Of all the barnyard-class deep-thinkers clamoring to make grunting fools of themselves over Sandra Fluke presenting her opinion to Congress, and getting called a "slut" for her trouble, among the loudest jackasses was Steve Landsburg, who brayed:
while Ms. Fluke herself deserves the same basic respect we owe to any human being, her position — which is what’s at issue here — deserves none whatseover. It deserves only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered. To treat it with respect would be a travesty.
Landsburg said this because, as a Philosophical Economist, he either (a) doesn't understand how this newfangled contraption known as "insurance" works, or else he's (b) just kind of an asshole.
He in fact came up with a third iteration of this nonsense, though by that point most people were bored and kind of just sighed and moved on, because it was the same old -- the argument that if you pay a tax you get to veto every single use of your tax dollars is not strictly accurate, but even worse is the idea that if you yourself are paying a tax, you don't get a say in how that tax might benefit you, if someone else who is paying that tax objects.
The tax on fertile women who choose not to use birth control pills is the least defensible.
Fertile women who never use some form of contraception are in a minority consisting of Rainbow Brite, Princess Buttercup, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and not even Smurfette.
You definitely get a kind of Henry Higgins vibe off Professor Lansburg, though....
Higgins is standing up near him, closing two or three file drawers which are hanging out. He appears in the morning light as a robust, vital, appetizing sort of man of forty or thereabouts, dressed in a professional-looking black frock-coat with a white linen collar and black silk tie. He is of the energetic, scientific type, heartily, even violently interested in everything that can be studied as a scientific subject, and careless about himself and other people, including their feelings. He is, in fact, but for his years and size, rather like a very impetuous baby "taking notice" eagerly and loudly, and requiring almost as much watching to keep him out of unintended mischief. His manner varies from genial bullying when he is in a good humor to stormy petulance when anything goes wrong; but he is so entirely frank and void of malice that he remains likeable even in his least reasonable moments.
The "likeable" bit is not so apparent online, where, well, Landsburg's blog reads exactly like what Henry Higgins' blog would have read like, if they had the internet early last century, and Shaw hadn't invented him. (Ultimate grammar troll!)
Anyway, I thought of Higgins after I saw this...
Steven Landsburg, the professor who was denounced by his university for criticizing Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, stuck to his position in an exclusive interview with The College Fix.
“Everyone deserves respect, but some people are not interested in discussing their ideas, or possibly examining a different side,” said Landsburg, a bestselling author and professor of economics at the University of Rochester. “Fluke clearly has no desire to do this.”
How does he know that Fluke feels this way? Who knows? And who cares? Yes, Fluke clearly believes that if she pays into an insurance scheme, it ought to cover contraceptives. This is an astoundingly non-controversial position. It certainly does not deserve to be "laughed at, mocked, and jeered."
But then note this, why Landsburg was told he was out of line by Rochester's president:
I am outraged that any professor would demean a student in this fashion. To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in this way is about the most offensive thing a professor can do. We are here to educate, to nurture, to inspire, not to engage in character assassination.
Well, yeah.
When you're speaking as a professor, you shouldn't do that.
But then, dig this:
UR president Joel Seligman wrote an e-mail to faculty and staff that said he was “outraged that any professor would demean a student in this fashion.”
Landsburg found these criticisms to be absurd.
“Free speech isn’t the issue here,” he said. “Nobody, myself included, tried to stifle her speech.”
Right...
But free speech is so not the issue.
You being a dick is the issue.