How do you feel about tattoos?

[bellatrys]

(No, I'm not thinking of getting one; they're way too expensive for someone like me. (I did, way back before I had any idea how much they cost.) This is something else. And yes, there are a lot more serious issues out there and a lot more sad things going on that are more important than this, but it's emblematic of a problem particularly rampant in

Comments

Ah - it's our old friend Jonah once again

[anonymous]

I admit, I did go "Whatte the swyve?!" there, until I clicked on the link and saw the name of Jonah Goldberg.

Good grief, does the man do *nothing* else but spend his days ferreting out things about which to fret and fume? Better keep him away from watching any of the rugby matches involving the All Blacks - the sight of the haka would make him swoon dead away...

Deiseach

Re: Ah - it's our old friend Jonah once again

[fidelioscabinet]

Was it the people out at the Godless University of California who did the study which showed anxious, fretful children grew up to be closed-minded conservatives while secure, relaxed ones became open-minded progressives as adults?

Which is, yes, my way of saying Jonah was a whiny baby when he was little and still is.

the National Review's collective vapors

[bellatrys]

are quite amazing, aren't they? God forbid someone expose them to Mozart's "Rondo Alla Turca" or - egads, in DC and NY there are women working there who wear saris every day! The horror, the horror!

Re: the National Review's collective vapors

[fidelioscabinet]

I like the term "50-yard pearl clutch" for those reactions--not sure where it, or the variants, first appeared, but it works for me.

BTW, I think the bride's hands were probably decorated with henna art, which is not quite the same as a tattoo, although it's equally ethnic.

[celandineb]

I have two, and what I think of them is the nuanced "it depends on what it is, where, and how well done it is."

I wonder how many of those who cite Leviticus as a reason not to have (or even forbid by law) tattoos have pierced ears? That seems to me also a cutting or marking.

well, there are *some* according to google

[bellatrys]

here, both Christian and Jewish- but one Rabbi consulted said that the only real worry was health, that you might think it was unaesthetic but that was hardly an ethical judgment requiring legal intervention; the other school was more leery about it. So a resounding "maybe" (no/sure/I don't know) from the tradition which brought us Leviticus in the first place

[randwolf]

Judaic practice to many parts of Torah generally is more akin to obeying a health code than avoiding "evil"; that's how kashrut is treated, and apparently also the specific prohibition of tattoos. Judaism generally has a very different take on "sin" than christianity; it is more a matter of "just do this" and less a matter of shame.

most of the rabbis do feel that way, yes

[bellatrys]

I did notice that the more conservative ones were arguing that it was a matter of humans not having the right to deface the body that God had made and still owned, which is indistinguishable from the "your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit" arguments against all kinds of [various/different] things by Christian moralists.

In general, the halakhic tradition is much more in line with *my* upbringing as a convert Catholic where people read Aquinas and argued about exegesis and ethics, than the Evangelican fundamentalist attitude of uncritical selective acceptance of whatever fits their tastes and squicks...

[raincitygirl]

Well, I guess there's a cure for cancer and AIDS, and world peace has broken out all over. Only plausible explanation for the NRO guy flipping out over *tattoos*.

And even after reading the original post, I *still* don't understand what about that perfectly innocuous ad was so offensive. I need a Wingnut to English dictionary, it would seem.

South Asian person = Terra! Terra! Terra!

[bellatrys]

Even if it's a woman's hands in preparation for a big family party. (Even if she's quite likely Hindu, too.) Add that to the aggressively multiculturalist slogan of the ad that it's important to pay attention to other human beings not yourself, and OMG!!WTF!!11!!!OHNOES!1!one!!1 Tis the End of Civilization As We Know It, might as well surrender to the Mongol Horde and become Dhimmis and Charles Martel must be rolling in his grave and--

(and at that point the men in white coats come and take you away to a padded cell, in a sane world.)

[nimbrethil]

they're okay, they seem kind of tacky but then that's how I was raised to think of them, the province of burly guys on Harleys and their "mommas"

Put me down for that one. My Dad hates tatoos and thinks that the only real reason anyone gets them is to purposely piss off people who think they're tacky. (I've thought about getting one in the past, and said as much to him. The resultant argument ended with me flippantly saying I'd get one just to piss him off and his earnest statement that that's the reason anyone gets a tatoo).

I wouldn't mind getting one now, but I'm put off by having it bashed into my head for years that you can't get a job if you have a visible tatoo, and I would want a tatoo where it could be seen, otherwise wouldn't see the point. That, and, yeah, the cost. Ack.

Now they're quite fashionable

[bellatrys]

in fact I know reactionaries who go in the other direction and don't want to get them now because of the fact that "everyone's got them" nowadays...

crimestop!

[cmdroverbite]

I don't think it is the tats per se that had the NRO blogger up in arms. I read it as an objection to the tagline.

If you take for granted: a) the belief that some points of view are inherently and self-evidently wrong/bad in all particulars, and b) the belief that empathy is sympathy is indoctrination, then the objection makes "sense."

It's Orwell's crimestop in action -- a sort of protective stupidity about anything that doesn't neatly fit into the mindset. Openness to other points of view leads to empathy and understanding which is but a brief tumble down the slippery slope from sympathy and thus ultimately the open-minded person himself strapping C4 to his torso and blowing up a Qdoba.

If there's one constant strain running through most of the NRO Corner posts I've read, it's that culture exists to inculcate people with correct political ideas. Kinda ironic for a bunch of people that you just know pride themselves on their "politically incorrect" pugnacity...

Re: crimestop!

[cmdroverbite]

that should be "the slippery slope to sympathy," etc.

"Xenophobes Anonymous"

[bellatrys]

was another title I considered for this post.

"Hi, I'm from The Corner, and whenever I see brown people, or people wearing funny clothes, I can't help imagine shooting them..."

well, specifically, it's the presence of South Asian person

[bellatrys]

because I'm certain that if they had shown two people as white as me *with* nothing Asian about the tattoo - because, let's face it, a lot of Hindu women are nearly as white as me (very few people are as sallow as I am, to the point of comments on the street from other white people), with whiteness measured on a pantone chart, not the mythical and unprovable ancestors-nearer-the-Greenwich-meridian-than-yours scale - with daisies in blue and green on a girl's ankle, frex, and an American flag and an eagle on a white guy's freckled arm, and the same slogan, there would have been squawkage emanating from The Corner, yipping about hippies and relativism and OMGWTFOHNOES about the decadent Sixties.

But their first response wouldn't have been "To War, To War/To War We're Gonna Go!"