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Jewish World Review Sept. 13, 2005 / 9 Elul, 5765 Intellectualizing and meeting up with stupidity By Marianne M. Jennings
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The MBA programs at the University of Chicago, Stanford, Penn's Wharton, and Harvard prohibit disclosure of their students' grades to recruiters. This restraint, they profess, creates "a more collegial environment with less competition" among their students. This peace-out will serve the grads well in the business world, if Barney, Lamb Chop, and the Rev. Bill Graham are running Wall Street.
On far too many occasions I find myself, with green Sharpie pen drawn, circling madly these types of stories and yawping, "What on earth are they thinking?" Clint Eastwood said recently that if you go far enough in either direction politically you end up sharing company with fringe kooks on the other side. The far left meets the radical right and discovers comrades there. Sean Penn, Howard Dean, et al. embrace Pat Buchanan and his bud, Michael Moore, on the war in Iraq. William F. Buckley's National Review staff with its nutty campaign to legalize drugs ends up breaking bread and hash with Country Joe and the Fish and other fear and loathing Woodstockians. The same circularity consumes intellectuals. Intellectualism runs smack dab into stupidity.
Group Health of Seattle has a notice on its Website warning its patients that when their medical records go into online mode (per federal requirements) access to their teenage children's medical records will disappear. The site now clicks away on a count-down for the parental access cut-off date. Parents have a chance to withhold the car keys or Halo game controllers from their teens in exchange for privacy waivers. Whatever!
Misguided intellectualized regulatory morasses intersect here as stymied bureaucrats stand by wondering what natural law they can overturn to accommodate mammon's folly. Boy howdy, they got themselves cornered on this one. Some state laws require privacy for teens who seek abortions, mental health services, or abuse counseling. So, parents cannot have access to their teens' records in these treatment areas. However, other state laws prohibit minors from gaining access to their medical records without parental consent. Now no one will have access to those medical records, thus thwarting the federal mandate for online medical records. To say that we have traveled in a circle in this thicket of intellectualized regulation is charitable. This is a reverse u-turn off a cliff. Here's the anti-intellectual rule: teens report to parents. Parents are in charge of teens. Parents can have access to teens' DNA, medical records, and ear wax, if they so desire. He who pays for medical care is entitled to know what he paid for.
No one morphs into stupidity better than academics. Professor Rebekah Nathan turned herself into the Margaret Mead of the party animal college students (may their parents never see their campus health center records) with her new book, "My Freshman Year," documenting her a year as a frosh. Herewith her commentary on cheating amongst her youthful subjects, "I saw (cheating) as part of a larger system rather than as an ethical barometer of our times or of particular students." The simple-minded person wonders: If cheating is not an ethical barometer, what is? Why are they cheating anyway? No one sees their grades!
Illegal immigration brings the pseudo-intellectuals out of the woodwork. Amnesty for all, they tell us, would reduce the problem. Right-O! While we're at it, why not give them free medical care? Oops, already intellectualized into existence. Our beloved governor of Arizona, Ms. Janet Napolitano, tromped down to our border to declare a state of emergency. This same law-and-order wunderkind then proceeded to require that we charge in-state tuition to illegal immigrants attending our state universities. Intellectuals in Tucson installed water stations in the desert areas most frequently used for illegal entry. These policies oughta keep them out. The late Sonny Bono, the consummate anti-intellectual, when asked what he thought about illegal immigration, responded with great befuddlement, "It's illegal, isn't it?"
Environmentalists bombard us with greenhouse gas science and other hot air theories. They oppose most things man-made, from cars to levees. Just a quick Westlaw data run shows that the Army Corps of Engineers would have had trouble finding the time to strengthen the New Orleans levees because of the time spent in court battling environmental groups such as, "Save Our Wetlands." The environmental groups pulled out all the stops, as it were, to preserve the Lake Pontchartrain swamp. Between battling over EIS requirements and definitions of tributary vs. wetland, the Corps had not a spare moment nor authorization. Now a compost of toxic waste adorns Bourbon Street. Dead bodies are a nice wetlands touch.
Then there are the lawyers who reasoned that legal services in this country should be dispensed pro bono to the proletarian masses. The best way to assist the needy may not be to sic a pack of lawyers on them. Nonetheless, mandatory pro bono service was born. This week I received an e-mail from the grieving State Bar of Arizona. Horror of horrors, there are 550 evacuees, refugees, flood victims, or whatever we are calling them now, sitting in our Memorial Coliseum sans legal assistance. Not to worry, the beneficent State Bar held triage sessions with the needy and determined their primo legal concerns. Our legal leaders beckon us to assist the evacuees with: Consumer bankruptcy, Social Security, Criminal, Interstate child custody, Protection orders, and Immigration.
What, no medical records issues? Dearest reader, we have come full circle. We now provide free legal advice for hurricane victims who were in the country illegally so that lawyers can do pro bono work for victims of a levee break (courtesy of environmentalists' blockades) who have gotten crosswise with the law. But judge them not, devoted observers of intellectuals, for criminal activity is not an ethical barometer.
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JWR contributor Marianne M. Jennings is a professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State
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© 2005, Marianne M. Jennings |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
