In catching up on some comic books the other night I was caught surprised by Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 9 #6, in which (1) Buffy gets pregnant; and (2) Decides to have an abortion. Apparently, this was a big-deal media story last month. Who knew?

The Buffy comics have been breaking bad for while now. There was the ridiculous Buffy lesbian romp. The second half of Season 8 was often incomprehensible–I mean this literally, not pejoratively. The art–with the very notable exception of the lovely Steve Morris cover for #1–keeps getting flabbier and less interesting. This was already a title on the margins of my pull-list.

The abortion issue kicked it over the side.

I’m pretty live-and-let-live when it comes to politics in art. I never would have voted for Jed Bartlett, but I loved the first couple seasons of The West Wing. Like my friend Mike Russell, I’d argue that–for all sorts of reasons, including your own sanity and sense of peace–it’s best to separate an artist’s politics from his art. All you should demand is that when art deals with political or moral questions, it do so intelligently, fairly, and artfully. That’s why I hopped off the bus during The Bourne Ultimatum–because the movie’s politics were suddenly causing contortions in a central character just to fit the film-makers’ ideologies.

And that’s pretty much what happened with Buffy’s abortion. She gets knocked up by some unknown dude she mysteriously slept with during a bout of binge drinking. It’s not even clear from the writing that Buffy remembers having sex at all on the night in question–let alone who the guy was. And to sort out whether she should embrace motherhood, give the baby up for adoption, or abort him/her, she finds out she’s pregnant, walks over to have a single conversation with a peripheral character, and then makes her decision.

What’s worse, is that Buffy asks this other character, Geez, don’t you wish your mother had aborted you? Look how lousy your life has been! And his non-committal answer is, No, not entirely. It’s complicated and I support whatever decision you make!

I’ve never seen statistics on this, but in my own anecdotal encounters the most vehemently pro-life people I’ve met aren’t Republicans or evangelicals. They’re people who were adopted. Of the adopted folks I’ve known, even the intensely liberal ones have been really, really anti-abortion. But Whedon doesn’t want to grapple honestly with the question, so he uses a straw man.

What’s worse, is that Whedon is perverting his own character by having Buffy so cavalierly choose abortion. Jump back to the climactic moments of Season 5 when the Big Bad Glory reverts to the human form of Ben. Buffy won’t kill him, because taking a life is wrong; Giles has to do the dirty work for her. Maybe she would find the moral calculus between killing an innocent man to save the world and killing an unborn baby to save her social life to be quite different. But at least the Buffy of Whedon’s previous creation would have wrestled with it. (If Whedon had written the abortion arc for Faith it would have been in total keeping with her character.)

So why did Whedon warp his character? For his own, provincial political purposes. Here he is talking about it in an interview with Entertainment Weekly:

Did you always know that she would be getting an abortion, or did you ever contemplate the notion that she would keep the baby?
No. I think strongly that teen pregnancy and young people having babies when they are not emotionally, financially, or otherwise equipped to take care of them, is kind of glorified in our media right now. You know, things like Secret Life [of an American Teenager] and Juno andKnocked Up – even if they pretend to deal with abortion, the movies don’t even say the word “abortion.” It’s something that over a third of American women are going to decide to have to do in their lives. But people are so terrified that no one will discuss the reality of it — not no one, but very few popular entertainments, even when they say they’re dealing with this issue, they don’t, and won’t. It’s frustrating to me.

I don’t think Buffy should have a baby. I don’t think Buffy can take care of a baby. I agree with Buffy. It’s a very difficult decision for her, but she made a decision that so many people make and it’s such a hot button issue with Planned Parenthood under constant threat and attack right now. A woman’s right to choose is under attack as much as it’s ever been, and that’s a terrible and dangerous thing for this country. I don’t usually get soap box-y with this, but the thing about Buffy is all she’s going through is what women go through, and what nobody making a speech, holding up a placard, or making a movie is willing to say.

Leave aside, for a moment, Whedon’s seeming ignorance about the statistical realities of abortion in America. What we have here is yet another example of Whedon declaring that his art is no longer art because what he’s really interested in making is political propaganda.

All of which explains the decline of the Buffy comics: They’re no longer written with story-telling as the first consideration.

I don’t follow Ezra Klein all that closely but Galley Friend X does. Here’s his latest missive:

The latest step in Klein’s progression:

Step One: Economists thought that we needed a bigger stimulus; it’s Republicans’ fault that Obama could deliver it.

Step Two:  Economists scoff at the notion that Presidents create jobs, so let’s not go blaming Obama for not creating jobs.

Read down to the Woz at #5. I’ve actually noticed the same thing, but thought it was just me.

I know a lot of people have soured on Jen Rubin, but still think she’s a great fit for the Post and when she’s writing about the legal stuff that’s in her wheelhouse, she’s awesome. That said, this post of hers is a little confusing.

So far as I can tell, she’s saying that (1) A brokered convention is an impossibility which cannot happen; and (2) People pursuing a brokered convention are playing a dangerous game and if they succeed the party will be torn asunder. Obviously, if (1), then not (2).

That’s the first bit of confusion. Then there’s the weirdness of the shift in tone about Romney. The argument in favor of his candidacy has gone from (1) He’s such a dominant force that we have to get behind him because he’s the only guy who can win;  to (2) He’s so weak that we have to shut this thing down fast, so that he doesn’t bleed anymore and still has a shot at winning in November. QED

But the real show-stopper is this passage:

Certainly, there is certainly an ilk in the party that would rather howl in the wilderness than win with a center-right candidate who would have to govern — that is, make some necessary compromises.

I think what’s she’s saying translates loosely as, “Of course we should not expect him to repeal Obamacare.” But then, I may be misreading her. It is hard to tell.

Every once in a while it becomes absolutely clear that liberals and conservatives are viewing the same issue through lenses so different as to make them essentially make them unintelligible to one another. The hubbub about women pushing for restrictions on Viagra is one of those instances.

I’d trade intense regulation of Viagra–and all sorts of other male-enhancement regimes–for the tiniest marginal restriction in abortion or even some consideration as to the pushing of contraception in schools, on churches, etc. Would do it in a New York minute. And I’m pretty sure that most conservatives would, too.

Why? Because for conservatives, abortion isn’t about sex, it’s about protecting innocent life. And contraception isn’t about “sex” except in the most prosaic sense–it’s really about freedom of religion, freedom for parents to teach their own kids as they see fit, and (at the highest level) about the macro effects on society, including fertility, family formation, divorce, and other big-ticket items.

Yet the left–or at least much of it, I don’t want to be too reductionist–thinks that it’s all about sex, sex, sex. It’s not that they disagree with the broader arguments–they can’t even see or understand them. So they think, Those troglodytes want to take away our constitutionally protected right to make boom-boom? We’ll show them! We’ll make it harder for them to have sex, too! That’ll show them.

I’d be happy to take them up on the offer.

I’m pretty sure it would come out something like this.

Which kind of makes me wish Reihan would blog about art . . .

The Czabe is at DEFCON 2 over the Redskins trade-up for Robert Griffin III (for whom they gave up three 1st round picks and one 2nd rounder). Other smart football types agree that the Skins paid too much.

Did they really?

I’m not asking to be a smart-ass–I legitimately don’t understand the valuation of draft picks in the NFL. I’m sure there’s a complicated formula for what picks are worth, from a VORPish standpoint, but it must be really variable dependent on number and position.

For example, I suspect the value for picks isn’t a smooth curve beginning at #1 and trailing off evenly. Surely there must be points in the draft at which the value line changes trajectory, right? By the same token, value calculations have to be dependent upon the existing player positions. For instance, in hindsight it would have surely been worth trading (just to pick a number) four 1st round picks for Peyton Manning (or whoever you deem to be the best quarterback of the last 20 years). But it would, presumably, not be worth that price for the best player of his generation at any other position–even if you knew beforehand that you were getting the best corner or lineman or safety or back. (Or would it? Maybe knowing you were getting Lawrence Taylor would be worth four 1st rounders?)

And all of that is before you even factor in the uncertainty discount, which you have to account for with a drafted player. But even this gets complicated–because I assume that the yield rate differs, again, from position to position–so that the percentages of quarterbacks who don’t perform to expectations is different than the percentage of, say, line-backers. Or receivers.

I’d like to think that smart organizations spend some resources on trying to understand draft picks as value propositions in some numerical sense. But maybe not–maybe the entire system is just too complex to be modeled in any meaningful way.

If any of you have smart thoughts (or have read deeply on this)–I’m looking at you, L.B. and B.D.–I’m all ears.

Update: I suppose that this is a start, though I haven’t read it all the way through yet.

Santino on movie credits and the difference between “and” and ” &”.