Bored, are we? OK, I'll add some jolt to your cola...

From: Wade Riddick (riddick@MAIL.LA.UTEXAS.EDU)
Date: Sat Aug 11 2001 - 19:09:41 EDT


You know, if a ban on cloning means that Katherine Harris can't register to
vote in two different counties at the same time, I think I'd vote for that.

Oops. How impertinent of me. I forgot I don't have the right to vote anymore.

Um, other things to wake you up...

If there was any doubt left in your minds about the president, it should
have been erased this week when he left the air-conditioned halls of
Washington for a vacation in the 110 degree comfort of Crawford, Texas.

Yes, George Bush is Satan.

On that non-partisan note...

I went to the ABA last weekend and asked the chief legal counsel for the
Bush campaign in Florida what he would think if Judge Ito had dismissed the
charges against OJ Simpson and Mrs. Ito later popped up on OJ's payroll.

I think it's the first time I've ever seen a silent Republican outside of
captivity.

He then got up and proceeded to denounce all of the "lies" spread about the
Florida election and the state's voting problems - to the amusement of
everyone in the room, liberal and conservative lawyers alike (including
some Cubans).

This was a strategic error on his part because the attorney from the NAACP
sitting right next to him on the panel then began to read out a long list
of her class-action clients and what had been done to each of them when
they tried to vote.

After I asked my question about the ethics of judicial families getting
jobs from the litigants, I sat back down. This Jewish judge from
Washington whose wardrobe was about four digits more expensive than mine
leans over and says, "That ain't the half of it. When I lived in Florida,
Harris kept me from voting on almost a dozen occasions." He then begins to
rant in one ear while the crazy Republican denier on the panel is ranting
in the other.

At that point, a federal judge from Pennsylvania stood up, lambasted the
Bush campaign official for his repeated references to the NAACP lawyer as
"young lady" and asked if his opinion about the inability of Florida's
judiciary to address voting problems in Florida meant that the federal
district judges were A) incompetent or B) corrupt.

Boy, and I thought my question had been tough.

It didn't get much better from there.

And, of course, while we're all sitting there discussing this, the papers
are running forensic analyses of the Secretary of State's computer systems
which show Harris had lied about Republican party operatives using her
office equipment for partisan purposes and show that she planned to reject
the absentee ballots anyway whether they arrived before or after the State
Supreme Court's deadline. She had a speech prepare for either eventuality.

Of course, you probably haven't heard of any of this because of the
incredible Democratic tilt in the media these days - a tilt so severe it
prompted the new head of CNN to hold a meeting with Republicans in
Washington so he could find out what CNN could do to attract more
conservative viewers.

I guess I won't be watching my old employer CNN anymore. (It's OK. They
didn't pay their interns peanuts and the sex was awful.)

Let's see, another panel in Chicago on 11th Amendment state sovereign
immunity went so far as to conclude that the president had been picked by
five Supreme Court justices and that all nine of the justices had voted in
_Bush v. Gore_ inconsistently with their past positions.

More Supreme Court craziness:

I was right about how their pursuit of state's rights had screwed up
patents and copyrights. If you work for the state (and there's no
corresponding *state* law or policy to inhibit you) you can run off all the
copies of books you want to for your class and give them to your students
without paying the rights holder. There might be some question as to
whether you can be sued as an agent of the state, but one patent attorney
relayed to the audience that he'd already heard from one university's legal
department that they were running off his and other people's papers with
impunity since the decision back in - '98 was it?

I had thought this list would seize upon cloning and stem cell issues since
reproductive law was one of the few secular issues Percy mentioned in his
fiction.

Whatever side of the debate you're on, I think you'll find it hypocritical
of Bush to prohibit the creation for new stem cell lines from fertilized
eggs because that would destroy embryos but he'll be more than happy to
keep permitting infertile couples to do just that in test tubes (though, of
course, none of these cells have amniotic sacs, which begs the question in
the first place).

The panel on genetics law disturbed me the most. They had a scientist who
detailed all of the problems associated with assigning ownership on certain
genes and also explained how people had been hard at work doing genetic
engineering and cross-species transplants anyway for tens of thousands of
years. He listed all the reasons why the ban on cloning wouldn't work and
why he thought it was all irrelevant to begin with. Science will soon be
able to coax your cells into becoming an embryonic stem cell or anything
else.

None of the laws made any sense to him and he thought Congress was just
ganging up on a bunch of easy-to-demonize scientists for political gain.
(Which reminds me of a piece I recently read about the lack of science
popularizers like Carl Sagan and how this had adversely affected the
ability of science to speak with authority in political debate and make
claims of legitimacy).

This discussion brought up a very real and thorny political problem.

Nowhere in the constitution does it say the government has a right to
regulate what you do with your genes or what you and other parties can
decide to do - issues of reproduction aside. What if I want to sell my
cells to create a monoclonal antibody to fight cancer? Does that mean my
brother can't sell his copies of the same gene if he's got it too?

Government can compel you to show up and fight in a war, can issue a
warrant for DNA evidence, but can it exercise authority over derivative
works you produce with it? A judge can force you to be a responsible
parent... but can a judge make the decision about whether you can become a
parent in the first place?

If the government decides to pass laws regulating this type of behavior,
it's not clear the courts will uphold it - and if they do, what the hell
else will the government be able to get away with? The government can
mandate a blood test for a marriage, but it can't tell the man and the
woman they can't have sex or children - yet.

And if the government can regulate what you do with your genes, does that
mean that a child will be able to sue a parent if he contracts a genetic
disease or is born with less than desirable characteristics?

Some of the reactions to this admittedly complex morass are reminiscent of
the Renaissance paranoia about astronomy. None of the politicians sticking
their nose in it really understand the science involved. I hear a lot of
"I'm against" and "Don't do" from the religions involved - but that's what
I always hear. It's easier to be against something when the collection
plate goes around. What about being *for* something?

I ask these questions because reproduction is at the very heart of what
Percy was about - whether we're talking about words in language which can
convey ideas for all eternity ("in the beginning was the word") or the
cells that allow us to pass along this potent power of genetic immortality
here on the material plain.

It's always seemed to me less important how you create the child and more
important how you treat it once you have it. Focus on the spirit and not
just the dead letter and all that. Christianity, when you get it from the
source, has always been to me quite practical in this regard. Paul's
advice on vegetarianism - not to do anything that leads your brethren to
sin - seems both frighteningly wide in its discretion and potentially quite
constrictive at the same time.

What do we do with these mysteries that none of us is fully equipped to
grasp? Reproduction is literally that thing placed outside or your self
whose power you have to share.

I can understand the fear that comes from sex being separated from
reproduction, love from sex, romance from responsibility - but this attack
at the most confusing fringes of the issue says more to me about how people
feel they've already lost the larger battle. Isn't it better to regulate
the problem at home instead of banning it and forcing researchers abroad?
Can we talk about the wisdom of K-mart selling lingerie to our ten year
olds?

But see, even I'm immediately forced into the position of attacking things
because I'm not in power. It's a lot easier to sell young girls on kinky
music videos with Madonna running around in bustiers because there's a
profit in it for someone. It's harder to build up other, more responsible,
role models for behavior because they typically fall outside the capital
markets.

Just look at Lance Armstrong. His doctor is arrested in connection to an
EPO doping scandal involving other riders and the US press barely mentions
it. I guess there's no profit either in curbing the love of a sport like
football just because half a dozen guys died practicing for it last month.

And, you know, to their credit, in study after study children don't
typically pick these sorts of individuals for primary role models if
they're already in a strong family environment. The system's a lot more
resilient than I often give it credit for.

But with a little leadership, forethought and planning, it can be a lot
better. I suppose I just wish it didn't have to jerk back and forth so
much when it corrected itself - not when sane and literate individuals can
see what's likely to come.

But I'm not about to listen to a corrupt SOB like Bush on an issue like
stem cell research when the very nature of his decision illustrates his
moral bankruptcy. If it's not permissible to create and dispose of
fertilized eggs for stem cell research, why is it permissible to do so for
infertile couples?

At least be consistent.

And this says nothing of the broader system's inability to address truly
important issues - namely our inability to render service to the poor and
infirm in our society. We're going to ban human cloning to protect our
children, but then Ashcroft is going to permit sales at gun shows to those
very same children? Bush is going to dip into Medicare and SS funds to pay
for next year's tax cut? He's going to give $60m in foreign aid to the
Taliban who beat women to death and arrest Christian missionaries on death
penalty offenses like proselytization?

I could point to a million other little issues.

It's like calling the handicapped "differently-abled." You changed the
form of the word, but have you really changed anything else?

Oh, well. I doubt genetic paranoia will catch on in the USA the way
McCarthyism did. There's much to fear in the coming genetic revolution and
I think it all stems from our society's focus on the superficial form
instead of deeper meanings - but that aside, the one thing I don't fear is
someone stealing who I am from a few skin scrapings.

It's a confusing issue. I doubt know quite what to think. I'm ill and
lightheaded right now. I've had relatives with MS, cancer and diabetes.
And of course this issue involves my pet peeves about modern identity
formation.

We spend an hour in the public square going "tut-tut" over sex and two
seconds wondering, "Who are we? Who should we be? Why are we here?"

They recently busted a friend of the Louisiana House Speaker for drugs and
possible pimping and now that's all over the local news like Gary Condit.
Yet there's nothing about the corrosive effect of gambling in the state,
which affects far more families' lives. There's nothing about the $100+
million a year in fraudulent insurance insolvencies and liquidations in
this state which put auto-insurance out of reach for the working poor.

I mean, shit, it's just sex. Get over it.

There are a lot worse sins to throw stones at.

At least if we legalized prostitution, it would get run by major
corporations who would sue news outlets for running stories on it or
threaten to pull their advertising dollars and we wouldn't have to see so
much sex on the news anymore.

Hm.... which brings me to other Percyesque questions I'd like to see
addressed by the soap opera punditocracy of corroded capitalism: Can a
porn star sue her coworker for sexual harassment? What would the workman's
comp cases look like? Which internet startups would go bankrupt for
building their own discount whorehouses instead of "adding value" to
existing local businesses? Given that jazz came out of New Orleans
cathouses, would MTV be the fiercest lobby against legalization because it
might actually produce good music? Would the Fed fret in its beige book
about the rise and decline of various sex acts and their contribution to
GNP?

Where's Kurt Vonnegut when you need him?

Ah, the ironies of the modern age...

I realize I'm not supposed to diverge into secular issues but, hey, you
can't have a mind without a body.

Apologies for any replication errors in this message.

Originator cannot be held responsible for any alienation that failed to be
reversed by reading this message.

Wade Riddick

                                           Hey, baby. For a good time visit

http://www.la.utexas.edu/~riddick



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Jun 22 2002 - 20:15:01 EDT