I appreciate your take on this subject. Too many are in college who don't belong there because they're regarded as second class or a failure if they don't go. There's a certain stigma attached. Unfortunately, some of our laws drive this result. If I require a certain degree level for an applicant, I don't have to worry about charges of discrimination on an aptitude test. I don't have to interview as many people either.

And yet, our colleges create employees at best; even the professional schools. They don't teach entrepreneurship. Those in the skilled trades often decide to start their own businesses, which is where most of our employment comes from. I haven't read anything about trade schools, including vocational high schools, as breeding grounds or seed beds for future business development. A plumber might decide to start a plumbing business, or open a store, or change fields and become a journalist :D

Are you obtuse or do you just play obtuse on the Internet? Paglia's threads are littered with first-time and only-time posters, all using their mad libs to denigrate libs. Thus, the doubt.

Hi, Wychwood,

???

You can't prove it by me.

Does Mark Steyn write here? I bet he would get similar responses.

Heck, I got similar responses.

--

Brooks

Seriously, Jonny, I defined it in my letter, for the purposes of this discussion. Jobs is producing a product for profit.

Lawyers (and I have a lovely lawyer daughter-in-law) can be engaged in a real job, producing a service (a non-tangible form of product) for profit, in that sense.

The lawyers in congress ae NOT DOING SUCH. If they screw up, as did Carter's crew with the Comm. Redevel. Act of 1977 and mandate insolvent loans, if Andrew Cuomo mandates even MORE insolvent loans, if Barney Frank and Chris Dodd cover up the insolvency, etc., etc., thus producing the OPPOSITE of a profit, does the government fold, fire the incompetents who caused the problem, act as any rational profit-constrained corporation would? No, indeed! They promote the incompetents, who then confiscate even more of our money to pay for their boondoggles!

That's NOT a real job. That's government!

Huh?

I said quite clearly that I thought the Butterfly type letters were *not real*.

Sailfree The Butterfly type letters have a particular tone. I said I don't see similar posts on Salon, other than re Paglia, Maybe you could point me to one.

Prof. Paglia,

Your analysis and discussion of the fairness doctrine missed an important aspect of the rationale for its existence. Back in the day (pre-internet days) the fairness doctrine was premised on “spectrum scarcity.” As radio became popular, the multiplicity of stations meant a drastic increase in harmful interference. To promote and to fully exploit the scarce spectrum as a resource, broadcasting licenses were granted. With this license (which granted a temporary ability to use a specific portion of spectrum free from interference by other broadcasters) came certain public interest obligations, chief among them was the “fairness doctrine.” In your column you lamented the “gradual disappearance of small, quirky local shows due to the trend toward national syndication.” “Broadcast localism” was another public interest obligation imposed on license holders. I describe this history to show that talk radio is not solely a creature of the marketplace, it was largely a creature of specific and well thought-out government policies. With the abolition of most of the public interest obligations in the past decades, talk radio has morphed into the bland and strident diet we have today.

I wonder (and hope) if we are coming to the end of the “government is bad” meme that seemed to have gained ascendancy with the election of Reagan. For ~30 years we’ve held as an article of faith that government is the repository of the 3rd and 4rth raters and that it should not be trusted to do anything. I think this contempt for government led to a lot of the excesses in terms of torture, unlawful war, the vast increase in surveillance and the collapse of several significant sectors of our economy we’ve witnessed recently. Hopefully, the terms of debate can be enlarged in the coming years; so that we might have some discussion on the proper role of government in regulation of certain economic activity and in promoting a more civil society. Ahistorical and incomplete descriptions of things like the “fairness doctrine” do not help to promote such a discussion.

I’ve followed your thinking since I read Sexual Personae in the early 90s. I acknowledge that you are an opinion maker and a thought leader and I think generally you do a pretty good job. But sometimes it seems that in order to make what seems like a commonsense point, you gloss over much nuance and detail. Yes, color me a humorless liberal. I can’t help it … my dad was CEO of Westinghouse Broadcasting during its heyday. Do you listen to KYW or WINS (you give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world). He took the partnership between business and government very seriously and I think it made the world a little better place.

Thank you Ma’am for your attention to this matter!

BH

Sorry about that. Too often, I am obtuse and play it on the Internet.

As an engineer who has worked in the environmental field for over 30 years, I am pleased to see that you acknowledge the improvements that have occured to our nation's air and water quality in the last few decades. Much of these improvements can be attributed to actions by our federal government (i.e. Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, RCRA, CERCLA, etc) which were intended to mitigate the adverse effects of industrialization, population growth and economic development, etc. Many of these laws have set specific emission standards and discharge regulations for a host of human activties. Engineers and scientists have devoted an enormous amount of time and resources researching pollutant fate and transport to determine the reductions in pollutant emissions that was necessary for a given improvement in the environment. Much of this work involved mathematical modeling of the physical,chemical and biological environment similar to what is occuring now in the climate change arena and indeed by some of the same people. While it is unfortunate that politics has entered the climate change debate, from my perspective in the scientific community,there seems to be a clear consensus that human activity is having an effect on our climate. There is, however, disagreement on the amount of change and what that may mean to something like the mean sea level 50 years from now. I guess my point is that we have been there before. We recognized the problems with our nations air and water quality 40 years ago and did something about it. We used many of the same tools that are being used by today's researchers in the climate field. Obviously it is very complicated and there is plenty of room for debate over the science. Over the years, I have seen new issues arise every few years in the environmental business. As we solve one we begin to look at another. Why is it so hard to believe that only politics is behind the greenhouse gas issue? To me it is just another environmental problem that we need to address and the people involved in this effort are no less dedicated that the ones who have been working to improve our nation's environment over the last 40 years.