"Arthur if it's a boy. . .

Martha if it's a girl."

That's what I wanted to name my firstborn child.

But it could have been worse. Check out this story of one poor woman, whose mother decided to name her "Marijuana Pepsi". (Her friends call her Pepsi, but professionally -- she's a teacher, by the way -- she insists on "Marijuana").

The Craigslist Killer

Here is a link to the full story from ABC news that we looked at briefly in class today. And here's another, from the day before, from the New York Times. Here's what I found particularly interesting about the Times article:

Abby Goodnough reported from Boston, and Anahad O’Connor from New York. Reporting was contributed by Nate Schweber in Albany; Ariana Green in Ledyard, Conn.; David R. Kocieniewski in Long Branch, N.J.; Coleen Dee Berry in Little Silver, N.J.; and Al Baker in New York.

This is what we can't afford to lose -- if and when the newspaper as we know it goes the way of the passenger pigeon -- news gathering organizations. Seven reporters in seven different locations, to report on one story.

New Haven Firefighters Test

As we know from class the other day, there is now a case before the Supreme Court involving firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut, and an exam they took for promotion.

Because no African-Americans scored well enough to earn promotion, the test was called invalid -- and no-one was promoted. Those who did pass the test -- including Frank Ricci, who is dyslexic, and who went to extraordinary efforts to do well -- felt that they were being treated unjustly, and sought retribution in court.

Here are two opinion pieces dealing with the case. The first is by John McWhorter, a linguist and commentator. To McWhorter,

"the issue is less about color than class, and in the global sense, about what it is to be human.

In countless American communities, flyers are routinely full of major misspellings, more than a few people are only fitfully comfortable with e-mail, and few read newspapers above the tabloid level. Life is fundamentally oral. People from places like this (which include Appalachia and the rural white South, as much as black and brown inner cities) get next to no reinforcement from home life in acquiring comfort with the written word beyond the utilitarian.

Direct questions as regular interaction are largely an epiphenomenon of the printed page. Most humans on earth lead fundamentally oral lives in the linguistic sense (only about 200 of the world's 6,000 languages are written in any serious way, for example), and need to adjust to direct questions. Middle class American kids inhale them at the kitchen table. Other kids learn how to deal with them in school; it takes practice, and because our public schools are so uneven, quite a few never get really good at it."

McWhorter finishes his piece with advice that Chief Justice John Roberts probably would agree with.

This will not do: People like Du Bois did not dedicate their lives to paving the way for black people to be exempt from tests. Sure, the tests may not correlate perfectly with firefighters' duties. But which falls more into the spirit of black uplift that you could explain to a foreigner in less than three minutes: teaching black candidates how to show what they are made of despite obstacles, or banning a test of mental agility as inappropriate to impose on black candidates?

McWhorter's article appears on The New Republic website. Also on the website is another article, by Jeffrey Rosen, which mentions not only the New Haven case but also a challenge to the extension of the Voting Rights Act (2006). Rosen writes that

The Ricci case is a nightmare for moderate liberal supporters of affirmative action, because it presents the least sympathetic facts imaginable. The Supreme Court has said repeatedly that affirmative action is most troubling when its burdens are concentrated on a few innocent white people rather than being widely dispersed among a large group of white and black applicants. So, for example, the Court in 1985 struck down a teachers' union agreement that white teachers would be fired and black teachers with less seniority would be retained in order to preserve racial balance.

Rosen thinks that the focus on job discrimination should be at the hiring level. Once you've got the job, he says (agreeing with McWhorter), it's up to you to do what you need to do to gain promotion. Rosen feels that President Obama is in a unique position to be able to push Congress to pursue this "middle way".

Obama could wean liberals of the resort to the threat of lawsuits to avoid discrimination in the workplace at all levels. Instead, he might convince Congress that judicial oversight of employment decisions makes more sense when it comes to entry-level hiring decisions, which are more likely to be affected by stereotypical judgments than cases of promotion and firing. At the moment, the vast majority of "disparate impact" cases involve challenges to promotion, demotion, or firing, rather than hiring--but these are precisely the kinds of cases in which impulsive, unconscious racism is least likely to materialize.

Stay tuned.

The Supremes -- Clarence Thomas Edition

You tend not to hear that much about the Justices on the Supreme Court. They tend to keep a low profile, although they do from time to time make public appearances. Justice Clarence Thomas recently took questions from a group of high school students who were winners in an essay contest about the Bill of Rights.

A little background about Justice Thomas. He is the lone African-American on the Court. (As you know, there is also one woman. The rest are white males.) He is quite conservative. (Among other things, he is opposed to affirmative action programs.) His nomination was quite contentious: Thomas himself called it "a high-tech lynching." (He was accused of sexually harassing a female clerk.)

Now the New York Times, where this article occurs, calls it a "sidebar". Normally, in journalism, a sidebar is a short article supporting a longer one -- information about a person involved in a story, say. But in this case, there is no other story. (In law, a sidebar is a conversation between judge and lawyers outside of the hearing of the jury.) So what is it here? Well, it's not straight news, and it's not quite a column (where opinions are acceptable).

Let's take a look.

Justice Clarence Thomas has not asked a question from the Supreme Court bench since Feb. 22, 2006. He speaks only to announce his majority opinions, reading summaries in a gruff monotone. Glimpses of Justice Thomas in less formal settings are rare.

That's how it starts. It's true that, unlike the other justices, Thomas doesn't get involved when cases are argued before the Court. But it strikes me as something of a dig.

Thomas went on to mention some of the things that are important to him.

“Sometimes, when I get a little down,” Justice Thomas said wearily, he goes online. “I look up wonderful speeches, like speeches by Douglas MacArthur, to hear him give without a note that speech at West Point — ‘duty, honor, country.’ How can you not hear those words and not feel strongly about what we have?” He continued: “Or how can you not reminisce about a childhood where you began each day with the Pledge of Allegiance as little kids lined up in the schoolyard and then marched in two by two with a flag and a crucifix in each classroom?”

Hmmm. Separation of church and state? That's a big, contentious issue.

As for the Bill of Rights. Well, rights are okay, I guess, as far as they go.

“Today there is much focus on our rights,” Justice Thomas said. “Indeed, I think there is a proliferation of rights.” “I am often surprised by the virtual nobility that seems to be accorded those with grievances,” he said. “Shouldn’t there at least be equal time for our Bill of Obligations and our Bill of Responsibilities?” He gave examples: “It seems that many have come to think that each of us is owed prosperity and a certain standard of living. They’re owed air-conditioning, cars, telephones, televisions.”

I agree. We Americans don't always own up to our responsibilities, and we probably regard things as our "rights" which really aren't. But Thomas doesn't always always seem too thrilled by some of those basic right in the Bill of Rights. That's not mentioned directly in the article, but if you know Thomas's record, it's certainly looming in the background.

I Know What Boys Want. . .

The common wisdom, among guys anyway, is that the female of our species is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Like a lot of common wisdom, it may not be true. Just ask the folks at the Disney Corporation.

Back in February, the Disney Media Empire introduced Disney DX, a cable channel with a target audience of 6 - 14 year old boys. The problem is determining what kind of programming appeals to boys 6- 14 years old (that would be appropriate for a Disney channel). Solution: bring in anthropologists to examine their artifacts.

Kelly Peña, or “the kid whisperer,” as some Hollywood producers call her, was digging through a 12-year-old boy’s dresser drawer here on a recent afternoon. Her undercover mission: to unearth what makes him tick and use the findings to help the Walt Disney Company reassert itself as a cultural force among boys. Ms. Peña and her team of anthropologists have spent 18 months peering inside the heads of incommunicative boys in search of just that kind of psychological nugget. Disney is relying on her insights to create new entertainment for boys 6 to 14, a group that Disney used to own way back in the days of “Davy Crockett” but that has wandered in the age of more girl-friendly Disney fare like “Hannah Montana.”

How might that work?

Ms. Peña, a Disney researcher with a background in the casino industry, zeroed in on a ratty rock ’n’ roll T-shirt. Black Sabbath? “Wearing it makes me feel like I’m going to an R-rated movie,” said Dean, a shy redhead whose parents asked that he be identified only by first name. Jackpot.

Was Ms. Peña able to find any other nuggets?

Walking through Dean’s house in this leafy Los Angeles suburb on the back side of the Hollywood Hills, Ms. Peña looked for unspoken clues about his likes and dislikes. “What’s on the back of shelves that he hasn’t quite gotten rid of — that will be telling,” she said beforehand. “What’s on his walls? How does he interact with his siblings?” One big takeaway from the two-hour visit: although Dean was trying to sound grown-up and nonchalant in his answers, he still had a lot of little kid in him. He had dinosaur sheets and stuffed animals at the bottom of his bed. “I think he’s trying to push a lot of boundaries for the first time,” Ms. Peña said later.

Disney's had great success with marketing to young girls, with much more than just tv programming. There's apparently a whole "princess culture". (For an interesting article on that phenomenon -- one that I've used in the TALC program -- go here.) Girls are happy to tell you about what they like and don't like. Guys can be a little more reluctant to spill their innermost feelings.

Why Do People Go on Killing Sprees?

Today in class we heard Glenn Beck's worry that today's disenfranchised conservatives will be driven to violent rampages.

BECK: But as I’m listening to him. I’m thinking about the American people that feel disenfranchised right now. That feel like nobody’s hearing their voice. The government isn’t hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don’t listen to you on both sides. If you’re a conservative, you’re called a racist. You want to starve children. O’REILLY: Sure. BECK: Yada yada yada. And every time they do speak out, they’re shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?

We wondered at the time what the motivation of the Alabama killer was. Well, mostly it was a family thing, according to a letter he left behind. He killed his mother first, then went for his grandmother, uncle, two cousins (among others).

McLendon, who had spoken about being depressed and dissatisfied with his situation, also made a list of those who had “grieved him and disappointed him,” and wrote in the letter of his plan to take his own life, said the statement, issued late yesterday. The letter also referred to a “family dispute.”

No politics, apparently, although he is described as a "survivalist". So he had plenty of guns and ammo stored up.

But there was another guy last July, Jim David Adkisson, who burst into a church in Knoxville, Tennessee. This one was definitely politically motivated. If you're interested, if you can stomach it, you can read the letter he left behind.

Bill O'Reilly said that guys like Adkisson are sick, and he's right. But in this case, he sounds angry and disenfrachised. The church he went to was his second choice: the people he really wanted to kill were listed in Bernard Goldberg's "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37)". Now, thousands of people read that book, and they never killed even one person. Still. . .