Thursday, November 3, 2011

"I'll tell you who is an attractive man: George Will."

There's a great exchange between Elaine, Kramer, and Jerry in the Seinfeld episode "The Jimmy":

Jerry: "Elaine and I we're just discussing whether I could admit a man is attractive."
Kramer: "Hmm! Oh! Yeah. I'll tell you who is an attractive man: George Will."
Jerry: "Really!"
Kramer: "Yeah! He has clean looks, scrubbed and shampooed and...."
Elaine: "He's smart...."
Kramer: "No, no I don't find him all that bright."


It turns out Kramer was right as George Will makes the ridiculous leap from an on-campus religious organization at Vanderbilt University expelling a member after finding out he was gay to claiming progressives would want pharmacists to lose their licences if they refuse to dispense the morning-after pill:

"Here, however, is how progressivism limits freedom by abolishing the public-private distinction: First, a human right — to, say, engage in homosexual practices — is deemed so personal that government should have no jurisdiction over it. Next, this right breeds another right, to the support or approval of others. Finally, those who disapprove of it must be coerced.

Sound familiar? It should. First, abortion should be an individual’s choice. Then, abortion should be subsidized by government. Next, pro-life pharmacists who object to prescribing abortifacients should lose their licenses. Thus do rights shrink to privileges reserved for those with government-approved opinions.

The question, at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, should not be whether a particular viewpoint is right but whether an expressive association has a right to espouse it. Unfortunately, in the name of tolerance, what is tolerable is being defined ever more narrowly.
"

This is what I don't get about conservatives like George Will. There is no nuance to their positions. What does one issue have to do with the other? Nothing. Then why would the same principles apply? To Will and other neocons, every idea must apply equally to everything completely unrelated to it. Either you are with them or you're against them. The whole world is one big gray area yet they are so blind to it that everything can only be black or white.

Another great part of that Seinfeld episode was the character of 'Jimmy', who used to refer to himself in the third person and got George Costanza to do the same.

In that case, Amod agrees with Kramer. Amod doesn't find George Will all that bright either.

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