“300” and Counting

March 18, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

I sometimes ask students if Violence is an American value. Their first thought is usually: No, of course not; violence is bad. But then I point out the amount of violence in our popular culture (TV, music, movies) and in our real lives (US rates of violent crime, even after the extraordinary decline in the last 15 years, are still much higher than those of other industrialized nations).

My point in all this is to question the idea — often found in sociology textbooks — that values are primarily guides to action. That definition implies that we can discover a culture’s values by looking at what people do. Looking at Americans do, we see that they produce and consume a lot of violence. So either Americans value violence, or there’s something wrong with this sociological idea about values.

The answer I usually give is that the guides-to-action definition is at best incomplete. Despite our actions, Americans and American culture do not value violence itself. Violence is not an ultimate good —like success or freedom —that we use to justify some action. It’s just that we don’t mind using violence to get some of the results that we do value. We don’t think violence is inherently good. We just don’t think it’s all that bad.

Brian Gellman, who blogs at Intel Dump, may get me to change my thinking. Intel Dump is a blog run by former military officers, and it has provided excellent military analysis of the current war. But this post, inspired by the recent hit movie “300,” shaded over from purely military matters into the cultural arena.

Critics of 300 fail to understand what many critics of the current administration’s handling of the “Global War on Terror” fail to understand. American culture. . . .Americans today overwhelming see military power as a solution to any number of problems.

Critics of current US policies in the world who believe things will change when the current administration leaves office are fooling themselves . . . The reality is that until American culture changes, US policies will not change significantly.

So maybe we don’t mind violence as a means to an end; maybe it's the means we most prefer, at least in international matters. This preference goes along with another idea that forms the basis for at least three hundred American movies from “HighNoon” to “Top Gun” and “300,” an idea I’ve mentioned before — that all problems (moral, psychological, personal) will be resolved through a final, decisive contest between two adversaries. It works in the movies.

Unfortunately, in real life, where we cannot fade to black and roll the credits, the results are rarely so simple.

Spring Break

March 12, 2007

Posted by Jay Livingston

The blog is going to Florida for Spring Break. It will return, tanned and rested and maybe with a few strings of beads. Don't look for it on the next installment of “Blogs Gone Wild,” though. It's just not that kind of blog, jello shots or no.

Dissonance, Hypocrisy, Irony

March 11, 2007

Posted by Jay Livingston

Cognitive dissonance — the phrase echoes from the past when I took courses in social psychology. It’s the idea that people find it uncomfortable to hold two conflicting “cognitions” and usually adjust one of them to make it fit.

The classic experiment asked people to do a very boring task — turning square pegs on a board for no apparent reason and with no apparent effect. Some people were paid a pittance, others were paid well. When they were asked to rate how interesting the task really was, the poorly paid volunteers rated it as more interesting than did the well-paid ones. Their cognition that the task was boring conflicted with the cognition that they’d done it for very little money. So they changed their view of the task and rated it as not so boring. Well-paid volunteers needed no such rethinking to justify their actions; they did it for the money.

Cognitive dissonance is really the close cousin of Hypocrisy — changing your perceptions to make them square with your larger ideas. Cognitive Dissonance went to grad school; Hypocrisy chose religion and politics. Here’s what I mean.

1. One of These Adulterers is Not Like the Other

The Rev. James Dobson, a moral crusader, hates Bill Clinton and his politics. (He also came out strongly against Spongebob — Bob was  part of the homosexual agenda — but that's another matter.) Dobson far prefers the conservatism of a Newt Gingrich. When Congressman Newt was rallying the troops to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, the good reverend was cheerleading from the pulpit. Now Newt has disclosed that at that very moment back in 1998, he himself was having an extramarital affair.

Rev. Dobson was appalled by Clinton’s behavior: “we can’t overlook his shameful sexual behavior in the Oval Office... Indeed, it is my belief that no man has ever done more to debase the presidency or to undermine our Constitution — and particularly the moral and biblical principles upon which it is based —  than has William Jefferson Clinton.”

How did Rev. Dobson react to Newt Gingrich’s infidelity? He invited Gingrich to be on his radio show and praised him as a national leader.

Jerry Falwell thought Clinton’s affair was not just immoral but bad for the morality of the country. “My view as a theologian is that the leadership of a nation reflects the moral condition of the nation itself, and Bill Clinton is a reflection of the moral climate of the nation.” As for Gingrich’s philandering, Falwell has forgiven him and invited him to be commencement speaker at Falwell’s Liberty University (or is it Libertine University?)

Apparently it’s Clinton’s lying, as opposed to Gingrich’s merely keeping his mouth shut, that makes Clinton’s sexual misdeed so malignant, while Gingrich’s adultery is benign

2. See No Evil
And then there’s the Washington sex scandal. The “Beltway Madam,” Susan Palfrey, ran a business which she styled, “high-end adult fantasy firm which offered legal sexual and erotic services across the spectrum of adult sexual behavior.” The prosecutors say she was running a prostitution service. Her defense? The women who worked for her had to sign a contract saying that they wouldn’t engage in illegal behavior.

This fig leaf wasn’t good enough for the prosecutors, who insist that she knew what the women were doing and encouraged them to do it.

But how about torture? Here’s President Bush talking about the administration’s program of “rendition” — sending prisoners to foreign countries to be tortured:

“We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured when we render a person back to their home country.” The Bush administration knows that those countries use torture, but it gets them to sign a statement, just like Madam Palfrey’s contract, saying that they won’t do anything illegal. These assurances, unlike Ms. Palfrey’s signed contracts, are sufficient for the Justice Department. I’m not sure what the difference is, but I’m sure cognitive dissonance is at work.

3. Patriots, Prostitutes, Privacy
Here's the final irony: This week Ms. Palfrey threatened to sell her phone records of 10,000 numbers dating back to 1993, a client list that probably included several powerful Washington people. No names, of course — Ms. Palfrey respects her clients' privacy — just numbers and preferred scenarios. That same week, the Justice Department announced that the FBI had been abusing the Patriot Act to illegally get phone records and other information on thousands of Americans.

Annals of Crime - GTA

March 10, 2007

Posted by Jay Livingston

I know from my own days in the crim biz that people with criminal records have trouble getting jobs, a difficulty which only contributes to the cycle of problems. (Blogger and U. of Minnesota sociology chair Chris Uggen is very good on the problems faced by convicts.) I’m not talking about criminals like Scooter Libby or Jack Abramoff—they’ll do very well, pardon or no — but street criminals. Case in point:

My friend David G tells me this story. David G is in the retail food business, and as he was sorting the chèvre and mozzarella this morning, our conversation turned to the topic of the disorganization and craziness he sometimes encounters in the business.

“We just had a guy who came to a job interview in a stolen car.”

“How’d you know it was a stolen,” I ask.

“Well, the guy comes in, fills out the forms, has the interview, and leaves. And right there on the first page, it says, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” and he puts down that yes, he was convicted of possession of stolen property. So I figure, OK, maybe here’s a guy trying to get his life back together.

“Then one of the workers comes in and says, ‘You know that guy that was just here— he left his car out in the parking lot.’ So I have the application with the address and phone number. So we call him. ‘Hey, you left your car here.’ He says, ‘No, it wasn’t me, I didn’t drive.’

“So we go back and run the surveillance tape, and sure enough, it shows him driving up in that car. We get the license number, call the police and run the plates, and it turns out the car is stolen.

“We have the tape of him driving up in the car, and we have his name and address.”

“Not exactly CSI,” I say, “but look at it this way: the guy is trying to get an honest job, your place probably isn’t that easy to get to, maybe he was running late, so instead of taking the bus, he took a car. It just wasn’t his. That’s pretty enterprising.”

“Enterprising,” says David G, “but not very smart.”

I guess the guy’s not going to get the job.