Comments on: Hell is Other Pupils

By: bryan

bryan — Sat, 07 Feb 2004 10:46:30 +0000

it’s like that one song: Thank Hell for little boys.

By: Mary Kay

Mary Kay — Sat, 07 Feb 2004 00:26:51 +0000

Possibility #3 made me giggle. Thank for that I needed it. Now if you could just fix it so y’all’s fine blog remembers my information when I ask it to… MKK

By: ttam117

ttam117 — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 20:26:16 +0000

I think Super-Nintendo Chalmers said it best, “Take it outside god-boy.”

By: JRoth

JRoth — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 18:13:11 +0000

No, no, Scaife got it right on this one. Here’s the story from the real newspaper in town: http://post-gazette.com/pg/04036/269490.stm It is hard to know how this could have spun up to the principal. Pittsburgh is not a puritan town (Calvinist, maybe), and the neighborhood and school are unremarkable. Why would the teacher not have said, “The both of you quiet down, right now.”? Seems like that’s all that was called for, and I’m just wracking my brain for a plausible story, one that would require both teacher and principal to overreact like this. Maybe the other kid broke down sobbing at being told he’d go to hell? Strange, strange.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 13:32:55 +0000

Shucks, only a little extreme? I meant to be quite extreme. (But then I should have threatened to sow the kid with salt – I see that now.)

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 12:18:58 +0000

Over at Harry’s Place: more weird stuff from America, a class action suit alleging injury suffered from the sight of Janet Jackson’s breast href=”http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2004/02/06/warning_bare_breasts_may_damage_your_health.php” rel=”nofollow”>http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2004/02/06/warning_bare_breasts_may_damage_your_health.php.

By: Doug Muir

Doug Muir — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 08:00:06 +0000

I’m torn on the Volokh thing. On one hand, as noted, Roberts is taken seriously by a lot of people. OTOH, the statement in question is so breathtakingly idiotic that refuting it truly does seem a waste of his time and ours. I confess it’s also bugging me a little that he’s so damn polite and respectful about it. I’m not suggesting he start flaming. I do think a certain de haut en bas snarkiness would not be inappropriate, though. He’s responding to a statement that’s both idiotic and offensive; adopting that calm, respectful tone seems to lend his opponent a bit too much dignity IMO. (Though if one must err, I freely acknowledge that erring on the side of being too polite is the way to go.) I’m late with my quarterly, BTW. No doubt the IRS will come and whip my back to a raw mass of bleeding flesh, rape my wife, and sell our two-year old down the river to make good. I mean, cripes. Doug M.

By: Douglas

Douglas — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 06:06:01 +0000

Couldn’t you talk about the embarassing things in your own country for now?

By: msg

msg — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 03:44:05 +0000

It’s only like that in Pittsburgh; or only the US; well and South Africa, virtually all Oceania, and big huge chunks of Latin America. And parts of Canada. And parts of Belgium. Romania… Mexico… And notice how that fundamentalist thing comes filtering up through the p.c. thing. Having a democracy that politely allows the participation of people who don’t agree that democracy’s a necessary part of public life; politely allowing those people to become a majority power within that democracy; isn’t there a paradox there? – And where would you guys be with all that honed reason if it wasn’t mounted on top of irrational superstition? Irony has outlived its usefulness. It’s getting yeasty. The real problem is social decay is climbing toward your dream house and you don’t have anything to hold it back but prionic bits of moral logic. There’s a difference between those who fight ignorance out of enlightened self-interest, and those who fight for causes outside the self entirely. We’re entering a period when that difference will be made as plain as the difference between politically-correct drones and little rote-speaking cultists is now. There aren’t any ironic firemen, on the job.

By: Decnavda

Decnavda — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 03:23:46 +0000

Sadly, I fear Eugene’s attention IS necessary. Roberts is taken seriously by many on the right, and the “thinking” he represents is common on the right, possibly among much of Eugene’s readership. Some on the right – I’m thinking here not of Eugene but of Tacitus – make a big deal of lefties who do not spend enough time denouncing the worst of the left. Coming from the right, Eugene can crush this stuff better than us on the left, and I’m glad he’s doing so. I am sickened though that I feel it necessary to defend Eugene’s need to stamp out roaches like Roberts.

By: Kevin Drum

Kevin Drum — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 03:00:02 +0000

I’ve been wondering the same thing about Volokh. I mean, I can get sucked into some dumb conversations too, but slaves vs. taxpayers doesn’t seem worthy of my cats’ attention, let alone Eugene’s. As for the school in Pittsburgh, I would simply raze it and sow the soil with salt. Clearly they have created a hostile environment there that is so entrenched that there is no hope of ever fixing things up.

By: Kevin Drum

Kevin Drum — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 02:59:59 +0000

By: Anno-nymous

Anno-nymous — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 02:49:15 +0000

A little off-topic, but how could one know if the media are usually around? There seems like there might be some selection bias at work—when the media don’t cover a story, you don’t hear about it. I’m just sayin’, is all.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 02:42:10 +0000

That’s a little extreme Ophelia. If you really wanted to be subversive you’d give the child some role models who will according to the standard story be going to hell (e.g. every music, film and sports star we can name), and those who will be going to heaven (e.g. boring people) and let the child decide which group they want to be in. In practice you’d get in a certain amount of trouble for this (not entirely unreasonably if the school system is meant to be religously neutral rather than aggressively secular) but if you were Ruler…

By: praktike

praktike — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 02:40:05 +0000

Well…don’t forget just who owns the Daily Scaife…take any stories from there with a major dose of salt.