{"id":35228,"date":"2017-09-12T18:55:12","date_gmt":"2017-09-12T22:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=35228"},"modified":"2017-09-13T08:25:39","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T12:25:39","slug":"bite-lip-close-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/09\/12\/bite-lip-close-eyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Bite My Lip and Close My Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

To be fair, the \u201cLike\u201d button on most social media is multivalent, forced to serve a host of meanings and functions that do not necessarily entail the \u201cliker\u201d actually \u201cliking\u201d the post \u201cliked.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Twitter, for example, liking a post is the easiest way to flag it for future reference. It may be an article that looks intriguing that you want to go back and read later, but it also may be an article that looks horrific that you may want to go back and hate-read later. Other Twitter users cannot easily tell which of these your \u201cLike\u201d indicates.*<\/p>\n

\"I
I don\u2019t have permission to use this AP photo, but I couldn\u2019t resist using it. Call it an act of akrasia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, yes, it is possible that Sen. Ted Cruz and\/or some staffer in his office \u201cliked\u201d a pornographic tweet late last night because the senator\/intern was thinking, \u201cOoh, I\u2019ll want to call this up later when I\u2019m alone to enjoy myself.\u201d But it\u2019s also possible, in theory at least, that the senator and\/or intern was thinking, \u201cGreat Jehosophat!<\/em> There appears to be unsolicited pornography here on the Internet \u2014 we must protect the children!\u201d and clicked \u201clike\u201d to keep track of this horrifying affront to public decency in order to later trace its source, sanction its producers, and draft legislation preventing such terrible, terrible things from ever appearing in anyone else\u2019s Twitter feed.<\/p>\n

This is, after all, a man who once argued in court that Americans do not have any right to masturbate<\/a>. (Cruz\u2019s \u201csmall-government conservatism,\u201d apparently, holds that any private behavior not explicitly defended in the Constitution is therefore prohibited by it.)<\/p>\n

The first scenario seems more likely, I think, and that appears to be the explanation the senator is going with \u2014 insisting that it wasn\u2019t him, personally, and that he will be conducting an internal investigation to find out who among his staff is responsible<\/a> for this embarrassment. (Note to Sen. Cruz: We carry UV lamps at the Big Box if you need one.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a number of people on the team who have access on the account. It appears that someone inadvertently hit the like button. When we discovered the post, which was I guess an hour or two later, we pulled it down,\u201d Cruz said. \u201cIt was a staffing issue. And it was inadvertent, it was a mistake. It was not a deliberate act. We\u2019re dealing with it internally, but it was a mistake. It was not malicious.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m not sure how someone inadvertently searched for porn on Twitter, but I think those last eight words are probably correct: It was a \u201cmistake,\u201d but \u201cwas not malicious.\u201d It\u2019s not clear, though, that Ted\u00a0Cruz understands the meaning of that morally significant distinction here. Malice is a graver evil than akrasia<\/em>, the fancy old-timey designation for mere weakness or stumbling. Akrasia<\/em> happens. After all, nobody\u2019s perfect. We\u2019re all fallible. But fallibility and evil are not the same thing.<\/p>\n

The weird thing here is that Cruz seems to regard masturbation (or even titillation) as an act of malice<\/em>, not as a mere mistake resulting from a moment of weakness. That\u2019s \u2026 odd. If you\u2019re doing that maliciously, I think you\u2019re probably doing it wrong.<\/p>\n

Look, I recognize that the (approximately universal) deed in question here can involve what we religious types call sin \u2014 often more akin to sloth or gluttony than to the lust we automatically associate with it. It can involve the objectification of others or of oneself in unhealthy ways. It can be a form of selfishness. (And that\u2019s all without\u00a0even getting into the whole matter of complicity in the production of the pornography that may or may not be involved in the matter.) So, without meaning to disparage\u00a0anyone\u2019s hobbies, I understand the moral reasoning that can regard at least some forms of the deed as \u201csinful.\u201d I\u2019m not personally inclined to condemn it as sin or even as a problem. (I mean, depending on where and how often.)** But, yes, I understand the argument from those who do.***<\/p>\n

The point here, though, is that it\u2019s unusual \u2014 and disturbing \u2014 to see masturbation condemned as an act of malice.\u00a0Perhaps that\u2019s not what Cruz meant. Perhaps what he meant by a deliberate maliciousness was that the staffer\/intern simply screwed up without any intent of deliberately and maliciously attempting to damage the senator\u2019s reputation. I hope that\u2019s what he meant. And I hope that, given that, he finds some gracious way to deal with the intern in question without damaging that person\u2019s whole reputation\u00a0more than they have already damaged it by making \u201cOffice of Sen. Ted Cruz\u201d a prominent line on their r\u00e9sum\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Regardless of how this all shakes out for Cruz and his staff, let\u2019s try to make this a teachable moment as well as a hilarious one. Human weakness is different from malice. When someone has a moment of weakness and makes a mistake we should afford them the same charity and grace we ourselves will need to rely on when, inevitably, we make our own mistakes. And when someone acts maliciously, we should afford them the charity and grace of standing up to them and calling them out, just as we ourselves would want to be corrected lest we start to make a habit of that and wind up being the kind of predatory, evil jerks who would, for example, vote to deny access to health care for tens of millions of our neighbors.<\/p>\n

In short, some lonely senate staffer searched for and \u201cliked\u201d a bit of porno using his boss\u2019s official Twitter account. That\u2019s a mistake<\/em>. This same staffer willingly continued to work for the senator in question despite that senator\u2019s support for repealing the ACA and DACA. That\u2019s malice<\/em>. We should readily forgive the former. The latter requires repentance.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

* I use the like feature in both of these ways, as the Twitter equivalent of a \u201cbookmark.\u201d\u00a0I also use it, of course, to indicate that I liked a post \u2014 that someone\u2019s joke made me laugh, or that I am happy for them when they share good news. I also sometimes use it, somewhat awkwardly, to indicate sympathy when someone shares bad<\/em> news. Most social media users do that, recognizing that\u00a0as the only available tool it is necessarily ambiguous and may sometimes signify \u201cUgh, so sorry to hear that. That\u2019s terrible\u201d rather than \u201cI like this!\u201d<\/p>\n

** I worked for a year at the front desk of\u00a0a home for dual-diagnosis adults. In a typical day, I probably said \u201cThat\u2019s a private thing, remember? We don\u2019t do that here\u201d as often as I said \u201cHello, how may I direct your call?\u201d And in the same politely perfunctory\u00a0tone of voice. This had absolutely nothing to do with any\u00a0category of \u201csin.\u201d<\/p>\n

*** Years ago, an earnest evangelical friend confessed to me that he \u201cstruggled with masturbation.\u201d I suggested trying his other hand. I wasn\u2019t being flippant. He was agonizing over this and obsessing over it out of all proportion. Making something like that the focus of \u201cspiritual\u201d preoccupation is, itself, far more dangerously self-absorbing and self-obsessing than occasionally rubbing one out might ever be. In the name of spiritual \u201cstruggle,\u201d he was locking\u00a0the doors to his own cell and losing the key just as surely as Billie Joe in \u201cLongview\u201d<\/a> \u2014 the mirror image, perhaps, but the same result.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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