Foreign Dispatches

An Amazing New Advance in Paternalism

Kathi-Anne Reinstein, a bold legislator in the state of Massachusetts, proposes to protect the elderly and disabled from sexual "exploitation", even when said "exploitation" is something they've willingly consented to themselves. I suppose there is some sort of contorted logic to this effort, if you assume - as Ms. Reinstein clearly does - that most people over the age of 60 are already in their dotage "second youth", and therefore incapable of informed consent ...

Why Twitter?

Farhad Manjoo asks a question I've long been meaning to myself: what exactly is the reward in using Twitter? I've never been able to come up with a good answer to this question, which is why I've never ever bothered to use my Twitter account even once after creating it. 140 characters doesn't suffice to share all but the most banal thoughts, and when I look at what active users of the Twitter service actually put out, I find myself scratching my head as to why anyone would care to follow such material. Is it really news to anyone that politicians and celebrities engage in all the same mundane daily activities that the rest of us do? I could care less that Ashton Kutcher is mowing his lawn or that Lindsay Lohan just bought an iced frappucino, and if the minutiae of the lives of these famous individuals are of so little interest, I fail to see why anyone - other than  perhaps a stalker - would care about the many non-events that make up my typical day, which might look like this in all its gripping detail:

Everybody Wants to be a Gangsta

As I happen to consider gangsta rap to be one of America's more regrettable cultural exports, I am always bemused to run across evidence of its worldwide popularity.

Freedom is for Bigots Too

While browsing a certain website, I came across this article, detailing the ways in which the American legal system is being used to combat parties refusing to deal with gays. Now, some of the legal decisions quoted are not all that troublesome to me - for instance, there is no such thing as a "right" to a property tax exemption - but others - like forcing a photographer to pay hefty legal fees for refusing to shoot a gay couple's ceremony - make me extremely uneasy.