Point, Counter-point: Khan vs. Trump, Round Three

I was thinking of doing a post on what has turned out to be a huge blow-up after Khizr Khan's speech at the DNC and The Hairpiece's response, but there is just too much, so I'm giving you what's pretty much a link dump.

The Khans are not backing down. Here's a short video of Khizr Khan (which I'm not able to embed), responding to this:

"If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say," Trump said, adding that "maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say."

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama [Did you doubt it?]) has decided to get into the act:

Senator Jeff Sessions was the chosen voice to appear on CNN's State of the Union for some damage control after Donald Trump hammered Gold Star parents Khzir and Ghazala Khan twice yesterday.

When asked about Khizr Khan's condemnation of Trump as a "man with a black heart," Sessions emphatically said, "I reject that and I'm disappointed that he said that."

Sessions then went on to justify Trump's hateful attitude with more spin about how Trump "praised" Khan. Actually, he didn't praise him at all. This is what Trump said, and what Khan reacted to.

(Click through for the quotes.)

Brian Stelter at CNN actually committed journalism on TV. Video and transcript at the link, and watch Trump's spokesman dodges and weaves and keeps trying to change the subject. (Which itself is a favorite ploy of the right.)

And just in case you missed the dog whistle that Miller was blowing on, long-time Trump buddy Roger Stone makes it plain:

And it really looks like Trump has finally done it: he's getting shit from major Republicans, including John McCain, Mitch McConnell, and even Wunderkind Paul Ryan.

You can imagine what the left is saying.

That's enough on this for now. All I can say is that I hope this story follows Trump around for the rest of his campaign.

They Can't Help Themselves

Tone-deaf, to say the least (AP, via NOM Exposed):

"You're looking at what is the best course society wide to get you the optimal result in the widest variety of cases. That often is not open to people in individual cases. Certainly adoption in families headed, like Chief [Justice] Roberts' family is, by a heterosexual couple, is by far the second-best option," said John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage. Eastman also teaches law at Chapman University law school in Orange, Calif.

I'm sure Eastman meant it to be a positive comment, but the way it's being interpreted (at least in the gay blogosphere) is anything but -- the take is that the's slamming adoptive families. Positive or not, I wonder how the Chief Justice would react to being called "second best."

Read the AP story -- it's very interesting.

Race and Intelligence Again -- Farther Afield

I finally broke down an e-mailed Andrew Sullivan (although I'd rather snipe at him from the safety of my own blog) about the series of posts he's been running on Race and Intelligence -- sparked by the latest reader comments.  Since I doubt he'll publish it, here's the e-mail, with a short version of my thoughts on the whole "controversy."

Dear Andrew Sullivan:

I've been following your posts on "Race and Intelligence," and regarding the latest comments on the e-mail concerning "the genetic basis of intelligence" by the Harvard law student, I see that the controversy continues on the same -- and to my mind, quite mistaken -- terms.  It all seems to have gotten tied up in various causes celebres -- racism, freedom of speech, and the like -- and has very little to do with what she actually said.

I've not seen any comments on this flap that focus on what the real flaw in the e-mail was:  it's not that she was expressing an unpopular viewpoint, or even treading on politically incorrect territory, but that she assumed that she knew that she was talking about (as do both her supporters and critics) without, apparently, ever examining her assumptions, which I think must be a fatal flaw in someone who plans on making a career out of dissecting formal arguments.  Her question is legitimate, but sadly uninformed.  (And I suspect if she had even the most rudimentary knowledge of genetics and how it works, she wouldn't have bothered to ask the question to begin with.)

Until she has, and can express, a clear idea of what she means by "race" and by "intelligence," she, like most non-scientists who tackle this issue (which as far as I can see is a non-issue to anyone who doesn't have an agenda), should keep mum.

"Race" is a fairly fluid concept, and, while it has some use as a descriptive term for taxonomists, in larger discussions it essentially no longer has any meaning.  In ordinary parlance, it's purely a social construct.  One need only remember that in the U.S., a person with a black ancestor has routinely been considered "black," no matter the relative proportion of black to white ancestry.  (And I'm deliberately not using the word "genes" here -- the genetic difference between human races is so small as to be unmeasurable. After all, we're not very far, genetically speaking, from chimpanzees.  How far can we be from each other?)  To pose a question of genetic inheritance based on cultural definitions is to construct a fundamentally flawed question.

Talking about "intelligence" and genetics in the same breath is asking for trouble.  The genetic basis of intelligence, like the genetic basis of just about anything (especially behaviors), is a set of potentials and nothing more.  These potentials are subject to environmental influences that start when the egg is fertilized -- why does anyone think that doctors place such stress on proper nutrition for expectant mothers?  Because the womb is an environment.  The problem here is that, while our Harvard 3L is talking about the expression of intelligence (test scores, one assumes, or other measures of performance), she is casting it in terms of heritability.  We're talking about a behavior here, not eye color, and human behavior, even for those areas that are "biologically determined," is way too complex to cast in such simplistic terms.

I don't fault her for asking the question.  I'm not going to impute an agenda or ideology as a foundation here -- it's the kind of air-headed "what if?" that one finds in students, which is a good enough excuse, and to start hurling charges of racism based on something like this is, at best, revealing of a lack of clear thought in her critics.  I'm not even sure I fault her for saying it without having a clear idea of what she was talking about -- she's asking a question, and it's a student's question, but that's one way we learn.  (And yes, I'm one of those who thinks we should be allowed to ask any question that occurs to us.)  I do think, however, that the only adult response is "Back up and define your terms."  That seems to have been eclipsed by the politics of those involved.

Next teapot.

He Says He Was Lying . . .

but we know he's a compulsive liar, so was he really lying?

Here's a link to the MPBM piece on the "schools" issue in the marriage fight in Maine. (For some reason, Blogger won't accept the code to allow me to embed it.) And here's a transcript of Mark Mutty's remarks (toward the end of this segment) from Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin:

We understand that schools will not be mandated to provide one curriculum or another, but neither will they be discouraged or will they be unable to provide the kind curriculum that they so choose that well could include teaching about same-sex marriage.

… We have never said that schools will be mandated — or, actually, perhaps we did in one ad, or certainly led people to believe that, inadvertently.

This has shown up several places (here's Joe Sudbay's report), and here's Jeremy Hooper's), but everyone is focusing on the "We lied" part. (And why is anyone sur-- . . . oh -- because he actually admitted it.)

But look what he says in the section before that: "neither will they be . . . unable to provide the kind of curriculum that they so choose. . . ." In Maine, public school curricula are determined by local boards of education, and anyone who thinks parents have no input has never had a kid in a public school -- especially in a small town. So what Mutty is saying is that SFMM -- and the Catholic hierarchy -- are against letting parents and local boards make the decision as to what's taught in public schools. Any guesses who they think should be making that decision?

You're right!

And it gets better: NPR is demanding that SFMM pull their ads using materials from its broadcasts because of copyright infringement. (Have you noticed how often the right wing has a problem with stealing other people's stuff?) A report from AmericaBlog, with this choice bit:

National Public Radio is demanding that the Stand for Marriage Maine group stop using its content in television ads supporting a people’s veto of a new same-sex marriage law.

Content from an NPR story was used in Stand for Marriage Maine’s latest television ad, which began airing Oct. 16 and suggests that gay relationships and gay sex may be discussed in schools if the law isn’t overturned.

The Sept. 13, 2004 story, titled “Massachsuetts Schools Grapple with Including Gay & Lesbian Relationships in Sex Education,” was part of an All Things Considered program, according to Dana Davis Rehm, NPR’s senior vice president for marketing, communications, and external relations.

“NPR did not license use of this story or its content, and would certainly not have licensed or permitted it if we had been asked,” Rehm said in a statement. “NPR is a highly respected news organization and does not allow its content to be used by political or advocacy groups. Such use is harmful to the integrity and independence of NPR. NPR does allow – even encourage -- personal, non-commercial use of our content, so long as it is not modified, and not used in a manner that suggests NPR promotes or endorses a cause, idea, Web site, product or service. The use made by Stand for Marriage Maine violated all of these terms.”

I love it when a plan comes together.