{"id":3190,"date":"2008-12-02T11:45:46","date_gmt":"2008-12-02T11:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/12\/02\/plaxico-burress-and-the-short\/"},"modified":"2008-12-02T11:45:46","modified_gmt":"2008-12-02T11:45:46","slug":"plaxico-burress-and-the-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/12\/02\/plaxico-burress-and-the-short\/","title":{"rendered":"Plaxico Burress and the Short Skirt Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Ezra Klein<\/a>, Adam Serwer takes dim view of conservative attempts to blame the Mumbai attacks on Indian culture<\/a>, specifically the relative lack of guns among the geenral population:<\/p>\n

\n

This is a really strange and immature coping mechanism that manifests on the right in times of high profile tragedy. Rather than contemplate being a victim of a terrorist attack, the subject imagines him or herself as the star of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. I’d say it’s simple racism, but it really is fear masquerading as bravado, a cultural chauvanism that directs itself at other Americans as readily as it does at foreigners. It is the “short skirt” theory of violence. If it happened, you must have been asking for it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This turned up in my RSS feeds while I was listening to Mike and Mike talking about Plaxico Burress’s decision to try out for the Cowboys<\/a>. They went on a long rant about the claim (on Burress’s behalf) that he needed to be carrying a gun to protect himself. As they asked rhetorically, if you’re voluntarily going to a place where you need a gun to be safe, why are you going there<\/strong>? Burress was at a nightclub, of his own volition– it’s not like he was required to be in an unsafe neighborhood as part of his job. If he didn’t feel safe without a gun, he was perfectly free to choose a different club, or stay home.<\/p>\n

There’s something of the same psychology here as in the right-wing gibberish Klein and Serwer link to, and I’ve never understood it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The right-wing position on concealed weapons requires a mix of machismo and pants-wetting terror that I’ve never really been able to comprehend. You need to simultaneously believe that you’re in mortal danger at all times (or at least likely to be put in mortal danger at any moment), and also that when confronted with said mortal danger, you will turn into an action hero, and coolly use your gun to kill or frighten off the terrorists\/ muggers\/ evildoers\/ lost tourists asking for directions.<\/p>\n

It’s really kind of baffling to me. I mean, look at the surprisingly miserable record of trained police officers panicking and shooting unarmed civilians. Or the number of soldiers who don’t fire their weapons, even in wartime. Guns don’t have the magical power to turn ordinary people into action heroes– people with guns are as likely to overreact or just freeze as people without guns.<\/p>\n

(Of course, as I’ve said before, guns aren’t magical corrupting talismans that turn normal people into stone killers, either. The rhetoric from strongly anti-gun people is as fatuous as that from the pro-gun people.)<\/p>\n

It’s particularly puzzling to me in the case of Burress, who is, after all, a professional football player. The number of people who might physically challenge him is pretty small. And if he’s worried that someone will pull a gun on him, he’s got more than enough money to hire a professional bodyguard who will 1) have the necessary permits to carry whatever weapons he needs, and 2) know enough about guns to not shoot himself in the leg by accident.<\/p>\n

Feh. He’s a champion knucklehead, full stop. The Giants will be better off without him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Ezra Klein, Adam Serwer takes dim view of conservative attempts to blame the Mumbai attacks on Indian culture, specifically the relative lack of guns among the geenral population: This is a really strange and immature coping mechanism that manifests on the right in times of high profile tragedy. Rather than contemplate being a victim… Continue reading Plaxico Burress and the Short Skirt Theory<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}