Another Topic We're Not Allowed to Discuss: Spanking

Oh, if you want to talk about adult sexual spanking, knock yourself out. You can get a 13-week commitment for a sitcom based in a Sub-Dom club with the right creative team behind you. I'm thinking a Brillstein-Grey production, starring Andy Dick and Kathy Griffith as a pair of inept "dungeon masters" who squabble every week about how to make rent and over the proper color for ball-gags.

But when the bete noir of liberals ("bete noir" is a French term meaning "Evil-Twin Goateed Bette Midler"), Dr. James Dobson, wishes to run ads endorsing spanking as a means of disciplining children, the usual suspects have a hissy fit.

I don't have any kids, and I remember my own terror at getting "the belt" (at least until I was no longer afraid of it, sometime around turning 27), so I don't know if can really offer a firm opinion on corporal punishment. Spare the rod, spoil the child they say, but I would use that rod sparingly if at all.

Nevertheless, it does seem to me that if we are living in a democracy, with that "marketplace of ideas" thing liberals like to talk about whenever they have some (usually atrocious) ideas they'd like to peddle, perhaps we shouldn't get the vapors over the fact that some people still believe that a moderate amount of corporal punishment is ultimately in the best interest of a child.

If Dobson wants to run his ads, let him. Who cares?

As a side note, I've lately become a firm believer in the theory that one's politics are decided chiefly not by what you believe per se, but by whichever side's bullshit annoys you the least. Both sides have bullshit, of course. I'm frequently annoyed by some of the bullshit of the right.

But until the left can exert some greater quality-control over its bullshit, and present that bullshit in a less Henny-Penny-the-sky-is-falling manner, I'm going to be stuck being a conservative, whether I like it or not.

posted by Ace at 11:47 AM

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