Category: leisure fascism

Jazz hands as a substitute for clapping approved at the University of Manchester

October 3, 2018 • 12:30 pm

A new report from the BBC and the Independent (click on screenshots below) discussed the banning of clapping at certain events by the student union at the University of Manchester, the school where Matthew Cobb teaches:

BBC:

The Independent:

 

What the papers report is that the student union at the University of Manchester has voted to ban clapping or other ‘noisy appreciation’ of speakers and replace them with “jazz hands” for student activities like panels, debates, and talks. They’ve also encouraged other student groups and societies to move toward jazz hands and away from clapping. (Jazz hands are also described as the sign of approval in British Sign Language.) The National Union of Students (NUS) has been recommending jazz hands since 2015.  And, as The Independent reports:

What’s more, in 2017 the NUS said there would be “consequences” for students who clap and whoop at events, following requests for people to stop.

Here are what jazz hands look like:

The rationale? Inclusivity. The action started with the deaf (from the BBC):

The action was created not only because deaf people wouldn’t be able to hear clapping, but also because people often clap their hands in their laps or at waist level, which isn’t always easy to see.

It’s thought the action originated in France, where deaf people would wave their napkins in the air at banquets to show applause and approval.

. . . Union officer Sara Khan said traditional clapping can cause issues for students with autism, sensory issues or deafness.

. . . Ms Khan, the union’s liberation and access officer, who proposed the motion at a recent meeting said clapping can “discourage” some from attending democratic events.

So-called “jazz hands”, she said, encouraged an “environment of respect”.

“I think a lot of the time, even in Parliamentary debates, I’ve seen that clapping, whooping, talking over each other, loud noises, encourages an atmosphere that is not as respectful as it could be,” she said.

Yet jazz hands discriminate against blind people, who can hear applause and thus can join in, but can’t hear jazz hands. Blind people have to hear something to join in. Or maybe the audience can just shout to the blind: “Make jazz hands now.”

My view? I am not outraged by this, but I don’t think the student union should require everybody to accommodate the relatively few who can’t (or so they say) tolerate applause. The question is how much should we alter our behavior to be inclusive. Should we be inclusive of everyone? What about those people who are allergic to perfume, can’t tolerate it (I really don’t like heavy perfume), or even get migraines from it. Should everybody be required to ditch the perfume before an event? If not, why would you ban applause?

I think it’s fine to say that people can use the gesture if they want, and there should be an explanation of why it’s used, but its use should not be mandatory. Further, the behavior-monitors have to realize that they’re discriminating against the blind or visually impaired when they mandate hand-waggling.

This is of course not a huge issue compared to, say, the choice of a new Supreme Court justice, but it’s another symptom of how authoritarians seek to control everyone’s behavior to conform to their own ideology or preference.

Here are some tweets from the BBC North West:

Here’s a psychology professor associating clapping with other kinds of raucous behavior. But those different behaviors need not be used together, and that the combination of shouting, clapping, and gesticulating, as seen in Parliament’s “question time”, can indeed be disruptive to the discussion and speakers.

In the real world people applaud, and they’ll continue applauding regardless of the demands of student unions. The onus, I think, is up to those disturbed by applause to learn to tolerate it. I, for one, was afflicted by depression a couple decades ago, but applause never bothered me. To imply that every depressed person, or person with autism, can’t tolerate applause is simply wrong. So what proportion of objectors would it take before nobody is allowed to applaud?

Let’s take a nonscientific poll. Please vote, as I’m curious:

College Follies of the Day, Part 1. Michigan State bans smoking in cars on public roads traversing the campus

August 14, 2016 • 10:30 am

The Regressive Leftist antics of colleges never cease to amaze me, and we have two today. (“Why do I post these?”, you ask. “To show you what students experience at institutions of higher education,” is my reponse.)

Today there are two follies, which I’ll recount briefly in two posts. The first, described by Michigan Capitol Confidential  (MCC) and verified by the Lansing State Journal, describes a new no-tolerance smoking policy on the campus of Michigan State University (MSU).  Smoking is banned everywhere on campus, including outdoors, and “smoking” includes “vaping,” or using e-cigarettes. (I’m not quite sure if there are any dangers to others of using these, but of course they’re considered “gateway drugs”.)

Fine. Although smoking outdoors is unlikely to hurt anyone but the smoker, one can argue that it produces undesirable litter: cigarette butts. But(t) there’s one provision I consider ridiculous. As the MCC describes:

Beginning on Aug. 15, a new tobacco-free policy at Michigan State University will make drivers subject to a $150 fine for choosing to smoke or chew tobacco while traveling on public roads that cross the school’s East Lansing campus.

What? On public roads? And even if the roads weren’t public, what possible justification for this can there be? In fact, given that it’s legal to smoke in your vehicle on public roads elsewhere in Michigan, this “policy” is probably illegal.

To be sure, MSU adds that, well, they’re really not going to enforce it. To wit:

“There’s no directive to our police that this needs to be strictly enforced,” MSU spokesman Jason Cody said. “We are looking at it through an educational lens.”

Cody said he didn’t envision a police officer pulling over a motorist for smoking and giving a ticket. He did say he could see an officer on a bike telling a motorist who was smoking about the no-smoking ordinance.

The ordinance was passed by the board of trustees on June 17, 2015. Its effective date was set for more than a year later on Aug. 15, 2016.

“A new policy is an effective, cost-efficient way to protect the health of the campus community and encourage tobacco users to reduce or eliminate consumption, thus increasing life, longevity and vitality,” the MSU tobacco-free website states. “Most tobacco users want to quit, and tobacco-free environments encourage users to quit and help them maintain a tobacco and nicotine free status.”

Maybe they should stop people eating hamburgers or sugary sodas in their cars, too? After all, that policy would also “increase life, longevity, and vitality”. (It goes without saying that smoking in cars doesn’t endanger “the health of the campus community.”) In fact, why shouldn’t these Nanny Schools ban fatty food and non-diet sodas everywhere on campus, as they have smoking?

As for the “educational lens,” well, I doubt that there’s an American alive who isn’t already aware of the health dangers of smoking. Every pack of cigarettes has a warning label. The no-smoking-in-your-car policy isn’t going to spread that news any further.

h/t:  Amy Alkon

Philadelphia’s ridiculous soda tax

June 11, 2016 • 11:30 am

In April I noted that a 2¢/ounce soda tax failed to come to a vote in the California state legislature. That’s an exorbitant tax, nearly doubling the price of a twelve-ounce can of soda. Other states are trying to pass such a tax, while Mexico and a few European countries have one already. In the meantime, only the People’s Republic of Berkeley, California, has such a tax in place: 1 cent per ounce. The San Jose Mercury-News reports that the Berkeley tax is showing “results,” but those results are simply a small rise in the retail price of soft drinks. There are no data on whether consumption has decreased (the goal of the initiative), or whether health has improved (for that it’s too early to tell). In Mexico, the one-peso-per-liter tax on sugared soft drinks has reduced consumption by about 12%.

I regard these taxes as unconscionable, as they’re simply ways for the government to regulate people’s diets, and get some money as well. I can barely countenance such taxes on cigarettes, but sodas aren’t that dangerous when drunk in moderation. Almost nobody smokes in moderation. More important, if we’re doing this to fight obesity, why not tax anything with added sugar, like cakes, cookies, or ice cream? Or why not red meat?  Or, if you really want to get serious, why not levy an income tax on people by their weight: charging them $X yearly per pound over their ideal weight? That, of course, would be politically insupportable—a sort of fat-shaming—although it might do more for public health than a soda tax. What better incentive to lose weight than if you get taxed for being heavy? The obese may argue (incorrectly) that being overweight isn’t unhealthy, or that they are simply unable to lose weight, but one could also argue that not all people who drink Coke are endangering their health.

These “nanny taxes” are a slippery slope toward government standardization of diets, and they’re popular because they sound good. But wait until they come for your hamburger!

Now Philadelphia is on the verge of voting in a soda tax, which was sold not as a health measure, but a revenue measure—to fund kindergartens and other useful initiatives like libraries and parks. While the tax was originally 3¢ per ounce, the measure that passed the city council by voice vote this week halved that, to 1.5¢ per ounce. What makes this truly ridiculous, though, is that it includes diet sodas, which aren’t a health risk (well, there are some reports that enormous consumption may increase the risk of cancer):

The measure that passed Wednesday taxes not just sugary drinks but also diet drinks. It exempts juice drinks from the tax as long as they have 50 percent juice, even if they also have added sugar.

The city finance director also admitted during the hearing that the soda-tax revenue wouldn’t be used just to fund kindergartens parks, and the like, but would be used to fill in general lacunae in the city budget. In other words, the city lied when proposing it.

There can be no health justification for a tax on both sugared and diet sodas. It is either just a way to grab more taxes by piggybacking on a sugared-soda tax, or reflects people simply not liking others who drink diet sodas, just as some don’t like people “vaping” as a way to reduce the health effects of cigarettes. And if they’re going to tax diet soda, why not bottled water? Such a tax would have salutary ecological effects.

If Philadelphia is doing this just to raise revenue, and not for the health benefits, it would be more useful to raise (or institute) local income or sales taxes. The former could be progressive rather than regressive, for soda taxes put most of the burden on the poor. If it’s for the health benefits, why tax diet sodas instead of butter or red meat?

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Nanny-state tax on soda loses in California

April 15, 2016 • 1:30 pm

I suppose I’m part libertarian, as I really object to governments trying to control the leisure activities of their citizens—always “for the public good.” While I can understand a desire to stop bad habits like smoking by taxing the hell out of cigarettes, I support that only because it raises money that should be (but isn’t always) earmarked to help cover the costs to the public of smoking-induced health problems.

Yes, I can understand taxing to help relieve the public burden of people’s smoking habits, but there’s really only one bad habit linked to lung cancer and emphysema. Things are different when it comes to diet, for there are many dietary causes of obesity and its attendant byproducts of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and so on. Governments have tried controlling these, too, by banning trans fats (as the U. S. government is now doing for artificial trans fats) or putting taxes on soda pops with sugar, as has been done by several countries and, in the U.S., by the People’s Republic of Berkeley. Most other U.S. measures have failed, and of course the soda manufacturers have fought them.

And a recent attempt to impose a pretty stiff soda tax in California has just failed. It would have been 2¢ per ounce, which is a whopping 24 cents on a 12-ounce can of Coke, which you can buy pretty close to that price when it’s on sale. That’s a substantial tax, all because some people want to control the diets of others—especially poor people who can’t afford steep taxes.

As the Sacramento Bee reported, though, the soda tax bill in California was pulled from the legislature without coming to a vote. This is mourned by Lifestyle Nanny Jason Best at TakePart in a column with the ludicrous title of “Big Soda wins in California”

There’s little doubt that soda and other sugary beverages are at least partly to blame, however. As such, it only seems fair that they be taxed to help shoulder at least a fraction of the staggering health care costs associated with the epidemic of obesity-related disease, estimated at between $147 billion to $210 billion each year. California’s proposed soda tax would’ve been a step in the right direction. Let’s hope its supporters take heart and try again next year.

Yes, of course. So why not tax cookies, red meat, butter, candy, potato chips, Cheetos, and so on? Cigarette taxes—maybe. Soda and snack taxes—not for me! I do support getting the soda machines out of schools, which is at least a nod toward improved health, but I don’t support doubling the price of a can of soda because Leisure Fascists think it’s bad for me. After all, not everybody gets obese from drinking Coke!

I still remember two incidents that have led me to oppose this kind of thing. The first was when my mother died a few years back, and I was so upset that I bought a pack of cigarettes to calm myself. (I used to smoke a bit in college, and still have one cigarette every few months when I can cadge it, but have pretty much stopped completely over the last forty years.). A guy in line behind me at the store took it upon himself to lecture me, asking, “Don’t you know those things can kill you?” I looked at him darkly and told him why I was buying cigarettes. That shut him up.

The other occasion was when I was walking down the street in Davis, California, smoking a fine cigar that my friend Michael Turelli had given me. One person held their nose and pointed at me when I walked by, and that person was in a store behind a window. When I sat down in a park to enjoy my stogie, a cop came by and told me that I had to move on: I could smoke the cigar while walking, but not when sitting down far away from anyone else. That’s the law in Davis.

These two episodes make clear that concern for health is not the sole reason for Leisure Fascists’ desire to tax anything that could hurt you. Much of it is based on a ridiculous moral stance: the Leisure Fascists want to dictate how other people live. And once you buy into that philosophy, there’s no end to the taxes you can levy.