Two more things to get angry about
A couple of the articles in this week's New Yorker (or last week's, by now, I guess) infuriated me. The first was the books piece by Steven Shapin. Over breakfast Friday, I read about J. Eric Oliver's argument that the obesity epidemic is largely hype, that being fat isn't so bad for you, and that obesity is an imperfect proxy for poor health. Then I got on the bus to work, where there was a man so fat he could only fit in his seat by turning sideways in it and splaying his enormous legs out into the aisle.
Oliver's case is not without its merits, but on the whole it's casuistry. That is, he makes it because it can be made, not because it should be made. As best I can make out, his problem with the term "obesity epidemic" is that it stigmatizes being fat. My question is, the not-necessarily-related phenomenon of anorexia aside, is this such a bad thing? Judging from the way obesity rates continue to climb, the forces propelling our national weight gain are still quite a bit stronger than the stigma. If the feeling of other people looking at you with disgust helps convince that guy on the bus to get off and walk a few blocks, I'm all for it. I'm not arguing that fat people deserve our moral condemnation, just that the apologia can wait for a time when we as a society have figured out how to live among plenty without eating ourselves into early graves.
By the way, as for that part about obesity not being all that bad for you, my wife, who is a doctor, assures me it is bogus.
The other article, by Eric Konigsberg, was even more infuriating in its own way. It's about a gifted child in Nebraska who committed suicide last March at age 14. After the boy, Brandenn, scored extremely high on an IQ test at age 4, his parents, Martin and Patti, decided to homeschool him and segregate him from other kids. By the time you finish the article, it's impossible to avoid concluding that Martin and Patti contributed to Brandenn's death by failing to notice his depression, and by forcing him to lead an isolated life that few children could enjoy.
What's so irritating is that Martin and Patti have considered this conclusion and dismissed it, absolving themselves of any blame. Patti takes the lead in this self-exoneration; when Martin wonders out loud whether he'd made mistakes, Patti assures him, "We did everything right." Konigsberg captures exactly what kind of person Patti is with a single detail: She writes mystery novels, but has them self-published because "I don't want an editor telling me how to change what I write. I don't follow all the conventions of mystery writing."
But Patti's not even the most deplorable person in this narrative. That would be Linda Silverman, the psychologist who measured Brandenn's IQ at 178, declaring him one of the implausibly large number of super-geniuses she has identified over the years. Silverman is the ultimate enabler, encouraging Martin and Patti to homeschool Brandenn, and assuing them, after his death, that he was an angel in human form who killed himself to fulfill his divine mission of organ donation. Silverman, even more than Patti, is a testament to the power of narcissistic delusion.
I'm not saying Martin and Patti should have to live with a crushing burden of guilt on top of their grief. But if they showed just a little bit of humility and critical self-awareness, I would be a lot less inclined to blame them for something that just might truly have been nobody's fault.
Oliver's case is not without its merits, but on the whole it's casuistry. That is, he makes it because it can be made, not because it should be made. As best I can make out, his problem with the term "obesity epidemic" is that it stigmatizes being fat. My question is, the not-necessarily-related phenomenon of anorexia aside, is this such a bad thing? Judging from the way obesity rates continue to climb, the forces propelling our national weight gain are still quite a bit stronger than the stigma. If the feeling of other people looking at you with disgust helps convince that guy on the bus to get off and walk a few blocks, I'm all for it. I'm not arguing that fat people deserve our moral condemnation, just that the apologia can wait for a time when we as a society have figured out how to live among plenty without eating ourselves into early graves.
By the way, as for that part about obesity not being all that bad for you, my wife, who is a doctor, assures me it is bogus.
The other article, by Eric Konigsberg, was even more infuriating in its own way. It's about a gifted child in Nebraska who committed suicide last March at age 14. After the boy, Brandenn, scored extremely high on an IQ test at age 4, his parents, Martin and Patti, decided to homeschool him and segregate him from other kids. By the time you finish the article, it's impossible to avoid concluding that Martin and Patti contributed to Brandenn's death by failing to notice his depression, and by forcing him to lead an isolated life that few children could enjoy.
What's so irritating is that Martin and Patti have considered this conclusion and dismissed it, absolving themselves of any blame. Patti takes the lead in this self-exoneration; when Martin wonders out loud whether he'd made mistakes, Patti assures him, "We did everything right." Konigsberg captures exactly what kind of person Patti is with a single detail: She writes mystery novels, but has them self-published because "I don't want an editor telling me how to change what I write. I don't follow all the conventions of mystery writing."
But Patti's not even the most deplorable person in this narrative. That would be Linda Silverman, the psychologist who measured Brandenn's IQ at 178, declaring him one of the implausibly large number of super-geniuses she has identified over the years. Silverman is the ultimate enabler, encouraging Martin and Patti to homeschool Brandenn, and assuing them, after his death, that he was an angel in human form who killed himself to fulfill his divine mission of organ donation. Silverman, even more than Patti, is a testament to the power of narcissistic delusion.
I'm not saying Martin and Patti should have to live with a crushing burden of guilt on top of their grief. But if they showed just a little bit of humility and critical self-awareness, I would be a lot less inclined to blame them for something that just might truly have been nobody's fault.
posted by Jeff at 8:20 AM
2 Comments:
oooh look at me, i have a wife.
Mr. Fantastic: Reading my earlier remarks on the Brandenn story, perhaps I overstated my case, but I stand by the essence of what I said. I truly hope nobody was to blame, that it was a freak occurrence, but let's face it: Parents are the biggest influence on a child's behavior, and how much more so when the kid is home-schooled. Anytime someone says "I'm completely blameless, I did everything perfectly," you know they're at least a little bit full of it.
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