Month: April 2007

[Ross] If you read only one comic book this year, make it this one. (hat tip: Jonathan Last)

[Ross] So it turns out that abstinence-based education doesn’t really have any effect on teen sexual habits, according to a preliminary study of the programs in question. This has prompted a fair amount of snark around the social-liberal parts of the blogosphere, which is fair enough – but it’s worth pointing out that there’s very little evidence that any other kind of sex education has much of an effect on teen sexual habits either. (That’s the general conclusion of Kristin Luker’s book-length treatment of the issue, and Megan McArdle’s  epic blog series on the topic.) Which would seem, in turn, like a good case for having our public schools waste as little of their time on sex ed as possible. My own somewhat fuzzy view of the issue (developed at greater length here and here and here) is that except in areas where pervasive family breakdown requires educators to act in loco parentis more than one would like them to, public schools should take an, ah, stripped-down an approach to teaching sex, and mainly leave the whole "condoms or abstinence" issue to parents and kids to sort out on their own. Given the way the current battle lines are drawn, I suppose I’m on the side of the abstinence educators, since I’d much rather have my (hypothetical) sixth-grade kid’s school telling him or her to hold off on sex than handing out Trojans after class. But I’d rather see those battle lines go away entirely, and take a lot of local culture-war sturm und drang with them.

This was the right’s original idea, of course, and one of the various pillars of Grover Norquist’s whole "leave us alone" coalition: Social conservatives didn’t like sex ed’s sexy side, and libertarians didn’t like its nanny-statish side. This alliance succeeded in freezing funding for sex ed at 1970s levels – which were much higher than ever before, needless to say – throughout the 1980s, but not in cutting it; meanwhile, the whole "virginity pledge" movement gathered steam, and Bill Clinton, ever attuned to the political winds, embraced funding for abstinence-based education as a small part of his famous triangulation strategy, even as he ramped up sex-ed funding in general. Since then, social conservatives have tried to exploit his concession, expending most of their energy trying to change sex ed programs into abstinence promotion vehicles rather than phasing them out entirely. It’s an understandable strategy but perhaps a misguided one: I’m not usually one for siding with libertarians on culture-war debates, but sex ed is a case where privatization seems to make more sense than any of the alternatives.

[Ross] He’s opened a significant lead over Hillary in South Carolina, The Nation‘s John Nichols reports, which suggests that the rumors of black voters giving Obama the cold shoulder may turn out to be greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus flags a Rasmussen poll showing a Hillary-Obama dead heat nationwide, and Chris Bowers speculates about why Rasmussen might be more accurate than the competing polls that still show an edge for Clinton. (And this nifty fund-raising map lets you see where all the candidates are getting their money from.)

Then again, wasn’t it just two weeks ago that Nichols was highlighting a slew of polls showing Hillary pulling away? I think it was. I suppose the lesson here could be that we shouldn’t be reading so much into polling fluctuations, given that the primaries are still eight months away and all. But that wouldn’t be very much fun, would it?

Houston, Texas, 9.55 am.

[Ross] Commentary feels superfluous, as Andrew says. For all the talk about how the "YouTube-Facebook-instant messaging generation" has revolutionized journalism during tragedies like this, it’s been twenty-four hours since the shootings and nobody’s managed to weave together a coherent narrative of what happened inside Norris Hall. I’m still trying to find firsthand accounts from people who were there when the shooting started. Here’s one from the Virginia Tech student newspaper. Here’s another from the Baltimore Sun. Here are some from a community newspaper in Blacksburg.

Meanwhile, Scientology stays as classy as ever.

Perhaps fortuitously, I’m taking a few days off for a pre-scheduled breather from the blog. I’m extremely lucky to have persuaded three of the best young writers and thinkers out there to blog in this space while I’m off-duty. Ross Douthat is an Atlantic colleague, who shares a blog with the inimitable Reihan Salam, an actual Dish alum (he used to edit the Letters Page). Megan McArdle blogs for the Economist and as Jane Galt. Welcome back, Reihan and Ross. Welcome, Megan. This is also a good opportunity for me to mention the interns who have helped me immeasurably in keeping the Dish al dente these past few months at the Atlantic: Jessie Roberts, Eric Siegel, Whitney Kassel, Zoe Pollock, and Brooke Nevils. They’ve gone where no Atlantic intern has gone before; and they’ve taught me much more about the blogosphere. I also owe Shaun Raviv a great deal on the design front. As for the guest bloggers, your emails are more than welcome as always. But be nice. They are our guests.

Imagine that this kind of massacre happened every day. Imagine a police force that was far too small to even respond to most of them. Imagine this occurring repeatedly for years until the perpetrators and their accomplices became the de facto power-brokers throughout the land. Imagine the shootings also being accompanied by the brutal torture of victims. Imagine families never having finality on whether their own siblings or parents or children have been murdered or not.

This is Iraq today. Now think of the justified rage many feel at the VT campus police chief and university president for misjudgments. Now imagine them presiding over several more massacres in the same place. Ask yourself: why do we not feel as enraged by those responsible for security in Iraq? Are those victims not human beings too? Are they not children and mothers and fathers and sons? Are we not ultimately responsible for them, having destroyed the institutions of order in their country? Now go watch John Bolton tell the victims to go help themselves.

We now know the murderer, although not the full motive. We also know the contours of the debate that will now rage. It seems an obvious misjudgment, to say the least, not to have had a more aggressive, immediate response to the first shooting. As for gun control, the debate shifts, I believe, when we’re dealing with a campus. Whatever the pros and cons of gun control in general, I find the idea of a place of learning being filled with students carrying concealed weapons to be a deeply disturbing idea. It is the antithesis of civilization.

Absorbing the horror today – and the conflicting, complicating, shifting stories that keep emerging – is the kind of thing that makes you want to get the news a week after the event. There is so much we don’t yet know about the Virginia Tech massacre, so much that keeps changing, so much to be angry about, and to be terribly sad about, that catching up, let alone opining, seems simply inappropiate. I know it’s my job, but blogging breaking news like this is something I don’t want to do. I don’t even know what to have an opinion about. They’re having a vigil at VT tomorrow night and some have had impromptu ones already, as above. "Vigil" seems the right response right now. Praying and watching. Blogging later.

(Photo: Sixteen year-old Jessica Hill takes part in a vigil for the victims of the mass killing at the southwestern university, Virginia Tech April 16, 2007 in Blacksburg, Virginia. More than 30 people were killed after a gunman opened fired first at a dormitory and later a classroom building. By Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A rowing race in Baghdad on the Tigris. Except …