I Like Where His Head Is, But...

Via Carpe Diem we see that well-known and well-regarded economics professor Steve Landsburg of the University of Rochester is in a scuffle with the president of the university following Prof. Landsburg's defense of Rush Limbaugh's recent rhetoric. 

I score Prof. Landsburg's open salvo a hmm:

Rush Limbaugh is under fire for responding in trademark fashion to the congressional testimony of Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, who wants you to pay for her contraception. If the rest of us are to share in the costs of Ms. Fluke’s sex life, says Rush, we should also share in the benefits, via the magic of online video. For this, Rush is accused of denying Ms. Fluke her due respect.

But while Ms. Fluke herself deserves the same basic respect we owe to any human being, her position — which is what’s at issue here — deserves none whatseover. It deserves only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered. To treat it with respect would be a travesty. I expect there are respectable arguments for subsidizing contraception (though I am skeptical that there are arguments sufficiently respectable to win me over), but Ms. Fluke made no such argument. All she said, in effect, was that she and others want contraception and they don’t want to pay for it.

To his credit, Rush stepped in to provide the requisite mockery. To his far greater credit, he did so with a spot-on analogy...

Someone once said (or should have!) that if you have a winning poker hand don't start playing bridge.  And if you have a winning argument, as Rush did, don't give your opponents an opportunity to change the subject.

Does Prof. Landsburg really think a debate over the relative applicability of "slut" and "prostitute" is more likely to advance the libertarian/free-marketeer cause than a debate over the limits of individual and religious freedom and the merits of subsidizing contraceptive care for a future one-percenter?  Or does he think that people just weren't paying attention until Rush turned up the volume?

I don't think so either, and didn't.  As to the separate question of whether this sort of rhetoric advances the interests of Rush Limbaugh, well, we are talking about him and spelling the name right, yes?  Time will tell!

Finally, as to a spot-on analogy that is far less incendiary, I remain an unrelenting advocate of the "Wake Up And Smell The (Free!) Coffee Act".  That said, when Rush suggested that we should subsidize running shoes as a health measure he was accused of trivializing the Serious Issue of birth control (more serious than obesity?), so maybe I am equally guilty with my caffeine binge.

SEND IN THE CLOWNS:  If the question is, what student activists deserve to be mocked, here is the answer:

Protesting students entered Landsburg’s room at the beginning of his mid-afternoon class.

“They formed a line between him and the class. And he continued to lecture,” said UR spokeswoman Sharon Dickman, who noted a couple of University Security officers were on the scene but didn’t need to take any action.

After about 15 minutes, the protesters left but returned about 45 minutes later for the end of the class, which Landsburg dismissed about five minutes early.

UR student Alykhan Alani, one of the protesters, said the group was not ready to discuss their concerns.

Is this mike live?  Darn!  No, we are not ready for our close-up.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM:  From the newspaper coverage we extract this back-and-forth on the academic freedom issue:

UR President Joel Seligman sharply criticized the professor, Steven Landsburg. Seligman’s statement, which was included in a Wednesday email of college news sent to faculty and staff, said that he is “outraged that any professor would demean a student in this fashion.”

...

Seligman’s statement said that Landsburg has right to express his views, but took him to task for his comments.

“To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in this way is about the most offensive thing a professor can do. We are here to educate, to nurture, to inspire, not to engage in character assassination,” said Seligman.

In an email to the Democrat and Chronicle, Landsburg said that Seligman wants the university to promote the free exchange of ideas, but that Fluke “didn’t even pretend to be interested in debating any of the serious issues raised by the question of when some of us should pick up the tab for others’ expenses.”

Tricky.  Seligman is not threatening any reprisals, but his comments may have a chilling effect.  That may seem like an especially undesirable outcome in the frozen tundra of Rochester, but on the other hand, plenty of people, including plenty of academics, self-chill and self-regulate. 

And to get really lawyerly here, Prof. Landsburg's defense seems to be that Ms. Fluke did not merit a serious response.  Obviously he has the free speech rights accorded any citizen but if his response is not serious why should we accord it any special respect as a serious academic inquiry?  Are professors free to yell "Hey, that might be a fire over there!" in a crowded theater and then claim a special professorial protection?  (And what is "fire", anyway?).

Placing Landsburg on the spectrum which includes Swift's "Modest Proposal" and Cornel West's rap CD is a toughie.

Comments

[Clarice]

Sooo right, but I've gotta dash --the GT University "slut walk" take back the day and night and weekend march is about to begin.

---
Much as I wish he'd been more temperate, I think nothing separated the morons from the sentient voters than his remarks which drew attention to the preposterous Dem move to frame a freedom of religion fight as an effort to ban contraceptives. All the more temperate arguments on this failed to turn the spotlight on that shell game as much as this one did.

[Extraneus]

I think the Prof should read the statement Fluke gave to the faux hearing. (Rush should have done this, too, before commenting on this.)

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/statement-Congress-letterhead-2nd%20hearing.pdf

She never referred to herself, and while she did make the claim that 40% of Georgetown ladies were financially troubled by their bc bills, she only focused on sob stories related to real medical needs for birth control pills.

She told lots of lies in that statement*, but unless she said more than what was in her statement, the sexual stuff was largely an unfair characterization of what she said.

*For example,

Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. Forty percent of female students at Georgetown Law report struggling financially as a result of this policy. One told us of how embarrassed and powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter, learning for the first time that contraception wasn’t covered, and had to walk away because she couldn’t afford it. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception. Just last week, a married female student told me she had to stop using contraception because she couldn’t afford it any longer. Women employed in low wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice.

[Cecil Turner]

Clowns creep me out. Especially when they're acting like Brownshirts.

[rse]

I just want to call attention to Bam's statement to open up 'your hearts' to Derrick Bell. There is a tremendous dispute going on that wants to make feeling and beliefs on par with rational thought based on documentable facts. I took Bo's comments to mean we give too much primacy to logic and not enough to feeling. Bell's work then becomes valid in that how we feel world.

Rethinking that LBJ explosion I linked yesterday. I think that was part of what was going on as well and likely influences BO's behavior in the Oval Office. When you have that much power and deference but your mental frame is based more on emotions and beliefs and someone attempts to make the case from logic and facts, all you hear is their pitch threatens how you view the world. And you are the most powerful man and always entitled to deference.

Anyway I was reading a higher ed report last night that quoted a speech he gave that mentioned making human ability equal. Really able people with lots of experience working in fact based mental worlds know that's impossible.

[Captain Hate]

Anyway I was reading a higher ed report last night that quoted a speech he gave that mentioned making human ability equal. Really able people with lots of experience working in fact based mental worlds know that's impossible.

It should be intuitive that it's impossible. It's pretty disturbing that there's not immediate and universal pushback on this. Maybe that's what we get from tripe like "I'm ok; you're ok".

[Porchlight]

Does Prof. Landsburg really think a debate over the relative applicability of "slut" and "prostitute" is more likely to advance the libertarian/free-marketeer cause than a debate over the limits of individual and religious freedom and the merits of subsidizing contraceptive care for a future one-percenter?

I don't know. Did he say that he thought that? A defense of what Limbaugh did say is not the same thing as an assertion that Limbaugh made the best possible argument. This looks like a bit of a strawman, TM.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Actually, Landsburg did some follow up posts that are better than the one Tom links to, especially the one where (thanks to a commenter) he recognizes that it would have been better to call Ms Fluke a 'contraceptive sponge' for wanting others to pay for her birth control.

At any rate, the reaction to both Rush and Landsburg just validates Ann Coulter's most recent book; it's mob behavior, entirely free of any logical argument.

[boris]

People taking Flook seriously is a bigger problem than the word slut.

Speaking as a women's "spokesperson" she is saying BC is too expensive and the government should mandate either Catholic religous institutions or taxpayers to cover her [peep's] expensive sexual lifestyle choices.

Perhaps the precise definition of slut or prostitute does not exactly fit her stated agenda but it is close enough metaphorically speaking for an analogy, which is what Rush used ... "What does it say about .... it makes her a slut, it makes her a prostitute".

Since appearing in front of an agenda friendly commitee is not exactly the same as an indecent proposal for cash ... Rush is clearly invoking similarity, not making a personal attack ... like "Jane you ingnorant slut".

[boris]

Because if the word "slut" is too provocative and the firestorm heat is too intense ... how is this different from dhimmi ninny cowardice over the Muhammad cartoons?

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

University presidents who live in glass houses, har har;

Dear President Seligman,

I find it curious that you would publicly denounce a member of our faculty for expressing his opinions in the public square of the internet. For comparison, I include below an exchange between my brother (a Pastor and Professor of Islamic Studies at the time) and your office following the honor bestowed to Bill Maher in a headliner invitation to Meliora weekend several years ago. In addition to the things cited in my brother’s letter, Maher is well known for numerous misogynist comments about conservative and religious female public figures. Yet your office categorically refused to publicly distance itself from Maher, claiming “the University does not endorse or disavow points of view”. But you seem all too eager to publicly repudiate the points of view expressed by Professor Landsburg. Put another way, if Rush Limbaugh had made his statements on a UR stage instead of the radio, would your office have refrained from public criticism? After all, he is just an irreverent comedian.

[jimmyk]

Seligman's criticism is off target: Landsburg explicitly said he was criticizing her position, not her as a human being. Is that not a valid distinction? It's one lots of people make about homosexuality--hate the sin, not the sinner. And even if that's too fine a distinction, he distanced himself from the "slut" remark and focused on the "online video" comment, which is clearly not a personal attack on Fluke.

[bgates]

I repeat that the whole kerFlukle shows that there is an intolerable financial burden placed on the boys and girls attending law school and probably undergraduates as well, and the solution is for Congress to immediately withdraw all funding from any tuition-charging institution at which any student claims the expenses of tuition and other fees make it impossible for him or her to obtain contraceptives and/or prophylactics at a rate commensurate with his or her lifestyle.

[SLC]

“Tricky. Seligman is not threatening any reprisals, but his comments may have a chilling effect.”

As a (full) professor in a state university who has served on committees dealing with tenure and promotion at all levels, who has chaired my campus’ P&T committee, I can tell you that there’s nothing tricky about it at all. Seligman has provided encouragement to those on campus who would, through the tenure and promotion process, enforce conformity of thought and analysis: It’s not just through hiring that departments of social science and humanities can become so uniform in these regards. Subjectivity is built into these processes. In itself that is not a bad thing, but it can be abused. Seligman stands as the last point of appeal in the P&T process; for that reason alone, he should be very guarded and chary is sharing his opinions.

The level of sensitivity that Seligman has displayed will be noted at all levels, and when it comes to self-interest, self-preservation more so, you will find no more sensitive beings than untenured or not fully promoted faculty in universities. CAO’s in universities do a great disservice to universities as institutions with egregious displays like that of Seligman.

[SteveM]

Does Prof. Landsburg really think a debate over the relative applicability of "slut" and "prostitute" is more likely to advance the libertarian/free-marketeer cause than a debate over the limits of individual and religious freedom and the merits of subsidizing contraceptive care for a future one-percenter?

Bit of a strawman there. You imply that your question must be answered with "That's absurd", and I don't that that it must be. In any case there is no reason why we cannot advance several different arguments on several different fronts.

[James D.]

I've got a compromise on this whole Fluke thing.

Let's cut sex out of it entirely. She's advocating a policy where the government forces other people to provide her with things she wants, but does not want to pay for. We've got a perfectly good word for people who use force to obtain things they want without paying for them. It's "thief".

After all, "Thief" is gender-neutral and implies nothing about sexual behavior (or the lack thereof), so that ought to ease the minds of all her supporters who are so concerned about women being demeaned or shamed, etc, right?

[Gus]

Correct me where I am inaccurate. Sandra Fluketard isn't LANDSBURGS STUDENT.

Discuss.

[Gus]

My barber had a press conference today.
He said it would be better for Americans if the government provided disinfectants for the barber shears....of course they should be provided FREE, from the shops LIABILITY INSURANCE carrier.

My barber is not a student, but he is 30 years old.

Rush Limbaugh then called my barber an ASS-HAT RAT BASTARD.

Is Landsburg allowed to agree with Rush Limbaugh?

This whole effing story if absurd. Sandra Fluke can go straight to HELL. H/T Maxine Waters.

[Teresa in Fort Worth, TX]

After reading Ms. Fluke's testimony, I can't help but wonder just how many Georgetown Law School co-eds have dysfunctional uteruses (uteri?), because she knows more women with PCOS than I do, and I'm 50 years old.

Does GL attract women with a higher rate of gynecological disorders than other schools?

And where has the women's rights movement gone wrong that a rape victim doesn't report the crime to the police because she doesn't have insurance?

All we hear about from Women's Rights activists is how "strong" and "empowered" women are, but to hear Ms. Fluke tell it, these ladies are helpless little creatures who can't take care of themselves.

They are in LAW SCHOOL, for Heaven's sake - that means that all of them already have an undergraduate degree, which means that they have been living semi-independently for at least 4 years.

Ms. Fluke is 30 years old, and getting ready to graduate law school. She CERTAINLY should know how to take care of herself, but she is telling the world that she still doesn't know the first thing about how the real world works.

And some of the "women" that she mentioned in her testimony seem a little too good to be true - I mean, they hit all of the "victim" highlights. Honestly - a girl doesn't get her ovarian cysts taken care of because her college won't cover birth control pills? Please.

A married student can't get a birth control prescription at her school, so she "does without" because she and her husband "can't afford the cost"? Do they smoke? Get lattes at Starbucks? Have a spiffy data plan on their cell phone? Have cable? Buy beer? Go out to eat? If they can afford even ONE of these things, then they sure as heck can afford birth control.

And just wait - 15 years from now, when all of these same "ladies" finally figure out that their fertile years are behind them and they decide that they want a baby, we will no doubt see Ms. Fluke testifying before Congress again.

After telling you that you have to give these little darlings thousands upon thousands of dollars to prevent them from being punished with a baby, they're going to turn around and demand that you pay for their fertility treatments.

Because - like birth control - having a baby is a "right".

[Sara]

And of course, the whole subject of religious liberty a.k.a. the 1st Amendment, gets lost in the discussion. I have no sympathy for Ms. Fluke. She was there to obfuscate and change the subject and she did her job spectacularly.

It doesn't matter if she was referring to her own needs or advocating for others, the bottom line is that she wants me, you, and everyone to pay for them to be as promiscuous as they please at our expense. If she and/or her friends/supporters want to act like sluts, that is their business and in a free country, they are more than able to be as slutty as they want to be. They do not have the right to ask us to pay for their behavior and they sure shouldn't have the right to ask the Catholic church to condone their slutty behavior by paying to facilitate it.

And where does it end? If the Catholic church has to pay for birth control pills, condoms, diaphragms, etc, then are they also responsible for providing free health treatment for gonorrhea, chlamydia, HIV/AIDS and other venereal diseases, some of which are lifetime sentences? Do they have to pay for the abortions sure to follow?

If you are grown up enough to be sleeping around multiple times a day, week, month, perhaps the money would be better spent in counseling these young women to have a little more self-respect and put a higher premium on themselves than some drunken roll in the hay with some guy who is only interested in them as a roll in the hay. This is not a woman's issue, it is a societal issue. And you do not have to be a woman who led the life of a nun before marriage to understand how destructive total sexual abandonment is over time. It is far from liberating, no matter what anyone on the left says.

However, morality aside, since it is not the issue. The issue is religious liberty and the right of a religious institution to exercise its own conscience in regard to these matters.

I'm not mad at Rush for speaking the truth about Fluke and those she is supposedly speaking for, I am mad at him for allowing the subject to become his remarks rather than the whole reason Fluke was testifying in the first place.

[Porchlight]

Correct me where I am inaccurate. Sandra Fluketard isn't LANDSBURGS STUDENT.

I thought of that too, Gus. So no professor at U of Rochester can say anything negative about any student at any institution, anywhere?

I'm guessing somewhere, somehow, a U of Rochester prof mocked a student somewhere - or defended someone else's mocking of a student, probably on free speech and/or academic freedom grounds - and didn't get chastised for it by Seligman. Hint: probably a conservative and/or Christian student.

[James D.]

After telling you that you have to give these little darlings thousands upon thousands of dollars to prevent them from being punished with a baby, they're going to turn around and demand that you pay for their fertility treatments.

Because - like birth control - having a baby is a "right".

No doubt at all. According to Fluke, sex-change surgery at insurer/taxpayer expense is also a right, according to her writings.

I'd bet that "free" fertility treatments because it's yet another "right" already are listed as a demand in one of her articles, manifestos, etc.

[Chubby]

what a hoot -- the Breitbart guy now being interviewed on Hannity: Soledad was reading from Wikipedia when she was talking about Critical Race Theory. Also the guy from Breitbart, Joel, is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

[Porchlight]

Do they smoke? Get lattes at Starbucks? Have a spiffy data plan on their cell phone? Have cable? Buy beer? Go out to eat? If they can afford even ONE of these things, then they sure as heck can afford birth control.

Please. Everybody knows the government's job is to subsidize lifestyle choices.

You know, like my college-educated friends who have their kids on S-CHIP so they can be stay-at-home-moms and buy all-organic groceries and knit and sew and work on their gardens.

[Cecil Turner]

And to get really lawyerly here, Prof. Landsburg's defense seems to be that Ms. Fluke did not merit a serious response.

Not quite what he said.

But while Ms. Fluke herself deserves the same basic respect we owe to any human being, her position — which is what’s at issue here — deserves none whatseover. It deserves only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered.

And in the spirit of the Prof Bell discussion (and resulting SciFi kick), here's one of my favorite Heinlein quotes, which seems apropos:

However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea -- a practice I shall always follow.

Works for me. Claiming equal time or respect for a stupid idea is, well . . . stupid. And a pointed reductio ad absurdum is both authorized and encouraged.

[Porchlight]

For the "doom" people (my bold):

Poll: 50% now regard Obama’s presidency as a failure

Apart from his monthly averages, and aside from the bin Laden rally period, the last time Obama had approval ratings of 50% or better for even several consecutive days in Gallup Daily tracking was in January 2011. Obama’s sub-50% approval ratings are continuing thus far in March, with his approval rating registering between 43% and 48% in Gallup’s three-day rolling averages.

That half of Americans say Obama’s presidency to date has been a “failure” underscores the challenge the president faces in convincing voters he deserves a second term. The 44% today saying Obama has been a success contrasts with the 64% saying this of Bill Clinton just a few months before his re-election in 1996.

Most Democrats consider Obama’s presidency a success while most Republicans call it a failure. Independents’ views are similar to the national average, with the slight majority calling it a failure.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/153152/Obama-Approval-Averages-February.aspx

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Obviously he has the free speech rights accorded any citizen but if his response is not serious why should we accord it any special respect as a serious academic inquiry?

Because otherwise most academics wouldn't have anything to do during the day/

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Anyway I was reading a higher ed report last night that quoted a speech he gave that mentioned making human ability equal.

My Gods, he's been reading Harrison Bergeron.

[Sara]

The federal government recorded its worst monthly deficit in history in February, according to a preliminary report Wednesday from the Congressional Budget Office that said the deficit in fiscal year 2012 is already more than half a trillion dollars.

[glasater]

Kurt Vonnegut Jr was a fantastic short story writer.

[Ignatz]

--Kurt Vonnegut Jr was a fantastic short story writer.--

Never did much for me but if you say so.
In any event he needs a new biographer at Chaco's wiki link, who came up with this groaner;

Equality is a beloved principle enshrined in America’s constitution in the phrase “All men are created equal,”

[Greg Toombs]

Anyway I was reading a higher ed report last night that quoted a speech he gave that mentioned making human ability equal.

Wouldn't everyone then be "C" students, dooming us all to a life on the dole?