April 29, 2005

HATS OFF TO SATEL AND SOMMERS

Jules Romains’ 1923 comedy “Knock, ou le triomphe de la medicine,” is a satire in the tradition of Molière on the power of doctors to impose upon human credulity. The character of Dr. Knock, contrives, with his long and serious face, scientific double-talk, ominous pauses, and frightening graphs and charts, to convert a group of robust villagers into devoted hypochondriacs. There is, in fact, a movie made in 1933 based on the play and called “Dr. Knock” who is played brilliantly by the great Louis Jouvet.

Of snake oil and snake oil producers there is no end and modern America has its own types. Fortunately, philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers and her co-author Dr. Sally Satel, a psychiatrist, are on the lookout for Dr. Knocks and warn us about them in their smart, straight-shooting new book, “One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance.” (Click HERE for more information.)

The cover of “One Nation Under Therapy” shows an analytic couch covered in red, white, and blue. The inner contradiction expressed in this symbol is explored in the book but requires some elaboration.

Horsefeathers has been keenly mindful of the abuses of psychology and psychiatry in the modern world, especially as these have been co-opted by members of the liberal left to rationalize their values and the policies derived from them. On the many occasions that we have touched on these abuses we have referred to them as manifestations of the “Therapeutic Culture.” Ms. Sommers and Dr. Satel have their own name for the same phenomena—“Therapism.”

According to Ms. Sommers, “Therapism is a philosophy, a way of life, that views humans as centers of fragility. It believes that vast segments of the population under duress are in need of experts—such as self-esteem educators, traumatologists, crisis counselors—to take them through the vicissitudes of everyday life.”

Sommers and Satel are not against people who have problems and seek professional help for them. What they object to is imposing the therapeutic mentality, uninvited, on others.

Horsefeathers, with its combined total of ninety years of practicing and teaching psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, is happy to concur with much of Sommers’ and Satel’s good sense and criticism of the mischievous and misguided uses to which psychiatry and psychology are put by modern ideologues and cultural exploiters.

Psychotherapy (and psychoanalysis, a more intensive and extensive form of psychotherapy) is, in many ways, like surgery. 1) It is more of an art than a science, although both are rooted in empirical science. 2) The quality of the treatment is based on the experience and skill of the treater. (When you want that tumor removed you want the guy who has done it a zillion times before. Whereas it doesn’t much matter who prescribes the antibiotic for your bronchitis.) 3) Where and by whom the surgeon or the psychotherapist was trained matters greatly in the outcome of the treatment. 4) It is very difficult to do research in both surgery and psychotherapy because you cannot randomize patients (you must take whatever patient comes along), there is much variation from patient to patient, and the numbers one deals with are low compared to outcome studies of medicines where the numbers of patients can be in the thousands.

Contrary to the philosophy of “therapism” as described in “One Nation Under Therapy,” the best practitioners would say that psychotherapy is and should be the treatment of last resort. Why? Because it is so labor intensive, expensive, and difficult for the patient. (If the patient is not experiencing tolerable but significant quantities of emotional pain caused by the intervention of the psychotherapist then the therapist is not doing what he is being paid to do—make the patient aware of his or her conflicts.) Then again the success rate is not great. Depending on the degree of pathology, the skill and experience of the therapist, the motivation of the patient, and a little bit of luck, studies show on average that one third of patients are not helped, one third of patients get some help, and one third are helped a great deal.
As in surgery, there can be spectacular successes and many failures—ask your friends who’ve had hip or knee surgery.

Psychotherapy or psychoanalysis should be prescribed only if the patient has chronic symptoms that interfere with the patient in a significant way—they can’t work, can’t relate to people, can’t get relief from anxiety or depression using any of the multitude of self-help remedies that are used in everyday life. And even under the circumstances just described there are those who are not motivated to seek psychotherapy, even if offered at no charge. Psychotherapy will not be effective unless the patient really wants to work at it, but this is no different from any other form of treatment—if the patient does not collaborate with the doctor the treatment doesn’t work.

Contrary to what the “therapism” counselors believe, the human mind is extremely resilient—or has been until the new therapeutic culture started its attempts at psychological engineering of the minds of our schoolchildren. It takes a great deal to overwhelm the human mind. Some military psychiatrists during the Second World War have estimated the breaking point to be 200-240 combat days.

But everyday life is different and clinical observation of adults suggests two consistent facts—there is no single situation that is invariably “traumatic”—illness, accident, death of a relative, job loss, divorce, marriage, childbirth. There is no experience in life that invariably overwhelms the mind. Furthermore, clinicians usually find that those who become overwhelmed by an illness, or accident, or death of a loved one, etc., have been harboring some secret or not so secret psychological problem which makes them vulnerable to a “traumatic” trigger event.

The normal resilient mind has many ways of dealing with the frustrations, disappointments, challenges, losses—“traumas”—of life.They are, so to speak, the psychotherapy of everyday life. They are free, generally accessible, remarkably effective as folk medicine goes, and have stood the test of time. These techniques utilize some of the same techniques used by the so-called experts of the therapeutic community. They are based on four mental tendencies: emotional ventilation through talking; forgetting/avoidance/distancing; distraction/keeping busy; self-comforting/regression/eating/ intoxication.

As anyone who has lived for more than a few minutes knows, life is full of pain. And when we encounter it we automatically or intuitively find one or any combination of the above methods of pain mitigation. (Churchill self-treated his depressions—the Black Dog, he called them—by endless talking, writing, building walls on his estate, oil painting, and, of course, drinking Pol Roger 1928.) And what is best about this array of self “treating” methods is that they are self-regulating; they do not require a therapeutic establishment to find the right dose of pain relief.

Satel and Sommers deserve a special vote of thanks for making a valiant attempt to save the children—especially the boys. The latter have been special targets (as Sommers in another book [click HERE] has demonstrated) of the feminist/therapism movement. The main aim of this movement is to take aggression and competiton out of the school environment and to replace them with self-esteem-building programs that lack any degree of authenticity.

Most mothers who have tried to suppress their children’s murderous impulses by disallowing toy guns find that it is useless. Sooner or later they see their little boys making guns out of their forefingers and their imagination. It seems that it is difficult for the therapeutic culture to accept that life cannot be pain-free and that aggression and competitiveness are part of human nature and cannot be amputated. It is hard for some feminists to accept the notion that rough-and-tumble play is hard-wired in children—a little more in boys than girls probably—and that even if you take away dodgeball and replace it with knitting you will not take the aggression out of the boy.

For centuries educators, when they were still mostly men, knew that the best way of dealing with the competitive spirit was to channel it and not try to supress it. So sports were built in to the school program. They also knew that competition entailed winners and losers and that becoming a winner resulted in pride and a heightened sense of accomplishment and self-esteem. What about the poor little losers? Well, children have much to learn from losing. They can be taught how to be good losers, how to use losing as a motivator for greater achievement, and how not to give up when you want to achieve something.

One of the things that school is about is allowing children to experience failure in a non-catastrophic environment. School is a place to experience failure and periods of low self-esteem in order to learn how to cope with them in the future with the help of teachers, parents, and the models of their older sibs and classmates. Competition doesn’t weaken children; it strengthens them. And robbing them of these opportunities only interferes with this process.

In the last few years the American people have been weighed and found overweight and psychologically flabby; it’s time for them and their kids to get off the analytic couch and start pumping iron.

April 26, 2005

IS THERE A SIZABLE GAY SAUDI CONSTITUENCY?

Perhaps President Bush should take time away from kissing and strolling hand in hand with Saudi oil ticks like Abdullah, and listen to other Saudis like Ali-Al Ahmed:

"...The president said in his State of the Union speech that he intends to address the conditions in the Middle East that foster terrorism. He need look no further than Saudi society, which is the single greatest supplier of global terrorists. While its religious classes produce the fatwas that justify hatred of Christians, Jews and Shiites, its arm-chair jihadis channel rivers of petrodollars into the global holy war..."
See the rest here.

April 21, 2005

PASSOVER 1943, WARSAW: LEST WE FORGET

Pharoahs rise up in every generation. In our age, the Hitlers and Stalins are succeeded by the Pol Pots and Saddam Husseins. They all count on our collective forgetfulness; our wish to believe that all differences can be negotiated and resolved, that Man is essentially good. Human nature, striving to transcend itself, yearns for an end to conflict. Ideologies promise it. Whole professions devote themselves to "conflict resolution", as if human nature could ever be rid of conflict. The high-minded among us forswear violence in the name of 'peace'. Pacifists always claim the moral high ground. They believe destructiveness arises solely from frustration, and that when all human needs are adequately addressed, peace will reign. How quickly we forget Homo Homini Lupus, "Man is a wolf to man". We read the great thinkers from Machiavelli, to Hobbes, to Shakespeare to Burke to Johnson, to Freud, to Churchill and still we need reminders. They all recognized that utopian schemes for human improvement founder on the rock of human nature. Do not be fooled by wishful thinking, they all taught; to avoid war, prepare for it. When the terrorized Jews of the Warsaw ghetto learned of their likely fate, most didn't believe it. They chose to deny what their own eyes and ears were telling them.

"The news was brought by three persons who were to be put to death in Chelmno and who had miraculously escaped. Their story showed that during November and December 1940, approximately 40,000 Jews from Lodz, another 40,000 from Pomerania and towns from other regions incorporated into the Reich, and also a few hundred Gypsies from Bessarabia had died in the Chelmno gas chambers. They had been murdered by the Germans in the now well-known vile manner. The victims were told they were being taken for work and ordered to take along hand-luggage. Upon their arrival at the Chelmno Palace they were stripped of all their clothes and everyone was given a towel and soap, supposedly for the bathing that was to follow. All appearances were kept up to the very last minute. The victims were led into hermetically closed trucks containing gas chambers. The gas was forced into the chambers by the truck engines. Afterwards, in a clearing in the woods in the vicinity of Chelmno, Jewish grave-diggers unloaded the corpses from the trucks and buried them. The woods were surrounded by 200 SS-men. A certain SS-man called Bykowiec was in charge of the procedure. Inspections by SS and SA generals occurred several times..."

Yet even as the world outside the ghetto walls ignored the ongoing terror and slaughter of European Jewry, within the ghetto a few brave, ill equipped and outnumbered young people decided to rise against the Nazi hordes. It was the time of Passover, 1943. They confronted reality. They looked straight into the heart of darkness facing them, and decided the only good Nazi was a dead one, then proceeded to kill as many as possible, striking a blow that would resonate through history. Here is a first hand account of the courageous, doomed Warsaw ghetto uprising. The Nazis launched an all out assault to terrorize the remaining few resistors, "...But no, they did not scare us and we were not taken by surprise. We were only awaiting an opportune moment. Such a moment presently arrived. The Germans chose the intersection at Mila and Zamenhofa Streets for their bivouac area, and battle groups barricaded at the four corners of the street opened concentric fire on them. Strange projectiles began exploding everywhere (the hand grenades of our own make), the lone machine-gun sent shots through the air now and then (ammunition had to be conserved carefully), rifles started firing a bit farther away. Such was the beginning.

The Germans attempted a retreat, but their path was cut. German dead soon littered the street. The remainder tried to find cover in the neighbouring stores and house entrances, but this shelter proved insufficient. The "glorious" SS, therefore, called tanks into action under the cover of which the remaining men of two companies were to commence a "victorious" retreat. But even the tanks seemed to be affected by the Germans' bad luck. The first was burned out by one of our incendiary bottles, the rest did not approach our positions. The fate of the Germans caught in the Mita Street-Zamenhofa Street trap was settled. Not a single German left this area alive..."

Sixty-two years later, as another Passover arrives let us heed the request of Marek Edelman at the end of his survivor's account of the ghetto uprising:
"...On May 10th, 1943, the first period of our bloody history, the history of the Warsaw Jews, came to an end. The site where the buildings of the ghetto had once stood became a ragged heap of rubble reaching three storeys high.

Those who were killed in action had done their duty to the end, to the last drop of blood that soaked into the pavements of the Warsaw ghetto.

We, who did not perish, leave it up to you to keep the memory of them alive--forever..."

See the full account here.

April 20, 2005

CHOMSKY'S WORLD

In a more self-confident America, Noam Chomsky would be a shunned traitor rather than a welcome speaker at our elite universities. Horsefeathers doesn't recall Tokyo Rose being invited during World War II to speak to undergraduates about Western oppression of the Asian 'other'.

Here is a report from the University of Washington about the loathsome anti-semite, Noam Chomsky's appearance on campus as an honored guest speaker. "...Chomsky's two pet hatreds -- the United States and Israel --have become linked in Europe -- where his popularity is greatest -- and in those scattered American outposts of European sentiment and ideology: our universities...".
See the rest here.

April 16, 2005

JANE FONDA'S FRIENDS

        According to the standard post-modern liberal narrative, the Vietnam war represented the deserved triumph of freedom loving, indigenous Vietnamese over American imperialism. Winston Churchill's maxim that history is written by the victors has proved accurate--except the history of Vietnam is being written, not by the North Vietnamese victors, but by their academic supporters in Western universities. These Amerika hating, UN loving utopians and supporters of Ho Chi Minh's totalitarianism, now are tenured Ivy league teachers of our younger generation. They portray Ho's victory as the triumph of a noble liberation movement, and our efforts to oppose the spread of Communist totalitarianism as misguided cold war belligerence. Here are some of the fruits of that "victory" by Jane Fonda's friends--all these years later. Note the role of the UN in assisting this ongoing ethnic cleansing.

"...After the atrocious response to last Easter's peaceful prayer vigil by the Montagnards in which hundreds were murdered, brutally beaten, and sent to Vietnam's hidden gulags, a very few legitimate refugees beat the odds and escaped to Cambodia. Even with the Berlin Wall, a few Germans made it out of communist East Germany to freedom in the West; however, many more were either killed or caught and imprisoned. The same goes with the Montagnard Christians. Reports eked out of the Central Highlands that many more were caught; women were raped, a large number killed, and the few who survived were imprisoned, or "disappeared..." See the rest here.

THE NEW YORK TIMES PROMISES: WE'LL TRY HARDER

Horsefeathers knows its readers will breathe a sigh of relief. The Times has identified its most important problem and promised to address it. In a letter to readers, editor Gail Collins offers a mea culpa, and assures us that she and her fellow editors are trying really hard to correct their "diversity" problem.

"...Diversity should come in diverse packages. As many of you have pointed out, we've done a better job of finding columnists with a range of interests and political opinions than with a range of genders, ethnicities or even hometowns..."

Curious minds want to know: What would that greater "range of genders" encompass?

April 12, 2005

Madrassa On Morningside Heights (cont.)

It seems fitting that the NYTimes, with its long history of coldness to Jews, should have been exposed as complicit in the recent Columbia whitewash of its Jew hating, America hating Middle Eastern Languages and Culture dept. Both share the same left utopian loathing of America and its ally, Israel. However, the blogosphere now permits other voices to be heard. The Times sought in the days following release of the Columbia report to exclude the voices of the students, the victims of Jew hatred, while glamorizing the haters. Thanks to the new media, especially the blogosphere, this effort has failed. Here are two important assessments not to be found in the NYTimes, here and here.

April 09, 2005

HARVARD FACULTY DOING WHAT IT DOES BEST THESE DAYS: SHOVELING HORSE MANURE

In what seems to Horsefeathers like a smooth transition from the academic to the real world, a Harvard Prof. shows that shoveling horse manure is not confined to the classroom. And we thought Lawrence Summers only had to deal with intellectual horse manure!

Purloined poop lands Harvard prof in doo-doo
By Thomas Caywood
Boston Herald, 4-6-2005

An Ivy League economics professor, of all people, should know that a market economy is based on the principal of paying for goods and services.

But Martin Weitzman, Harvard University's Ernest E. Monrad Professor of Economics, allegedly got caught in the act of swiping a truckload of horse manure Friday, police said.

``You'd think he'd know better,'' Rockport horse farmer Charlie Lane said.

``We had to go up there and put a lock on the gate. He was in there when my stable manager got there,'' Lane said.

The stable manager, Phillip Casey, penned Weitzman's truck in and called the cops.

``He offered $20 to let him go,'' Lane said. ``Phillip said no, and he offered $40. Phillip still said no.''

Weitzman, 63, of Gloucester, is charged with larceny under $250, trespassing with a motor vehicle and malicious destruction of property under $250 for tearing up some land with his tires, police said.

He didn't return a call to his office.

April 07, 2005

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ELEANORA FAGAN

        On this date, April 7, 1915, the greatest female jazz vocalist who ever lived was born. The child of a 13 yr. old prostitute and a 15 yr. old guitarist, who quickly abandoned her, she left her own budding career as a teen aged hooker, took the name, 'Billie Holiday' and lived a brief 44 years, before succumbing to drugs and alcohol. Her unique style of singing slightly behind the beat, of finding unpredictable notes to sing, while maintaining the clarity of melodic line (try singing along with her, you'll quickly be lost), but finally, the intensity and genuineness of the emotion she conveyed, has never been equalled. Every lighthearted tin pan alley ditty she sang was transmuted into near Sophoclean tragedy, by the weight of her sadness and empathy for the human condition. Horsefeathers remembers seeing her at the Apollo Theater near the end of her life, her voice gravelly and gasping, and heartbreaking; he knew he was witness to genius. It was horrifyingly thrilling. Was it the actress, Jeanne Moreau who said that Billie could convey more emotion in 3 minutes than most actresses in 3 hours? The closest anyone has come, in our experience, was Janis Joplin, in a performance at Hunter College auditorium in New York, when the scary bone-chilling intensity of the performance made us think 'this woman is doomed': no one could express that intensity, even fueled by ample supplies of Southern Comfort, and expect to survive long.
        For us, Billie's most satisfying performances are the ones in which her doomed tragic awareness is tempered by the exuberant loving musical connection with saxophonist, 'Prez', Lester Young (who dubbed her, in return, 'Lady Day'). This was the most exquisite erotic musicianship ever set down in recordings. Listening now to A Sailboat In The Moonlight, or Says My Heart,("Oh you fool, that was love says my heart") encourages one to an almost utopian conviction that Love will prevail over the forces of darkness--and if it doesn't it will have a helluva good time before it succumbs. Happy birthday Eleanora!

        For anyone who might despair over the debased quality of a culture that grants celebrity to gangsta rappers and hip-hop 'artists', Billie Holiday's music is being celebrated non-stop for a week here.

April 04, 2005

WHERE ALL THE KIDS ARE ABOVE AVERAGE...

Guest blogger Rita Kramer, author of “Ed School Follies, writes:

”If a skeptical observer of the contemporary school wars had set out to write a parody of the current state of affairs in America’s classrooms, he (or me) could have done no better than the article that appears on page 31 of the Metro section of yesterday (Sunday’s) New York Times. CLICK [HERE]

The article is headed THE SECREGATED CLASSROOMS OF A PROUDLY DIVERSE SCHOOL, with the subhead “Dividing by Ability Spurs Racial Tension.” Note the buzz words: “segregated” (which implies official separation), “diverse” (which in edspeak has replaced every other word synonymous with “good” or “valuable”) and “racial tension” (which signals that something has gone terribly wrong).

Now what it is that has upset the diversity applecart and brought racial tension to formerly idyllic Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, is the fact that, although blacks outnumber whites in the school population, whites outnumber blacks in advanced classes. Now what could possibly explain this unacceptable state of affairs? Why, nothing other than “racial bias.” Discrimination, in this case, as elsewhere in the education universe in the U.S. today, is what results from “the practice of dividing students into ability groups.”

What the article refers to as “the racial gap” is causing school officials “to take a hard look at the leveling system and decide how to strike a balance between their two main goals—celebrating diversity and pushing academic achievement.” It does not seem to occur to the district officials—and certainly not to the New York Times reporter—that these two goals may simply not be compatible. One has to do with the schools’ traditional functions of teaching and learning, the other with the schools’ redefinition as agencies of social change. It is no longer enough that all students be given equal opportunities to use their individual abilities; now all students have to have equal outcomes. Anything less is evidence of what one of the student protestors calls “contemporary segregation.” At a student assembly held to “publicly confront administrators,” the principal, in true Larry Summers mode, apologized for saying “anything that might have been construed as insensitive.” And when a student grabbed the microphone and said that “all it took was hard work to move up,” a near-riot ensued.

And what has been the result of the confrontation? “Student leaders and administrators are now discussing ways to narrow the so-called achievement gap; like granting students more say in which level they are in.” While this may strike some as right out of “Through the Looking Glass,” the New York Times reporter is not one of them. According to the Timesman, “The debate over leveling here boils down to fairness. Is it fair just to ensure equal access to upper level classes? Or does fairness go farther than that and require administrators to truly level the playing field so that the racial makeup of upper classes better resembles the racial makeup of the school?”

This is truly breathtaking. Class standing has to be fair. Nothing to do with levels of ability or effort. Let’s just make sure—in the interest of being fair to everyone—that the advanced classes aren’t made up according to demonstrated ability but are open to everyone who would like to be in them. And that they are made up of the same proportion of blacks and whites as the entire school.
The next step, of course, is to make sure that in the interests of fairness the advanced class work is not too difficult for anyone in the diverse class. That would be unfair. So the next step is to water down the curriculum so that no one is discriminated against because the work is too hard. Which leaves us with the question of where the next generation of scholars and innovators will come from? And who will be left who knows the difference?

April 03, 2005

PROFILE IN COURAGE: AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Ayaan Hirsi Ali poses a challenge to all who enjoy the post-Enlightenment freedoms of the West: will we defend those values or have we become so spoiled and decadent that we will meekly capitulate to those who wish to destroy us? In a passage describing her early 'education' Hirsi Ali, offers a taste of what's in store for the rest of us under Sharia law.

"...When Hirsi Ali was 16, an Iranian-trained Shiite fundamentalist arrived to teach at the previously Anglophile Muslim Girls' Secondary School in Nairobi. The girls had been reading ''Little Women'' and Mark Twain and Dickens. That changed. Sister Aziza, as she was called, wore a full Muslim wrap and gloves. She was so pale, graceful and charismatic that Hirsi Ali's eyes still widen when she speaks of her. In the tender way of an elder sister, Aziza began questioning the girls about their Muslim observance. A Muslim prayed five times a day, she told them, and anyone who did not was not a Muslim. A Muslim did not wear shorts and T-shirts, even to sports class. The teacher took them to eat sweets and read magazines at the Iranian Embassy -- the East African equivalent of being wined and dined. ''Gradually we were covering ourselves,'' Hirsi Ali remembers. ''We were not taking part in sports, we were not laughing anymore, we were not visiting each other anymore. We were praying five times a day. We were reading the Koran. And suddenly we hated Israel with a passion. We didn't even know where Israel was. I was 16, and I had never seen an Israeli, but we hated them because it was 'Muslim' to hate them...''

See the extraordinary profile in courage here.

April 02, 2005

TWENTY FOUR HOURS UNTIL THE WORLD BEGINS AGAIN: PLAY BALL!

        Horsefeathers writes in the midst of a howling winter storm--in April! Rain and hail are splattering off the roof. His dog is cowering under the couch as if nature were preparing an even more terrible blow. World news is full of the wailing of mourners. And yet, and yet....tomorrow hope returns, life begins again, BASEBALL IS BACK!
        Let us forget for a moment the failures of our once great educational institutions and turn for instruction to the timeless wisdom of The Ol' Perfesser, that great deconstructor of cant, the late Casey Stengel. We recall with a smile, Warren Spahn's comment about the man who managed him for the last place Boston Braves and again, more than a decade later for the Yankees: "I knew Casey before and after he was a genius." Still, we'll stick with 'genius'. If a neutron bomb were to destroy our elite universities tomorrow, on Opening Day, could we live with the loss of instruction from the Judith Butlers and Hamid Dabashis? Indeed we could; there is more practical wisdom to be found in Stengel's observations than in all the post colonial, gender studies depts. at Columbia, Harvard, Stanford and Michigan. Take it away, Casey.

Stengel on the relationship between the sexes: "Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in."

Casey's view of end-of-life decisions, as expressed to his barber after a bitter defeat: "Don't cut my throat, I may want to do that later myself."

Casey on economic justice: "It's high time something was done for the pitchers. They put up the stands and take down fences to make more home runs and plague the pitchers. Let them revive the spitter and help the pitchers make a living."

Casey on elitist intellectual condescension: "They say Yogi Berra is funny. Well, he has a lovely wife and family, a beautiful home, money in the bank and he plays golf with millionaires. What's funny about that?"

Casey- the baseball manager as gov't bureaucrat: "All right, everybody line up alphabetically according to your height."

Casey's advice to aspiring managers: KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) "You got to get twenty-seven outs to win."

Casey on youth and age: "When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out." Further thoughts on aging: "They told me my services were no longer desired because they wanted to put in a youth program...I'll never make the mistake of being seventy again."

Casey's reality principle: The Yankees don't pay me to win every day, just two out of three."

Casey on our Age of Narcissism: "They got a lot of kids now whose uniforms are so tight, especially the pants, that they cannot bend over to pick up ground balls. And they don't want to bend over in television games because in that way there is no way their face can get on the camera."

Casey's vigorous response to a letter from a soldier telling Casey how he should manage the Yankees--take note Lawrence Summers!: "If you're so smart, let's see you get out of the Army."

Casey on why it's not always advisable to moralize: "They say some of my stars drink whiskey. But I have found that the ones who drink milkshakes don't win many ball games."

Casey the legal scholar on circumstantial evidence:"I don't know if he throws a spitball but he sure spits on the ball."

Casey on friendship: "It's wonderful to meet so many friends that I didn't used to like."

Casey the Clausewitz of baseball: "I don't like them fellas who drive in two runs and let in three." and "Most games are lost, not won."

Above all, there is Casey the realist, the rare human being who knows his own strengths and limitations and is prepared to live happily with both. Here is that Stengel, clear eyed about himself and others:

"I broke in with four hits and the writers promptly declared they had seen the new Ty Cobb. It took me only a few days to correct that impression."

"I was not successful as a ball player, as it was a game of skill."

"Managing is getting paid for home runs someone else hits."

"I feel greatly honored to have a ballpark named after me, especially since I've been thrown out of so many."

"The secret of managing is to keep the 14 guys who hate you away from the 15 guys who are undecided."

I got players with bad watches - they can't tell midnight from noon."

And finally, Casey the psychological philosopher gives advice that could be especially useful to contemporary Liberals:

"All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won't succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy."

Play ball!

April 01, 2005

ALL TOGETHER NOW, 'THE REPUBLICANS LIED'!

        In a vindication of the Kerry campaign's charges of Republican lying, a criminal investigation of the Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger's theft and destruction of classified documents revealed that "On Sept. 2, 2003... Berger put a copy of the Clarke report in his suit jacket..He did not put it in his socks or underwear, as was alleged by some Republicans last summer. On Oct. 2, 2003, he again spent hours at the archives and took four more versions of the document. Back in his office, he studied them in detail, realized they were largely identical, and took the scissors to three of the copies, the associate said..."
See the full story here.

LAWRENCE SUMMERS: THE NEVER ENDING APOLOGY

        Horsefeathers attended a talk last night by Harvard Pres. Lawrence Summers to New York area alumni. The evening was almost rescued by the superb canapes and drinks in the hour preceding the talk. Unfortunately the cocktail hour ended and President Summers began speaking. Rather than presenting a robust critique of the intellectual thugs who are out to destroy him, he assumed the defensive position he has lately taken. There was endless blather about the new initiatives of Harvard and its responsibility to address all the unfairnesses of life. The most obvious injustice, naturally, is the existence of differences between the sexes. In the question period, Summers listened to the remarks of a deeply conncerned alumnus, deploring the failure of Harvard to achieve gender equality as measured by numbers of women in the sciences and math. Would Summers, he inquired, want his 14 yr. old twin daughters, to go to such a school? Instead of swatting aside the ridiculous P.C. cant, he replied as if women at Harvard were in the condition of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban. He promised 'results' when replying to the demand for equality in the sciences and math. Would he specify a numerical goal? No, but he did promise to report back on a yearly basis so everyone would know how much 'progress' had been made.
        Finally, as the question period was drawing to a close, two women succinctly dispelled the cloud of unknowing that was enveloping the room. One, a mathematician, averred that she would not want to work in a Math Dept. that had achieved numerical gender equality as per Summers, since it would have to achieve that goal by lowering standards. The second, eloquently pointed out that for all Summers's genuflections at the shrine of diversity, there was almost no intellectual diversity on campuses like Harvard's, where radical leftists dominate the faculty, and conservatives are both outnumbered and unwelcome. Somehow Horsefeathers doubts we'll be hearing loud calls from those quarters for affirmative action for conservatives.

        In his latest defense (see the article here) of Summers, Alan Dershowitz writes:
"...If Summers now begins to “temper words,” as he told the Faculty of Arts and Sciences he would do, Harvard will become a less interesting place.
        Many of the same people who correctly insist on greater “diversity” based on gender, race and ethnicity seek homogeneity of viewpoints. They want more colleagues who share their ideologically fixed positions. The last thing they want is diversity of viewpoint, especially on issues of gender, race and politics..."

        Regrettably, it looks like Harvard will indeed become a less interesting place. Certainly Larry Summers is becoming a less interesting, less courageous and bold President.

Madrassa on Morningside Heights (cont.)

Columbia's report on the teaching methods of its Israel and America hating Dept. of Middle Eastern Languages and Culture is an appalling whitewash. The authors of this self flattering account whereby the perpetrators of lies and hatred are turned into victims whose academic freedom needs defending, should replace Winston Smith at the Ministry of Truth. They're especially adept at utilizing the Memory Hole to make unwanted facts disappear. Fortunately the blogosphere has not signed on with the NYTimes's agreement to a media cover up.

Charles Johnson has the full text of the David Project's response to Columbia's self-exculpating whitewash. Here is the crucial point.:

“...Most importantly, the Dirks Committee obfuscates the main issue: the teaching of lies and propaganda by Arabist professors who so demonize Israel that defenders of the Jewish state find themselves in a hostile environment in their classes.

“The report obfuscates by referring to incidents of biased, dishonest teaching in pedagogical and psychological terms. It classes them as ‘rhetorically combative’ methods or as expressions of ‘uncongenial views’ that — and the issue is reduced to this — make some students ‘uncomfortable.’ But the committee never considers the possibility that these ‘teachings’ are lies and propaganda. When Professor Massad teaches that the word ‘Zion’ means ‘penis’ and therefore Zionism is a macho movement, this is not an uncongenial view, but a lie. When at Columbia it is taught that the Jews are Nazis and the Palestinians are the new Jews, and that the Jews slaughtered Arabs in Jenin, these are not ‘rhetorically combative’ modes of teaching; they are blood libels, anti-Semitic provocations, deceptions, and Arabist propaganda..."

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