Everett Hughes at the Pump

July 20, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

“I don’t know how to do this. I’m from New Jersey.” The fortyish woman had gotten out of her SUV and was standing there by the gas pump looking befuddled. *

It was a small, two-pump Mobil station just off Rte. 84 in Connecticut, and my wife and I had stopped for gas on our way to Boston for my niece’s wedding.** The Jersey woman was also on her way to Boston, taking her teenage daughter to see Rent. She was a law-abiding woman, and in New Jersey, it’s illegal to pump your own gas. The Garden State does not trust its citizens to perform this delicate operation that is better left to professionals. Gas station attendants must take eight hours of training, and no doubt some of that time is devoted to nozzle technique. (On the other hand, if you want a clean windshield, do it yourself, buddy. The squeegee’s over there.)

My wife showed our fellow traveler how to unscrew the gas cap, dip her credit card, lift the nozzle, and so on. I thought about Everett Hughes.

In his course on work and professions, Hughes reflected on who was allowed to do what in an occupation. The rationale was always about the training and expertise necessary for the protection of the public. But when you looked at changes in the distribution of these tasks, you began to see an effort retain control and limit access.

To become a pharmacist required a two-year course of study. But in World War II, when the military needed druggists – and fast – the army started turning out 90-day wonders. For a long time, only MDs were allowed to give injections. Only when doctors had more complicated tasks that filled their time did the AMA change its mind and agree that on second thought maybe handling a hypodermic syringe was something a nurse might be capable of. There must be many more examples in medicine and in other professions.

Someday, even drivers in New Jersey and Oregon may be allowed to pump their own gas.

* No, the woman was not Mischa Barton. I just grabbed this pic from Google Images.

**A wonderful wedding, by the way. Pictures available on request.

Sotomayor and "Master Status"

July 15, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

In the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, Republicans have swarmed on Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Haven firefighters case. To hear them tell it, Sotomayor flung the law aside in upholding the lower court decision. She, the majority of the Second Circuit Court, the Federal judge who wrote the original opinion, and the four dissenting Supreme Court justices all based their opinions entirely on a preference for blacks and Hispanics and an animus towards whites. They didn’t consider the law.

By contrast, the five males (four of them white) on the Supreme Court who sided with the white male plaintiffs based their decision wholly and impartially on the law. Their race had nothing to do with it.

The Republican strategy depends on the tendency for privilege to remain invisible. I’ve commented on this before, here and more recently in a post called “White Is Not a Race” White is the default setting, the one we take for granted. Because it’s usually invisible, we can’t see how it could affect the way we think.

For the Republicans, Sotomayor’s race and gender are what Everett Hughes called “master status” – the dominating fact about her. So they assume that these characteristics control everything she does, including her legal opinions. Unfortunately for their argument, they can find nothing in those opinions that confirms this idea, except perhaps her brief statement in Ricci. Instead, they must ignore the large volume of opinions she has written (more than those of recent Court nominees) and focus on speeches in nonlegal venues.

In any case, the hearings have only ritualistic value and are without real consequence. The Senate will confirm Sotomayor, and the Court will have its first Latina, wise or otherwise.

NY ♥ France

Le 14 juillet 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

The anti-French campaign by the Cheney-Bush administration and friends never had much success in New York. Elsewhere in America, people were dumping Bordeaux and serving “freedom fries,” but not here. A Stuff New Yorkers Like blog would have to have France near the top of the list.

So Sunday’s French street fair was packed.

(Click on a picture for a larger version.)

Food, of course, was much in evidence.

(Maybe you make crème brulée, but you probably don’t brown the top using an acetylene torch.)

There were macarons, but they were not from Ladurée, the only macarons source for true Parisians. As the snarky Stuff Parisians Like put it in their first post:

Parisians lack imagination. Baby Shower? Macarons Ladurée. Birthday party ? Macarons Ladurée. Thank you note? Macarons Ladurée. Dinner party? Macarons Ladurée. Weekend in Normandy? Macarons Ladurée.
Le macaron has become a key social lubricant in Paris. While most Parisians have given up on ancestral guilty pleasures (sex, drugs, alcohol), very few will say no to the modern form of socially acceptable vice: Le Macaron Ladurée.

There was even boules game.


From the improvised sign, I’d guess that this was a last minute addition. And because they call it pétanque rather than boules, I’d also guess that the people involved are from the South. It took me back to Laurence Wylie’s classic ethnography Village in the Vaucluse, which taught me the difference between pointer and tirer.

Last but not least, the Deux Chevaux.


Certain cars stand as icons for their country; they embody important cultural themes. The Rolls Royce, the Ferrari, the Mercedes, the Volvo. But it’s hard to know what to say about the 2 CV.

Data? We Don't Need No Stinking Data.

July 13, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

There it was again, the phrase that makes me cringe. This time it was in a letter to the New York Times Magazine in response to a column by Rob Walker on a marketing strategy the Hyatt Hotel chain was using to increase customer loyalty. The hotel would give “random acts of generosity” (like picking up your bar tab) in hopes of generating gratitude.

Walker also cited some supporting research from a management journal. That was his mistake. The letter writer knew better.

Well, we finally know why the American economy is in trouble. The Journal of Marketing accepted an academic paper exploring whether gratitude kindles a feeling of obligation. Could anything be more patently obvious without any research? John Milton knew this 400 years ago: “The debt immense of endless gratitude.”
-- Bob House, Phoenix [emphasis added]

Mr. House did not use the customary phrase, “we don’t need research to tell us,” though he did say flatly that such research is not only unnecessary but harmful to the economy. Who needs data when you have Paradise Lost?

Week one in my course I tell students that even when an idea is obvious, we still need to get evidence to confirm it. I don’t mention gratitude, though I do cite other obvious facts, like the fact that far more people die in fires each year than by drowning, a fact well supported by logic and common sense, though unfortunately not by the evidence.

Sometimes speakers use “we don’t need statistics” after they’ve cited the statistics. More often, when someone says, “We don’t need statistics to tell us. . . .” it’s a pretty good bet that there are no data to support the statement, or worse, that the evidence supports an opposite conclusion. Here are a couple of samples from my files:

Does watching porn or listening rap make kids more promiscuous? Why waste time figuring out how to get data on the question? Just take it from Irving Kristol (William’s dad) from some years back writing in the Wall Street Journal:

is it not reasonable to think that there may also be such a connection between our popular culture and the plagues of sexual promiscuity among teenagers, teenage illegitimacy, and, yes, the increasing number of rapes committed by teenagers? Here again, we don’t really need social science to confirm what common sense and common observations tell us to be the case.
Can anyone really believe that soft porn in our Hollywood movies, hard porn in our cable movies, and violent porn in our “rap” music is without effect?

By “here again,” he apparently means that there are several other areas where we are better off not trying to get evidence.

Is the death penalty more of a deterrent than long prison terms? No point in doing all those regressions. Just take it from Charles Rice, a law professor at Notre Dame, writing in The New American

The best evidence that the death penalty has a uniquely deterrent impact . . . is not based on statistics but is rather based on common sense and experience. Death is an awesome and awful penalty, qualitatively different from a prison term . . . Common sense can sufficiently verify that the prospect of punishment by death does exert a restraining effect on some criminals who would otherwise commit a capital crime.

For what it’s worth, I did a quick Internet search. Here are the results.

• “We don’t need studies” - Google - 791; Bing - 605
• “We don’t need statistics” Google - 329, Bing - 262

Of course, we don’t really need statistics to tell us that these phrases are a refuge for those who have no evidence.