as.

    *One owner of one school I worked at took his staff out for an annual galbi dinner. The posted price for 600 grams of beef was $175,000 won, roughly $180 at the exchange rate of the time.

    **On the production side, the fear of farmers was that expensive importation of beef would depress beef prices enough that Korean farmers would no longer be able to sell domestic beef at prices sufficient to cover production cost. I could understand the problem–raw hanwoo beef at the meat market was up to 6-times more expensive, depending on the cut. (But also well worth the difference in some cases.)

    2
  13. CSK says:

    @Kathy: @Rick DeMent:

    Now I now why straight men beat up gay men they don’t even know.It was always a mystery to me. Thanks.

    6
  14. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Jen:

    Yup stand back and let trump be trump. It will come to a screaming halt when the inevitable polio, TB outbreaks occur.

    I wonder if there are plans afoot to bring back the black death?

    3
  15. just nutha says:

    @Kathy: In Korea, the unlucky number is “4.” Elevator number panels are marked 1, 2, 3, F (for “floor”), 5, 6… Why “floor” became the standard, I never found out. Why 4 is the number is said to be because the spoken word for a version of “4” is homophonic to a Chinese word for “death.”

    1
  16. Flat Earth Luddite says:

    @Jen:
    @Kathy:

    I’ve got a whole rant I could go off on about the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of great inherited wealth and power having no comprehension of the world, but I’ll save that for another rant.

    As I’ve mentioned here before, my maternal grandmother was a polio survivor. She had contracted polio when 17 and pregnant with the oldest of my uncles. She lived in a three-story house in Rainier valley, raised six children, and used crutches for her entire adult life until she finally had to go to a walker in the mid 80s, IIRC. The fact that she also ran card rooms for the Chinese community, and raised her youngest daughter’s child when no one would made me love and appreciate her more.

    When both polio vaccines became available, she made absolutely no bones about the fact that I was going to get both of them. One of my teachers told me that there was some issue with this because of course both back vaccines weren’t needed, but nope I was going to get both.

    As far as I’m concerned, infect that virulent a-hole with multiple doses of live vaccine. I have absolutely no sympathy for him which just proves that Luddite is not the evolved being he strives to be.

    4
  17. just nutha says:

    @CSK: I’ll disagree on this. Violent straight men beat up gay men for the same reason that they beat up straight men or black men or Asian men, or women for that matter. Because they’re violent. The reason you cited is the excuse they give for being violent.

    6
  18. Lucysfootball says:

    @Jen: “There’s nobody who’s been a greater asset to the medical freedom movement than him.”
    If it were just the families of the morons who believe this shit I’d say it was Darwinism, but it affects everyone.
    RFK Jr. might actually be Trump’s worst pick.

    3
  19. CSK says:

    @just nutha:

    But there seems to be a special terror in them that’s evoked by even the sight of a gay stranger. Do they fear something in themselves? Did they once glance at a naked man in a locker room and get hard, so they have to rush out and beat a gay man to death to fight the feeling?

    3
  20. Jen says:

    @Sleeping Dog: As seen in the NYT comments on this article:

    “…well, you’d have to call it the White Death for it to be taken seriously by the incoming administration.”

    This is the dumbest timeline.

    6
  21. MarkedMan says:

    @Rick DeMent: Not to play 5 cent Psychologist, but I gotta wonder whether your guitar player was in denial about his sexuality and overcompensating. Lord knows that even in my prime I was at best just average looking, but over the years I did have unwelcome advances from a small number of women and men. Now, I’m as boringly straight as they come so I think my reaction is typical of a straight guy – I was more uncomfortable turning down the women then the men. I mean, with men there’s no judgement involved – “Sorry, I’m as straight as they come”. But with women, there’s no hiding that judgement is very much involved, “I don’t see you in that way”, is a necessary but inherently cruel statement.

    6
  22. Sleeping Dog says:

    America voted for a dumpster fire — Democrats just need to let it burn itself out

    Have to say that I generally agree with this.

    For the next two years, Democrats have no responsibility to govern. They should focus on politics instead and take a longer view of the country’s best interests. If, for example, House Democrats had allowed Republican dysfunction to shut down the government in September, they almost certainly would have won a House majority in November. A few weeks of furloughed workers and shuttered national parks would have been a small price to pay for an effective check against Donald Trump’s plans for an American autocracy. Democrats should be practicing tough love and allowing Republicans to inflict pain on themselves, even if that also inflicts some pain on the country.

    This isn’t to say they should let Trump permanently wreck America just to teach his voters a lesson — an approach advocated by some angry progressives. If there is an issue that could do irreversible damage to America’s future, then Democrats should be prepared to step in. But, as a general rule, if Republicans can end a crisis just by acting like responsible adults, Democrats should stand by and do nothing at all, for just as long as it takes.

    5
  23. Rick DeMent says:

    @MarkedMan: I speculated just that at times, and I would suppose that there is some truth to that. His austentatious “womanizing” is consistent with some closeted gay men. My friend has a saying, “scratch a homophobe, get a homo”. While that seems an overaly broad marker to me, I suspect some people who do that are just self hating gays at the end of the day.

    Which is sad.

    2
  24. just nutha says:

    @CSK: I’ve never had working gaydar, so I can’t speak to your point. I’ve also known few men creeped out by gayness in the way you describe. I’m an agnostic/unbeliever.

  25. Mister Bluster says:

    @a country lawyer:..I left Viet Nam in one piece.

    I’m glad that you did not come home in a body bag.

    Vietnam War U.S. Military Fatal Casualty Statistics
    National Archives

    3
  26. Gustopher says:

    @just nutha:

    Why 4 is the number is said to be because the spoken word for a version of “4” is homophonic to a Chinese word for “death.”

    They are homophonophobic.

    (I am very pleased to link the threads of conversation started by @Kathy and @Flat Earth Luddite)

    1
  27. Gustopher says:

    @just nutha, @CSK: I take a view based more on diversity. Some men are violent towards minorities because they are violent, others are violent towards gays because they fear being treated like they treat women, some are violent towards gays because they are secretly attracted to men and have been taught that is wrong and it comes out as violence… A rich, interwoven tapestry of terrible motives for terrible behavior.

    I’ve always been more of a “celebrate the differences” kind of guy than a “we’re all the same deep down” kind of guy.

    2
  28. Kathy says:

    I hesitate to link to this piece in The Guardian about why some people did not vote last November, because a lot in it makes me angry. No doubt it will anger some of you as well (fair warning).

    But read this part, and tell me the media have little influence in elections:

    “I felt both candidates fell well short of the presidential standard, and didn’t feel I could cast a vote for either,” said a 47-year-old engineering manager and registered Republican from Texas.

    “VP Harris failed to demonstrate she was ethically or intellectually capable of executing the office, repeatedly failing to detail out her policies and generally running her campaign like a popularity contest – ‘collect enough celebrity endorsements, by paying them, and the masses will elect you,’” he said.

    The irony is that someone thinks that a contest to get more voters to favor you should not be a popularity contest is just too much.

    5
  29. CSK says:

    @Gustopher:

    I’ve never understood the ire toward LGBTQ people. Really, what concern is it of mine? I’m a straight cis woman. Beth is trans. DK is gay. Big deal.

    2
  30. Fortune says:

    @Kathy: Webster’s definition of popularity contest is “a contest or situation in which the person who wins or is most successful is the one who is most popular rather than the one who is most skillful, qualified, etc.” Their example is “The election was just a popularity contest. Voters didn’t really care about the issues.”

  31. Kathy says:

    @CSK:

    I’ve a hard time understanding when those in an oppressed minority show bigotry towards other oppressed minorities.

    1
  32. CSK says:

    @Kathy:

    As do I. Maybe they think they’ll gain the approval of the in-group.

    1
  33. Mister Bluster says: