Get the 60 Point

By Randy Cohen

Sasha is a scrawny 15-year-old with big brown eyes and floppy hair. He lives with his mother and grandmother, gets frustrated with school and wants to be a carpenter or a car mechanic when he grows up. He sounds like a normal teen-age boy. Except for the fact that he used to buy half a liter of gasoline a day and ...

by noon ET Tuesday to e-mail your answer to newsquiz@slate.com.

Thursday's question (No. 152)--"Name and Shame":
British Home Secretary Jack Straw has proposed a "name and shame" initiative. So how would that work?
"It wouldn't."--Nell Scovell (Dan Simon had a similar answer.)

"Certainly not as well as the old 'maim and flame' under Margaret Thatcher."--Kate Clinton

"Once your Furby learns how to say your name, it chastises you for spending $200 on a toy that will be passé by March, when there are kids starving in Africa."--Daniel Radosh

"Leslie Howard! Evelyn Waugh! Ha-ha, oh my, I do say, those sound like girls' names! (The U.S. version of name-shame humiliation: Val Kilmer and her Auntie Joyce Kilmer. Ha-ha-ha!)"--Meg Wolitzer

"It shall become a capital crime to spell a British home secretary's name backward."--Peter Lerangis

Click here for more responses.

Randy's Wrap-Up
It seems so quaint, so English, to propose shame as a social force. Shame relies on a sense of public life, not private entitlement; of waiting in line for a bus, not ramming someone with a Jeep Cherokee. It seems sentimental to suggest that freedom is about public life rather than an autonomous individual pursuing his own ends. (How did the Warren commission put it? Ah--a lone gunman acting alone.) We Americans live with the ascendancy of the life, liberty, and property crowd over those poor saps favoring life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Or, as Eric Foner says in The Story of American Freedom: try telling the jerk in front of you at the movies to stop talking so loud into his cell phone and turn down his radio. See what he says about shared values. Hey--it's his radio. But of course this is no surprise in a nation whose president, knowing there was every likelihood he'd be found out, goes ahead and presents a Kennedy Center honor to Bill Cosby. ("The universal language of laughter"--I swear.) Shameless.
Of course, the awards ceremony is on CBS, so maybe he thought no one would see. Thank you; good night.

Shame or Sham Answer
Straw wants public bodies to monitor private sector employment practices, "naming and shaming" firms with the lowest hiring and promotion rates of minority staff.
Overhauling the 1976 Race Relations Act, aimed at wiping out discrimination and opening up opportunity for black and Asian people in Britain, Straw has ruled out "positive discrimination"--i.e., affirmative action--but wants firms to have senior black staff act as mentors to junior recruits.
His proposals are, in part, a response to the Stephen Lawrence investigation. Ministers expect strong public criticism in the wake of the inquiry into the 1993 murder of this black 18-year-old, stabbed by a white gang near a bus stop in South London. Criminal proceedings against five white youths collapsed amid charges of police prejudice.

Stocking Stuffer Extra
Holiday hints from the mail order Oriental Trading Company in Omaha, Neb. This catalog of inexpensive novelties is arranged by theme--sports, luau, dinosaurs, etc. Below, some products from the "RELIGIOUS," i.e., Christian, section. Why no other religions? Forget it, Jake, it's Omaha.

• "3 inch plastic CROSS MAGIC SPRINGS. Electric colors with cross shape. $13.50 dozen."--The crucifixion as a plastic Slinky. I'm assuming it ascends the stairs.
  
• "2 1/4 inch 'SMILE, JESUS LOVES YOU' RELAXABLE BALLS. Assorted colors. $12.00 dozen."--It's just fun to write "relaxable balls."
  
• "1 3/4 inch vinyl RELIGIOUS EYE POPPERS. Flip the ball inside out, place it on a hard surface, and watch it pop! Assorted colors and designs. $4.80 dozen."--Printed with the slogans "JUMP 4 JOY!" and "LEAP FOR THE LORD." And yes, it's also fun to write "flip the ball."
  
• "3 3/4 inch plastic GLOW-IN-THE-DARK PRAYING HANDS. $3.00 dozen"--A classic. And I'm pretty sure it's not made of that stuff that caused liver cancer in those lab rats.
  
• "16 inch 'SMILE! JESUS LOVES YOU' PUNCH BALLS. Assorted colors with rubber band handles. $6.00 dozen"--I'm no theologian, but what happened to turn the other punch ball?
  
• "Stretchable CANDY CROSS JEWELRY. Each with a 1 1/2 inch candy cross. Individually wrapped. 2 1/2 inch Bracelets, $1.95 dozen; 4 1/2 inch Necklaces, $3.60 dozen"--This is my blood, this is my body, and this is my candy necklace.
  
• "TESTAMINTS® Assorted peppermint, spearmint and wintergreen flavored mints individually wrapped in Bible verse wrappers. (Approximately 140 pcs. per lb.) $4.80 Unit (1 lb.)"--Gives you the confidence that your breath doesn't offend and your soul isn't damned to hell for all eternity. Nice detail: The "T" in "Testamints" is a tiny cross.

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