Essay 1: Michelle Wolf Did What Comedians Are Supposed to Do

By Adam Conover New York Times, April 30, 2018

Comedy has no rules, per se. But in my 15 years of writing and performing, I’ve come up with a few guidelines that I find helpful:

1. Be funny.

2. Tell the truth.

3. Make people in power uncomfortable.

By that math, in her performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night in Washington, Michelle Wolf did exactly what a great comic is supposed to do. She made the crowd of assembled journalists, politicians and guests laugh; she made them squirm; and she made them gasp in astonishment (and yes, a little delight) when a sharp sliver of the truth cut a little closer to the bone than they were expecting.

In other words, she killed.

Yet in return for her excellence, Ms. Wolf was criticized not just by partisan defenders of the president, but by members of the press, too. Journalists called Ms. Wolf’s set “offensive,” “deplorable” and “a debacle.” Margaret Talev, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, who booked the comedian to perform, released a statement on Sunday night that said “unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit” of the group’s mission.

There is no president of the Comedians’ Association, and though Ms. Wolf and I know each other professionally, I’m not her spokesman. But at risk of speaking out of turn, I’d like to offer this official response from America’s comics: If you don’t want comedy, don’t hire us.

The journalistic and political classes are very eager to borrow the cultural authority of comedians when it suits them, sending out gala invitations and posing for photos in hopes that a bit of that edgy satirical shine will rub off on them. From Senator John McCain’s chummy on-air relationship with Jon Stewart to President Barack Obama’s hyperactive zeal to appear on every comedy product from Jimmy Fallon’s “Slow Jam the News” to “Between Two Ferns,” the message was clear: Comedy is cool.

But as soon as a comic does his or her job too well and uses comedy to speak a truth that could jeopardize the press’s attempt to befriend the political players they cover, reporters put away their cellphone cameras and cry, “Who invited such a rude woman?”

No one who hired Siegfried & Roy was shocked when they brought a tiger onstage. So you shouldn’t be shocked if you book a comedian and she points out that the emperor has no clothes. Or when she points below the emperor’s waistline and makes a rude joke.

Contrary to what several prominent journalists said, the transcript shows that Michelle Wolf did not make a single joke at the expense of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s physical appearance. Rather, she did something much worse in the eyes of those assembled: She ridiculed the White House press secretary’s mendacity, hypocrisy and complicity. And in a searing, brutally funny segment, she criticized the willingness of the press to play along:

“You guys are obsessed with Trump. Did you used to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him. And if you’re gonna profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money because he doesn’t have any.”

No wonder the crowd seemed so uncomfortable.

Some people noted that Ms. Wolf’s routine was poorly received in the Hilton ballroom itself. But watching her at home I recognized exactly what she was doing. Every performer who has done comedy on television knows that the people in the studio don’t really matter. They’re uncomfortable, they’re tense, and they have to be polite because they’re sitting six inches away from Chris Christie. You’re never getting a real laugh out of them. Instead, you focus on the audience that counts: the folks at home. And the folks at home don’t want comedy that’s polite and tasteful, and secures them access to an interview next Wednesday — they want comedy that stands on the rooftop and calls out hypocrisy and deceit at the top of its lungs.

The way the press corps treats the brilliant comedians it hires is an old joke by now, and we all know the punch lines. In 2016, when Larry Wilmore tore into the cable news industry’s history of racist coverage and greeted President Obama in a manner some took offense to, he was deemed to have gone “too far.” In 2006, Steven Colbert mercilessly mocked President George W. Bush from just feet away. Yet that now legendary performance was very poorly received at the time.

I went back to watch the video again: The assembled press squirms in their seats, barely laughing as Mr. Colbert drops bomb after bomb of brilliant satire. The reviews that followed were just as scathing as those Ms. Wolf received: The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen wrote that Mr. Colbert was “not funny” and “rude”; the New York Observer’s Chris Lehmann said that his “timing was dreadfully off”; Representative Steny H. Hoyer said that the comedian had “crossed the line.” In response, the next year the White House Correspondents’ Association booked the celebrity impressionist and sexagenarian Rich Little, who did Johnny Carson impressions while President Bush happily smiled. So much for satire.

Comics are regularly asked to perform for impossible rooms. They’re called “hell gigs.” I’ve done standup on a ferryboat, at a youth hostel where no one spoke English and, on one memorable occasion, at an electronic music festival where the entire audience was on ecstasy. All three went better than you’d expect. All a comic really needs to put on a show is a microphone, low ceilings (more important than you’d think!) and an audience that’s willing to hear what he or she has to say.

So, which is it? Does the White House press corps want to use the platform to let the unvarnished truth be spoken to those in power? Or would they rather prioritize the preservation of politeness and a chummy relationship with the administration we rely on them to cover? If it’s the former, great! That’s what we do.

If it’s the latter, please, leave America’s comedians off the invite list. Better yet, cancel the whole charade and head out to your local comedy club. You’ll find us there, doing what we’re paid to: telling jokes and telling the truth.

Adam Conover (@adamconover) is the creator and host of “Adam Ruins Everything” on TruTV.

To the Editor: April 30, 2018

Re “Press Dinner’s Comedy Act Sets Off Furor” (Business Day, April 30):

Michelle Wolf’s coarseness at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night was disgraceful. It imitated President Trump’s own speech. Defenders of Ms. Wolf ask why journalists don’t criticize Mr. Trump’s coarseness. But they constantly and rightly do. The journalists aren’t hypocritical for criticizing Ms. Wolf’s speech but instead would be hypocritical for failing to when at the same time they criticize Mr. Trump.

Ms. Wolf’s defenders seem to imply that First Amendment-protected speech is inappropriate, coarse, embarrassing to its targets, foul-mouthed or in poor taste when it comes from Mr. Trump but not when it comes from his critics.

Most distressing about Ms. Wolf’s monologue is that it seemed to vindicate Mr. Trump’s nonattendance at these dinners, and even more to vindicate his own protected but disgraceful free speech.

JAMES ADLER, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

To the Editor:

Michelle Wolf’s comments did what the fictional Mr. Dooley famously urged the press to do, “afflict the comfortable.” Ms. Wolf did that well, evidenced by the stony silence from many of the dinner’s participants. Watching journalists and politicians squirm in their fine tuxes and gowns as their deeds are called out is the perfect visualization of Mr. Dooley’s quote.

President Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders lash out almost daily, and now they have seen how this feels when it happens to them. If Mr. Trump had attended the dinner, he would have had an opportunity to have his day in court with humor aimed at his critics.

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is the only time a comedian can say what much of America is really thinking to the press and the White House occupants in attendance. Please do not make it go away.

JACQUELINE HICKS GRAZETTE UPPER MARLBORO, MD.

The writer is a former journalism teacher.

To the Editor:

As a father, I have recently found myself emphasizing more often than I should have to the importance of being kind. Initially, I faulted memes. Too often, my kids laughed at their phones and attributed it to a funny meme they read online. I soon learned that some memes contain horribly inappropriate “humor” directed at others.

It was easy to initially blame social media. The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner proves that the problem is more systemic. How did we get to the point where it is appropriate to personally attack other Americans based on the way they look, think, speak or dress?

It’s time to put the “roast” to bed permanently. It’s time for Americans to expect dignity and professionalism from our leaders and to replace them if they refuse. Maybe then, we can tell our children to be nice without being hypocrites.

PAUL WATSON, TAMPA, FLA.

To the Editor:

As news outlets rush to criticize Michelle Wolf’s routine, have we already forgotten this very paper’s July 2017 tally predicting “Trump on Track to Insult 650 People, Places and Things on Twitter by the End of His First Term”? We read about or listen to a president of the United States verbally demean swaths of people, sometimes in language too vulgar for television, on a regular basis. But when a female comedian makes admittedly raw remarks about the president and members of his administration, at an event that in recent years has relied on comedians as hosts, we cry “too much.”

I can’t help but wonder: Would we be attacking the same words if they had been delivered by a man?

SUZY SZASZ PALMER RICHMOND, VA.

Essay 2: Hip-hop, not rock, is the voice of our era

By Marc Weingarten Washington Post, Apr 17, 2018

No one who has heard Kendrick Lamar’s stunning album “Damn” could be at all surprised that it is the first non-classical or -jazz recording to win a Pulitzer Prize. More than that, it is further proof — if any is still needed — that American culture has at last fully moved beyond the hegemony of rock ’n’ roll and the electric guitar-driven sound that dominated 60 years of popular music.

The Pulitzer for Lamar might confuse or anger those reared on the great canon of rock, but perhaps we will no longer have to endure the cloudy reveries of middle-aged men bemoaning the fact that fewer people seem to appreciate the brilliance of a 20-minute Clapton or Hendrix solo anymore. Didn’t millions of us, after all, live out our arena-rock fantasies with the “Guitar Hero” video game just a few years ago?

Mercifully, rock has been displaced by hip-hop, with its daring formal innovations, its blistering polemics and its vital role as a sounding board for powerful social movements. A genre aggressively committed to singles — as opposed to the creaky album-and-tour model that rock stubbornly insists upon even at the indie level — hip-hop provides a running commentary on the culture as it happens: a musical newsfeed in real time.

There’s a practical reason for this: While other musicians were whining about their paltry Spotify royalty checks and trying to monetize their fading careers, hip-hop artists gamed the web in the 2010s and made it their bullhorn and promotional tool. For them, the internet isn’t a distribution system, or worse, an evil force siphoning money from musicians; it’s their primary medium for artistic expression.

Hip-hop has cornered the market on innovation. No present-day rock musician can compete with Lamar’s astonishing verbal dexterity or his ability to articulate the inchoate rage of his listeners in tracks that take in the full sweep of vernacular music. But superstars such as Lamar don’t really drive hip-hop culture anyway, not when obscure and iconic artists are posting mind-blowing tracks online at a rate that makes rock seem sclerotic by comparison. To take the measure of forward-thinking in popular music, you have to pay attention to every culvert and tributary of hip-hop.

Hip-hop has also become the musical soundtrack of millennials’ lives. As rock’s Promethean figures inch closer to their 80s — and veteran musician-activists such as U2’s Bono continue to lose traction with anyone under 40 — rock seems unmoored from its commitment to social engagement, especially among the young; it’s ceded its role as a channel through which listeners work things out with themselves and the world around them. Electric guitar sales are down 30 percent over the past decade. Kids aren’t starting garage bands the way they used to for the simple reason that there’s nothing vibrant to tap into. Listeners are demanding more from their music than rock is willing to provide.

Of course, rock ’n’ roll isn’t “over-over”: There is a wealth of good stuff if you search hard enough. Rock is just functioning at a lower gear than hip-hop, and it’s forfeiting its chance to contemporaneously weigh in on this strange era. Years from now, it will be difficult to pinpoint any single guitar-driven song that speaks to the ugliness that has infected much of modern life in the age of Trump, yet a here-today-gone-tomorrow dispatch by a little-known artist such as Saba will home in on the disenfranchisement of black men with blunt intensity: “They want a barcode on my wrist / To auction off the kids that don’t fit their description of a utopia / Like a problem won’t exist if I just don’t exist.”

The irony, of course, is that rock was once the most powerful delivery system for social commentary and protest that American culture had ever produced — it’s the music that invented the teenager, lit a fuse under anti-war and human rights movements, gave us a rich tradition of anti-what-have-you insurrection. For every Pete Townshend windmill slammed across the strings of his Les Paul, there was also the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Baba O’Riley,” sharp stabs at a crumbling social order — at least until they were rubbed smooth and became stadium anthems leached of their original intent.

At its best, rock opens an aperture into new ways of thinking about the personal and the political; but in its present state, it’s a black mirror, reflecting nothing. Until rock musicians can figure out new ways to tap into the way we live now, and dissect the psyche of a fractious, angry and fearful country, hip-hop will remain the only genre that matters.

Marc Weingarten is a former contributing writer for Vibe, Rolling Stone and Spin, and the author of “Thirsty: William Mulholland, California Water and the Real Chinatown.”

To The Editor: April 23, 2018

Hip-hop isn’t great art. It’s just popular.

Marc Weingarten, in his April 18 op-ed, “Hip-hop, not rock, is the voice of our era,” and the Pulitzer Prize Board couldn’t be more wrong. There’s good reason jazz and classical dominated this award category: When it comes to excellence, they’re the best. The Pulitzer board long ago should have expanded its categories. Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life” are musical excellence, and there are many others.

As social commentary goes, rock-and-roll was never better than African American artists, who were dominant in all genres, from the blues to soul. Rock-and-roll is some of white America’s voice of an era, not all of America’s.

To say hip-hop “has cornered the market on innovation” is ludicrous. It has cornered the market on popularity, and it is to music what reality TV is to acting. High school marching bands, orchestras and jazz bands, thespian societies, debate clubs and more are gone in far too many American cities, and we lag way behind all other industrialized countries in education.

Corporations used to respond to what artists did. In our era, TV has flipped the script and creates what’s popular. Hip- hop is irresistible to corporations’ bottom line. Often there are no musicians, studio time, airfares, hotels, food or anything, and the “artists” present a finished product recorded in their studio. I’m not taking anything away from Kendrick Lamar, but his album is not the best, hip-hop is not the most innovative, and anyone who spends time at musical performances in our cultural centers has heard that.

Jeffrey Michael Bolden, Washington

Essay 3: I Wrote the Uber Memo. This Is How to End Sexual Harassment.

By Susan Fowler New York Times, April 12, 2018

If the news over the past year has taught us anything, it’s that discrimination, sexual harassment and retaliation are pervasive in nearly every industry.

From the systemic culture of sexual harassment and discrimination at Uber to the ubiquitous stories of women taken advantage of at Fox News to the tales of harassment in industries ranging from professional football to restaurants, we’ve seen one company after another publicly outed and shamed for illegal treatment of employees. The question is no longer whether egregious mistreatment actually occurs, nor whether it is limited to a few bad companies and industries, but what we can do to ensure that it never happens again.

Amid all the questions about where #MeToo goes next, there’s at least one answer that everyone should support, one backed by bipartisan legislation currently sitting in Congress, simply awaiting a vote: We need to end the practice of forced arbitration, a legal loophole companies use to cover up their illegal treatment of employees.

Discrimination, harassment and retaliation are illegal under federal and state laws. But they are not criminal offenses, so the process of obtaining justice must go through civil court. If, for example, you found yourself experiencing racial discrimination at your workplace and your workplace did nothing to fix the problem, you could publicly sue your employer in a court of law and — presumably — justice would be carried out.

Not all people want their lawsuit to play out in court. Sometimes victims of harassment and discrimination want privacy; sometimes corporations want to keep the ugly details of workplace disputes out of the public eye. For these cases, there is another avenue for obtaining justice: private arbitration. When the parties to a lawsuit decide to go to arbitration rather than a court of law, they meet with an arbitrator (usually a retired judge, and someone they both have decided to use), present their cases and then accept the judgment handed down. That is, ideally, how arbitration works.

Unfortunately, the reality of how arbitration is used to settle workplace disputes is far from that ideal. In the tech industry, where I work, and where issues of harassment and discrimination remain rampant, nearly every company requires as a condition of employment that its employees sign away their constitutional right to sue it in a court of law and instead agree to take any claims against the company to private arbitration. They are also typically legally bound to keep silent about the illegal treatment they experienced and the entire arbitration process — a process that will be handled by an arbitrator who is chosen by the company and has financial incentive to keep the company happy. (Forced arbitration of this sort goes beyond issues of sexual harassment: A recent investigation by ProPublica, for example, showed that I.B.M. employees who experienced age discrimination were bound by forced arbitration and would never be able to sue the company in court.)

Forced arbitration has become a standard practice for a variety of reasons. The dominant view is that it helps manage long-term legal risk, ensuring that companies won’t become embroiled in costly, drawn-out lawsuits. The examples of Uber and I.B.M. show that the opposite is true: Forced arbitration leads to long-term operating risk. Forcing legal disputes about discrimination, harassment and retaliation to go through secret arbitration proceedings hides the behavior and allows it to become culturally entrenched.

Before us lie three possible options for putting an end to this practice. The first is to leave it to individual companies and allow them to choose not to force their employees to sign away their constitutional rights. Microsoft has taken the lead on this and has stopped using arbitration agreements in cases of sexual harassment. As hopeful as this option might sound, leaving it up to individual companies is not likely to change the industry: The good companies will elect to ban arbitration agreements, while the bad companies will continue to use them and continue to mistreat their employees. The second is to leave it to the Supreme Court, which will soon hand down a decision in the case of Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, a suit filed not over harassment but over unpaid overtime, but that nonetheless has the potential to reshape the way companies can use arbitration agreements, particularly when they are used to ban class-action lawsuits. But it’s not clear how the court will rule — some analysis has suggested it is likely to rule in favor of employers — nor is it clear how this decision could shape forced arbitration for individuals.

This leaves us a third and final option: legislation. Promising progress is being made at the state level. Several measures were recently passed in the state of Washington, including one that will prohibit companies from using forced arbitration agreements to keep victims from reporting sexual assault and sexual harassment to authorities; in California, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher plans to propose a measure that would prohibit employers from making forced arbitration a condition of employment.

We could be making progress at the federal level, too. Last year, Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York introduced the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act of 2017, which would ban the use of forced arbitration in cases of sexual harassment and discrimination. The bill has bipartisan support. Senators and members of the House are now waiting to vote on it. Even if this bill is passed, it will be only the beginning: We must demand that our federal and state legislatures pass laws that ban forced arbitration in all cases of discrimination and harassment.

There are real questions about where #MeToo goes next — how it maintains momentum, how it can go beyond individuals losing their jobs and companies issuing public statements to create real, lasting change in our workplaces. Not all of them have easy answers. But there is at least one clear, tangible step that everyone who supports ending discrimination, harassment and retaliation in the workplace can take: Support the elimination of forced arbitration. 54Comments

Susan Fowler is a writer and former engineer at Uber.

To the Editor: April 23, 2018

Re “Where #MeToo Should Go Next,” by Susan Fowler (Op-Ed, April 13):

As we’ve learned from the #MeToo movement and also by repeatedly witnessing the abusive treatment of employees at even the highest levels of our government, a workplace can provide a sexual predator or a sadist with ample means to torment a target.

Our awareness has been raised. That’s a good first step. Putting an end to forced arbitration, as Ms. Fowler suggests, would shine an even brighter light on the issue. Another powerful way to reduce workplace abuse may rest heavily with witnesses to alleged abuse.

It’s all too easy for bystanders to remain silent or to give in to feelings of schadenfreude, or even to become secondary bullies themselves. But with some education on ethics, with training about the tactics used by bullies and about what to say or do if we become aware of abuse, and by making a commitment to act courageously, we may continue to push the momentum forward by thwarting those who try to weaponize our workplaces.

JANET RYAN SPRING LAKE HEIGHTS, N.J.

Essay 4: The Ethical Case for Having a Baby with Down Syndrome

By Chris Kaposy New York Times, April 16, 2018

My wife’s ultrasound turned up something abnormal in the baby’s heart — an otherwise innocuous feature that correlates with genetic conditions such as Down syndrome. A series of tests confirmed that our son indeed had Down syndrome. We were given the option of abortion, but my wife, Jan, already regarded him as our baby, and a few months later Aaron was born.

The first days after the diagnosis were hard. We thought about our son’s future, and our future. We went through a period of grieving. But we soon came to accept that Aaron would have Down syndrome, and to accept him as a member of our family. By the time Aaron was born, it was a joyous occasion. Today, almost nine years later, Aaron is an affectionate boy with blond hair and a crooked smile. He is passionate about hockey (we’re Canadian after all) and about animals. If he could grow up to be anything, he would probably be a veterinarian.

Many parents make a different choice. In the United States, an estimated 67 percent of fetuses with prenatally diagnosed Down syndrome are aborted. In Canada, the rate could be even higher, though there aren’t any reliable studies on it. This has become a front in the American abortion-rights debate, and bills have been passed in North Dakota, Ohio, Indiana and Louisiana (and introduced in Utah) that make it illegal for a doctor to perform an abortion because of a positive prenatal test for Down syndrome.

My wife and I are pro-choice and oppose placing limits like these on abortion. Nonetheless, I wish more people would include children with Down syndrome in their families. For this to happen, we don’t need new laws; we just need more people to choose to have such children.

I understand the emotional turmoil that a prenatal diagnosis can bring. But after parenting Aaron through difficulties and joys and seeing the curiosity and delight he brings to our lives, I wonder why more people do not choose to bring children like him into the world.

People with cognitive disabilities are, of course, commonly subject to ridicule, even by political leaders. I don’t mean just President Trump — President Barack Obama once made an offensive joke about the Special Olympics (he apologized). People with Down syndrome have tried to counter bias against them by speaking out about how they contribute to their communities. But acceptance in our communities seems scarcely possible without acceptance into our families.

Having a baby with Down syndrome may seem too demanding to some prospective parents. It may seem that those of us who choose to have children with Down syndrome are either irresponsible or saintly. From my experience, however, such parents tend to be utterly normal and levelheaded people.

Parents of children with Down syndrome have written extensively about their lives and have contributed to many research studies, as have people with Down syndrome themselves. These sources tell us that the lives of people with Down syndrome tend to go well. Their families are as stable and as functional as those that include only children who aren’t disabled.

So why is there such reluctance to have children with Down syndrome? One explanation shows up repeatedly when parents recount the early days after receiving their child’s diagnosis. They feel a sense of loss because they no longer dream that their child will get married, go to college or start a family of their own one day — in other words, that they will not meet the conventional expectations for the perfect middle-class life. In fact, some people with Down syndrome do accomplish those things. Nonetheless, hopes and dreams of perfection might be a strong motive for parents to choose abortion. After the initial phase of grief, however, parents of children with Down syndrome tend to leave behind concerns about perfection, and embrace a new outlook that values acceptance, empathy and unconditional love of their children. And researchers note that those parents feel pride in their children.

Perhaps the question to ask is: Why do we have children at all? Most parents would agree that it is not only so that they can replicate a conventional arc of a successful middle-class life: college, marriage, real estate, grandchildren. If those are the reasons to abort fetuses with Down syndrome, they seem disappointing — they are either self-centered or empty in their narrow-minded conventionality. Aaron will probably not become a veterinarian, and that’s O.K. Childhood dreams often harmlessly go unrealized. He could still get a different job working with animals, and that would make him happy.

Prenatal tests enable our capacity to choose, to some degree, the children we will raise. And those who are pro-choice typically embrace this autonomy in reproduction.

But the concept of autonomy can be understood in different ways. In one sense, it simply means being free to choose, without infringement by the government. But, in a richer sense, it means choosing in accordance with one’s own values.

If you value acceptance, empathy and unconditional love, you, too, should welcome a child with Down syndrome into your life. 939Comments

Chris Kaposy (@ChrisKaposy), an associate professor of bioethics at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, is the author of “Choosing Down Syndrome: Ethics and New Prenatal Testing Technologies.”

To the Editor: April 20, 2018

Re “We Chose Our Child” (Op-Ed, April 17):

Chris Kaposy makes an ethical case for having a baby with Down syndrome, urging expectant parents whose child has been diagnosed in utero not to abort the affected fetus. As the father of a child with the anomaly, he knows the “delight he brings to our lives” and wonders “why more people do not choose to bring children like him into the world.”

What he does not mention are the medical complications faced by such children: higher rates of congenital heart disease, gastrointestinal abnormalities, leukemia and autoimmune diseases. Worst of all, individuals with Down syndrome are prone to develop early dementia.

Mr. Kaposy lives in Canada, where there is universal health care. An American family might well be bankrupted by raising a Down syndrome child. The financial and emotional needs of an affected child may be more than they can bear. A child who can never live independently requires considerable financial resources, and how to provide him or her with a secure and happy future after the parents are gone is a source of constant worry.

All of these factors must be considered in the decision whether to bear a Down syndrome child or not, and neither choice is more ethical than the other.

DEBORAH BOREK KANSAS CITY, MO.

The writer is a pathologist.

To the Editor: My daughter, Stephanie, now almost 38, has Down syndrome. She is very capable, being close to independent. Genetic counseling was not available to my family before she was born. But the fact that she has been a wonderful daughter does not indicate to me that anyone should be able to decide for a couple or single mom that they are required to have a child with issues, whatever they may be.

Not all Down syndrome people have it so good. Many require near full-time support. But generally I agree with Chris Kaposy that it should remain a personal choice for the person who will be required to be a parent for life. Not all parents are emotionally equipped to become permanent caregivers.

JOHN BLAIR, EVANSVILLE, IND.

To the Editor:

Reading Chris Kaposy’s deeply moving essay “We Chose Our Child” highlights a question all parents should ask themselves: What constitutes a successful and meaningful life?

Our culture implicitly conveys a message that commonly accepted hallmarks of success such as “college, marriage, real estate, grandchildren” are typically unrealistic for children who have cognitive or developmental disabilities. Mr. Kaposy captures so beautifully the shortcomings in this value system.

The sense of being fully alive from loving and being loved with the purest of hearts and intentions is the greatest success and meaning imaginable. Take a look at a child with a disability. Chances are you will see purity of heart, unbridled wonder, curiosity and awe, an appreciation for kindness and human contact, humor, playfulness, soulfulness, and a complete lack of guile or hidden agenda. That’s the epitome of meaning and success to me.

JANE GARFIELD FRANK ROCKAWAY BEACH, QUEENS

Essay 5: Facebook Is Not the Problem. Lax Privacy Rules Are.

By The Editorial Board: The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the op-ed section. New York Times, April 1, 2018

As recently as 2010, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook, believed that privacy was no longer a “social norm.” But over the past few weeks — and not a moment too soon — he and his colleagues have learned that privacy still matters to individuals and society.

Revelations about how Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump’s campaign, amassed data about more than 50 million Facebook users without their consent has forced the social media company to tell anyone who will listen that it takes privacy very seriously. Last week, Facebook said it was simplifying and centralizing privacy settings, making it easier for its more than two billion users to change how much personal information they share. That was an important and necessary change, but what we have learned about the data collection practices of social media firms, advertisers, political campaigns, online publishers and other groups suggests that company-specific changes like Facebook’s will be insufficient. What is needed is for Congress to adopt rigorous and comprehensive privacy laws.

The technology and advertising industries have long resisted such rules, and neither this Congress nor the Trump administration has shown any interest in privacy. But someday new politicians will be in charge, and now is as good a time as any to begin a serious examination of how American privacy regulations can be strengthened.

There’s no need to start from scratch. In 2012, President Barack Obama proposed a privacy bill of rights that included many ideas for giving people more control over their information, making data collection more transparent and putting limits on what business can do with the information they collect. The bill of rights fizzled out when Congress showed little appetite for it. But the European Union has used a similar approach in developing its General Data Protection Regulation, which goes into effect on May 25.

The new European rules are not perfect — they include the so-called right to be forgotten, which allows people to ask companies to delete personal information that they no longer wish to share. That could be implemented in ways that limit free speech. But the Europeans have made progress toward addressing some of the problems that have recently been highlighted in the United States. For instance, their laws require companies to seek consent before collecting sensitive personal information, to make the request understandable, and to give users an easy way to opt in to sharing such data, rather than forcing them to opt out if they don’t want to be tracked. Further, companies that want to collect data about Europeans will have to be upfront about how they use personal data, and they cannot collect more information than they need to provide the services they are offering. The Obama bill of rights included a similar concept, saying that personal information should only be used in “ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.”

Today, it is standard procedure for many companies to vacuum up as much data as they can by getting users to agree to long, impenetrable terms of service. Companies might not even know how they will use the information being collected but collect it anyway, in case they later develop a specific use for it. Recently, some Facebook users discovered that the company’s Android app had been logging metadata from every incoming and outgoing phone call and text message, in some cases for years. The company said that users had consented to sharing this information and that doing so “helps you find and stay connected with the people you care about, and provides you with a better experience across Facebook.” That statement is positively Orwellian. It’s hard to believe that many people would have given the company access to so much personal data if they actually understood what they were agreeing to.

The new European regulation will also let people access their own data, transfer their information from one business to others that provide a similar service and delete it altogether under certain circumstances. Companies will have to notify customers within 72 hours if they become aware of a breach of personal information. Many businesses will struggle to comply with the European Union’s new rules, and officials in member countries will have a hard time enforcing it consistently. “We will have a learning curve,” said Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, who heads France’s privacy regulator, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés. “We will have to adjust.”

But it is increasingly clear that businesses will figure out how to live with and make money under tougher privacy rules. Some companies are also planning to apply some or all of the data protection requirements to all of their customers, not just Europeans. And other countries have or are considering adopting similar rules. Throughout history, meatpackers, credit card companies, automakers and other businesses resisted regulations, arguing they would be ruined by them. Yet, regulations have actually benefited many industries by boosting demand for products that consumers know meet certain standards.

Facebook and other internet companies fear privacy regulations, but they ought not to. Strong rules could be good for them as well as for consumers.

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To the Editor: April 5, 2018

Re “Its Ideals Tainted, Can Social Media Shine Again?,” by Kevin Roose (The Shift column, Business Day, March 29):

The appropriate frustration and disappointment resulting from the recent Facebook and Cambridge Analytica disclosures are making it easy to forget the personal and economic benefits of social media.

For example, let’s not forget that we choose to integrate these services into our daily lives because they allow us to deepen social connections and enable us to exercise our individual agency in a fashion that was impossible before their emergence. Or that these services have created millions of jobs, new business ecosystems and helped fuel the rise of the digital economy that brings broad societal benefit.

But it is important not to forget the learning of lessons and the hoped-for change. We are seeing some of these changes now. There is no playbook for addressing the principles at play here, and so it will not be all smooth sailing. But you can be certain that the effort will be earnest and that these services will be better as a result.

DEAN GARFIELD, WASHINGTON

The writer is president and chief executive of the Information Technology Industry Council, a lobbying group for Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Amazon, among others.

To the Editor:

“America Needs Better Privacy Rules” (editorial, April 2) misses a critical point: When users post anything “private” on Facebook, they are sharing it with all their “friends,” who often number in the hundreds.

Once something is shared with hundreds of others, it is not private. Lax privacy rules are indeed a problem, but denial about posts remaining private is another major problem, and unlike the lax rules, what is posted is within the direct control of every Facebook user.

ETHAN ANNIS, SAN FRANCISCO

To the Editor: The Facebook brouhaha has fascinated me for one reason: When you sign up for Facebook, you aren’t obligated to put any information about yourself in the sign-up. You are asked, but you don’t have to reply.

Several people I know have little or no information about themselves out there, and some have put in wrong birthdays and left out education, hometown and so on.

My hometown is listed incorrectly. I don’t know why it’s even there, but I don’t care. The people I’m on Facebook with know who I am, and that’s all that counts. If the data miners get it wrong, tough.

TERRY SHAMES, BERKELEY, CALIF.

To the Editor:

We are sidestepping the larger problem of this predictable data breach.

Facebook has been using — and selling — our data with little or no active consent or even active thought given by most data owners for more than a decade. This basic trade-off, of privacy for convenience, has been fundamental to the operation of social media sites over the last decade.

The loss of user data to Cambridge Analytica is obviously an issue. But the bigger issue is the loss of countless hours to Facebook and other social media outlets. Compounding that issue is how screens affect our interactions with others and how social media influences our understanding and awareness of the world around us.

Facebook’s data breach without user consent should be a catalyst inspiring examination of our connection to screens and how screen time affects news consumption, time management and intimate relationships.

ELISABETH JOY LAMOTTE WASHINGTON

To the Editor:

I agree that we need better privacy rules. Here’s a simple solution. Why not pay consumers for the use of their data?

Instead of combing through agreements for buried data use protocols and having to “opt out” of data sharing, consumers would “opt in” to data sharing in exchange for a fee, depending on the extent and the frequency of data use.

Much simpler, and more fair.

RICHARD KATZ, BROOKLYN

Essay 6: Teachers’ strikes hurt children. But stingy state officials are to blame.

By Editorial Board Washington Post, April 5, 2018

THE SURPRISING success of last month’s strike by West Virginia’s teachers in securing overdue pay raises has emboldened teachers in several other states to launch walkouts and stage demonstrations. In Oklahoma, public schools were closed as teachers rallied at the state Capitol. In Kentucky, teachers who banded together to call in sick forced some classroom closures. Teachers in Arizona have threatened to go on strike.

When teachers walk out, children get hurt. Learning is interrupted and hard to make up, routines are upended as parents scramble for child care, and students who rely on school breakfasts and lunches go hungry. But in this case what the teachers are protesting also hurts children — that is, a long- running and systemic disinvestment in public education.

Responsibility therefore lies with the governors and legislatures in these red states who have allowed teacher salaries to get so low. Many educators say they have to take a second or third job just to get by, and effective teachers are driven out of the profession altogether. A West Virginia high school teacher told the New York Times her take-home pay was less than $650 a week, while another West Virginia teacher wrote in The Post about taking home less now than in 2012 because of increased premiums for public-employee insurance. They were among thousands of teachers who staged a nine-day walkout that led to legislation giving teachers, along with other public employees, a 5 percent raise.

But teachers are not protesting only their own inadequate paychecks. Cuts in state education funding have harmed school quality and equity. In Oklahoma, despite a booming economy, public schools have lost about 30 percent of their funding, adjusted for inflation, over the past decade. Facilities have deteriorated, and classrooms lack textbooks and other basic supplies. Some districts can afford to keep schools in session only four days a week.

The striking teachers have by and large gotten a sympathetic response from the public. That — and the fact that the teachers seem to have come together out of widespread frustration rather than organized union efforts — should be a further prod to lawmakers to start paying attention to long-neglected education needs. As that West Virginia teacher observed in The Post: “Someone in the state government needs to be the hero for education and realize that a great education system is the backbone of a great state.”

To the Editor: April 9

The April 6 editorial “Walking out on students” unfortunately overlooked a valuable civic lesson happening right now in Oklahoma.

The last time the Oklahoma legislature passed a comprehensive education funding package was nearly 30 years ago. That, too, took a statewide teacher strike to implore elected officials to act. A native Oklahoman, I was 14 years old at the time and walked the picket line with my dad, a retired Oklahoma public school teacher and administrator. Those seminal events in my young life, and the lessons I learned as a product of Oklahoma’s public school system, inspired my professional career rooted in electoral politics and our democracy.

This month my niece and nephews, also the children of an Oklahoma public school teacher, have found their own voice and realized the important role they, too, can play in our democracy. Multiyear research by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement demonstrates that students who receive a quality civic education are more likely to be engaged in our democracy. They make better jurors, voters and leaders of our communities.

In Oklahoma and on the national stage with the recent student-led March for Our Lives, our youths are receiving a better civic education lesson than any book could ever teach. Even as they strike, our teachers continue to teach — this time with their feet and voices instead of books.

Essay 7: When Is a Church Not a Church?

By Katherine Stewart Ms. Stewart is the author of “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.” New York Times, April 16, 2018

Now that tax day is upon us, consider that through the miracle of tax breaks some of your tax dollars will effectively be going to support groups that finance campaigns against same-sex marriage and gun safety. A number of these groups are also entitled to raise money from other sources for political purposes, without filing the disclosures that are required of other individuals and entities. Why? They’ve got God on their side.

Last fall, for example, according to forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization that promotes socially conservative views on matters of public and family policy, declared itself a church.

Focus on the Family doesn’t have a congregation, doesn’t host weddings or funerals and doesn’t hold services. What it does do, with its nearly $90 million annual budget, is deliver radio and other programming that is often political to an estimated audience of 38 million listeners in the United States and beyond. It has funded ads against state legislators who support bills intended to prevent discrimination against L.G.B.T. people and it leads programs to combat what it calls “gay activism” in public schools.

Why would such a group want to call itself a church? Short answer: money. Churches can raise tax-deductible contributions more easily, and with fewer restrictions, than other nonprofits can. They also enjoy additional tax shelters, such as property tax exemptions for clergy members — or was that conservative radio personalities?

Next, churches can also enjoy the benefits of dark money. Unlike other groups, churches are required to disclose essentially nothing about who or what supplies them with their funds. And Focus on the Family, like a number of other groups on the religious right, may worry that its opposition to same-sex relationships will land it on the wrong side of anti-discrimination law. After all, the “moral behavior standards” in their employee guidelines prohibit “homosexual acts.”

The Family Research Council, a close partner that for a time merged with Focus on the Family, is registered as a nonreligious nonprofit, rather than as a church. But one of the council’s principal aims is to convert America’s churches, or at least conservative ones, into partisan political cells. It seeks to place what it calls “culture impact teams” in churches to “advance Kingdom values in the public arena.”

The way that Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council see it, the Bible offers specific information about how people ought to vote. Scripture, they say, opposes public assistance on principle (“God has charged believers to help the poor and widows and orphans,” the council’s culture impact team manual explains). Apparently, the Bible is also against gun control and supports privatization of schools through vouchers. It tells us that same-sex relationships are an abomination.

It does not want women to have access to comprehensive reproductive care. Environmentalism, according to the source the manual recommends to church groups, is a “litany of the Green Dragon” and “one of the greatest threats to society and the church today.” Other sources the manual recommends promote the notion that the earth is 6,000 years old.

There is no mystery about which political party the Bible supports, at least as these groups see it. In the run-up to the 2016 election, James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family and its former leader, praised Donald Trump and explained that the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency “scares me to death.” Their claim that they are nonpartisan is laughable. If you were worried that the amount of money flowing into politics was bad for our democracy, imagine what will happen when you add a divine exception, allowing partisans to spend freely on behalf of their chosen candidates and causes under the cover of churches. Notwithstanding the Johnson Amendment prohibition on direct electioneering by churches, it’s happening in all but name.

In 2016 Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, spoke at the Road to Majority Conference, which brings together politicians and leaders of the religious right. Mr. Reed promised to distribute 35 million “nonpartisan” voter guides through churches and help bring voters to the polls. No one funding his operation, or listening to his speech, could have had any doubt who would benefit from his work. Later that day, after Mr. Reed stepped off the stage, Mr. Trump stepped on to it.

The proof of the effectiveness of this political-religious machine can be read from the exit polls of the 2016 election. Four-fifths of white evangelicals supported Mr. Trump.

When challenged about their blatantly partisan activism, these groups invariably cry out that their religious liberty is under attack. It isn’t. They are welcome to their opinions and free to expose them to the sunlight of the public square. The real issue here is money and transparency. Tax breaks don’t come free; they’re just ways in which the government allocates your tax money. And if the government is going to allocate money in a certain direction, you should be able to see where it’s going.

The process corrupts religion, too. Religion has long thrived in America because most religious leaders respected the separation of church and state, an arrangement that has served our country very well. Under our current law, religious groups are exempt from certain tax and reporting burdens. Political groups are not. Churches need to decide which one they are.

Katherine Stewart (@kathsstewart) is the author of “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.”

To the Editor: May 1, 2018

Katherine Stewart’s April 17 Op-Ed essay, “When Is a Church Not a Church,” is a textbook example of unfairly assigning nefarious motives to lawful action. In recent years, nonprofit organizations have been targeted for information, including the names and personal details of their donors. To protect our supporters’ privacy, Focus on the Family applied for and received this designation as a church.

Ms. Stewart’s accusation that our programs are “often political” is not true. Matters of marriage and abortion are profoundly moral and rooted in the teachings of the Old and New Testaments.

Since I assumed the role of host eight years ago, there have been 2,130 broadcasts of our ministry’s radio program, which is devoted to helping couples with their marriages and helping parents raise their children. Only 34 (1.59 percent) have dealt specifically with issues that have only recently been considered “political.”

Why does Ms. Stewart want to control our speech? None of her targets are organizations of the left. Is her endgame to silence those who hold to traditional Christian beliefs? This chilling approach is a version of modern-day McCarthyism.

JIM DALY, COLORADO SPRINGS

The writer is president of Focus on the Family.