Shots in the Dark

Writing in Slate, my old friend Will Saletan asks the question, because, he says, it’s what some conservatives argue. The response turns out to be a little trickier than you might think.

(Obviously, this is inspired by the news that Columbia political scientist David Epstein and his 24-year-old daughter were allegedly sleeping together. Epstein has been arrested; his daughter has not. Epstein has been named in the press; his daughter has not. The relationship allegedly began when she was 21.)

Traditional rationales for prohibiting incest are genetics (two-headed children, etc.) and exploitation/ abuse.

But in Epstein’s case, the first doesn’t hold water.

Epstein has been charged under a different law. It prohibits sex with any close relative, “whether through marriage or not.” It also applies not just to “sexual intercourse” but also to “oral sexual conduct or anal sexual conduct.” If the law were rationally based on genetics, it would ignore sex acts that can’t make babies, and it would distinguish relatives by blood from relatives by marriage.

As for exploitation…

Nowadays, when we talk about incest, we tend to think of child sexual abuse. That’s how we use the term in therepressed-memory debate and in abortion legislation. When politicians such as President Obama make exceptions in abortion laws for “rape and incest,” they’re using the terms synonymously, except that in the incest scenario, the rapist is your dad.

But you can’t prosecute Epstein under that theory. According to news reports, his daughter is 24, and their affair began in 2006. That makes her an adult. Furthermore, police say the sexappears to have been consensual. Four years ago, Ohio’s Supreme Court upheld the incest conviction of Paul Lowe, a former sheriff’s deputy, for what the court called “consensual sex with his 22-year-old stepdaughter.” And last month, a 27-year-old Florida woman was sentenced to five years of probation for sex with her father. Clearly, we’re prosecuting people for incest regardless of age or consent.

Saletan’s piece takes some surprising turns, but it’s ultimately reassuring. There are good reasons to criminalize incest, he says, that both liberals and conservatives can agree on….

Wait till the Republicans gettaholda this.

Henry Hudson, that George W. Bush judge who ruled that Obamacare is unconstitutional?

He’s a significant investor in a GOP consulting firm that worked to defeat health care reform.

The Virginia attorney general who filed the lawsuit in the first place?

He’s a client of the firm.

(The New York Times completely misses this. The paper does mention that he is known as “cooch,” short for his surname “Cuccinelli,” in a “not so affectionate way,” then provides absolutely no explanation (or am I just being prudish?). Shades of Elizabeth Edwards—bad, bad Times.)

Sigh.

I have one word for you, Judge [sic] Hudson: “Recuse.”

But it’s too late for that now.

Perhaps this ruling will remind Democrats that, in order to win, they have to fight….

There is excellent sports news on three fronts.

First, the Yankees have failed to sign pitcher Cliff Lee. This is excellent news. The price—the Yankees were offering seven years at $150 million—was way too high. Seven years for any pitcher is insane; for a 32-year-old, it probably means eating the last three or four years of the contract.

Plus, Lee is a small-market pitcher; he couldn’t handle playing in New York. Why do I say that? Well, the fact that he signed with the Phillies is one reason. You have to wonder about someone who chooses to live in Philadelphia.

Two, many years of experience watching the Yankees sign free agents who just don’t have the right constitution to handle New York. Let’s face it, if you have the cojones to play in the biggest market in baseball, for the most storied team in baseball, you don’t waste time dilly-dallying around with the Texas Rangers (please) and the Phillies. You take the money and pitch great, and you become a more significant part of baseball history than you otherwise would have been.

And three, Lee appears to have all the personality of wet cardboard. This doesn’t fare well in the Bronx.

Below, a picture of a pitcher who doesn’t belong in New York. (I mean…the shirt. The bow! Is that a child or a lapdog?)

Good riddance to Lee. Brian Cashman, take the money and invest in ten minor-league pitchers from the Dominican Republic. And if the Yankees don’t win the World Series this year, that’s okay. We want players we can root for, not just ones who win.

Speaking of winning, the Giants won, playing Minnesota in Detroit. (Cliff Lee would probably like to pitch there.) More excellent news.

But perhaps the most excellent news is a twofer: The Jets, who began this season with apparently limitless braggadocio, lost their second game in a row; they are now averaging .75 points per quarter over their last two games.

Heaven.

Not only that, but they reinforce their organizational lack of class by having on their team a coach who actually tripped a Dolphin as he ran down the sideline. Nice one, Jets!

Honestly, I don’t know why someone doesn’t give me a sports column…

With the death of Mark Madoff, there are now at least four suicides related to the crimes of Bernie Madoff, and some people, myself included, wonder why there aren’t five.

I spent much of the weekend obsessing over Mark Madoff’s suicide for a couple of reasons. One, the death just felt so sad and tragic and terrible. (The two-year-old sleeping ten feet away!) It’s awfully hard to find a silver lining in it all.

And two, Madoff’s wife, Stephanie, is a former colleague of mine from a prior magazine; I worked with her for a number of years, and though we haven’t been in touch since then, I remember her as a kind, sweet, good-natured woman. I can’t imagine what she must be going through now.

On Saturday night, I happened to see Merchant of Venice on Broadway—the one starring Al Pacino and Lily Rabe.

I couldn’t help but think about the Madoffs as I watched the play, which is directed to omit the traditional false-feeling happy ending and feels instead deeply, appropriately tragic. (An example: Director Daniel Sullivan adds a scene of Shylock undergoing a forced baptism, which is brutal to watch.)

Shylock’s actions were famously motivated by his sense of outsiderdom—of being the victim of anti-Semitism in a deeply hypocritical society, one in which Jewish moneylenders are reviled by the very people who turn to them in times of crisis.

Bernie Madoff employed a different twist on the outsider theme; he attracted people who wanted to be the ultimate insiders, which is to say, people connected enough to be allowed to invest their money with Bernie Madoff. Madoff played on those feelings of outsiderdom that we are all privy to, though it sounds like he especially preyed on fellow Jews.

Especially, but hardly exclusively: Look, for example at the Fairfield-Greenwich hedge fund, headed by the Noel family, who became so rich from Madoff but always seemed to feel like outsiders in the high society circles to which they aspired.

At the same time, Madoff staffed his firm with people who were—as he was born—outsiders. And, of course, his family members, none of whom ever broke with him (as Shylock’s daughter Jessica broke with her father) until the revelations of his misdeeds.

Bloggers are always supposed to have an opinion, but truth is, I’m not quite sure what mine is about all this, except to wonder if we’ve really come very far since Shakespeare’s day, or, to put it another way, to feel awe at the continuing relevance of great writing.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

—Henry Kissinger speaking with Richard Nixon after a White House visit by Israeli prime minister Golda Meir on March 1, 1973.

So much to say, but if I had to point out one thing, it would be….”maybe”?

Columbia University political scientist David Epstein has been arrested on the charge of committing incest over the course of three years with his 20-something daughter.

According to the Columbia Spectator,

Political science professor David Epstein, 46, was charged Thursday with having a sexual relationship with his daughter, 24.

He was arrested Wednesday morning and charged with one count of incest in the third degree at an arraignment hearing on Thursday. According to police, the relationship appears to have been consensual.

What does that word, “consensual,” even mean in the context of a parent-child relationship?

(Assuming it’s true, and to be fair, we don’t know that yet.)

I mean, yes, good that he didn’t hit her over the head, drug her and rape her. But there are certainly other forms of coercion and manipulation that must be at work in such a case.

That’s point one. Point two, which sounds like it contradicts point 1 but I don’t think does: As gross as such a situation is, does arresting the man really do any good? And if the daughter is of legal age, why isn’t she also arrested?

(Lawyers, that’s a serious question.)

When Red Sox fans go all self-righteous and call the Yankees the “Evil Empire,” and then their team goes and spends $300 million on two—count ’em, two—players.

At least one of whom the Yankees should probably have signed.

Honestly. Nuts.

Duran Duran, working with producer Mark Ronson, have just released a new single on iTunes, “All You Need is Now.”

It’s good…and it’s free.

I know: I’m setting myself up for various jibes about indefensible ’80s music. And yet—I defend it. Duran Duran may have been primarily a great singles band, but then, so, with a couple exceptions, were the Beatles. And they were a great singles band: Hungry Like the Wolf, Rio, Notorious, Girls on Film, Save a Prayer, the Reflex, Skin Trade, View to a Kill… You get the point.

Plus, I saw ’em in concert at SummerStage in Central Park a couple years ago, and trust me, they were a blast. Night time, in the rain, summer, slight contact high (that’s not my thing, but there you are)—couldn’t have been more fun.

Here’s a video from that show (not taken by me). Typical cell phone quality; use your imagination.

I feel quite sad about the death of Elizabeth Edwards, a strong woman who got some bad breaks—the death of a son, marital infidelity, terminal cancer. That’s tough stuff.

So I was reading her obit in the Times today when I came across this paragraph:

A scathing portrait of Mrs. Edwards’s political role, based mainly on unnamed sources, was presented in “Game Change,” a book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin published last January. “The nearly universal assessment” among campaign aides, they wrote, “was that there was no one on the national stage for whom the disparity between public image and private reality was vaster or more disturbing.”

That too is tough stuff, and I scanned down the page to find some demonstration of this disturbing disparity between public and private Elizabeth. But there was none.

And it occurred to me that this paragraph is deeply unfair. The Times is using a second-hand source—the only one it cites in this lengthy obituary—to shovel in some muck. And then it doesn’t even have the guts to provide any specifics to support its muck; this is smear by implication.

Obituaries are a form of journalism, and this is bad journalism. Just because the victim of it can’t fight back doesn’t make it more palatable. It makes it less.