The Statesmanship of Stay-Home-Sick-Or-Go-To-Class

Amy and I have been agonizing about whether to send him to his make-up Russian Math class this afternoon, since he had the flu this past week. Amy thought he wasn't contagious (we have different ideas about that), but we both thought it was somewhat likely that full recovery could take a bit longer, with some potential slippage along the way, if he took the 25-mile-each-way trip to his class.

Ultimately, we decided that he should stay home, but while the question was still up in the air, he did a wonderful, almost-Clintonian (or Blairian) job of projecting earnest inner conflict and desperation to arrive at the right policy, while knowing all along what that policy should be - a bit like Hugh Grant when he's trying to look sincere. This was coupled with a classic McDershowitzian twist of carefully layered argumentation to drive home the point.

Early on in the deliberative process, Ian volunteered: "I really don't feel good, but I really want to go."

Of course, way made the mistake of discussing the whole thing in front of him, so Parliament was peppered with interpretive discourse from the gallery in real-time. I told Amy I thought that the class would be "good for his mind" but it "might not be good for his body," so it posed a conflict. Ian pointed out the essential dilemma at the root of this paradox, along with a fresh, clear-cut way of resolving the conflict:

"Well I would say that if something's bad at all, then you just wouldn't do it. You would wait for the good part."

I was sorry C-Span wasn't there to capture the proceedings.

(February 5, 2011)