Obama on “advanced” countries, gun control, and mass murder

The New Neo Posted on by

I have a new article at PJ on Obama’s push for gun control in the wake of the Charleston murders.

[ADDENDUM: Obama keeps pressing gun control in the wake of Charleston. As I wrote in my PJ article, “in the immortal words of Rahm Emanuel, ‘You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.'”

Of course, in the case of Charleston and so many others, it’s hard to see how gun control (short of taking away all citizens’ guns) would have done a thing to prevent this heinous act. The weapon Roof used to kill his victims was not on anyone’s list of bannable weapons; it was an ordinary 45-caliber pistol, according to most reports. Initially it was asserted that the gun was a gift from his father, but unnamed police were later quoted as saying that Roof stated he had bought it himself after his 21st birthday with money he was given as a gift. Either way, as I pointed out here as well as here, the transaction would have already been illegal in the state of South Carolina, because Roof had pending felony charges against him.

So, should it be made more illegal? Is Obama suggesting a particular gun law change that would make it even more impossible and unlawful for Roof to obtain a weapon he had already obtained illegally? If he’s talking about better enforcement of the already-existing law (such as improving the felony-pending database), fine, but that does not appear to be what he’s suggesting at all.

I realize it’s too much to ask that we introduce any logic into this. But it seems pretty clear to me that criminals—people who are planning to murder other people—are already intent on breaking a rather important law or laws, and it is doubtful that they would let themselves be held back by anything as paltry as gun control. Ever hear of the black market? The most likely scenario for further gun control laws at this point, when we already have quite a bit of regulation, is that they will hamper the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves.]

Why so little concern over the Office of Personnel Management hack?

The New Neo Posted on by

After all, it’s probably the worst cyber-breach the U.S. has ever experienced, as Megan McArdle points out.

And yet if you were to do a survey of most of your friends on the matter, many of them may be unaware of it, or only vaguely aware, and mostly uncaring.

Why? McArdle thinks the cause is a combination of the fact that Obama doesn’t care and the public doesn’t demand that he care. But that still begs the question: why? Why not care about something so outrageous?

I think the answer is that Obama would care if it had been the fault of Bush or the Republicans. But if he can’t blame them—and if he himself may be at least partly at fault—he’s certainly not going to become aroused. Instead, his kneejerk reaction will be to minimize and coverup.

And the MSM is still his servant in that regard, as well as the servant of the Democratic Party. Be quiet about what implicates them, be very vocal about what implicates the right, and the public will follow your lead.

But there’s more to it than that. The OPM fiasco reflects poorly on the competence of the federal government to handle much of anything. It can’t even seem to put in place the most basic of security in such a delicate and sensitive area. If it can’t do that, what else can it not do? To the left, that’s a dangerous thought.

On the question of cowardice

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “rickl” writes:

[Dylann Roof] shot old women praying in a church while talking about “black rape”.

If he was really so upset about it, then why didn’t he go after young male gangbangers in the hood?

Answer: Because he was a coward, and they would have capped his ass before he got his gun out.

The shooter may indeed have been a coward. In fact, I think he was a coward. But that’s not the only reason he chose the victims he chose, IMHO, rather than some guys in the hood.

I have felt from the start that Roof’s motive was to inflame a race war, and he himself has recently confessed that this was so. To achieve that end, killing a few gang members just wouldn’t do (and yes, they would have probably been armed and would have shot back—he couldn’t have that!)

But why did he choose the particular victims he did? He could have gone anywhere in the black community and started killing people, randomly. But he did not. He chose these particular people, that particular group of people, for the following reasons, in my opinion:

(1) He may have known—and admired—the work of the killers in the KKK who bombed the church in Birmingham in 1963 and killed the 4 little girls. Therefore he may have chosen a church for historical reasons.

(2) Much more importantly, I think, he targeted the most admirable people he could find. People devoted to God, to peace, to love, people just about everyone admired, in order to sow the greatest possible fear and outrage at their deaths. Evil unerringly seeks the good and the innocent to try to wreak the most destructive power and to evoke the maximum rage. If a person wants to inflame a race war, what better way to do it than to target the most beloved people possible?

Whether or not Roof thought this through in a rational manner I don’t know. But I believe that he felt it and sensed it. His impulse (although very different in philosophical origins, and that of an individual rather than a group) was something like that of ISIS: to sow the most horror. The more horror, the more backlash. The more backlash, the more violence. That was the idea.

[ADDENDUM: Reports are that Roof has said that the victims were so nice to him that he almost backed out. In other words, good came very close to conquering even this man’s great evil and preventing the crime by the sheer force of its goodness, but it did not. He clearly recognized, however, how good these people were.]

The MSM can’t get it right: about the gun

The New Neo Posted on by

And I don’t think they care. Just the narrative, Ma’m, just the narrative.

Case in point: how many times, in how many places, did you read that Roof’s father gave him a gun for his 21st birthday, which occurred in April?

Just about everywhere. The information appears to have originated in an interview with Roof’s uncle.

It seems as though this would be important enough information to have wanted to authenticate it or to at least get a second source on it before printing, because it implicates Roof’s father, who would be presumed to have known that Roof was facing felony charges at the time stemming from his arrest for narcotics possession.

Nevertheless, it was printed, re-printed, re-printed again and discussed as though it were an example of Roof’s father’s negligence and even perhaps a crime on his part.

Now it turns out it’s not true—that is, if we can believe this CNN report (which I happen to think has a decent chance of being more accurate, because this time the information is quoted as having come from two unnamed “law enforcement officials”):

One key part of this horrific scheme — the weapon — came in April, when Roof bought a .45-caliber handgun at a Charleston gun store, the two law enforcement officials told Perez and Bruer from CNN, the first network to report this development. His grandfather says that Roof was given “birthday money” and that the family didn’t know what Roof did with it.

This makes more sense. Perhaps over time we’ll even learn which report is actually true.

I have another question, though. If the above is indeed true, how did a person such as Roof, who was facing felony charges at the time, buy a gun legally?

This article from yesterday mentions that, as an accused felon, Roof would not have been allowed to purchase a gun. The rest of the article operates on the assumption (now disproved??) that the gun was a gift from Roof’s father, and explores the legal ramifications of that. But the initial question remains, and I don’t see many people asking it: how did Roof evade the background check if in fact he purchased the gun himself?

Seems like this would be important to know, because if there’s a glitch in the process of gun purchase that allows those charged with a felony in a pending case to get guns that easily, then it needs to be fixed.

Roof, the shooter, was a heavy drug user

The New Neo Posted on by

Will people call for stricter drug laws as a result?

I doubt it.

But drugs seem to have been very important in Roof’s life:

A high school classmate of Roof’s, John Mullins, told The Daily Beast that the accused white supremacist killer was ‘kind of wild’ and a big time prescription drug abuser.

‘He used drugs heavily a lot,’ Mullins said. ‘It obviously harder than marijuana. He was like a pill popper, from what I understood. Like Xanax, and stuff like that.’

Court records reveal that a February drug charge cited Roof’s possession of methamphetamine, cocaine and LSD, RadarOnline reports.

Psychological effects of meth:

The psychological effects of methamphetamine can include euphoria, dysphoria, changes in libido, alertness, apprehension, concentration, decreased sense of fatigue, insomnia or wakefulness, self-confidence, sociability, irritability, restlessness, grandiosity and repetitive and obsessive behaviors. Methamphetamine use also has a high association with anxiety, depression, methamphetamine psychosis, suicide, and violent behaviors. Methamphetamine also has a very high addiction risk.

Here are some facts about what prompted the drug arrest:

The incident report from February 28 stated that a man wearing all black went into The Shoe Department and Bath and Body Works asking employees “out of the ordinary questions.”

The report said that Roof was asking employees how many people were working, what time they closed and what time they leave the mall.

Police stopped Roof and asked him about the questions. According to the report, Roof began speaking very nervously and said his parents were pressuring him to get a job.

The officer asked him if he inquired about an application from any of the stores. He said he did not, according to the report. The officer said Roof became more nervous and started taking more time to think of answers to questions.

The report said the officer received consent to search Roof and located an unlabeled white bottle containing orange square strips. Roof said they were the prescription drug suboxone, according to the report.

The officer said he confirmed through Poison Control that suboxone is a Schedule III narcotic. The report said he did not have a prescription.

Roof was placed under arrest…

So, that’s another drug he was abusing.

And then there’s his school record:

Roof attended ninth grade at White Knoll High during the 2008-09 school year and went there for the first half of the following academic year, district spokeswoman Mary Beth Hill said. The school system gave no reason for Roof’s departure and said it had no record of him attending any other schools in the district.

According to CBS News, school records show that between fourth and ninth grade, Roof attended six different schools, and repeated the ninth grade.

Six schools in five years.

And a roommate quotes Roof as saying pretty much what I (and lots of others) have speculated was a large part of his motive in these murders:

Dalton Tyler, who said he has known Roof for seven months to one year, said he saw the white, 21-year-old suspect just last week.

“He was big into segregation and other stuff,” Tyler said. “He said he wanted to start a civil war. He said he was going to do something like that and then kill himself.”

So I have a question for Tyler—did you ever, like, consider mentioning this to anyone? Or did you think Roof was just joshing? I realize that you can’t lock someone up for making threats (nor should you). But this guy didn’t just fall through the cracks all his life—he fell through the Grand Canyon.

And very very unfortunately, a bunch of innocent black people paid the ultimate price. They seem to have been exemplary human beings. RIP.

[ADDENDUM: Looking at the many photos of Roof at the Daily Mail article, I noticed that his tongue is out of his mouth in quite a few of them. This can be caused by tardive dyskinesia, which is a possible side effect of many, many drugs (list here). There is also the possibility of dry mouth, which is not unusual in meth users.

I also noticed that for this story, as for so many others, the UK coverage seems to be more complete.

One more thing—even if Roof is a heavy drug user, this does not absolve him of full criminal responsibility for his actions.]

[ADDENDUM II: More information:

A woman who claimed to be the mother of Roof’s former stepmother told the Journal he began to change in recent years.

“He apparently told people that he was involved in groups, racist groups,” she said, adding that he stopped going to high school.

“He turned into a loner in the last couple of years and no one knew why,” she said. “He just fell off the grid somehow.”…

Many of Roof’s Facebook friends, including those from his high school, are black. Another high school friend, Antonio Metze, told the AP that Roof “had black friends.”

It sounds like things got a lot worse with Roof in the last year or so, or even more recently:

In an interview with The Associated Press, Joseph Meek Jr. said he and Roof had been best friends in middle school but lost touch when Roof moved away about five years ago. The two reconnected a few weeks ago after Roof reached out to Meek on Facebook, Meek said.

Roof never talked about race years ago when they were friends, but recently made remarks out of the blue about the killing of unarmed black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida and the riots in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, Meek said.

“He said blacks were taking over the world. Someone needed to do something about it for the white race,” Meek said. “He said he wanted segregation between whites and blacks. I said, ‘That’s not the way it should be.’ But he kept talking about it.”

He said that when he woke up Wednesday morning, Roof was at his house, sleeping in his car outside. Later that day, Meek went to a lake with a couple of other people, but Roof hated the outdoors and decided he would rather go see a movie.

Meek said he didn’t see his friend again until a surveillance-camera image of a young man with a soup-bowl haircut was broadcast on television Thursday morning in the wake of the shooting. Meek said he didn’t think twice about calling authorities.

“I didn’t THINK it was him. I KNEW it was him,” he said.

I conclude that he was probably the one who ID’d Roof to the police.]

[ADDENDUM III: Here’s how Roof was apprehended.

That woman did her good deed for the day, the week, the year, perhaps the lifetime.]

[ADDENDUM IV: Here are more of the details:

Mr. Pinckney was holding a Bible study session with a small group Wednesday when, surveillance video shows, the suspect arrived after 8 p.m. ”” a slight, blond man with a bowl haircut and a gray sweatshirt. He sat down with the others for a while and listened, then began to disagree with others as they spoke about Scripture, said Kristen Washington, who heard the harrowing story from her family members who were in the meeting and survived.

Witnesses to the tragedy said the gunman actually asked for the pastor when he entered the church, and sat next to Mr. Pinckney during the Bible study.

They said that almost an hour after he arrived, the gunman suddenly stood and pulled a gun, and Ms. Washington’s cousin, Tywanza Sanders, 26, known as the peacemaker of the family, tried to calmly talk the man out of violence..

“You don’t have to do this,” he told the gunman, Ms. Washington recounted.

The gunman replied, “Yes. You are raping our women and taking over the country.”

In an interview with NBC News, Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of Mr. Pinckney’s who also spoke with a survivor, gave nearly the same account of what the gunman said: “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”

The gunman took aim at the oldest person present, Susie Jackson, 87, Mr. Sanders’ aunt, Ms. Washington said. Mr. Sanders told the man to point the gun at him, instead, she said, but the man said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to shoot all of you.”

Mr. Sanders dived in front of his aunt and the first shot struck him, Ms. Washington said, and then the gunman began shooting others. She said Mr. Sanders’ mother, Felicia, and his niece, lay motionless on the floor, playing dead, and were not shot.

The gunman looked at one woman and told her “that she was going to live so that she can tell the story of what happened,” said Councilman William Dudley Gregorie, a friend of both the female survivor and a trustee in the Emanuel church.

It is mindboggling. He interacted face to face with the victims before the shooting, arguing about Scripture. Then he targeted the oldest first.

There is no other word than “evil.”]

American Pharoah, winner of the Triple Crown,…

The New Neo Posted on by

…wears earplugs when he races.

Why? Because he’s sensitive to noise. And so he was wearing his earplugs when he made history on June 6 by being the first Triple Crown winner since 1978.

I don’t follow horse racing much, but when something this dramatic happens it grabs my attention. This certainly got my attention. Watching American Pharoah race down the stretch, I don’t think I was anthropomorphizing when I imagined that he wanted to win, he felt confident he was going to win. From what I understand of horses, they don’t comprehend the whole prize money thing or the stud fee thing, but they know when they’re ahead and they like it very much. You could really see him opening up the throttle and moving, his head pumping a bit with the effort of it all, but without any sense of strain.

Speaking of the enormous stud fees this horse will collect, I was wondering whether American Pharoah will be earning them in person, as it were, or whether artificial insemination is used. It turns out there’s a rule that thoroughbred horses must “cover” (that’s a horse-world word for having sex) in the usual manner (known as “live cover”); they can’t just phone it in. And there are some good reasons for that, mostly financial.

There are many articles on the subject of why, but this one explains it pretty well. Artificial insemination in the thoroughbred world would have two main results: it would reduce the fees for the service, since many many more mares could be impregnated with a winner’s sperm, and it could therefore narrow the gene pool in a way that would be dangerous.

The economics go like this:

A live cover is subject to market economics because it is a limited commodity whose price depends, at least in part, on demand. Conversely, AI makes the product nearly limitless, logically reducing its value. Similarly, resulting foals would be devalued because of abundance – a situation that Thoroughbred sales companies wish to avoid. Further, allowing AI would alter the infrastructure of Thoroughbred breeding by reducing the need for transport services, off-site boarding of mares, small stallion farms, and myriad other segments of the Thoroughbred breeding industry.

However, horses are large and sometimes unruly creatures, and mating them “live” is no easy or safe matter and generally involves multiple handlers controlling the situation. Many safeguards have to be built in (you can read about it here, if you’re interested).

This is the life that looms ahead for American Pharoah. Not a bad gig, I suppose.

[NOTE: One of the reasons this topic interests me is that I have a good friend who had a mare that was bred, and as a consequence of what was euphemistically called a breeding mishap had to be put down. I’ll spare you the details, but it was absolutely awful, and impressed on me the necessity of great care as well as the possibility of great danger in the horse breeding process.]

Mass murder in Charleston

The New Neo Posted on by

Nine worshipers, including the pastor, were murdered at a historic black Charleston SC church yesterday during a prayer meeting. The shooter, 21-year old Dylann Storm Roof, had recently been arrested by authorities on drug charges.

The shooter was white and the victims black, and the word “evil” would appear to fit his actions very well. We can easily guess at the shooter’s motive, but according to some survivors (there were apparently only three of them) we don’t have to guess because he made his motive clear. It was racial hatred:

Pinckney’s cousin told NBC News that one of the survivors told her they had urged Roof to stop.

‘He just said: “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go”,’ Sylvia Johnson said.

Roof spared one woman so she could ‘tell the world what happened’, eye witnesses recounted, while a five-year-old girl also survived the attack after her grandmother told her to play dead. The gunman then fled.

Mug shots of the gunman from his previous arrest show a person with the dead eyes we’ve come to associate with murderers. A description of the methodical way he went about his business is chilling:

One survivor recounted how he reloaded his gun five times as he picked off his victims – killing three females and six males…

One again we have a demonstration of how an unarmed group is at the mercy [sic] of a person with a weapon. In Charleston, South Carolina, concealed carry laws are in effect, but they ban the carrying of a concealed weapon in various public places, and that includes churches. Here is the relevant law (at least, the law as of December 2013, when the article was written):

South Carolina isn’t an “open carry” state. If the gun is concealed, the CWP holder may carry the gun anywhere EXCEPT for the following places:

Restaurants that serve alcohol for on-premises consumption UNLESS you don’t consume any alcohol.
Police stations, Sheriff’s departments, or other law enforcement facilities.
Jails or detention centers.
Courthouses/courtrooms.
Polling places on election days.
Offices or meeting places of governmental entities such as counties, cities, and school districts.
School or college athletic events not related to firearms.
Daycares or preschools.
Places where the carrying of firearms is prohibited by federal law.
Churches or religious sanctuaries unless permission is given by the head of the facility.
Hospitals, medical clinics, doctor’s office or other places where medical services are rendered unless permission is given by the head of the facility.
Businesses or other establishments that post “No Concealed Weapons Allowed” signs or that otherwise express that they do not want concealed weapons on their premises.
Homes, apartments, or other dwellings unless you have the express permission of the person living at the residence.
If you bring the gun to a school or college of any kind, don’t carry the gun on you. It must be in a closed glove compartment, closed console, closed trunk, or in a closed container secured by an integral fastener and transported in the luggage compartment of the vehicle.

That’s an awful lot of exceptions. The exceptions create gun-free zones—except, that is, for murderers such as Roof, who don’t care about the gun laws except as far as they can exploit them to find a group of unarmed people to kill.

So the fallout from this crime will no doubt include the anti-gun people screaming for more gun control, although it’s hard to see how that would have prevented Roof from getting his gun legally and certainly not from getting it illegally. It seems to me that allowing more concealed carry areas would make a great deal more sense, because it would have given Roof notice that someone (or maybe many someones) at that church might have been armed, too.

Other fallout from the massacre will probably be something I’m assuming was one of the shooter’s main goals: a heightening of anger and hatred between blacks and whites and whites and blacks and just about everyone else, too. This was the act of a single person, but some will presume it speaks for a group, white people—and that was probably just what Roof wanted.

[NOte: Several things come to my mind on thinking about this crime. One was the killing of four black girls in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. The perpetrators were white supremacist members of the KKK, the mechanism was dynamite, and the venue was the 16th Street Baptist Church.

That was back in the segregated south, and although things have changed greatly since then, people like Roof will always remain—as will their mirror images who want to kill members of other groups.

Remember, for example, the Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin in 2012? That’s another thing that came to mind for me. The perpetrator was a white supremacist who “had talked about an ‘impending racial holy war.'” Why the Sikhs? We’ll never know because the shooter killed himself after his murders, after being shot by one of the policeman who had arrived on the scene in response to a call.]

What if Greece…

The New Neo Posted on by

…were to disappear, asks Bloomberg View writer Leonid Bershidsky:

As Tim Edwards, senior director at S&P Dow Jones Indices, pointed out recently, “If Greek equities, Greek bonds and Greek GDP disappeared, it would certainly be a tragedy, but not of epic and globally destructive proportions.” That’s because the combined free-float capitalization of the Greek stock market — at about 19 billion euros ($21 billion) — is just 0.2 percent of the EU equity market, Greece’s GDP is 1.5 that of the EU’s and its exports and imports hover about 1 percent of the EU volume.

There is, of course, the debt — 324 billion euros. But very little of that is liquid or market-based…

If EU member Greece just disappeared and re-emerged as Hellas, a newly non-EU state, leaving its debt behind, it would be just like the countries that emerged from the Soviet Union’s breakup. They, too, had clean slates, because Russia assumed responsibility for their debts. There was a lot of purely psychological fallout, of course, including a fallen-empire complex for many Russians and a reallocation of trust in the markets. Yet the EU is probably better able to handle this than was Russia in the early 1990s: It is much stronger economically and more enlightened about how the world works. By getting rid of Greece, the EU would also send a message to current and aspiring members that it’s got some standards.

I’m not at all sure that the EU does have standards, however.

[NOTE: Britain isn’t especially sanguine about the repercussions of the Greek economic crisis.

More here.]

Scary Rubio, successful Walker

The New Neo Posted on by

I keep reading articles that refer to the other Republican candidates as being most scared of Rubio among all their rivals.

John Podhoretz thinks it’s not just because of his youth and Hispanic ethnicity (although those help), it’s because “He is, without question, the most naturally gifted off-the-cuff political speaker I have ever seen,” and that, although real-world accomplishments are more important than the gift of gab, gab is what campaigns are almost all about.

I agree that there’s something about Rubio, although a great many conservatives cannot forgive him his stance on immigration, even though he’s disowned that position.

It strikes me that Rubio and Walker are somehow joined as two sides of a similar coin. They are both young and look young, boyish even. They are both relatively conservative but appeal to the middle as well. But Walker is less smooth as a speaker and his big claim is to exactly what Rubio lacks: action, and in particular executive experience.

And, interestingly enough, although other Republican candidates are not often described as being scared of Walker (although the left is sometimes described as being afraid of him), maybe they should be, because at the moment he’s leading the field:

Walker is alone in first place in the poll with 17 percent, followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 15 percent, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) at 13 percent, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 12 percent and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 11 percent.

But look at where Rubio leads:

Rubio stands out among the top tier of candidates for having the best favorability rating in the field. Fifty-nine percent of GOP primary voters said they have a positive view of Rubio, compared to only 16 percent who have a negative view.

And then there’s Hillary Clinton, whose supporters don’t seem to care how crooked or secretive she is:

Clinton leads all of the Republicans in head-to-head match-ups, with Rubio and Carson coming the closest, trailing the former secretary of State by three points each.

Clinton leads Walker, Bush and Christie by four, Huckabee by five, Cruz and Fiorina by six, and Paul by seven points.

That’s actually pretty poor for Clinton, considering the Republicans aren’t even close to having a frontrunner, most of the candidates are not well-known, and Clinton probably already has all the support she’s going to get.

A teenage shark victim with attitude

The New Neo Posted on by

A good attitude, I might add.

Just two days after the terrible moment when a shark bit off his arm, and after surgeons cleaned up the traumatic amputation and made it a surgical one, 16-year-old Hunter Treschl had this to say of the attack and the future:

“I didn’t see it coming,” he said.

Throughout the ordeal, he was conscious, and recalled being surrounded by 25 people in the hospital.

The staff “fixed my arm up,” he said. “Did a pretty good job of it too from what I hear.

“It feels good.”

Treschl said that in the wake of the traumatic event, he was faced with a choice.

“So I kind of have two options — I can try to live my life the way I was and make an effort to do that even though I don’t have an arm or I can kind of just let this be completely debilitating,” he said.

“Out of those two, there’s really only one that I would choose to do and that’s to try and fight and live a normal life with the cards I’ve been dealt,” he said.

Somehow I think he will succeed—and more.

[ADDENDUM: If you’re interested in a comparison of which animals kill the most people in the US per year, see this. The biggest killer in terms of numbers is most definitely not sharks. Of course, the comparisons don’t take into account how often people encounter each type of animal listed.]

The dancer’s body

The New Neo Posted on by

Meet Misty Copeland, a soloist at American Ballet Theater, one of the premier dance companies in America:

Because the dancer’s body is her (or his) instrument, the fact that Copeland is black becomes more of an issue than it would be in other artistic endeavors. So, that’s what people tend to talk about when they talk about Copeland.

To me, though, it’s far more interesting that she has an atypical sort of physique for a ballet dancer than that she has an atypical color skin. Copeland is more chesty than almost every other professional ballet dancer on earth, as well as more mesomorphic.

And how tall do you think she is?

The answer, very surprisingly, is 5’2″. That’s an example of what I was talking about years ago when I wrote:

But in the dance world in general, height does not make right. The stage adds height to dancers rather than subtracting it, so audiences might be very surprised to learn how miniscule some of their towering favorites actually are.

Because of her muscularity and proportionately broad shoulders, Copeland comes across as especially tall. According to this New Yorker article, she went through puberty late and her body changed after she had already attained a high level of achievement, making it necessary for her to relearn how to deal with a new center of gravity. That is very hard, but she had already done something almost unheard of—begun the study of ballet at the ancient age of thirteen. She’s strong and athletic, not delicate at all. She’s a good dancer rather than a great one, in my opinion, but the same could be said for most dancers today. I saw American Ballet Theater perform on my recent trip to New York, but unfortunately she wasn’t on the program. I’d like to see her in person and make my decision that way; videos don’t quite tell the whole story.

[NOTE: The following is a bit of inside baseball. But as far as floor barre goes, I don’t know what the woman’s talking about in the New Yorker article, because back in my day a teacher named Zena Rommett was known far and wide for her floor barre in NY. It sounded so easy—do your exercises lying down on the floor rather than standing up—but I found it confoundingly difficult to do when I tried it in my twenties while rehabbing from my first back injury.

Also the author says that Copeland’s hyperextended knees leave her more vulnerable to injury. But hyperextended knees are extremely common among dancers, almost standard (I have them too, although not to the same degree as Copeland). My guess is that it was Copeland’s late start in ballet that has made her more vulnerable to injury.

On researching Rommett for this article (I hadn’t thought much of her since the 1970s), I learned that she taught ballet until three months before her death at the age of 90. Strong lady, like so many other dancers.]