On Respecting Pronouns

 

Let us agree: People ought not be denigrated because they are Black or White or homosexual or because they consider themselves "gender fluid." 

Recently, a boy who plays football at Exeter High School was suspended after a conversation he was having with another boy on a school bus was overheard and the girl who confronted him engaged him in a texting exhange with him, which she reported to the high school principal the next day. 

The boy did three things, if online reports are to be believed:

1/ He maintained that there are only two genders: male and female. He posited this as a statement of fact or at least of his belief.

2/ He, or his parents, or some other people, justified his statements as "Christian belief."

        This, of course, muddies the waters. We all would be better off if this never got injected into the argument. It would be cleaner if he simply said, "I'm not convinced there are more than two genders. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. You may disagree but you cannot make me believe differently. It's my right to disagree."

3/ He expressed frustration with the texts from his interlocuter by using an abbreviation for a profanity: STFU.

Some reports have claimed he was suspended for the profanity, but that would violate the most recent Supreme Court ruling on a similar case. 

Significantly, he told the girl to "leave me alone." Since when does a bully say that?

In any event, he was not texting a transgender so he cannot be accused of bullying. 

In fact, a case might be made the girl on the bus was bullying him. 

Report from FOX News:

A female classmate identified as A.G. overheard them and allegedly chimed in, "There are more than two genders!" A.G. is neither transgender nor nonbinary but believes in gender fluidity, the suit says.

A.G. later obtained M.G.'s phone number, and the pair had a contentious exchange, the papers allege. 

"Gender and sex mean the same thing," he wrote her. "There are only two genders and sexes."

She insisted that gender is different from the biological sex one is assigned at birth. "Your [sic] in high school you should know this," she shot back. 

"I also know that ur a bozo," he replied. "Just stfu and leave me alone," he wrote, according to the lawsuit. 

The next day, M.P. was pulled out of his science class by the vice principal and his football coach, William Ball. 

The pair confronted him with the text messages A.G. had turned over and chastised him for "not respecting pronouns."  

Here are some issues raised by this kerfuffle: 

1/ LEGAL/ADMINISTRATIVE:

    There are questions about 

         a/ Why the student was suspended from playing in a football game:

Reports thus far do not show the texts between the football player and the girl who accosted him on the bus, but we are told in some reports he was called into the principal's office with his football coach and told he had violated the rule against disrespecting other students by refusing to use the proper pronouns. 

         b/ Who actually suspended the play, his coach or the principal?

Apparently, the school now says the coach suspended the player for not being a proper "role model" owing to his refusal to use the proper pronoun. This administrative sleight of hand gets the principal off the hook and makes the coach the enforcer. But the same offense is still there, presumably, failure to pronoun properly. (The idea of football players being "role models" for kindly or noble or even civil behavior is a bit beyond the pale, one might think.)

And what gives the principal and faculty of Exeter High School the right to suspend a football player from playing in a game without a trial of that student before his peers or perhaps a panel of parents because he expresses doubts about forcing new rules for pronouns?

         c/ Whether suspending the player from playing in a game is different than suspending him from school

There are lots of cases of students being suspended for violating stated school rules: In Tinker, in 1969, a girl was suspended for wearing an armband to protest the Vietnam war and the Supreme Court said students do not leave their right to free speech at the school house door. Later, in the infamous "Bong Hits for Jesus" case, the Supreme Court reversed this. Later still the Court held for a girl who expressed her rejection of the school cheerleading squad in profane terms.

2/ CULTURAL:

        a/ What is the basis for a legal prohibition of a transgender male to female person who has not had "gender affirming surgery" i.e., still has scrotum and penis stripping naked in a "girls' locker room"?

There are laws against public nudity. A man or a woman walks down the street or into a store completely naked; he or she does not touch anyone, may not even speak to anyone, so how can their very presence cause harm? Well, we do accept this would make people uncomfortable, but what is the harm? If you accept laws on public nudity are appropriate, then why would laws against a male transexual undressing in a girls's locker room be unacceptable?  

        b/ What harm is done to a transgender person if others refuse to refer to that person as "her" or "him" or "they" and what harm is done to those who are asked to use those pronouns as the transgender person requests?

Now, if you say the principle is everyone deserves to be called by the name they wish to be called by, the case of Cassius Clay and Muhammed Ali springs to mind.  As Howard Cosell, ne` Howard Cohen, famously said of Ali, "A man has a right to be called by the name he wants to be called by." And I agreed with that. Is it not a right for a person who was born with a penis and testicles to be referred to as "she" or "her" if he wants to be? No, that is not a name but requires a lot more mental gymnastics in the mind of the average citizen. 

Thus, if Pat wants me to refer to her as "them" and I cannot get my mind around that and say, "Pat will not be at jazz band practice because she has a dental appointment," have I violated Pat, who in fact wants me to say, "Pat will not be at jazz band practice because they have a dental appointment?" Or should it be, "Pat will not be at jazz band practice because they HAS a dental appointment?"

We are not simply changing a name here, we are changing the agreement between singular and plural and that takes a lot more neurons.

By what right does Pat or the principal of Exeter High School force me to wrap my head around a new English language Genderspeak when I, as a high school student have spent 16 years learning a non gender fluid English and am, in fact, likely to face a whole different set of rules when I take my SAT exams?

Why is it "disrespect" to Pat rather than Pat's disrespect to me if I insist on using a set of pronouns I do not even think about now, which are lodged somewhere below my cerebral cortex when I use them? Why are Pat's sensitivities more important than my own?

                

3/ SCIENTIFIC:

       a/ How is "biological sex" different from gender?

One of the things the girl confronting the football player said was that as a high school student, he should know that biological sex is different from gender. Which raises the question: Is there a course which covers this in sufficient detail at Exeter High School?

       b/ What is "gender dysphoria" and what is a transexual?

Whereas we do not know what the prevalence of homosexuality in the nation is--it has been variously estimated between 3% and 10% (Kinsey, now mostly discounted)-- but the prevalence of transgender gender dysphoria is easier to grasp since most of these folks seek medical attention in Transgender Clinics, and this is said to be about 0.3%. So the numbers of transgenders are small and it may well be that most people have never actually met or gotten to know a transgender person.

Can we even begin to discuss the issue of gender dysphoria without first knowing something about normal sexual differentiation and about disorders of sexual differentiation?  I would submit the answer is no. Until you know something about what happens in people whose known biochemistry is askew, it is very hard to imagine what folks with gender dysphoria may be going through. 

Born female, penis at 12

Does Exeter High School even have a course in gender issues which covers the genetics, endocrinology and psychology of sexual differentiation, disorders of sexual differentiation and gender dysphoria? 

Would the faculty or administration of Exeter High School pass a final exam in such a course?

Patients with XY chromosomes

As an endocrinologist, in whose specialty this whole topic traditionally falls, I hereby volunteer to present such a course to the Exeter HS faculty and administration, open to every citizen of the Seacoast, if anyone cares to actually listen.

Gdansk, Poland

Spoiler alert;  If I taught the course, I would make the case that transgender folks should be treated with kindness, as should everyone, but Transgender Clinics have become profit centers and do not serve the best interests of the patients they see or the community at large.

The American Dream

 

Don't you just love that phrase, "The American Dream?"

But what, exactly, does it mean?

Actually, there is no exact meaning.  As it is most often applied, it means making a ton of money and living a life of luxury without having to work too hard.

For some, it means loftier things, as Martin Luther King depicted it: When black children can walk hand in hand with white children, when Christian and Jew, Protestant and and Catholic can sing together, in the words of that old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we're free at last!"

Now, that's a dream I could get into. But it would not be everyone's American dream, more like a nightmare, the idea of little Black boys holding the hands of little White girls.

When I was 13, I held a microphone in my hand at a school dance and there was a line of girls on one wall and boys along the other and I was supposed to tell everyone to find a partner and do-see-do or whatever, but Mr. James McFall, our Student Council faculty supervisor, came flying out of nowhere and he seized the microphone from my hand. He was wide eyed, the picture of alarm and I was stunned.

"Oh," he explained, "I thought you were going to tell the girls to walk straight across the floor and dance with the boy on the opposite side!"

I stared at him, mouth agape, not understanding the problem.

"Then you'd have some White girls dancing with Black boys!"

This was not a problem which ever crossed my mind. This was 1960, in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. and our school had, maybe 15 Black children, max, out of a total of 1500 kids. There might have been three Black kids in the gym that night.

Mr. McFall, also taught "Star Science," a select ninth grade class for superior (White) students. The new high school, just built for us to attend that Fall, had finally been named. It was not going to be "West Bethesda High School," which was the name most parents  wanted, but it would be "Walt Whitman High School" which left most people nonplussed, as Walt Whitman didn't have much to do with anything in Bethesda. If they had called it "Clara Barton High School" that would have made sense, since Clara Barton's house still stood in a part of Bethesda called Glen Echo, just a few miles away and she was a suitably heroic figure. But nothing got named after women in those days, so Walt Whitman it was.

Mr. McFall told me under his breadth, "I can't believe they named it after that one."

"Why?"

Mr. McFall looked around to be sure no vice principals were within ear shout, "He was queer as a three dollar bill!"

"Who was?"

"Whitman!"

"No kidding?"

"Yup."

At age 13,  I was not entirely sure what queer meant. I had heard the word used in relation to circumstances: "Well, that's a queer thing," or "That's a queer idea." But attached to a person, it meant odd or peculiar or non conforming. I had to ask my father why Walt Whitman was considered queer. He asked me how that question had arisen and I told him and he said, "Apparently Mr. McFall has a problem with homosexuals, who are men who are not attracted to women, but to men."

That had me thinking for the next few weeks. 

Obadiah Youngblood, Lock 8, Cabin John, MD

But I digress. This was supposed to be a blog about how things do not always work out as you might expect and, given odd details as regards rules, they might turn truly bizarre. 

Take, for example, the detail that the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives does not have to be an elected member of Congress. The House can elect anyone it wants to elect. In recent memory, that has always been a member of the House, somebody who was elected to represent a district back in his home state. But, theoretically, and by the rules of the House, they could elect, say, Donald J. Trump to be the next speaker, which is, apparently, what some supporters, like Steve Bannon have suggested. It would give Mr. Trump a platform from which he can once again be visible and outrageous and no Twitter or Facebook could shut him down.

Then, once Mr. Trump could take advantage of another little quirk in governmental requirements: Supreme Court justices do not have to be graduates of law school. In fact, Justice Robert Jackson, one of the most distinguished justices to ever serve, did not graduate from any law school. And he went on to preside over the Nuremberg Trials, not to mention writing wonderful opinions, especially his dissent in the separation of church and state case in which he observed that for a municipality to support a Catholic church school was tantamount to the state supporting, financially, a church which is exactly what the authors of the First Amendment wanted to avoid as they wrote as the very first sentence of the Bill of Rights, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." the very first words of the Bill of Rights! Right there. And ignored by towns like Hampton, New Hampshire with the full consent of the Supreme Court ever since.

So, once Mr. Trump springs from his position as Speaker of the House to President, he can appointment Mr. Bannon and Steven Miller and Roger Stone and Michael Flynn to the Supreme Court of the United States, because another little appreciated wrinkle in the rules--the Supreme Court is not limited to nine justices who serve for life. In fact, it has at various times in this nations history had 10 or 15 justices. So, if the US Senate gets to be Republican and the House as well they can pass a law to expand the Court to accommodate as many justices as Mr. Trump desires.  And those justices could come from all walks of life: Joe Rogan, the QAnon shaman, Alex Jones. Or, how about Governor Abbot of Texas? Or Rupert Murdoch? 

And these are lifetime appointments. 

Or Donald Trump could appoint himself to be a justice and serve concurrently as President and Chief Justice. 

And then suits against Yale School of Law for violating the rights of white students and applicants by trying to ensure "diversity" could succeed at the Supreme Court. Say good bye to policies which seek to codify making colleges "welcoming places where students are called out, rather than called in." No more safe spaces. Rest in peace that stuff. And schools that advocate for reparations for the wrongs of slavery can kiss good bye to federal dollars. Oh, that woke world will just evaporate! 

And all that stuff about making schools or government "looking like America" where more offices are held by people of color or women or gays or trans people or Native Americans--all gone. Looking like America means looking like most of America, which is still actually, mostly White, old and a little nasty.

Now, THAT would be an American Dream!

Why We Fight

"Band of Brothers,"  the excellent TV series about the 101st Airborne's Easy Company has an episode called "Why We Fight," which comes as the penultimate episode, 9 of 10, in the series.

It's a strikingly misnamed episode, and that fact, its misnaming, has always struck me.

It's misnamed because Band of Brothers has nothing to with the why question, only the what question.  The show depicts the mechanics by which a disparate group of men are forged into a working unit of soldiers. You are never shown and never hear anything about why these men have decided to go to war. That decision was made by each of them long before you see them on screen. There is some mention, in the interviews with the real soldiers which precede each episode, where one or two mention they joined the Airborne because they didn't want to be in a foxhole with a draftee who didn't want to be there, or because the pay was better in the Airborne. 

The men themselves never actually discuss why they are fighting. 

In fact, there is only one brief bit where one of the soldiers is reading "Stars and Stripes" as his platoon bounces along in a truck and he says, "It says here the Germans are BAD," and the others react with mock incredulity, "Really? The Germans are bad?" There is considerable mirth among the soldiers, who make exaggerated faces of astonishment: Imagine that! The Germans are bad!

William Loeb

But in the episode "Why We Fight," the company stumbles across a concentration camp and they learn the Germans really WERE bad, or at least they were fighting for a bad cause. The writers set this discovery up by a conversation between a veteran, who has seen relentless action who explains to a new replacement why he fights: to stay alive and to sometimes sleep indoors and to have actual toilet paper to use. Simple luxuries like toilet paper is enough reason to fight for him. He is later among the scouting party which discovers the concentration camp.

So, of course, liberating concentration camps from the evil system they are fighting is not the reason why these men went to war; it becomes a justification for why they have been fighting but it did not motivate them because they had no idea concentration camps even existed.

I thought of that episode yesterday during the state convention of New Hampshire Democratic party. This convention was virtual and it was a far cry from in person actual conventions I've attended where Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren had the crowd on its feet, screaming throats hoarse and even crying tears of joy. 

This convention was all about the mechanics of how the party planned to mobilize, with organization charts and pre recorded videos from elected officials urging us all to "work hard" to elect Democrats.

But there was precious little about why we might want to elect Democrats.

There were statements from people representing different identities: Two Native Americans started things off banging on drums and singing songs in those voices we have all heard from movies, which sounded like a war dance, followed by a gay person saying Democrats fight for gays, and a speaker who introduced himself by telling us which pronouns he uses, ("Him, he") and another who, from her wheelchair, told us if we were going to throw a house party for a candidate be sure to rent a ramp for wheel chairs, and to renovate a ground floor bathroom to accommodate wheelchairs, and there were women who insisted that Democrats were all about women controlling their own bodies and that abortion is simply healthcare, and there were one of two people "of color" saying we needed more people of color in office in New Hampshire, and there was a Hispanic guy from the North Country saying, yes, there actually are Hispanic guys living in the White Mountains.  I may have missed the Greek guy from Manchester pumping a fist for New Hampshire Greeks, or a Polish guy shouting out to New Hampshire Poles.

I eventually caught on that Democrats were all about representing people who think of themselves as having special identities which set them apart from other Americans, identities which presumably Republicans defile because Republicans are BAD.

Not once did a see a guy who the guy who sits behind the counter at Hampton Hardware would identify with. This guy wears plaid flannel shirts and pants held up with both a belt and a suspenders, and every time I visit to buy batteries or light bulbs or nuts and bolts, he tells me about his time in the Navy during the Vietnam war. 

There was nothing I could tell my barber about from the convention's organizational charts. 

Nor was there much for the Thai owners of the Thai restaurant or the Korean folks who own the laundry in town. They are too busy worrying about keeping their businesses afloat to waste much time chatting about Democrats with me.

And I thought about Trump rallies I've seen on TV and thought, well, they certainly seem to inspire his crowds. They are the modern day version of those old Nuremberg rallies which were staged with thousands of flags and strutting soldiers and Swastikas everywhere and stiff arm salutes.

And then I thought about our own local Democratic club meetings, which are almost exclusively about the mechanics of organizing efforts to reach voters with our "message" and how best to do it, door knocking or on line.

I tried to think about when, as a group, we have ever debated just what our message should be.

We once had an exchange, in Zoom, about abortion, where I said I was for abortion but not for infanticide, and another Dem, a very bright lady, said she was for allowing "abortion" right up to the time of delivery because as far as she was concerned that fetus was part of the mother, or at least that's what I think she was saying, but she quickly added that was something we could talk about later, privately.

And I thought: Privately? Is that not exactly the sort of thing we should be talking about in public, as Democrats, exploring what our stance, our "message" should be?

Every time I have brought up an issue of values of "message," whether it's a question of whether the town of Hampton should be writing a check to support the local Catholic Church or whether we should be pushing for the teaching of how racism has functioned in American history, that gets deferred to some other forum.

                                       

During World War Two, soldiers and sailors were not allowed to discuss religion or politics on board ship and it was understood why: These hot topics would only foment dissension in the ranks. Going to war was not about discussing the why, only the what, only how we were going to kill Germans, not why.

                                      

That seems to be pretty much where we are now in our Democratic Party meetings and conventions: we are gathered together to discuss what we are about, not why we are about it or even the why of the what should be.

The Case for a Liberal T Party: A Gettysburg Coalition

 

 That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

--Abraham Lincoln

Gettysburg, PA

The Democratic Party I know offends people.

And Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy and Fox News cannot believe their good fortune to be fed, daily, red meat with which to bait their listeners.

Some people call this "woke" but whatever it is, I know, when I sit in a room with hardworking folks from Haverhill or Methuen or Salem, NH, they are appalled by the idea of defunding police, or by the idea of having to say a sentence about a "gender fluid" or "non binary" person not, "She went to Walmart to buy herself some soap," instead "They went to Walmart to buy themselves some soap."

And the idea of "reparations" for the nastiness of slavery and Jim Crow means that someone is proposing to take hard earned money  from them in 2021 to pay a fine for something that happened in 1856 or 1956 which they had nothing to do with. They don't know about red lining and they are not aware of advantages they may have had they never asked for; all they know is they are struggling financially right now, living paycheck to paycheck.

These folks can be as horrified as anyone at the photos and videos from the 1960's when Black children were killed in church bombings or spat on for trying to get served at a soda fountain or to attend a public school, or attacked by police dogs, but they are insulted and infuriated to be told that America is a bad place because we have some ugliness in our history and the idea this might be taught to their 10 year old kids as some sort of Critical Race Theory--which of course it is not, but still, that sort of thing is entirely plausible to these villagers who have heard Democrats on TV talk about racial injustice as if everyone is guilty.

And the news that in California they are erasing the name of Abraham Lincoln from elementary schools because ABRAHAM LINCOLN, the Great Emancipator, was not woke enough means these humble villagers want nothing to do with the Democratic party. Sure, tear down the statues of Robert E. Lee, who was a traitor and as vicious a slaver as ever lived, but Lincoln? 

Even Jefferson. Now, we all know, those of us who have seen "Hamilton" or maybe even read a few books about Jefferson--my own recent favorite is the "Most Blessed of Patriarchs," by Annette Gordon-Reed--then our judgment of Jefferson might be more complicated.

But here is my point: We need a different message as Democrats.

We need to say the Republicans are all about rejection of the idea of the community. The only place they accept cooperative action is worthwhile is in the military, but Democrats say we had all better hang together or surely, we will all hang separately. 

We really do need a new birth of freedom in this country, but that has nothing to do with guns and vigilantes stalking the streets like Kyle Rittenhouse, but a freedom which means that the government which represents us in Washington actually represents the PEOPLE, not sagebrush or the powerful minorities. There is nothing democratic, no democracy in a US Senate which has a Senator from Wyoming representing a few hundred thousand getting the same vote as the Senator from California who represents nearly forty million. And that same Senate, a body devised to restrain and thwart the will of the people, controls the US Supreme Court which is a body designed to say, "This is stuff you cannot vote on. Only we get to vote on this. We are the umpires and only our opinion counts."

So, I would love to see raucous Democrats showing up to protest Gerrymandering at rallies waving yellow flags which have the segmented snake who reminds us "Join or Die," which is perfect because its not about "Don't Tread on Me" because I am the only important one, but it's saying by joining WE are stronger and we depend on each other for survival.

And in New Hampshire, where we are supposed to have one representative for every 3,444 citizens, put that number on the flag. 

The Tea Party dimwits dressed up in Revolutionary War costumes, with three pointed hats. I think Gettysburg Democrats ought to wear the blue  Kepi hats worn by the Union soldiers of the Civil War--we ought to be saying, "It was the SECOND American revolution we embrace--the one that actually did set people free, all the people, the one that brought a new meaning to all men are created equal, not just white men."  And we might add, "Not just men, but women."

And make that yellow the same yellow as the Gadsden flag, just to confuse the opposition, who thought they had coopted that color and flag.  People driving by will have to ask: What?

Republicans are always catching the accusations we hurl at them and hurling those grenades back at us: I saw a youtube ad just yesterday saying, "Democrats are trying to take away your Medicare!"

The least we can do is to steal a flag.

Hometown Heroes: How Dudley Dudley, Nancy Sandberg and Phyllis Bennett Saved the Great Bay

 When a neighbor handed me a small book, "Small Town, Big Oil" written by a University of New Hampshire faculty member (David Moore)  the only reason I opened it was the photo of Dudley Dudley, about whom I'd heard various things over the years but I never really knew exactly why she was locally famous--something to do with Aristotle Onassis, which sounded to me like some myth: What would Aristotle Onassis want with New Hampshire? Could Onassis even find New Hampshire on a map?

Dudley Dudley: Don't Tread on Me

It turned out to be one of those books which actually kept me up all night--and I had work the next day--but I literally, could not stop turning pages.

Onassis 

Turns out, Aristotle Onassis did know where New Hampshire was and as part of a scheme to gain control over oil transport, he seized on the idea of creating his own mega refinery, which he decided to place in Durham New Hampshire, the largest oil refinery of all time, in the entire world, five times as big as anything in New Jersey.

Onassis's shipping wealth was closely embroiled in shipping oil and the oil producers more or less had him by the tender parts and this effort was part of his idea to go into the oil refining business himself and shuck the shackles of the oil barons.

To do this, he decided he'd ship oil in massive amounts to the Isles of Shoals, pump it from that depot under the water in a 15 mile pipeline to Rye and from there another 20 miles to Durham Point, hard by the Great Bay. 

From this, emerged a saga which makes  "Silkwood" and "Erin Brockavich" look like nursery rhymes, as the Onassis plan needed all sorts of co-conspirators from the governor of New Hampshire, a Georgia transplant named Meldrin Thomson, to the creepy,  venomous William Loeb III, publisher of the Manchester Union Leader. 

Moore structures his book masterfully, introducing each of the key players and then mixing them together as we see the struggle unfold.

Dudley Dudley--her first name was Dudley and she married a guy name Dudley (and you'll never convince me that wasn't half the attraction)--had just been elected to her first term in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, where Loeb thought no woman belonged. He never referred to her as anything other than Mrs. Dudley, because, after all, that's what she was, nothing more than a housewife trying to play in the big leagues of state government.  But Dudley proved to have a few important qualities: She was clearly tenacious and not easy to intimidate and she was shrewd enough to realize if she tried to oppose an oil refinery by appealing to environmental concerns Loeb would quickly label her a tree hugger and blow her away.  So she chose to frame the argument as an issue of local control: Durham should not be forced to accept an oil refinery against the wishes of the local residents. But to demonstrate the locals were actually opposed to this guaranteed environmental rape, Dudley would require help from the locals and some mechanism to get the word out. That's where Ms. Sandberg and Ms. Bennett came in.

Of course, the governor immediately cried out this was NIMBY and no local town should have the right to deny to the state this cornucopia of largesse, which, with the country in the middle of an oil crisis, with gas prices through the roof and long lines at the gas pumps, seemed irresistible. Onassis and his gang of expensive suits promised Durham residents would no longer have to pay property taxes owing to the revenues from the oil refinery and there would be thousands of good jobs at the refinery. Newmarket residents seemed all for it and wanted the refinery there. Gas station owners shut down their pumps, telling residents to vote for the refinery if they wanted gas for their cars.

Phyllis Bennett

Of course, none of this ever really happens when oil refineries come to town, and Phyllis Bennett, who had moved up from Baltimore to start a humble, weekly local paper, Publick Occurences, wrote extensively about how this sales pitch was clearly bogus and a con job. Turns out even if you have an oilrefinery next door, your own local gas station does not get cheap and plentiful gas for you and the taxes the oil refinery pays do not reduce your town's property taxes and there are very few jobs for locals at the refinery. 

Bennett's story is in some ways the most dramatic and built for Hollywood of the three women: She had moved to New Hampshire to pursue her dream of publishing a newspaper which really mattered and her husband was her partner in this, but not long after they started her husband started an affair with a young, pretty staff intern so as her own battle with William Loeb and the governor erupted, Phyllis was faced with the dissolution of her marriage. Just to really complicate things, the intern was the only one on staff who knew how to work the machine which actually allowed them to print the paper, so Phyllis had to keep her on staff just to get her stuff in print. (This was before computers emerged a decade later.)

And then there was Nancy Sandberg, who described herself as a housewife, tending her garden, when mysterious men in expensive suits showed up trying to buy property from her which they said was for a house on the Bay, when, in fact, this was part of a plot to buy up contiguous plats of land for the oil refinery. Nancy started a local activist group: Save Our Shores, which would play a pivotal role in getting the town of Durham to vote to reject the Onassis bid.

William Loeb III

All this happened back around 1974 and as unlikely as most David vs Goliath stories are, this one actually happened and the three women managed to defeat Onassis.

Meldrin Thomson

Onassis died the next year, and had he not, the battle may have been waged for longer and the locals ground down by big money and the battle won by the bad guys.

Dudley Dudley went on to fight the Seabrook Nuclear Plant but she lost that one. 

She did, however, along with Nancy Sandberg and Phyllis Bennett manage to save the Great Bay from the inevitable oil despoliation which would have accompanied the refinery and more likely the underwater oil pipelines. 

The cast of characters is hard to resist: William Loeb whose editorials cast Dudley Dudley as an elitist dilettante, likely Communist intent on denying an economic bonanza to the state just to satisfy her liberal inclinations to stick it to the common man. Mildren Thomson who never met a billionaire he didn't want to serve and exploit for his own benefit. The list goes on. 

But the most surprising characters are not the villains. They are the ordinary extraordinary women who found themselves at the tip of the spear and decided to thrust and parry right back and to not take a step backward.

The Straw Man Argument in the Abortion debate: Ignoratio elenchi

 Recently, on Twitter, a woman I follow, who is intelligent and liberal posted a Tweet using the argument that a woman's right to abortion is all about her being able to control her own body and what happens to it.

While I believe in abortion rights, this argument has always struck me as specious. The woman who argues abortion is only about a woman being about to control what happens to her own body is clearly ignoring what right to lifers are  are saying, which is there are two bodies involved in this case, not just the woman's body. What the right to lifer said is what is being done to another body, the one inside the woman, who at some point, most people would agree is close enough to being a human being to have some rights. The "I control what happens to my own body" ignores that argument as if it doesn't even exist.

6 weeks

The Original tweet from Irishrygirl was: "Good morning. If you only support abortions in instances of rape or incest, you're reinforcing the idea that in order for a woman to have control over her own body, someone else had to violate it first."

To which Obadiah Youngblood replied: "At 38 weeks gestation, it's not simply a question of control over your own body--there's another body in question. On the other hand, a pulsatile clump of cells does not constitute a "heart." It's about line drawing and the moment of conception is not the place to do it."

To which Irishrygirl replied: "If someone is 38 weeks pregnant, that person wants that child. Crib is built, clothes bought, names picked out."

To which Obadiah responded: "You are being literal, intentionally missing the point. What about 28 weeks? The point is, at some point, the fetus/conceptus passes beyond a point where it's only about the mother. I'm for abortion rights. The question is where does abortion end and infanticide begin?"

8 weeks

But Obadiah was voted down.  Scores of Twitter readers liked Irishygirl's reply about the crib. Nobody liked, and some vilified, Obadiah.

For Obadiah, this whole thread illustrated a tactic in argument which exasperates him: Ignoratio elenchi, or in a slightly different meaning, "The Straw Man" setting up an argument you can win which has nothing to do with the original argument, which you would lose.

22 weeks

It is the inability to follow the more abstract point of the argument of abortion, which comes down to where in gestation what is part of the mother's body gains a new conceptual status, that of an independent human being, or, in ancient conception, that thing growing inside a woman's body becomes "ensouled."

As always, the best illustration of this sequence of call and response comes from "The Wire" where Stringer Bell tries to make a point to his staff about being satisfied with something which is not a success and calling it a success because it's easier. Bell is spinning out an abstraction, telling an allegory to make a point, but it's entirely lost on at least one of his minions.

Below, is the link to Stringer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp1ExC52BOc

That's what Obadiah was facing.