The first e-mail response to today's column, from someone named Scott (no full name or return address), presents the standard reaction of parents who think slapping or spanking a kid is justifiable, and not a violent act. You can read it below. It never ceases to amaze me -- how we think hitting a kid is OK as a way of making a point when doing the same to anyone else is considered a crime. And, according to this e-mailer, you can slap a kid for bad behavior that might be a figment of the parent's imagination.

"Yesterday, today, and tomorrow some of the most loving, caring, nurturing fathers have or will give their seven  year old son a slap on the butt for some real or perceived misbehavior.   A slap on the butt is very different from beating a child."

Posted by Dan Rodricks at 8:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A friend from Owings Mills reports: "Rochelle and I went to the movies last night. To my surprise we were greeted by a sign that read 'No Weapons Allowed.'"

Posted by Dan Rodricks at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

OK, we're all supposed to hate mimes. But this is pretty extraordinary stuff -- a French "ventriloquist mime" my daughter brought home from French class. His name is Jerome Murat. Check it out.

YouTube video

Posted by Dan Rodricks at 7:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Lots of mail on today's column on Bush, the draft and national public service. A sampling:

From Richard Morrell, Lochearn:

I agree with the need for mandatory public service, but for somewhat different reasons. As we have expanded choices with cable television's hundreds of channels, xm radio, dvd's etc. the choices we have make any shared experiences rare - usually only great moments of disaster or of triumph. School and college curricula have become so diverse that the idea of a shared culture has become almost extinct. As a Vietnam era veteran (who was against the war) I came to the conclusion that had there been no draft there would have been few antiwar protests. The shared sacrifice that the draft brought insured that the country would not go blindly into an adventure however slowly the process took to affect change. I want the personal investment into the country that mandatory public service would bring, and I want the shared experiences that such service would also bring. I prefer no exemptions for any reason except physical and mental incapacity and I suspect it should be required at the point of high school graduation (or age of 18) for one or two years. I am less concerned about what someone does - military, Peace Corp, AmeriCorp, helping in schools, picking up trash, or anything else that contributes to improving the society - than I am about creating some sense of shared responsibility for each other and the country. As a child of the 60's I have come to believe that the worst thing my generation did was to discard the shared culture (it did need to be changed) and the the acceptance of almost anything as being of equal value and importance. We need some routine parts of life to bring us together and not just tragedies and reality shows.

From Jo Fisher:

Thanks for your stand on compulsory public service.  I've heard more than one college professor say that their best students are those who took a break between high school and college.  According to some of them. military service or voluntary service such as the Peace Corp results in more serious, dedicated students. I support Rangel's call for a return to the draft because I think we need to have a comprehensive discussion of how young people can benefit from serving our country and of how all of us can contribute to the current wars in ways other than putting "support our troops" stickers on our gas guzzling cars. I'd like young people to have a choice of how they serve our country but I also recognize that if the draft were reinstated, we'd be a lot less likely to go to war. One last thought - I am bothered by all the air-time the climbers who perished on Mt. Hood have received relative to that received by our military personnel who have died in the Middle East during that same period.  Those climbers elected to take that risk.  Our priorities sure are screwed up!

From Sharon Wright: I agree with mandatory public service but I disagree with  the military being mandatory. As a veteran I've always said I NEVER want a daughter of mine in such a controlled environment that doesn't allow creative growth. It should stay VOLUNTARY! This idea only started because recruiters target poor kids and the rich affluent are smart enough to find means to go to college and don't see the military as a desperate move as I did to excape E.St. Louis/St. Louis. I have told my daughters if they did decide to join the military get the education FIRST because the military makes promises it doesn't keep!

Posted by Dan Rodricks at 7:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Below are some good links that provide more info -- and some video -- on the subject of my Sunday column, the Mars Martin seaplane, the biggest ever built for the military. By the way, in one test run, this plane stayed airborne 36 hours carrying no payload. It had gobs of endurance power. On an early operation in 1943, a Mars, in the hands of a commander and crew of 16, took off from Patuxent River with 13,000 pounds of cargo and delivered it to Natal, Brazil, in a nonstop flight covering 4,375 miles in 28 hours 25 minutes. Historian Jack Breihan finds its regular runs from San Francisco to Hawaii during the war years most impressive.

Yes, Mars Estates and the Mars supermarkets are named for this baby. I hope the Martin museum succeeds in bringing one home. The flight from Vancouver to Middle River ought to be exciting. They'll have to take a "lake route" because, should the Mars need to make a landing on its way back to Baltimore, it can only land on wet stuff.

Bring the Mighty Mars Back Home

Martin Maryland Aviation Museum

Martin Mars as 'Water Bombers'

Jack Breihan history on Martin Aviation

More on Leonardo DiCaprio, who played Howard Hughes, who was like Glenn L. Martin only very different because Martin actually produced a giant seaplane that worked

Posted by Dan Rodricks at 6:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

I am glad someone is talking about improving academic achievement of young black men. I heard a depressing projection the other day: At the present rate of incarceration, by the year 2020, the United States will have more black men in prison than were ever in slavery. I am tracking down the source of that statement. It was made the other day at the presentation of a state panel's plan for getting more African-American boys to graduate from high school and go off to college. So many of these children grow up in poor, dysfunctional, fatherless homes -- so many of their fathers irresponsible or incarcerated, or both -- that we need a small army of social soldiers to get into their lives (mentors are just part of it) to point them in the right direction. Their fathers, uncles and older brothers might be lost, but there's still hope for them. They could still grow up to be responsible, law-abiding citizens and good fathers and husbands -- but it will take a generation to fix a generation.

I mentioned this on WBAL Radio, and a listener named Flame agreed by e-mail:

"You had it right when you suggest that we need to fix a generation in order to fix the problem. It seems to me that while society moved forward with the gains made by social equality for all in the 60s we took a step backwards with the upheaval created by the Vietnam War and my generations quest to be different from the generations of our parents and grandparents. The events our parents generation lived through(WW II and depression) made them, as Tom Brokaw remarked, "the greatest generation." A tough act to follow. The excesses of the 60s while quite a lot of fun at the time have taken a toll on future generations. Society fractured in the 60s and many of the social
problems we see today are the result. How to fix the problem and who takes the point is the burning question."

I don't necessarily attribute the problem of black male academic failure to the excesses of the 60s. In the case of Baltimore, there was a seismic loss of manufacturing jobs for unskilled workers -- good, union jobs that could pave the way to a middle class lifestyle. Part of our culture never recovered from that and it became bogged down in problems such as drug addiction. The de facto segregation of the city from its more affluent suburbs contributed to it. There is a long litany of reasons, some of which have to do with lifestyle choices and a failings of values, but most of which rests in big, structural factors like the shifting of economic opportunity, the ever-widening chasm between the rich and the poor, the stressing of the middle class.

But you know what? The reasons no longer matter. We know what the problems are and we have known them for a long time -- we just haven't treated these problems (related juvenile crime, school failure, recidivism, children mired in poverty) as if they constituted a national emergency. In fact, we have gone the other way -- abiding a diminished role of government in the social safety net, in giving citizens who need it a boost. We seem to be content with losing so many human lives to prison. It's time we did something about this. Time we stopped building new prisons and improved reading and math scores. But we will need time  -- a generation to fix a generation.

Posted by Dan Rodricks at 7:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Next time I get a vulgar e-mail from a nasty reader who says he'd be happy to see the Sun collapse and go out of business, and those of us who work at 501 N. Calvert lose our livelihoods, I'll remind him of the Sun's series this week on ground rent in Baltimore. This kind of journalism no one else around here does.

A well-known businessman sent this comment by e-mail: " I read the Sun series literally with my mouth open.  There are some soul-less humans around us..."

This is an example of the wise and cunning few taking advantage of the simple and innocent many. This is the parasitic economy, which produces nothing, ventures nothing, and exists to exploit arcane laws and victimize those with no resources to protect themselves. High-fives to Schulte and Arney for their work on this.

Posted by Dan Rodricks at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

At first, I thought the Peyton Manning commercials for Mastercard were funny, but the more I see them the more Manning comes across as a patronizing put-down artist, making fun of -- not championing -- the working stiffs of America who earn a tiny fraction of what he makes for throwing footballs and acting as pitchman for a credit card company. The waitress who drops a tray of food, the stock boy in a supermarket, the deli man slicing meat, moving men and fast-food workers -- all these modest wage-earners are the recipients of Manning's phony high-fives and obssessive antics. This isn't exactly fanfare for the common man; you can't forget that the wholesome Indianapolis quarterback, the one cheering on the below-minimum-wage waitress in the Mastercard commercials, makes millions of dollars a year from the Colts. He's reportedly the highest-paid player in NFL history, getting $99 million for seven years with a $34.5 million signing bonus, and an extra $19 million in incentives. According to Sports Illustrated, Manning gets another $11 million a year from endorsements. He'll never have to worry about waiting tables or moving furniture.

And never mind the whole issue of credit card debt -- whether Manning should be encouraging use of plastic for the same socieconomic class he "celebrates" in these commercials. Since 1989 credit card debt has tripled in the U.S. to more than  $700 billion, and studies show that middle- and low-income households carry an average of $9,000. Among the 20-somethings, who are Manning's biggest admirers, debt (college loans and credit cards) is a particularly acute problem. "The [credit card] industry discovered that the most profitable consumers were the least responsible consumers—college students, people who'd declared bankruptcy, housewives [and] people who were consuming beyond their means," Newsweek quoted James Scurlock, the 30-something director of  "Maxed Out," a documentary on consumer debt. "People who would pay anything for credit—any fee or any interest rate because they needed more credit. Before, credit was rationed based on whether you could pay it back, based on your reputation, based on your character to some degree. It's just not that way anymore, and that's a huge change."

Do you think Peyton Manning has a clue about this?

And I wonder how many of the workers depicted in these commercials have health insurance benefits from their employers. According to Investor's Business Daily, the cost of uncompensated care in the U.S. reached $28.8 billion in 2005. That was up from $26.9 billion the prior year. The estimate on uninsured Americans ranges from 46 million to 48 million these days.

So, pardon me for no longer laughing at Peyton Manning's Everyman-Everyfan commercials. The "joke" has worn thin now, but I wonder if Manning has the slightest clue that some of his fans, including this one, might see it that way.

Posted by Dan Rodricks at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Try the humus at Near East Bakery on Hamilton Avenue, just west of Harford Road. You love garlic? You love life? You'll love tbis. Slap it on the pita bread they sell there. Ask the guy in the retro red Members Only jacket for his freshest humus. He'll get it "from the back." Good stuff. It might be the last best thing they sell in the place.

Posted by Dan Rodricks at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

I got to give it up for the undergraduate production of 'Urinetown, The Musical' at Towson University, now through Dec. 9. Kids -- you've got a great show there! This is a smart, fresh, hip and hilarious -- I do not use that word hilarious easily -- production of the Greg Kotis-Mark Hollman Tony-winning musical from 2001. If you've never seen it, scrounge up 12 bucks ($7 for students), get to Towson's Center for the Arts and look for the theater with the toilet paper festooned above the doors. While I'd like to mention the entire cast -- almost every member of this motley crew seems to offer something you take home with you, and they're all involved in the clever choreography -- I clap a little harder for Bobby Libby (Officer Lockstock), Jaclyn Keough (Little Sally) and Bobby Strong (Ryan Haase). Not only do these students have talent, they have genuine star power. Compliments to director James Hunnicutt and scenic designer Daniel Ettinger, in particular. Great job!

Posted by Dan Rodricks at 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)