The Dish

George Prochnik, whose new book the Dish highlighted before, is blogging about silence. On Thoreau:

I never cease to be amazed by the breadth and profundity of Thoreau’s observations on silence.  Though obviously informed by his luminous engagement with nature, they step into other philosophical spaces as well. I recently came across this line from his 1851 journal, “the longest silence is the most pertinent question most pertinently put. Emphatically silent.”  For me, the line resonates with Wittgenstein’s famous concluding sentence to the Tractatus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent;” as well with a line from the extraordinary and wildy under-recognized early 20th Century American poet David Schubert. In one of his poems, Schubert wrote: “But the poem is just this, Speaking of what cannot be said to the person I want to say it.”

Massie is underwhelmed by the Tory plank on civil liberties:

You'll have to remember to ask the state to remove your DNA from the database. Which is fine and all about personal responsibility and so on. But the libertarian might think the presumption should be that innocent people should not be on the database at all. The Conservatives appear to think differently and this would seem to be a manifesto pledge crafted to help the government maintain as many samples on the register as possible.

Colin Dayan defends pit bulls:

The seizures, detentions, and exterminations of pit bulls—sanctioned by laws in many states—expose the statutory logic for making preemptive justice constitutionally permissible: canine profiling supplies the terms for inclusion and ostracism, and even the suspension of due process rights. No criminal conviction of the owner is required for state seizure and destruction of property. In other words, the Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which prohibit the government from depriving anyone of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” can be suspended for the public good without evidence, without trial, by classification alone.

PETA’s Daphna Nachminovitch tracks down Michael Vick’s former dogs:

The facility that houses many of Vick’s dogs may be on a large piece of property, but their pens or runs are still just cages. Marketing dogs who can’t be placed in homes as “success stories” is not just disingenuous, it is a betrayal of the dogs and of the public, which has been led to believe that rehabilitation is possible. The American public is spared the reality that sheltering and animal-control professionals face every day: fighting dogs rarely get a happy ending. Dogs who have been bred, raised, and trained to kill other animals will always be a danger to our communities. If Vick’s dogs are still too unpredictable to be adopted as family companions, living forever behind cage bars isn’t a solution; it is a life sentence.

(Photo: A pit bull looks out from a cage in the Liberty Humane Society shelter July 24, 2007 in Jersey City, New Jersey. According to animal shelter statistics, around one-third of all dogs coming into shelters nationwide are pit bulls, up from just 2 to 3 percent fifteen years ago. An estimated 40,000 people are involved in illegal professional dogfighting in the U.S. which often involves pit bulls. By Mario Tama/Getty Images.)

A reader writes:

It has nothing to do with stereotypes, and everything to do with actual facts. I live in L.A., dispensaries are all over the place, and I partake occasionally. In all my years going, at least 95% of the patrons in a dispensary are men. You hardly ever see women buying weed at these places. Is it because of stereotypes? No, it's because a stoner is WAY more likely to be a dude than a chick. Lots of chicks smoke pot, but they're not stoners.

I wonder if Dawn at Feministing is mad at the stereotype in movies of serial killers being men? I mean, we have to be fair, right? Forget facts; we need 50% of all serial killers in films to be women.

Men are more than twice as likely to smoke pot than women. The Stranger explored the gender divide a few years back:

Fiona believes that media images have a lot to do with why so few women smoke pot, but says that fear of weight gain also plays a large role. "You get the munchies, you know?" says Fiona. "A lot of girls

wouldn't want to sit on the couch and eat chips all night."

Perhaps the obstacle to female toking is a fear of looking lazy. Getting stoned is, in effect, a great way to relax. Men are allowed to be lazy—being stoned is part of their farting, pajama-wearing, video-game-playing pantheon of acceptable male relaxation techniques. … Their sloth is even kind of adorable. But modern women are not allowed to be lazy, adorable stoners. Women have to go to college (which they're now doing at higher rates than men), and then get their careers going quickly, before their biological clocks run out. Then they have to have kids and take them to all of their activities. There is no time for women to be slovenly and relax—and if women do relax, it has to be at a gym.

A reader writes:

I was absolutely stunned to see the Madison, Wisconsin view posted in your blog.  From 1980 to 1982, when I was in college at the University of Wisconsin, I lived in the house from which that shot was taken (or perhaps the house next door), near the corner of Mifflin and Broom Streets.  So 30 years ago, that was the view from my window.

Back then, the building with the mural housed the Mifflin Street Food Co-Op, and it had a banner painted across the top that read:  "Food is for People…. not for Profit."  Other than the removal of those '60s inspired words, the view is basically the same as it was then.  Even then, the now-defunct co-op was a trip back in time.  Customers bought bulk ingredients in their own recycled containers, organic produce, and foods produced by small, local manufacturers from the staff of hippy volunteers.  Often the store was permeated with the fragrant aroma of burning herb.  This single photograph transported me back there, again.   Thank you for this great feature!

Another writes:

I bought your window view book but I just want to tell you how very much I appreciate and enjoy the daily feature.  No matter what else is going on in the world — no matter how barbaric people are to each other, or how nonsensical the Cheneys/Palins/Becks/Limbaughs of the world can be on a daily basis, I find myself really looking for my daily respite, that "fix" of quietude and appreciation for the simple.  And I wonder about the person behind the lens.

A few weeks ago you published my photo, from my own little corner of Portland, Oregon.  After I sent in a number of different photos, I think you picked the perfect one — a tree filled with spring blossoms at a time when the whole Eastern part of the U.S. was dealing with crippling snowstorms.  I hope that photo gave others a glimpse of warmer, more pleasant days ahead in the same way that seeing the world through the eyes of others gives me a sense of real pleasure and delight.

Eric Daigh creates pushpin portraits. Artist site here. More portraits here.

A reader writes:

So now you want the pope to resign?  You begin by linking to Ross Douthat's column and then you completely ignore every point he made.  You would rather keep repeating the words "tied up and raped two boys" in the same paragraph as the pope.  Kiesle is clearly a disturbed criminal.  The story uses the word "molest" and while either are terrible things you seem to relish using the harsher word.

The timeline you listed shows that Kiesle left the active priesthood soon after his arrest.  Don't you also find it strange that this crime was a misdemeanor with 3 years probation and the record expunged?  So his later volunteering as a youth minister seems to me the result of a nimble prosecution.  Have you gone after the DA, the judge, and the probation officer yet?

You have posted some pretty uninformed emails from non-Catholics berating the time it takes for laicization.  But you never bother to explain that to Catholics, Holy Orders is a sacrament.  It is the equivalent of the marriage sacrament, and we know how hard it is to get an annulment.  In fact, a good friend of mine was a Catholic priest and it took 10 years for the Vatican to approve his laicization after he left!

Moreover, your frequent comparison of the African archbishop Emmanuel Milingo to priests defrocked for abuse is somewhat misleading.  The church took 5 years to act after Milingo married and his excommunication had more to do with his illegally ordaining priests.  This had everything to do with Ratzinger's office (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith).   You admit yourself that the pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, did not have authority over abuse cases until 2001.

With your constant "How long has this been going on?" postings, how about just one "how long has this not been going on" by a former altar boy and youth ministry member like me, who went on overnight ski trips, watched TV at the rectory, and nothing untoward went on?  Just one posting about the 96% of American priests who have not been accused of abuse would be some welcome balance.

These stories are horrifying and sad.  But you have become a muckraker of sorts with this and talk out of both sides of your mouth.  First you say gays can certainly be celibate and should be allowed in, then celibacy should be abolished.  You say that pedophilia/pederasty has nothing to do with being gay, then that gay priests committed pedophilia/pederasty because of the oppression of a Catholic home and the church teaching.  The church made me do it!

How exactly do you believe you are helping?  You have called for the end of celibacy in the priesthood, the admission of openly gay men and women, more "democracy" in the Vatican, and for the current pope to resign (when you're not insinuating he's a closet case himself).  If you truly believe this, then maybe it is time for you to leave the church.

It is not a contradiction to say that you believe mandatory celibacy should go but, if it exists, that gay priests can handle it as well as straight ones. I understand there is no "democracy" in the church as such, but greater power for the laity, as proposed by Vatican II, could have helped avoid these crimes (a few parents or simply a few women could alter the cocoon dramatically). Yes, pedophilia is utterly separate from homosexual orientation, but attraction to young post-pubescent teens, common to straight and gay men, can be controlled by most responsible adults. Psychologically damaged and emotionally arrested tortured gay Catholic priests could, however, be more likely to molest this group because they are at the same emotional development as their victims. That's one attempt at understanding one aspect of this complex and horrifying situation I have made.

But, yes, I think the ubiquity of these crimes necessitates a thorough review of how a system came to enable, and then hide, these pathologies and crimes. It's impossible to do that when the current Pope is himself integral to the problem, and has no better a record on this in the past than many, many others in the hierarchy. 

I stand by my every word on this subject, however uncomfortable these words are for those who do not see the full extent of the corruption in front of us.

College Humor went there:

And a new, pope-specific mash-up after the jump: