Leon Kass is a fuckwit

[litch]

So I read this interesting story about the President's Council on Bioethics. It's head (and the guy who selected most of the members) is Leon Kass. Even amoung bush's clowns he stands out as particularly inane, check out this from one of his essay's.

Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone--a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive. ... Eating on the street--even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat--displays [a] lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. ... Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. ... This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if we feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior.

Comments

issues, he's got 'em

[contentlove.livejournal.com]

Yikes. He'd have an embolism if he ever went to Kerala (or anywhere else where people eat (in a very delicate and tidy way, I might add) without utensils.

[charlayne.livejournal.com]

I had the "pleasure" of hearing both Kass and Pelligrino during the class I took on the Holocaust and Medical Ethics last fall. I remember thinking "what a jerk" at the time. I would have to go get the notebook to see what other thoughts I had. I have no real memory of Pelligrino.

That article hit right on what we studied in that class. Most of the people were med students, I took it for an english class.

[geomistress.livejournal.com]

I'm utterly speechless. How could anyone make ice cream sound so bad?