The Boo Ban and the Nanny State

So the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association wants to ban booing at high-school athletic events. Looks like ABC is running this story nationally as well.

If the Association knows what's good for it, it will drop this idea like the political hot potato that it is. It is (judging from the comments at the Post-Intelligencer) extremely unpopular, utterly unenforceable, clearly unconstitutional, and probably un-American.

Two themes from the comments at the P-I stick in my head though:

1. One poster suggests that this could be the seed of a general backlash against the "nanny state" in general, the impulse behind such things as the smoking ban, the creeping ban on alcohol enforced by lowering the DUI limit, as well as some of the ridiculous situations caused by unwillingness to allow others to accept risks for themselves that we might not choose to accept (usually aggravated by the insurance industry) such as the disappearance of swingsets and jungle gyms from public parks and the banning of pets (leashed or otherwise). Maybe we can put Tim Eyman to good use for once.

2. A number of people blame "liberals" for nanny-statism and other efforts to control people and eliminate civil rights. I tend to think this is just more use of "liberal" as a pejorative, as a knee-jerk reaction that reflects unwillingness to think on the part of the accusers. Even if nanny-statism has taken hold disporoportionately in the "blue states", I think it's more an issue of urban areas tending independently to social liberalism and nanny-statism, and it is possible to advocate for more of one and less of the other.

Humor for SMQs and Our Recent Concert

Our recent concert featured a Samuel Barber setting of a poem written during the Spanish Civil War, entitled "A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map." It is a very spooky piece and the sentiment is clearly anti-war, with the description of one soldier's death and the effect it has on his companion who lives on. The crowning irony of the work is the line "All under the olive trees", the olive branch being symbolic of peace.

And all I could think of during rehearsal was how funny it would sound to sing that line in Linda Richman's "Coffee Talk" voice. "Awwwl under the awwwwwwwwwwlive trees."

As a side note, it's eye-opening to mention Linda Richman to a fellow chorine and realize they are too young to have seen those episodes of "Saturday Night Live". Or to pull out "O Magnum Mysterium" and hum a few bars of the theme to "Magnum, P.I." and notice that somebody just Doesn't Get It, usually for the same reason. That's when you know you're getting old.

By the way, this afternoon's performance was, unfortunately, marred by an audience member's cell phone ringing toward the end of one of Bernstein's "Choruses from the Lark" being performed by our small ensemble, Ædonis; they had to hold the beginning of the next movement until the offending phone was silenced by its owner, who I hope was appropriately embarrassed.