As for Bono…I have always thought that U2 is mediocre band (there I said it!); hence their longevity! Only mediocrity can last 20+ years unchanged, but omnipresent. The truly creative ones, like Nirvana, Hendrix, even The Doors, die fast—see it is difficult to sustain that level of genius…unless you are Freud or Einstein.
I do not think the good prof. is a perv or racist-He is considering a theory to explain certain behaviors. The lack of alpha males is referring to lack of strong parents figures as you say, but also to the absence of strong, responsible young men, that females can relate and identify with—as you say, the young men do not have the discipline or guidance, so have to “prove their manhood”. If that is the case, then do the behaviors of the boys and the girls fit into the evolutionary drive? That is, to prove one’s manhood, propagate one’s genes, in any feasible way? And besides the instinctual drive to procreate and insure the continuance of the species, why else do people have children? And in certain societies, besides not having had discipline and good-enough parenting, what else is motivating the multiple births?

Regarding those chimps, was that ‘Bonobo’ or ‘Bono’? Given the aging rock singer’s off-kilter views on a lot of foreign policy issues….

As for the lecture, Kalka, I cannot believe the good professor at Adelphi University could actually compare the mating habits of—excuse me: chimps??—with those of blacks living in the inner city. Somebody call the “Anti-Defamation League” committee of the NAACP–and pronto!

The good professor Josephs needs some schoolin’ in basic sociology. The reason for teenage pregnancy in “the ‘hood”—which has been falling over the past decade, as most people know—is, indeed, resulting from the lack of father figures in residence, i.e., loco parentis.

But what is the El loco professor implying?

In the wild, those female chimps mate with younger chimps secretly, when the alpha male isn’t around. (On the Upper East Side, I think that’s called “having an affair”). But back in “the communitaaay,” as it were, young girls aren’t having sex with their (very temporary) same-age boyfriends IN LIEU OF mating with their alpha males, unless black girls having sex with their fathers (the alpha male) is the norm there–and it isn’t. (Then again, I haven’t read the novel, “Push,” or seen its recently released film version, “Precious”).

No, those girls are having sex with their 14-year-old peers because Poppa isn’t around to whupp their little behinds! Without parental discipline, without a father in the house, the boys have to “prove their manhood” by having sex with girls at younger and younger ages, and the girls are looking for affection and love—both of which they SHOULD have gotten from their fathers in a chaste, paternal manner.

Josephs sounds like a perv. And a racist. To paraphrase Led Zepelin (with apologies to Jimmy Page): Professor, “uh, we ain’t foooolin’—gonna send you back to, uh, schoooolin’…..”

Bret Randall
New York, NY