Lordy, Lordy

Look at this.

Prager was even more whacked in the old days than he is now.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20031111.shtml

Summer I -- our first semester of summer school -- has now begun, which means I am teaching two (count'em, two) classes per day, every single day, five days a week, each class lasting two hours each, so that's four solid hours of teaching, back to fucking back, first class being Chaucer and second class being Comp II, I'm teaching until 2:00 p.m. and prepping until 9:00 p.m. every single night, exhausting? I can't even spell the word anymore.

Where was I?

(And did I mention that's Chaucer in the Middle English? Oh, yes, my Beloved.)

Anyway.

I need, for Comp II, because it is that point in the semester, an example (I'm having a hard time not typing in Middle English, I've been reading so much Chaucer, ensample, he would say, with a French en, where was I?) I needed an example of a Really Stupid Argumentative Essay, and, as you might expect, Dennis Prager leapt at once into my mind.

So I popped over to TownHall.com, Home of the Really Stupid Argumentative Essay, click on Dennis Prager, and Voila, I'm in Stupid Essay Heaven.

Oh, how to choose, how to choose --

Why women who marry become wingers? (Because it's in their GENES, my dear!)

Why people are atheists? (They're intellectually dishonest. Or they believe in monkeys. Or something. That one's not very clear, alas.)

Or -- my old favorite -- why young women dress in scanty clothing? Because -- this is rich -- otherwise they have no way to prove they're girls! (Because eee-eee-eevil feminists (that would be me) have denied them the chance to marry and have babies, remember. And they can't wear modest dresses because they get mocked for doing so. So they have to dress like sluts. Or something. The leaps in logic are A-m-azing!)

But finally I decided on this one:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20031111.shtml

Here, Dennis explains to us that he believes that "breast-feeding is a religion."

(Hey! Where did I hear this? Who plagiarized from whom? Huh?)

Prager, unlike Michael Crichton, admits upfront that he has no actual evidence for his belief.

I acknowledge having no scientific basis on which to challenge the many scientific studies that point to the health benefits of breast-feeding -- such as fewer infant infections, fewer early allergies, getting the mother's antibodies, and so on.

But, being a man of God, Prager never lets a little thing like a lack of actual evidence stop him from believing anything.

On what grounds do I believe this? Common sense -- our built-in defense against nonsense -- suggests it.
Virtually my entire generation of baby boomers was bottle-fed. Yet we are the healthiest generation in human history. Moreover, it is among today's young people -- most of whom were breast-fed -- that we constantly hear about the far greater incidence of obesity, juvenile diabetes and children with asthma


Where he gets the data that his generation is "the healthiest in human history" I would like to know. That's one thing.

Where he gets the evidence that "most" of today's generation is breast-fed, that's the other thing I would like to know.

I believe that stats on the % of Americans currently being breast-fed for more than six months is less than 15% -- hard to call that most Americans even now, in anyone's book; and the percentage was lower, not higher, in the past. Here's the link,

http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/NIS_data/.

in case Dennis wants to do research -- though I know that's against his religion -- not his Jewish religion. Jews actually believe in doing research, which he seems to have forgotten. His Conservative religion.

Where was I, again?

Oh, yes. Dennis goes on to say,

So the question remains: Why do all these healthy parents who had been bottle-fed now wage war against bottle-feeding?

One answer goes well beyond the issue of breast-feeding. It has to do with education.

In much of the West, the well educated have been taught to believe that they can know nothing and that they can draw no independent conclusions about truth, unless they cite a study and "experts" have affirmed it.

"Studies show" is to the modern secular college graduate what "Scripture says" is to the religious fundamentalist.

This is why I say Dennis has left his true religion behind and embraced the religion Conservativism.

I can't imagine an actual Jew speaking this way of education. And yet Dennis does, all the time.

See, Dennis, there is a reason we eee-ee-eevil liberals embrace science, and studies, and well, yes, experts. Want to know what it is? Experts have studied their field. Studies look at the evidence that exists on a subject. Then the experts draw conclusions based, oddly enough, on the freaking evidence. If you can imagine such a whacked idea.


What is the matter with this guy?