Editor-in-chief: David Suissa
June 6, 2019
Scot Peterson, the former resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, has been charged with child neglect and culpable negligence for his alleged inaction during the active shooter situation which resulted in the deaths of 17 students and teachers at the school last year. Some think he’s being scapegoated.
A Florida jury may convict, but it’s fair to ask how this prosecution will influence other cops in the future. If Florida and other states believe police should be held criminally liable to legal standards of child neglect, their legislatures should make that clear in the law. It’s not always popular to stand up for the rule of law. But even cowards have rights.
He deserves our contempt. And the survivors, including grieving parents, need our support. But prison?
…who’s next? The indifferent teacher? The judge who let killers go free to kill again? Or the school administrator who allowed generations of poor students to graduate without being able to compete in the modern world?
He hid behind a concrete wall for 48 minutes instead of saving the lives of my daughter and her classmates.
Then he had the guts to go on national television and tell lies.
A lot is coming his way and he deserves it…
Rising antisemitism in Europe has made many Jews consider removing or otherwise hiding visible symbols of their Jewish identity like kippahs and tzitzit. This view was promoted by German official Felix Klein, who was rebuked later for his remarks by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. Still – for the Jews of Europe, is it best to play it safe and blend in?
If you follow Felix Klein’s advice to the letter, then living visibly as a Jew is no longer safe in Germany. Being invisible is more secure. Can you only be a Jew behind closed doors in Germany? If that is the case, Jewish life in Germany has no future.
How tragic that Germany of all places feels it helpful to suggest, unlike the 40s, not to identify ourselves with the yellow star but to conceal our identity with bare heads devoid of any link with our God. To recommend that we renounce Jewish pride in our faith only serves to contribute to the insidious and dangerous assimilation of the Jewish people.
A cardinal Jewish principle is pikuach nefash, save a life in danger, applicable to an immediate threat or to a danger that might become serious. It implies that one can disregard a law that conflicts with life or health. The preservation of life overrides almost all religious considerations.
A debate is raging in America about how to define poverty – and also about the prevalence of poverty in the United States. Two researchers, Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer, have claimed that a surprising amount of Americans are living on just $2 a day. How could this be true? Many conservatives say that it isn’t – and now a third researcher, Bruce Meyer, is claiming that these families are underreporting assistance and income. So who is correct?
Just because $2-a-day poverty might be a statistical artifact, that does not mean there aren’t a large number of families in truly dire circumstances in this country… Their paper also may miss some of the worst cases of need; it excludes homeless people, for instance, who don’t show up in government surveys.
The bottom line is that the numbers we’ve been hearing are vastly overinflated, and shrink dramatically with better methods. Meyer’s biggest contribution is to match what people tell survey-takers with administrative data from tax and welfare agencies, to reveal that the allegedly “extremely poor” are often underreporting their income.
Edin, Shaefer, and Meyer are all highly respected researchers, but Edin and Shaefer make no secret of being left of center and supporting a more generous safety net, while Meyer is affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute and receives funding from the Charles Koch Institute. I think Meyer does extremely good, careful work, but there’s obviously a reason that the Charles Koch Institute wants to fund this line of research, and by the same token there’s a reason supporters of a bigger safety net would be drawn to research suggesting that extreme poverty is widespread.
YouTube is changing its policy on hate speech – committing to being more vigilant in removing hateful, inciting, racist and white supremacist content. The decision, however, comes on the heels of YouTube’s refusal to remove content from podcaster Steven Crowder’s page, despite Crowder’s repeated homophobic attacks on Vox journalist Carlos Maza.
YouTube was absolutely right to allow Steven Crowder to maintain his channel… It is embarrassing that a media publication such as Vox supports this censorship of Crowder’s speech. Vox’s supposedly liberal writers should know that subjective interpretations of offensive speech mean that truly objective judges of acceptable speech are near-impossible to find.
The ways in which Crowder speaks about Maza in the video excerpts Maza compiled are exactly the kinds of methods bullies use in real life… For queer people and other marginalized users wanting to create content on YouTube, he says, “the price of entry is that you have to accept that the people who respond to you are allowed to use hate speech to target your identity as part of their criticism. That’s a miserable policy. It’s not actually an anti-harassment policy. It’s a loophole.”
YouTube said it would not allow the account spreading the homophobic videos against Maza to earn advertising revenue anymore — meaning that though they will stay up, Crowder can not profit directly from them… Maza and others noted that demonetizing the Crowder’s YouTube videos won’t stop the harassment.
This week YouTube reinforced speculation that its policies against hate speech are murky and inconsistent. While today’s bans have been touted as a good first step, several organizations and activists are less than impressed.
For many Gen-Z children, being splashed across your parents’ social media is commonplace and constant. But do parents really have a right to publish their children’s images without consent? As these children come of age, “sharenting” practices are being scrutinized.
Smartphones and social media may be, in fact, transforming the experience of childhood and adolescence in some ways. But the hard (for many adults to hear) truth is that many of technology’s effects on kids have less to do with screen time per se than they do with the decisions grown-ups are making — many of which place children’s privacy at great risk.
At first, the choice belongs to parents alone. An infant can’t object to a soft-filtered selfie with mama; a toddler won’t know if their tantrum becomes a topic of online commiseration. But when, exactly, does it start to change? Is there a turning point somewhere between first steps and first school dance, a clear moment when one’s offspring becomes an independent being whose experiences belong to them, too, and not just to a proud (or confounded, or frustrated) parent who just wants to boast (or inquire, or vent)?
Yes, there are definite negatives to oversharing your children’s personal info and photos, but there are also undeniable positives to pouring your heart out to the world. Indeed, sharenting can involve seeking advice, discussing parenting topics, relating experiences, sharing resources, garnering emotional support and more.
In response to new restrictive laws about abortion in Georgia and Alabama, many women have donned the distinctive red robes of the Handmaids as a form of protest. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a HULU show portraying a world in which women are kept as slaves and have no reproductive autonomy. The show has often been praised for its relevance in the Trump era. But how relevant is “The Handmaid’s Tale?” More at NBC News.
In some ways, The Handmaid’s Tale feels like it’s suffered from its uncanny timing over the past two seasons rather than benefited from it… Empowerment is crackling through the zeitgeist, and The Handmaid’s Tale wants to deliver it, but its continuation also depends on June being a prisoner of Gilead for a good while longer.
as long as an image pulled from fiction is used to define reality, reality starts to seem a lot less real. And reality seeming real is crucial to persuading people to do something… “Is America turning into Gilead?” is the wrong question. “What is America turning into?”, “What is it already?” and “What do we want it to be?” are better ones.
Comparisons to real-world events only go so far, and they can prove burdensome for any fictional series. While “The Handmaid’s Tale” clearly wasn’t conceived for those who might oppose its politics, the baggage of having become a meme heightens the scrutiny of every twist and turn.