Manners Maketh a Pod

In today’s pod David and Sarah discuss a federal district court injunction against Texas’s heartbeat ...

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In today’s pod David and Sarah discuss a federal district court injunction against Texas’s heartbeat bill, dive into the deep waters of Mississippi’s unbearable aquatic greed, and discuss whether ten robberies is one “occasion” for crime or, well, ten. But that’s not all! They also engage in a brief but spirited debate about whether the DOJ’s letter about threats against school board members. The pod finishes by talking about manners. In an interesting way. We promise.

Show Notes:

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  1. Payette

    I first listened to this podcast just after Oct 7. Today I listened again to the last part. I must say that it is refreshing to hear reminders of how people should be treated and to read the very thoughtful listener comments. On another podcast I heard David's phrase "The Exhausted Majority." I (and many of my friends) identify with that label. Anything that encourages civility and mutual respect is much appreciated. How we treat one another is a component of good character. And as Jonah has said: character is destiny.

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  2. Alex Winkleman

    I think Sarah is extreme in her view against mocking (the Bible mocks people, so it’s not wrong per se), but I generally agree that one should give a good faith explanation whenever practical. I have learned a lot that way, by teachers challenging inflammatory statements I make with actual reasons rather than insults. Not necessarily changed my mind, but got me thinking. I might make a reductio ad absurdum argument, but it’s something I actually believe. There is a tricky balance between maintaining that some things are beyond the pale and trying to convince people who hold dangerous views.
    I think in racial issues once “prejudice is immoral” became orthodox then challenging it became “what they’re not telling you” and followed the same path that we have heard about teen sex and drugs. Kids get curious but just get “just stop it (or I’ll bury you alive in a box)” arguments, so they don’t believe their parents. If racism can brand itself as being on the side of open investigation and facts and paint non racism as naive, impossible, superstitious, virtue signaling, etc, that is not going to be a good future for our country.

    Imagine your local public school teaches your kids that
    - we shouldn’t talk about God or push our morality on others,
    -we came from monkeys (and the strong eat the weak),
    -most of the high cultural achievements we learn about came from white people,
    -science is the only source of facts,
    -it’s good for some people groups to rally around their ethnicity and be rude about it (but not you),
    -throwing off religious constraints on behavior is sophisticated and suave and courageous
    -political power for your group is an existential struggle
    -but you should really not be racist because it’s rude and because I said so.

    That leaves a bunch of white kids primed to be wooed by neonazis unless we get more fact based, unemotional arguments out there.

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  3. Adam Shields

    I think that the school board discussion does need to nuance the difference between disagreement and even shouting from the kinds of threats that this video is showing https://twitter.com/martyduren/status/1448328574197538821?s=20

    I think there are a number of cases where that level of threats are real and I do think that the federal government should be involved because these are a threat against the institutions of democracy, not just the individuals. The reason that those that support hate crime legislation support it is because of the idea that the acts are not just the individual acts against the individual but because the acts are intended to communicate a threat to a community beyond that individual.

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    Alexander Spalding

    Somehow this seems to have had the opposite effect than intended. I’m now more persuaded that I disagree with your analysis on sarcasm.

    I believe my disagreement really lies in your emphatic statements that sarcasm is never an appropriate response. However, I do think it is en entirely personal preference of mine, that shouldn’t be universally applied, in the same way that your advice should not be considered universal.

    I actually often prefer to be rebuked with a sarcastic response. Especially if the opposite is a more lecture-y response, like the one in this podcast, which I actually found borderline belittling. (Don’t worry, I’m not actually offended, and I’ll keep listening.) Many of my favorite people are very sarcastic, especially my teachers. I appreciated that their sarcasm asked me to engage mentally and to rigorously defending myself. I also liked that it was often quite funny. For me, it felt more egalitarian than demeaning.

    I also believe your analysis fails to take into consideration the professor’s in-person demeanor. Is he drole? Is he dry? Is he angry? Is he serious? Without knowing this I don’t think the tone of the email can be properly ascertained.

    I’ve written “I” and “for me” multiples times because I think that’s the point. We’re not all the same, we shouldn’t all be treated the same. At college it is important to engage with many personalities as yours is being formed. You won’t like all of them, you’ll love some of them. I love the edgy, sarcastic ones. You don’t, that’s fine. But, and this is my only real point in writing this, I am not telling the warm and tender ones they need to be sarcastic. I don’t think they do. I’m just glad we have both.

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      Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

      I guess my pushback here (and I take your point that humor--which i do not think has to be sarcastic--can often be used when a nonhumorous response would be interpreted as pedantic) is the student's reaction. The professor's response raised the temperature of the situation and my point was that there was a much easier way to lower the temperature. There are times for humor--but this wasn't intended to be humorous and humor around intentional racial discrimination wouldn't have been appropriate either.

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  5. Mel Crannell

    I am a great fan of AO, and I think that in this forum and others of the TD lineup, Sarah and David have shown themselves to be nice people. However, their emphasis on "manners" sometimes seems to cloud their judgement (e.g. the Joseph Epstein/Dr. Jill Biden kerfuffle.). I would argue that sarcasm is not, is not (sorry, David) always wrong. The use of sarcasm by the late Justice Scalia was, arguably, helpful in pointing out badly written or argued ideas and opinions. Now, Sarah could rightly argue that Justice O'Connor, a frequent target, was not often disposed to change her mind as result of the sarcasm, but I think that the value lay in highlighting the weak arguments or rationale for everyone else.
    In the context of communication with a student I can see Sarah's and David's point (although "unprofessional" strikes me as a bit strong.). But I do think that some ideas deserve to be slapped down strongly, and the student's request in the UCLA case fits that category.
    BTW, it would seem that it is a good thing for both Sarah and David that Professor Kingsfield had retired before they attended Harvard Law (lol).

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  6. Ewan

    When discussing the UCLA professor, Sarah asserted something that I found highly unlikely. She claimed that surely no other professors actually applied disparate grading standards based on race. As somebody who spent most of a decade on a UC campus (including summer 2020), I would be absolutely shocked if nobody graded their minority students differently during finals around June 2020. Sure it would be illegal, but the zeitgeist around UC campuses (and I'm sure many other places) was incredibly powerful, and nobody would have been held accountable for tipping the scales in favor of their minority students.

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    Pete T

    I was a.shift sergeant for a mid size police department. Had to spend a lot of time on whether multiple victims made multiple crimes. Connecticut has a concept of criminal spree which allows for it to be one case. For example if an offender walks down the street with a crowbar breaking the windows of all the cars on the street you have one arrest with multiple counts. One case for court. Do it again the next night new case new arrest.

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    Sarah Ross

    I don't really ever comment but I do listen regularly and closely. I found myself troubled at the end of the UCLA discussion. I have a high school teaching background and based on my experience I think there were two assumptions made about the context.

    #1 - It is assumed that in this classroom the power dynamics ran from teacher to student. That makes sense when considering past classroom environments and it may even make sense given the current situation of some classrooms, like Sarah's for instance. However, it is not guaranteed. I hold, maintain, and steward for good the control and the positional authority I enjoy in my classroom. But sometimes (assemblies, standardized testing, after school hangouts) I find myself in a situation where I do not have positional authority - even when I am the "adult" and they are the "kids." And then all the rules change. I find I have to resort to an intensity level to maintain safety/functionality in those settings that means I may say or act in ways I would never dream of doing with my own students in my own classroom. I don't know this classroom, teacher, or student, but it would not surprise me if that, given the nature of the "request," that student felt empowered and leveraged over the professor, and that the professor was left in a precarious position.

    #2 - In a similar vein, it is being assumed that the student *wants* to learn *anything* from that professor. I think that's a result of empathy - people who record, produce, and listen to AO podcasts consider the situation and say, "Well, if I had written that letter, I would be offended because I made it in good faith. And I would want my teacher to teach me." I'm just not sure that's the case here. It may be, but I think that the argument made in the end of this episode really rested on these assumptions without acknowledging that they are only assumptions.

    I don't disagree that we should hold ourselves to the highest of standards regardless of the actions of the other party. But I would suggest that perhaps there's more going on in the context of this situation than was allowed in the discussion. Sometimes we don't answer a fool according to their folly. Sometimes, we do.

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    1. Icarus213

      Thank you for this comment, Sarah, I also read the situation the same way. I think David and Sarah might be projecting their past experiences onto a new situation (or at least, new to American universities lately), and they aren't seeing that maneuvers like the student's letter are about power, an attempt to change the power dynamic. If you are in a position of authority, you need to watch for those power plays and nip them in the bud. And I think the very fact that the university stepped in and handed power to the student proves that the professor's concern was wholly justified.

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        JohnF

        The part of the discussion that I really think they whiffed on was the plea to us older folks to recognize the "learning opportunity"" for these impressionable kiddies. What Sarah and David seem to have missed was that the students likely did learn a lesson from this, and that lesson was "𝒊𝒇 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝑰 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆, 𝑰 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒃𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒃 𝒄𝒓𝒂𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒐𝒏 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒅."
        The students sent an inappropriate email to the professor, the professor responded in kind. Instead of discussing this directly with the professor, one or more of the students then published the professor's response out to the masses. The professor was then set upon by the unwashed hordes who threatened him and demanded he be fired. The University briefly complied by suspending him.
        The end result of all of this is that the professor's reputation is damaged and the University will likely lose his lawsuit. Near as I can tell, however, there have been no repercussions for any of the students involved.
        Lesson learned.

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        1. Icarus213

          This has been my perennial criticism of David French, to be honest, which I've commented about on his columns: he doesn't quite seem to be aware that something has changed in the realm of public morality. I don't say that with wild-eyed "the end is nigh" panic, but I mean that there seems to be a new set of rules concerning what one is allowed to say in the public sphere that didn't exist 20 years ago. So when something like this happens, he tends to take a "yes, I've been fighting for free speech and religious liberty for several decades, so I've seen this before" approach, and doesn't seem to see any one event in the context of any recent trends. I think both him and Sarah are guilty of that in this instance.

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  9. Kevin H

    Phenomenal closing section of this episode. It could not have been said better. We are here to persuade and that only happens in an environment of civility.

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    Tom Westberg

    First let me get this controversial position out there: I am anti-threat.
    That behind us, David mentioned that in general a shouted threat against a board member on the street would be strictly a local matter, while a threat sent by mail or email would come under federal law. I get the USPS letter threat being the federal government's job, but email? Because the bits probably went to California before they went to the board member? Or is there a law making email threats a federal Thing?

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