Thought Snax

Sam Bagenstos has written a thoughtful post on the use of the word “retard” in movies and our response as a community.  He was responding to this post, which was reacting, in turn, to the use of the word “retard” in the Alexander Payne/George Clooney movie, The Descendents.  I tend to agree — on general free expression and artistic license grounds — that we should not be in the business of telling writers what to write.  But I’m hoping for the day when the casual use of the word “retard” carries the weight that the casual use “nigger” or “cunt” would.  (For example, I’m predicting it was pretty jarring to read those words in my blog.  Was it equally jarring to read the word “retard”?)

Given the intersection of language nerdery and disability rights, this is a subject that interests me and that I’ve written about a couple of times.  Sam’s blog post makes excellent points, including that

People use the r-word in real life, just like they use slurs against other groups (and just like they do other harmful and wrongful things), and it would be wrong to say that movies and literature can’t depict that.  (And I think it’s a cheat to say that the use of the word can be depicted but only if the character who uses it “learns the lesson” that it’s wrong or is otherwise shown to be a bad and unsympathetic character.  That’s not any different than requiring purely idealized depictions of people.)

Very true.  In fact, if the word were restricted to movies, books, or tv shows in which lessons were learned, we’d only hear it in after-school specials, where the bully turns out to have problems of his own, reforms, and everyone has a group hug in the end.  No, rather than requiring lessons be learned or the word avoided, I’m hoping the movie-going public evolves to the point where the writer knows that putting that word in a character’s mouth will communicate something deeply negative about that character.  Right now, the choice to have a white character use the word “nigger,” without the quotes, directed to or about an African-American, communicates something very specific and negative:  the speaker is a racist asshole.  Same with “cunt”:  sexist bastard, or denizen of frontier Deadwood, South Dakota.

The truth is, I find it incredibly jarring and disappointing when a character in a movie with whom I sympathize (or perceive that I’m supposed to sympathize) uses the word “retard” as a casual epithet.  It’s similar to the phenomenon that Ta-Nehisi Coates has called “the John Mayer Rule,” and which I called “drinking with white people”:   that moment when someone you thought was cool says something bigoted  . . . and the concomitant urge to avoid situations (in my case, drinking with acquaintances who don’t get disability rights) where this might happen.  There are good reasons why George Clooney would not say a long list of offensive epithets in a movie of the type I understand The Descendants to be.  I’m hoping for the day when writers and actors will think that way about the word “retard” and use it accordingly.

One final thought:  a laser-focus on one word misses is the many ways movies and TV can be demeaning to people with disabilities while remaining pristine in language use.  One of my favorite examples is Law & Order, which has presented a long string of pathetic and/or criminal people with disabilities, without once (that I can recall) showing, say, an attorney, detective, forensic professional, or random witness in a wheelchair.  Two episodes stick in my mind.  In one, a mother is accused of killing her son, a quadriplegic.  The son is presented as unable to get out of bed and as a result we are asked to sympathize with the homicidal mother.  Scenery-chewing DA Jack McCoy tells the jury — as a fact, I promise, not as a negative comment on the mother’s narrow world view — “she knew he’d never grow up to be a doctor or lawyer.”  Seriously – how hard would it have been for the writers to figure out that there are all sorts of quad doctors and lawyers and other professionals?  The other episode I recall was where the hunt for the killer led toward the brother who was paralyzed and as a result bitter and murderous.  While I can’t recall others off the top of my head, I don’t recall any portrayals of people who use wheelchairs straying beyond vegetative and/or embittered.  I’d take 100 George Clooney “retard” utterances over this.  Although we keep watching the damn show,* we know to turn it off the instant there is mention of a character with a disability.  We know, to a 100% certainty, that L&O will screw it up.

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* L&O occupies the very small overlapping area of Tim and my taste in television:

Remember just the other day I was ridiculing some over-caffeinated opposing counsel for accusing CCDC of defamation for posting, on its website, pleadings in case alleging that his client violated the ADA.  Highlight:

My position is that you and your clients have been defaming my clients by raising false allegations of discrimination . . .

On Wednesday, we got the judge’s decision on our motion for summary judgment.  Here’s page 3 — the key portion: 

That’s right, Ladies and Gentlemen, summary judgment granted to plaintiffs!  Big thanks for the excellent legal work of Team CCDC:  Kevin Williams, Andrew Montoya, and Briana McCarten.

Flew home from Portland, wheelchair fail, and two very different court decisions in a short period of time:

Breaking News!  Did you know that the mayor of a  major American city said that treating African-Americans equally was an “inconvenience” that was “unfair to average people” because it made them “uncomfortable”?  You didn’t!?  What a scandal – how did the media miss this?

Oh, right, sorry — it was just the civil rights of people with disabilities.  Silly media consumers — you know that’s not the same thing.  So no reason to expect 24/7 handwringing, apologies, and navel-gazing talk shows about the state of civil rights in response to the MAYOR OF OUR LARGEST CITY SAYING THAT RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF HIS MINORITY-GROUP CONSTITUENTS IS INCONVENIENT AND UNFAIR TO “AVERAGE” PEOPLE.

In fact, I have to cut the intrepid reporters on the civil rights beat some slack on this because they were busy pursuing a much more important story.

Yes, leading liberal website ThinkProgress was far too busy tracking the astonishing news that  beauty queen got drunk and used a bad word.  In fact, the website was so on top of this story that they got an …

That’s right, an EXCLUSIVE.  You won’t read this important story ANYWHERE ELSE!   And in fact, ThinkProgress has the crucial details, too.  Miss Virginia’s roommate told the reporter that she was “extremely intoxicated” that night and seemed upset that she did not have the full house to herself, so she  “downgraded people based on their physical appearance and economic status.”  Now this is indeed breaking civil rights news:  college girl gets drunk, says something stupid and hurtful.

How on earth did ThinkProgress beat out The Onion to this important scoop?

It should be obvious that whatever the ADA does or does not permit, it would not permit a business owner to DECREASE accessibility.

ADA 101:  You’re supposed to build new facilities to be accessible and make old ones accessible when it’s “readily achievable” — that is, when the cost and your resources make it reasonable.*  When you’re making alterations, you’re supposed to make them accessible “to the maximum extent feasible.”  But fer Pete’s sake — a phrase that really should appear verbatim in the regs — don’t take something that’s accessible and make it inaccessible.

This is what the regs actually say about it:  “No alteration shall be undertaken which decreases or has the effect of decreasing accessibility or usability of a building or facility below the requirements for new construction at the time of alteration.”  ADAAG § 4.1.6(1)(a).

When we moved into our office space in February, 2008, the space across the street was empty and essentially gutted.  Among other things:  flat.  The floor of the space was had no changes in level.  Did I mention it was flat?

Hoping for another good restaurant in our neighborhood, we were psyched to learn that someone was opening a mid-scale Mexican restaurant & bar across the street.  We looked forward to good food and after-work gatherings, especially with our friends & co-counsel at the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition, which is right up the street.

This is what the space looked like before:

Here’s what it looks like now:

We don’t have a panoramic shot of the restaurant, but this is the newly constructed raised area on the north side — the mirror image of the newly constructed raised area on the south side.  No ramps.  Over half of the total floor area is now inaccessible, and most of the rest is occupied by a bar, leaving a couple of tables — often inaccessible high tables — on the ground level.

To summarize:  The owners constructed two inaccessible raised areas in a previously flat, fully-accessible space.  They took a space that could have been completely integrated and created — at best — a wheelchair ghetto.

In brief:

Before: flat.
After:  inaccessible.

We tried hard to talk to them about this, with no success.  So we got together with the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition and filed suit.

Pause for a brief introduction to CCDC, as if all five of my readers aren’t already intimately familiar with them.  On a shoestring budget, CCDC works with the legislature, conducts training, engages in outreach and advocacy and — when called for — files suit to ensure equality of opportunity for people with disabilities.  During the legislative session, their volunteers are at the capitol every day.  When people are having difficulty securing needed services or benefits, their volunteers are on the phone.  And their advocacy and litigation have increased Denver’s physical accessibility from the Pepsi Center to Red Rocks, and … done a lot of other amazing stuff.  I was going to give some more examples, but just click here and scan the list!

In response to the lawsuit, the restaurant retained Littler Mendelson, a nationwide employment discrimination defense firm.  And by “nationwide” I mean, of course, “expensive.”**  Instead of working with us to make the place more accessible — and saving everyone’s attorneys’ fees — it’s been scorched earth litigation.  But I think what has been most entertaining for us is the Littler lawyer’s decision to accuse CCDC of defamation.  Yup:  the fact that CCDC posts, on its website, the pleadings — public documents — containing the undisputed facts above — took a flat space; made most of it inaccessible — constitutes defamation.  Here is the Littler Mendelson attorney, verbatim, in a deposition of CCDC’s executive director:

5     ……My position is that
6   you and your clients have been defaming my clients by
7   raising false allegations of discrimination, repeatedly
8   accusing my client, both in this case, in judicial
9   filings, but also in Internet filings, which simply
10   reiterate the false allegations put into the court
11   record that my client discriminates against individuals
12   with disabilities.
13                You are trying to present a picture of my
14   client to the Court which is not true, and I’m entitled
15   to present a picture of your client which I believe
16   demonstrates its motives in pursuing this case.  You’re
17   trying to present a picture of your client to the Court
18   of a noble organization just trying to obtain
19   additional access for people with disabilities.
20                I’m allowed to present to the Court a
21   picture of your organization as one which shakes down
22   and scourges local businesses and forces them to incur
23   tens to hundreds of thousands dollars in attorney’s
24   fees and costs in order to promote the organization’s
25   revenue and business, and I think I’m allowed to make
1   the same types of — I’m allowed to rebut the glowing
2   picture of your organization that you’re trying to
3   present to the Court . . .

That’s right:  calling attention to the fact that the defendant took an accessible space and made it inaccessible is defamation.  I suppose we should be glad that being accused of inaccessibility is at least regarded as a bad thing!

Just after we started our firm in 1996, I was talking to my Dad about some of the baloney we were already starting to get from defense counsel.  He told this story. When he was the Executive Director of the Missouri Commission on Human Rights in the early 1960s, he decided to drive around rural Missouri testing the newly-enacted Civil Rights Act which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race in places of public accommodation, for example, restaurants.  On at least one occasion, the restaurant he had just tested called ahead to the next one down the road, and the folks at the second place were waiting at the door with shotguns when he arrived.

I suppose it represents a sort of progress that enforcing the civil rights laws in 2011 requires only a thick skin and a high tolerance for bullshit rather than a up-armored ’64 Dodge Falcon and firearms.

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* OK, the definition is slightly more complex than that, but I sense your eyes glazing over already.

**  We haven’t seen their legal bills, but I’m fairly certain Littler Mendelson is not working for free.  Our assumptions did lead to this dryly hilarious exchange in the deposition of CCDC’s executive director:

18 Q. All right. Then in the
19 next line, the next paragraph, second sentence, says,
20 “[The restaurant's] owner is spending money, lots of money, on
21 a 17th Street law firm to fight providing access.” Do
22 you see that?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. What is the basis of your knowledge
25 concerning the amount of money, if any, that
1 [the restaurant's] owner is spending on legal fees?
2 A. I — I guess I don’t know exactly. It’s
3 an assumption. Maybe I shouldn’t have made that
4 assumption. Maybe you’re working pro bono and I don’t
5 know that.

If you are not rolling around on the floor laughing so hard you can’t breathe, you probably aren’t a plaintiffs’ lawyer.

I was just about to post a cranky post about opposing counsel in a case we’re involved in* and my last two Facebook posts have been

This is where we are on our Big Case: witness has to go back to doctor for urgent tests and possible exploratory surgery for cancer; Defendant refuses to withdraw the subpoena for her deposition at the same time as the medical appointment.

Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be lawyers.

and

File under “K” for karma’s a bitch. Opposing counsel who refused to reschedule a deposition for the witness’s medical procedure now needs us to reschedule for *his* medical procedure. Must.Control.Sarcastic.Response.

so it hasn’t been a good week for Rule 1.5.  But before I launch into my latest diatribe, I wanted to link to this, a wonderful meditation** by my friend and co-counsel Kevin Williams on how lucky we are to practice in the field we do.

As many of you know, CCDC’s offices are like many non-profit’s, but from my office, I can see the Colorado Rockies South and West.  From Pike’s Peak…almost…(if you stretch)… to Long’s.  This evening, as I wrap up today’s work (responding to letters from some lawyer telling me why he thinks I’m an a**hole), I was lucky enough to remember to turn around from my desk and look out my window.  I just watched the magnificence of another spectacular Colorado sunset.

…

The sunsets keep coming.  Fifteen years of being a disability rights lawyer has taught me one undeniable principle: When you represent people who have a righteous cause, you are doing the right thing.  Although we have had a few let-downs over the years, and many, many contentious battles, the victories keep coming. I look forward to tomorrow’s sunset.

We are lucky.  I’ll be ranting again soon — tomorrow, even — about the antics of our opposing counsel, but for tonight I’m thankful to practice in the field that I do, with a partner like Tim, co-counsel like Kevin and the rest of our incredible and various teams, and righteous clients, cases, and issues.  And much as I love our coastal colleagues, with the amazing view of the sun setting over the Rockies.

**********

*Coming soon.

**I think Kevin will hate this word.  I think he’d prefer something more like gin-fueled philosophizing.

I get that.   In Emily Hauser’s words, “This is not my business. Not.My.Business. I know that, and if any African-American readers want to tell me as much, I won’t be able to argue.”

I also get that there are things that African-American women do to their hair that is arduous, painful, and time-consuming.  I can’t even be motivated to dry my hair unless I have to appear in court before 10:00 a.m., so I am in awe of the effort.  But I also realize that what many African-American women do to their hair is motivated by generations of internal and external prejudices about what constitutes good hair, meaning, most of the time, hair like white people have.

With all those caveats here is my small contribution to the conversation:  our family’s micro-level Kenneth Clark experiment.

I have a November birthday.  When I was ready for kindergarten in 1965, the Jefferson City, MO, public schools were not ready for me, so my folks sent me to the kindergarten affiliated with Lincoln University, an historically black university.*  As a result, my kindergarten class was almost entirely African-American, but for me and one other white kid.  Our teachers all African-American, many of them being student teachers from Lincoln U.  I still remember Miss Flowers — pictured below — who I totally idolized.  My fifth birthday — Mom brought cupcakes:

Anyway, what the hell does this have to do with hair?  I’ll tell you.  Apparently one day during my year at Lincoln U’s kindergarten, my folks discovered me in our bathroom applying Vaseline to my hair, in an effort to make my hair look like my classmates’ hair.  I don’t actually remember doing this, though I do remember thinking that being able to braid your hair effortlessly into multiple braids was way cooler than anything my hair could do.  OK, the photo shows that really almost anything would have been cooler than my hair,** but the cute ‘dos of my two female classmates were out of reach even if I (or, let’s be candid, my mother) had had any hairstyling sense at all.***

So I think about this every time I read about what African-American women go through with their hair, or even what teenage girls of all races do to conform to the (skinny, racy) images that confront them constantly.    I wonder if you sent a skinny girl to a school full of fat girls — and deprived her of access to fashion magazines — whether she’d come away with an earlier recognition of this life truth:  fat people are generally cooler than skinny people.

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* While getting the link for their website, I learned that Lincoln U’s mascot is a blue tiger.  I wish I had known that all these years.  That is seriously awesome!  I’m thinking of acquiring a blue tiger sweatshirt — my earliest alma mater!

** Memo to my brother:  comment on this at your own risk.  I have photos of your haircuts from the late 60s and early 70s.  You know what I’m talking about.

*** I can’t tell from the length whether this was before or after the “one more word out of you and I’m cutting it all off” incident, but let’s just say that I did not spend much of my childhood with long hair.

We recently went to trial against a fast-food chain for lack of wheelchair access.  In trial, three of the chain’s customers who use wheelchairs and the son of a fourth, now deceased, took the stand and described their experiences.  They described these experiences as a practical matter — a door that closed on an ankle, a queue line that was too narrow, employees who ignored them or told them they could not even wait off to the side of the line — and as an emotional matter — what it felt like to encounter these barriers, to be ignored, to be told to wait somewhere else. They talked about their own lives, too:  a lay pastor who counseled people with disabilities; an advocate who is working with the Smithsonian on a disability history project; a woman whose parents took her to see Martin Luther King, Jr. and taught her to stand up for her rights; a man whose mother had worked to integrate people with disabilities into her chorus.

The fast-food chain’s response was:  you’re lying.  You’re lying and you’re greedy.  The chain’s lawyers called the restaurant’s assistant manager to the stand to testify that she didn’t recognize any of them.  The lawyers pointed out — in cross-examining the customers — that they might recover damages, that they had filed other lawsuits to challenge other inaccessible conditions, that this wasn’t the closest restaurant to their homes.  The chain’s hired expert — who uses a wheelchair — took the stand to say he didn’t mind the barriers, that he didn’t consider it discrimination.

Four people who took time out of their day, their days, to be deposed, to take the stand in trial.  Work hours missed, long rides on public transportation.  Just to be accused of greed and dishonesty.  To be challenged on the fact that they had a life that took them farther afield than the restaurant closest to their homes.  To be accused — rather than celebrated — for standing up to other facilities and other defendants who had excluded them.

We defended them in the language permitted us by the law, by the rules of civil procedure and evidence.  Objections to relevance.  Quotes from the governing appellate court:  “[f]or the ADA to yield its promise of equal access for the disabled, it may indeed be necessary and desirable for committed individuals to bring serial litigation advancing the time when public accommodations will be compliant with the [ADA].”*

But as always, the late poet Laura Hershey says it best:

Telling**

What you risk telling your story:

You will bore them.

Your voice will break, your ink

spill and stain your coat.

No one will understand, their eyes

become fences.

You will park yourself forever

on the outside, your differentness once

and for all revealed, dangerous.

The names you give to yourself

will become epithets.

 

Your happiness will be called

bravery, denial.

Your sadness will justify their pity.

Your fear will magnify their fears.

Everything you say will prove something about

their god, or their economic system.

Your feelings, that change day

to day, kaleidoscopic,

will freeze in place,

brand you forever,

justify anything they decide to do

with you.

 

Those with power can afford

to tell their story

or not.

 

Those without power

risk everything to tell their story

and must.

 

Someone, somewhere

will hear your story and decide to fight,

to live and refuse compromise.

Someone else will tell

her own story,

risking everything.

A brilliant call to arms — to words? — for those who risk so much in speaking up.  It feels mundane to quote it in the context of a fast food restaurant.  But that’s the point:  in simply describing a visit to a restaurant, ordering food, interacting with staff, you risk being called a liar and having your motives and experiences questioned and belittled.

I devote my professional energies to disability rights law, but mostly I do that sitting at a computer researching or writing.  From that sheltered vantage point, it’s easy to lose sight of the courage it takes to tell your story in a courtroom and to be challenged, belittled, and accused of lying.  I am deeply grateful for those who are willing to tell their stories.

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*  Antoninetti v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., — F. 3d —, 2010 WL 3665525, at *7, slip op. at 16016 (9th Cir. Sept. 22, 2010).

** Quoted with permission. Thanks, Robin!

Turns out, Tim and I would put up with a fairly annoying level of discrimination and techno music for this tasty treat.  We went to our favorite tapas joint last night — Denver’s 9th Door.  We’ve always known that an evening at 9th Door is a trade-off between amazing food and a deeply annoying hipster-and-techno-music ambiance.  But we’ve been there many times and always been seated politely.  Last night, the manager decided we were a fire hazard.

You know how there are phrases that just signal discrimination, that members of minority groups hear often — each time from someone thinking he is original — demonstrating conclusively that you are different, outside, etc.  For example, saying an African-American is “articulate,” or an Asian is a “model minority,” or a Jewish name is “delightful.”*  Well, nothing says “other” better than calling you a fire hazard.

We got there at our usual old-fogie, early-bird-special hour and the manager showed us to a two-top — one we had occupied on a number of previous occasions — and then started vocally fretting about how she could arrange us so that neither Tim nor I would be a fire hazard.  In one arrangement, I would have been sitting in the aisle.  She rejected this, causing Tim to tell the rather chubby manager, “she’s only 105** pounds, she won’t take up the whole aisle.”  Oh snap!  Following much dramatic table-dragging and eye-rolling, we were seated, after which, of course, the entire length of the aisle she was worried about immediately filled up with annoying hipsters, posing a far more serious, non-wheelchair-related, fire hazard.

A word about techno music.  Does. Anyone. Like. That. Shit?  OK, 5 words.  It seems to me to have been composed by lab rats seeking revenge for whatever we’ve done to them in the name of science.  Hey, Rats – here’s your data:  techno music makes me want to rip my own ears off.  Now make it stop.

But I swear to God it was all worth it.

Dátiles: Crispy Serrano ham-wrapped dates stuffed with almonds and drunken goat cheese

Pimientos del Piquillo Rellenos: Fire-roasted piquillo peppers stuffed with fresh goat cheese and rosemary

Aged Manchego cheese with membrillo Cabrales blue cheese with almonds and honey Cabra cheese with dried fig chutney

Alcachofas a la Plancha: Crispy pan-fried artichoke hearts with lemon-thyme aioli

Croquetas de Hongos: Mushroom and rice croquette with sherry wine and mushroom sauce

Albóndigas: Traditional lamb meatballs served in a delicate Moorish mint almond sauce

Extra-bonus sexism.  See if you can spot it in their menu blather:

On Spain’s Costa del Sol, located between Malaga and Marbella, sits a quiet little mountain village called Mijas.

During the summer of 1969, after having been made famous by James Michener’s novel The Drifters, Mijas had become an expatriate community of writers and poets. On lazy afternoons, these expats would gather at their favorite bar – one without a name, recognizable only by the number nine that was carved into the door.

Behind the 9th door, they would imbibe on the local wine and brandy and share the tapas of the house, trading stories and reciting poetry to the local women until the early hours of the morning.

Raise your hands if the first time you read the words “expatriate community of writers and poets” you pictured a mixed group of men and women.  Ha!  Fooled you!  Or maybe I’m just being heteronormative:  male and female expat writers and poets could all have been seducing the local women.  Of this I’m confident:  no techno music was involved.

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* OK, this one might not make sense out of context.  Here’s the context:  I’m half Jewish, half, well, WASP.  When discussing a friend of mine with one of my older WASPy cousins, he responded to hearing the guy’s name by laughing out loud, repeating it over and over, saying “how delightful!”  Not an anti-Semetic bone in his body, but almost nothing could have made me feel more “other” at that moment.

** This reflects the historically accurate weight stated on my driver’s license.  Let’s just say:  it’s up for renewal this year.

For the past few days, I’ve been a bystander in a ridiculous email discussion about airport security and decided that, once I’d spent the entire drive up University Boulevard from County Line to Evans composing a rant in my head, that rant needed to be freed from my head and posted on the blog.

Airport security is a pain in the ass.  But that’s all it is.  Buck up, folks.  I always choose the pat-down because the nude photo thingy creeps me out.  It’s not fun, but it’s not, say, dental surgery.  Hell, it’s not even flossing.  Yup, I’d rather go through airport security than floss.  Life is full of annoying things.  Get over it.

And the thought that — to avoid this mild pain in the ass — we would sacrifice core American values is just beyond me.  I am constantly baffled by what it is conservatives love when they say they love America. It was the question addressed at fabulous verbose length by this guy.

What I really wanted to ask is this: Proud American? Really? What is it exactly that you’re proud of?  You say you love your country? You say you love the United States? Really? Which part? What is it that you love about it? Specifically, what exactly do you love about America?

Because, see, so far as I can tell, people like you seem to hate just about everything that makes the United States what it is.

And so on for like 45 paragraphs or so.  It really is hilarious, but I recommend skimming.

I’ll tell you what I love:  I love the Constitution.  I love the 14th Amendment, the one that promises equal protection of the laws.  Do we really want to violate one of the most fundamental American principles to save 15 minutes at the airport?  Really?

Oh and another thing:  it doesn’t work.  If we start profiling, we would be sacrificing our values for nothing.

[P]rofiling creates two paths through security: one with less scrutiny and one with more. And once you do that, you invite the terrorists to take the path with less scrutiny. That is, a terrorist group can safely probe any profiling system and figure out how to beat the profile. And once they do, they’re going to get through airport security with the minimum level of screening every time.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, we’re all more secure when we randomly select people for secondary screening — even if it means occasionally screening wheelchair-bound grandmothers and innocent looking children. And, as an added bonus, it doesn’t needlessly anger the ethnic groups we need on our side if we’re going to be more secure against terrorism.

But more than that, how would it work?  As another security expert noted,

But what do we go by? Name? Appearance? The vast majority of Arab Americans, for instance, are not only innocent of sympathy for terrorism, they’re actually Christian. To profile Muslims you’d have to target blacks, Asians, whites and Hispanics (remember Jose Padilla?). How could that work, and would it really help identify those who are intending harm or would it simply divert resources that could be better used on investigations?

So we set out to profile Muslims, but we can’t use name or appearance. What then?  Seriously, profiling advocates, if you want to target Muslims, you have to figure out a way to do it.  Religious identity cards?  A quick religious catechism with the TSA dudes?  I’m loving the idea of small-government conservatives authorizing the Federales to investigate individual religious beliefs to determine whether you get groped in the security line.

But ultimately, of course, it’s not just Muslims who commit terrorism:

The biggest terrorist attack in U.S. history prior to 9/11—the 1996 Oklahoma City bombing—was carried out by a white ex-Marine with a crew cut. The only major WMD attack of the “war on terror” era—the 2001 anthrax mailings—was apparently the handiwork of a white, Christian microbiologist angry that prominent Catholic politicians were pro-choice. And who stormed the Holocaust Museum last year, killing a security guard? Ayman-al Zawahiri? No, neo-Nazi octogenarian nutcase James Wenneker von Brunn.

I have to wait in line to take off my shoes, start up my computer, and step through a metal detector every time I go to court because Christians like to shoot at, blow up, and threaten federal buildings and officials.  That’s right, Christians.  Oh, right, of course, not Christians like you.  Bad Christians.  Maybe people calling themselves Christians who do not remotely have the values you would call Christian.

Exactly my point.