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I started writing about the relationship between legalizing gay marriage and legalizing polygamy as a comment to a post over at TigerHawk. My comment got way too long to actually be a comment so I posted something shorter - and crankier - over there and spent some time trying to turn that comment into a blog post. I could never find quite the right frame for it so I set it aside.
A few days ago Grim wrote about polygamy, inspired by a school assignment that quotes a twenty-year old Islamic woman as saying she has no objection to her future husband taking multiple wives. If a woman wants to be one of multiple wives, asks Grim, why shouldn’t we let her? He concludes by asking:
Is there some fundamental reason to prefer monogamy, or is it just what we're used to seeing?
In response, Cassandra has presented ten arguments against polygamy. In commenting on Cassandra’s post, I remarked that I had a post about this topic 90% completed and would get it up on Friday. I didn’t, obviously, for two reasons.
First, whenever I say I’ll post by a deadline I don’t do it. There’s something about writing to schedule that makes me utterly inarticulate.
Second, and more important, I thought I would be able to do one post, tying together everything I had to say about my original points, Grim’s argument, and Cassandra’s rebuttal. Not happening. I’m going to end up with multiple posts. I hope to get the first one - which will be basically my original one - up over the weekend. Then one on Cassandra’s points and then one on Grim’s argument. Plus probably one or two side-trips along the way. (We’ll see if I end up with enough posts to finish the riddle.) I realize that by the time I get this all done, everyone except me will probably have lost interest but I’m just glad I’m once again looking forward to doing some long, twisty writing.
As usual, I’ve created a new category to track the related posts: Grim Polygamy.
No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office. - George Bernard Shaw
There are some articles popping up that claim Chris Christie’s weight makes him obviously unfit (heh) to be President. Elspeth Reeve’s has ably identified the goal of these articles and the tiresome, distasteful pattern they follow. Megan McArdle opens her discussion of the articles on Christie’s weight by announcing that she and Jonathan Chait are in agreement that:
... the argument that Chris Christie is somehow unqualified to be president because he is fat is absolutely ridiculous.
McArdle then does her usual good job of outlining - yet again, for all those who weren’t paying attention the first, second, whatever time - the state of research on weight:
The [weight] band that your body wants to occupy is no more a sign of virtue than the color of your eyes. Yet people who would be ashamed to argue that Barack Obama should be excluded from the presidency because of the amount of melanin his skin contains, feel no compunction at all in declaring that your genetic predisposition towards adiposity is an intolerable fault.
Chait focuses on the “moral panic” aspect of articles by Eugene Robinson and Michael Kinsley and concludes:
The only real reasoning I see here is that American elites view obesity with disgust, and they’re repulsed at the notion that a very fat guy could rise to a position of symbolic leadership. It’s not a very attractive sentiment.
All three - Reeve, McArdle, and Chait - are worth reading and I don’t have anything more to say about the aspects they address so well.
However, there are a couple of things that struck me in these articles. First, Eugene Robinson says, in quick succession:
1) He does not intend to blame Christie for his own obesity.
2) He is sure that Christie wants to live long enough to be around for his children’s milestones.
3) Christie should lead himself.
4) Christie claims he is overweight because he eats too much and the wrong things.
5) It’s not that simple because of genetics and psychological factors.
6) Gastric surgery is available.
7) People who lose weight and keep it off do so through proper diet and exercise.
8) Robinson’s sincere advice to Christie: “Eat a salad and take a walk.”
So, once again, which is it: Christie can and should lose weight by eating less and exercising more or Christie can’t lose weight unless he has gastric surgery? Or perhaps it’s that obesity is really hard to write about coherently when a writer is trying to score political points in the context of a topic about which he knows nothing except a series of sound bites.
Second, Michael Kinsley says:
Controlling what you eat and how much is not easy, and it’s harder for some people than for others. But it’s not as difficult as curing a chemical addiction.
Kinsley does not provide a link backing up this claim and perhaps he’s correct. However, I spent about 10 minutes using Google and I found the following recovery rate claims:
Alcoholism: perhaps as high as 35%
Heroin: perhaps as high as 32%
Meth: perhaps as high as 15%
Obesity: perhaps as high as 20% - if success is defined as “intentionally losing 10% of initial body weight and not regaining it”.
So if these numbers are anywhere near right, it looks to me like “[c]ontrolling what you eat and how much” is at least “as difficult as curing a chemical addiction”. And this is with a very, very low definition of recovery from obesity. How low? Well, if Chris Christie weighs 286 pounds (the minimum Robinson thinks he weighs), he would weigh 257 pounds if he “recovered” under this definition. Somehow I don’t think that would result in Robinson lauding Christie’s leadership or Kinsley okaying Christie’s “character” and “control”. (I can’t find decent numbers on people who start out obese, lose enough weight to be considered “normal” weight, and keep that weight off. The number usually tossed around is 1 to 2% which is far lower than the numbers for alcoholism, heroin, or meth.)
Same thing with that bariatric surgery Robinson recommends as a way off the “dieting roller coaster”. According to Weight Watchers (citations in original):
Results of Surgery
Patients lose an average of 50% of the excess weight with all bariatric procedures and this is usually achieved 12-18 months after the surgery and regain 10-15% over three to ten years.
So if Christie weighs 286 pounds and Robinson thinks he should weigh at most 214 pounds (to avoid falling into the “obese” category), Christie’s “excess weight” is 72 pounds. If he underwent bariatric surgery, he would lose 36 pounds which would bring him down to 250 pounds, then regain 7-11 pounds, leaving him between 257 and 261 pounds. Again, I don’t think either Robinson or Kinsley are going to decide that Christie’s weight is no longer an “issue” at 257 pounds.
People love to write about obesity. Especially people who aren’t obese. The fact that no one understands obesity is irrelevant to them; they are quite sure that their lack of obesity makes them experts on the subject.
Personally, I’d much rather have a fat President who can get done at least some of the things I believe need doing than a thin one can’t get anything constructive done at all. However, I suspect one reason Christie can do what he’s doing in New Jersey is because he understands State politics; I imagine he knows where the bodies are buried and may even have planted a few himself. So I’d prefer he stay where he is for now and spend the next four years continuing to fix New Jersey while getting himself plugged into national politics.
I’m pretty sure the country will still need Christie’s services in 2017. And maybe by then pundits will be less confused about what Christie’s obesity supposedly says about his character and more interested in what Christie’s track record actually says about his ability.
To think about September 11, read Memorializing September 11th by Wilfred M. McClay in National Affairs:
And the greatest good is often done, as William Blake put it, in "minute particulars," in small but focused ways that individual citizens can manage on their own initiative.
To remember September 11, read the poem “For the Children of the World Trade Center Victims” by BJ Ward, available online as a pdf here.
Neoneocon is writing about a Russ Smith post which contains the following quote:
There are usual caveats: Of course Obama isn’t illiterate or Bush-dumb because as Jesse Louis Jackson once said, “God doesn’t make junk,” and the intelligence-challenged just aren’t allowed near Harvard, much less become editor of that university’s Law Review.
Neo is focusing on the fact that Bush also graduated from Harvard (and Yale). What struck me (other than Smith’s lousy writing) was the “God doesn’t make junk” part of the quote. Is Smith implying that while God made Obama, someone else made Bush? if so, who?
The Anchoress (via NRO) has up a rant about first responders and clergy being excluded from the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. It speaks for itself and I have nothing to add to that aspect of it.
I was, however, taken aback by this statement from one of the articles she links:
During the 2001 "Prayer for America" service at Yankee Stadium, leaders from the major religions—Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Protestants, Sikhs, Greek Orthodox—addressed the crowd of thousands and an even larger TV audience from a podium atop second base.
"I brought every major religion to this event in Yankee Stadium," said Mr. Washington, who is considering holding a news conference on Sept. 11 to object to the exclusion of clergy.
"I'm very upset about it," he said. "This is crazy."
It seems to me that if Mr. Washington is upset because he believes people would benefit from prayer on this sad and solemn occasion then the appropriate thing to hold would be not a news conference, but a prayer service. Or lots of prayer services at lots of houses of worship, perhaps at the same time as the official ceremony and including sincere, loving prayers for all those who were touched by this disaster. I think it would be a particularly nice touch if the first responders were warmly invited to these services.
There are two verses I remember from Sunday School that cover this situation pretty thoroughly:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.
It seems worth nothing that the latter verse ends:
And they marvelled at him.
I gather there are some concerns, particularly among conservatives, about the implementation of sharia law* in the United States. I don’t know how reasonable those concerns are, although as a woman I tend to feel that any possibility of such a thing happening should be viewed with great alarm.
There is, however, a simple way to make sure sharia law is not implemented in this country: pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Not all sharia law has to do with the role of women but a fair amount of it does. the Equal Rights Amendment would insure that the aspects of sharia law that enshrine different rights for men and women could never be implemented. Losing the "sweetener" of being able to treat women like second-class citizens should make the prospect of sharia law much less enticing to many who might otherwise be willing to condone it.
*****
*I do not have a nice, clean summary of sharia law to offer as a link. The Wikipedia entries on sharia law and on women in Islam read - as one commenter put it - like a pro-Islam “tourist brochure”.
If I were the “bipartisan, bicameral committee on deficit reduction”, I would simply have my staff retype the Simpson-Bowles plan on committee letterhead. It would save a lot of time and a lot of money and produce an outcome at least as good as anything the committee will come up with in the next three months.
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