What liberal America regards as disqualifying

What a ridiculous society we live in. Two years ago Julie Myers was not considered unqualified to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on the basis that she was a 36 year old woman with zero experience or knowledge of immigration. But she may be disqualified from the job today on the basis of a prize she awarded to a “racially inappropriate” costume at a Halloween party!

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Steven Warshawsky writes:

Yes, we truly live in a ridiculous society. This could be a regular feature on your website. Just today, while walking in New York City, I saw an ad by some “public interest” group objecting to smoking in movies. They want smoking to be restricted to R-rated movies. So while PG and PG-13 movies increasingly include depictions of sex, violence, drinking, drugging, swearing, and other vices, depictions of smoking goes too far for today’s “health” police. Of course, the rationale for this proposal—as with nearly all such proposals—is to “protect” children from the baleful influence of seeing movie stars puff on cigarettes. Yet these very same people contemptuously dismiss concerns that seeing movie stars engage in promiscuous sex and nihilistic violence also harms children, indeed harms all of us. What a deeply confused society we live in that seeks to outlaw smoking, while glamorizing whoring.

LA replies:

Once many years ago I asked my mother, whose world view is basically shaped by the New York Times, about this apparent liberal contradiction: “Why must smoking be suppressed, but every kind of sexual behavior (and depictions of same) are allowed?” And her answer was that sex goes to the core of a person’s identity and being and therefore it must be free, while smoking does not.

My mother had certainly never read Planned Parenthood v. Casey, but she was right in tune with it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 17, 2007 09:49 AM | Send