"To get this broad-based view, we asked SurveyMonkey Audience to ask self-identified Midwesterners which states make the cut."
See, because what you need is data. Because data can be analyzed. And with that data we learn that the heart of the heartland is Illinois. Or is "heartland" a somewhat different place? Maybe another SurveyMonkey for "heartland" and then a Venn diagram showing the overlap.
FiveThirtyEight follows up with "Which States Are in the South?" I have a few questions here. For example: How did only 80-some percent think Mississippi is in The South?
Also, I have an answer about Delaware, where I was born and raised. Apparently somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of those who identify themselves as Southerners see Delaware as part of the south. Living there, I didn't know anyone who had the idea that we were in The South, but as an adult, I have been told repeatedly, often by people who were laughing at me, that's because I'm white. So maybe we need 2 maps of which states are in The South, based on 2 surveys — one from those who identify as southern and black and one from a those who identify as southern and not black.
April 30, 2014
"Pop Culture Recasts Obama as Drone Master" — a NYT headline I misinterpreted.
That's the front page teaser for an article that has a slightly different headline "The Rise of the Drone Master: Pop Culture Recasts Obama." I clicked through because I thought it would be funny if pop culture had started mocking Obama's style of speech. He's no longer eloquent. He's verbose and dull — droning. The Drone Master.
But no:
But no:
In Marvel’s latest popcorn thriller, Captain America battles Hydra, a malevolent organization that has infiltrated the highest levels of the United States government. There are missile attacks, screeching car chases, enormous explosions, evil assassins, data-mining supercomputers and giant killer drones ready to obliterate millions of people....
"Wall Street is coming to grips with the possibility that Twitter may remain a niche service, rather than become the next Facebook."
Says The Wall Street Journal.
ADDED: Here's an essay by Todd Gitlin from January 2000, "How Our Crowd Got Lonely":
While Twitter has proven to be a powerful communications tool for celebrities, activists, marketers and journalists, it hasn't caught on with mainstream users. Facebook, meanwhile, has become a required place to share photos and life's daily happenings.I thought the young people were all leaving Facebook. Maybe people will just get sick of all the "required" sharing. What if a higher standard of what counts as interesting and worth saying were to catch on? Where would rich folk park their extra cash?
Given its fast-paced nature, Twitter's service can at times make users feel like they are alone in a crowded room. The company has tried to make users feel more connected by making it easier to find people they already know.Loneliness in a crowd... the worst kind of loneliness. Discover solitude — loneliness elevated and sublimated, but you have to get away from the crowd. The answer is not in the crowd, even if a company tries to make you feel you've got company. You're on your own.
ADDED: Here's an essay by Todd Gitlin from January 2000, "How Our Crowd Got Lonely":
Half a century ago, Yale University Press published the first edition of ''The Lonely Crowd,'' by David Riesman with Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney. The book's subject was nothing less than a sea change in American character: as America was moving from a society governed by the imperative of production to a society governed by the imperative of consumption, the character of its upper middle classes was shifting from ''inner-directed'' people who as children formed goals that would guide them in later life to ''other-directed'' people, ''sensitized to the expectations and preferences of others.'' In Riesman's metaphor, the shift was from life guided by an internal gyroscope to life guided by radar. The new American no longer cared much about adult authority but rather was hyperalert to peer groups and gripped by mass media....
Though published when television was still a fledgling medium, it took seriously the fact that Americans had been plunged into a media bath....
Should the GOP run Rick Perry against Hillary Clinton?
Dick Morris explains a key difference between the tastes of Republicans and Democrats:
Of the last eight people who have won the Republican nomination for president, six ran for the office and lost before they eventually got their party’s designation. To win as a Republican, it would seem you have to first go through losing.That's about getting the nomination, not winning the election. The GOP's last winner — who won twice — was the one who hadn't tried for the nomination before. It seems to me the GOP has terrible luck with its propensity to go back to the old loser who seems to have waited his turn.
Romney, McCain, Dole, Bush-41, Reagan, and Nixon all lost before they won. Only Bush-43 and Ford won without first losing. (And Ford inherited the nomination and almost blew it).
Not so in the Democratic Party. Of the last seven nominees, only Al Gore first lost before he eventually got the nomination 12 years later.
Republicans don’t like to take chances. They want their candidates to have served their apprenticeship as losers. The Republican voters are agoraphobic, fearful of new situations and people. It takes them a while to get used to new candidates and those who have run once and learned their lessons have great appeal. So keep your eye on Perry.Because he just might win the nomination and proceed to lose the election? Anyway, buried in that column — if you care about the thoughts of (speaking of old losers) Dick Morris — is some pushing of Scott Walker:
Walker... is interesting because he has been, hands down, the best Republican governor in recent years. He slew the teachers union, freed the schools, funded education, cut taxes, created jobs, and survived repeated political assassination attempts. He has the courage, fiber and vision it would take.And you know how much Republicans need fiber.
"How Oklahoma Botched an Execution."
It wasn't the new drug cocktail, it was the needle and the vein.
Meanwhile, The Daily Mail has photos of the dead convict and his victim and highlights facts about the crime ("shooting a woman and watching his friends bury her alive"). There's also a photo of another man who was also scheduled for execution and what that man did to deserve it — he raped and killed an 11-month-old girl — the details of the last meals of both murderers. There are over 2000 comments at The Daily Mail, and the best-rated one, with over 6000 up votes (and only 300 down votes), is:
People support the death penalty, and I suspect they would support deliberate, extended torture if it were an option. It's enough to make you worry that there's a temptation to botch lethal injection execution intentionally. I'm sure death penalty opponents think Oklahoma's horrible incident will turn people against the death penalty, but it doesn't seem to work that way. Personally, I am opposed to the death penalty. It transforms a murderer into a victim, an object of pity... at least to some of us. Most people seem to remain focused on the murder victims (and those who loved them), and any suffering that befalls the murderer will always be deemed far out of balance with the suffering he caused.
In all likelihood, the executioner who inserted Lockett's IV—and, in Oklahoma, an IV is inserted into both arms—missed the veins or went right through them. After this likely mistake, the state, according to the protocol, would have had “three persons to administer lethal agents”—that is, to push the drugs through the IV line....That sober analysis comes from The New Republic, which illustrates the article with a stock photo of an empty gurney in a prison chamber.
After the first drug is administered, the Oklahoma protocol requires the supervising physician to confirm that the patient is unconscious. The AP says the doctor did this 10 minutes after Lockett’s execution began. The other two drugs were then being administered when the execution team recognized a problem. Lockett started clenching his teeth and trying to lift his head. At this point, the doctor inspected Lockett and recognized the blown vein. A curtain was pulled so witnesses could not see what happened next. The Department of Corrections called off the execution and even tried to resuscitate Lockett, but it was too late: He died of a heart attack.
Meanwhile, The Daily Mail has photos of the dead convict and his victim and highlights facts about the crime ("shooting a woman and watching his friends bury her alive"). There's also a photo of another man who was also scheduled for execution and what that man did to deserve it — he raped and killed an 11-month-old girl — the details of the last meals of both murderers. There are over 2000 comments at The Daily Mail, and the best-rated one, with over 6000 up votes (and only 300 down votes), is:
Considering "Lockett was sentenced to death for shooting a 19-year-old Perry woman and watching his friends bury her alive," as I have read elsewhere, I don't have much sympathy for his writhing and shaking.The next favorite is: "Hmmmm.....I don't think I care...." Followed by:
This man forced his teenage victim to watch his accomplice dig her grave, before he stood her in it and shot her. This was after he duct taped her and beat her. Her crime? She wouldn't hand over the keys to her truck. If there's an afterlife, I hope she was standing next to that gurney for those twenty minutes of agony that he laid dying, and I hope he saw her there, waiting for him.The worst-rated comment is: "End this madness. Abolish the death penalty now." Second worst-rate: "The death penalty is barbaric, cruel and unusual punishment. I am ashamed this country practices this great evil."
People support the death penalty, and I suspect they would support deliberate, extended torture if it were an option. It's enough to make you worry that there's a temptation to botch lethal injection execution intentionally. I'm sure death penalty opponents think Oklahoma's horrible incident will turn people against the death penalty, but it doesn't seem to work that way. Personally, I am opposed to the death penalty. It transforms a murderer into a victim, an object of pity... at least to some of us. Most people seem to remain focused on the murder victims (and those who loved them), and any suffering that befalls the murderer will always be deemed far out of balance with the suffering he caused.
"How privileged are you?"
A checklist.
I'm 53% privileged. Meade is 32%, and unlike me, he had to check "I am a man." What's happening there? I pressured him about whether he was straining his interpretation of the questions to try to avoid having to check things.
Did he check "I have never gone to bed hungry"? I checked it, but I could have interpreted "going to bed hungry" to include the times I felt peckish but had already brushed my teeth and was too lazy to go through the rigamarole of finding something in the refrigerator and brushing my teeth again. Meade, who did not check that one, assures me that he interpreted the question in the spirit of the project, which purports to identify attributes of privilege, and in that spirit, "going to bed hungry" means going to bed hungry because of genuine financial constraints.
We got to that Buzzfeed quiz via David Blaska, whose blog post on the topic is called "White, middle-aged (plus), and male? I plead guilty as hell!"
Facts about Althouse's Buzzfeed-tested lack of privilege: I have been denied an opportunity because of my gender (I was excluded from the lighting crew in high school theater; I was excluded from mechanical drawing and shop in high school and required to take cooking and sewing). I have been called a racial slur ("albino"). And a stranger has asked me if my hair is real ("Is that a wig?").
I'm 53% privileged. Meade is 32%, and unlike me, he had to check "I am a man." What's happening there? I pressured him about whether he was straining his interpretation of the questions to try to avoid having to check things.
Did he check "I have never gone to bed hungry"? I checked it, but I could have interpreted "going to bed hungry" to include the times I felt peckish but had already brushed my teeth and was too lazy to go through the rigamarole of finding something in the refrigerator and brushing my teeth again. Meade, who did not check that one, assures me that he interpreted the question in the spirit of the project, which purports to identify attributes of privilege, and in that spirit, "going to bed hungry" means going to bed hungry because of genuine financial constraints.
We got to that Buzzfeed quiz via David Blaska, whose blog post on the topic is called "White, middle-aged (plus), and male? I plead guilty as hell!"
Facts about Althouse's Buzzfeed-tested lack of privilege: I have been denied an opportunity because of my gender (I was excluded from the lighting crew in high school theater; I was excluded from mechanical drawing and shop in high school and required to take cooking and sewing). I have been called a racial slur ("albino"). And a stranger has asked me if my hair is real ("Is that a wig?").
April 29, 2014
"Newly released emails on the Benghazi terror attack suggest a senior White House aide played a central role..."
"... in preparing former U.N. ambassador Susan Rice for her controversial Sunday show appearances -- where she wrongly blamed protests over an Internet video."
The email [from Ben Rhodes, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications] lists the following two goals, among others:
"To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy."
"To reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges."
After a trial on the Wisconsin Voter ID law, Federal Distict Judge Lynn Adelson finds a violation of Equal protection and the Voting Rights Act.
The Nation reports:
Judge Adelman found that 300,000 registered voters in Wisconsin, roughly 9 percent of registered voters, lacked the government-issued ID required by the state to cast a ballot...Obviously, there will be appeals, but this factfinding is significant and sets this case apart from the U.S. Supreme Court's Crawford case upholding the Indiana voter ID law in 2008. In that case, the district judge had granted summary judgment against the challengers of the law because they had "not introduced evidence of a single, individual Indiana resident who will be unable to vote as a result of SEA 483 or who will have his or her right to vote unduly burdened by its requirements."
“The evidence adduced at trial demonstrates that this unique burden disproportionately impacts Black and Latino voters,” Adelman wrote. Data from the 2012 election “showed that African American voters in Wisconsin were 1.7 times as likely as white voters to lack a matching driver’s license or state ID and that Latino voters in Wisconsin were 2.6 times as likely as white voters to lack these forms of identification.”...
Judge Adelman argued that the state of Wisconsin presented no evidence of voter fraud to justify the burdens of the ID law. “The evidence at trial established that virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin"...
The problem in Wisconsin wasn’t only the large number of voters who lacked ID, but the Kafkaesque hurdles voters had to jump through to obtain the correct ID....
Fear in Canada of an explosion...
... of a whale.
"It's very difficult to keep people away, simply because it's not too often that you see a blue whale."So... fear and curiosity... curiosity sufficient to overcome the risk of a sudden spew of the rotten innards of the world's largest creature swollen to twice its normal size.
"I am banning Mr. Sterling for life from any association with the Clippers association or the NBA."
"Mr. Sterling may not attend any NBA games or practices, he may not be present at any Clippers facility, and he may not participate in any business or decisions involving the team."
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced just now. He's also imposing a $2.5 million fine and urging the owners to vote to force Sterling to sell the team. The press conference was quite interesting, with many references to the NBA constitution and Silver's powers under it, which, of course, I have never studied. Obviously, Silver has his lawyers. It's interesting that so much could be done so quickly and in the heat of immediate outrage over remarks made in what was a private conversation with one other person.
ADDED: Silver is getting praise for his great leadership, and there was immense pressure on him to act to control the severe damage to the interests of the team's players. I question how much process he gave to Sterling — other than to get a confession that the voice on the tape was Sterling's — but I am guessing that Silver determined that it was worth it to act boldly and to deal with Sterling's legal responses after the fact.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced just now. He's also imposing a $2.5 million fine and urging the owners to vote to force Sterling to sell the team. The press conference was quite interesting, with many references to the NBA constitution and Silver's powers under it, which, of course, I have never studied. Obviously, Silver has his lawyers. It's interesting that so much could be done so quickly and in the heat of immediate outrage over remarks made in what was a private conversation with one other person.
ADDED: Silver is getting praise for his great leadership, and there was immense pressure on him to act to control the severe damage to the interests of the team's players. I question how much process he gave to Sterling — other than to get a confession that the voice on the tape was Sterling's — but I am guessing that Silver determined that it was worth it to act boldly and to deal with Sterling's legal responses after the fact.
"How the Democrats Can Avoid Going Down This November/The new science of Democratic survival."
An article by Sasha Issenberg in The New Republic that focuses on the correlation between voting Democratic and skipping nonpresidential elections. The answer to "how" — I would guess — has to do with understanding the minds of these people so that they could be fired up to vote in the midterm elections. But Issenberg says:
The real reason Democrats have embraced a progressive agenda has not been to energize their own base but to lure Reflex voters from the other side."Reflex" voters = people who vote regularly (as opposed to "unreliable" voters, who only vote in presidential elections).
Obama and his party’s candidates talk about the minimum wage in the hope that working-class whites skeptical of Democrats on other matters will become more ambivalent about voting Republican. Democrats’ renewed interest in women’s issues—including a defense of Planned Parenthood and embrace of equal-pay standards—is also designed with defections in mind. In 2012, the Obama campaign’s entire direct-mail program on women’s issues was targeted at reliable voters who leaned Republican: Field experiments in the first half of that year had showed that the messages were most persuasive among voters whose likelihood of voting for Obama previously sat between 20 and 40 percent.
"Preparations for the 2016 Rio Olympics are the 'worst' ever seen..."
"... according to International Olympic Committee vice-president John Coates."
These are the Olympics that were supposed to be in Chicago. At the time of the decision giving the Olympics to Rio, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said:
These are the Olympics that were supposed to be in Chicago. At the time of the decision giving the Olympics to Rio, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said:
"The president made, I think, a very strong appeal, and it didn't work out. But it was well worth the effort..." Axelrod said Obama's appeal wasn't strong enough to overcome the "internal currents".... "I think there were other things that played there that we simply couldn't overcome, and that's life. Life goes on."
"I got my feelings hurt and I picked a fight with my husband... The police called it disorderly. Thank God it's orderly now."
Says Edie Brickell, 47, married to Paul Simon, 72.
Both got arrested. Both seem to be colluding to smooth over the whole dismal matter now. Brickell is cracking jokes. "The police called it disorderly. Thank God it's orderly now." Does she write her own domestic-dispute jokes?
Do we need to revisit the old BatteredWoman Person Syndrome checklist?
Both got arrested. Both seem to be colluding to smooth over the whole dismal matter now. Brickell is cracking jokes. "The police called it disorderly. Thank God it's orderly now." Does she write her own domestic-dispute jokes?
Do we need to revisit the old Battered
SOS Kerry on the "apartheid" remark he didn't know was being recorded: "If I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word..."
"... to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two state solution... In the long term, a unitary, binational state cannot be the democratic Jewish state that Israel deserves or the prosperous state with full rights that the Palestinian people deserve."
If I could rewind the tape... in other words, if I knew that there was going to be a tape.
If Icould rewind knew there was going to be the tape, I would have chosen a different word avoided the clear language that makes what I mean to say comprehensible, and I would have deployed the mind-numbing, meandering verbiage that has work for me for years either to effectively lull people into thinking that they in their weakness must have drifted off and missed the point or to arrive at the absurd but self-flattering belief that they appreciate the subtle explications of The Man of Nuance.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
If I could rewind the tape... in other words, if I knew that there was going to be a tape.
If I
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
The "glass cliff" — explaining the high rate of firing female CEOs.
"Over the past 10 years, 38 percent of female chief executives of the world's 2,500 biggest public companies were fired, compared to 27 percent of their male counterparts."
The "glass cliff" theory attributes the failure rate of females to the tendency to hire females when
the company is already in trouble:
The "glass cliff" theory attributes the failure rate of females to the tendency to hire females when
the company is already in trouble:
Women are treated as exotic outsiders, brought to the helm when board members are feeling adventurous (mainly out of necessity). They have to prove their worth in situations that powerful men suspect may be hopeless.
"Effective immediately, only those shoes that accommodate all five toes in one compartment are authorized for wear."
Says the Army. Those "FiveFingers" — foot-glove shoes — "detract from a professional military image."
I had to wonder how this controversy even arose in the first place. Whatever happened to uniforms and uniformity? And there seems even to be some complaining about this new rule, that the powers that be are too closed minded and uninformed about the benefits of FiveFinger shoes.
What is the history of shoes in the military? Surely, there have been many soldiers who have gone without any shoes at all. From a Civil War letter:
I had to wonder how this controversy even arose in the first place. Whatever happened to uniforms and uniformity? And there seems even to be some complaining about this new rule, that the powers that be are too closed minded and uninformed about the benefits of FiveFinger shoes.
What is the history of shoes in the military? Surely, there have been many soldiers who have gone without any shoes at all. From a Civil War letter:
"We slept on the ground for four nights with only one blanket apiece, and what was the worst thing that happened to me was that in going up the mountains I lost one of my shoes in the mud and it was so dark that I could not find it and then of course I had to carry one until I came back to camp. You must wonder at soldiers having to do without shoes and blankets sometimes. I believe men can stand most anything after they get used to it. The hardest part is getting used to it."ADDED: "One of the most persistent legends surrounding the Battle of Gettysburg... is that it was fought over shoes."
"On the morning of June 30," [wrote Confederate general Henry Heth], "I ordered Brigadier General [Johnston] Pettigrew to take his brigade to Gettysburg, search the town for army supplies (shoes especially), and return the same day." That parenthetical phrase "shoes especially" has taken on a life of its own over the years....AND: Continuing to the end of that article at the last link:
[F]rom a literary standpoint, "shoes especially" represents the perfect detail, quickly translating abstract historical forces into blisters on aching feet and the smell of new shoe leather. The Battle of Gettysburg readily lends itself to being read as a three-act tragedy, dominated, as many have argued, by Lee's hubris... That it started by accident, over something so "pedestrian" as shoes, is too perfect for writers to ignore. Shelby Foote certainly did not, crafting a scene in The Civil War: A Narrative (1963) in which A. P. Hill airily dismissed the possibility that the Army of the Potomac was in Gettysburg:From a literary standpoint, it's no surprise that a man named Foote would fixate on shoes.
In Foote's dialogue, Heth was quick to take him up on that. "If there is no objection," he said, "I will take my division tomorrow and go to Gettysburg and get those shoes."
"Hitler rarely got out of bed before 2pm."
From a front page article in the Washington Post titled "Hitler’s former maid remembers the good life at Der Fuhrer’s mountain retreat" that presents what it calls — I am not kidding — "tidbits about life at Hitler’s home away from home." For some reason the Post sees fit to take a cutesy tone, telling us, for example that at night, Hitler "liked to steal away to the kitchen for a bite of 'Fuhrer cake,'" which was "a specially prepared" cake. Specially prepared... they made the cake he liked. Steal away... what? Am I to picture the man tippy-toeing through the corridors lest somebody interfere with his access to cake?
April 28, 2014
"You thought you were dead?"/"Yes, I was under a mountain of dead girls."
"I touch my hand, and I see it’s not cold. It’s warm. And I walk out."
(Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah.)
(Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah.)
"Instead of being content to punish Sterling and go back to sleep, we need to be inspired to vigilantly seek out, expose, and eliminate racism at its first signs."
Writes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and I'm just a little worried about what counts as "first signs." Sure, let's be vigilant, but part of vigilance is vigilance about ourselves, and "seek out, expose, and eliminate" sounds a tad mistake-prone and over-righteous.
"All roads led to a mysterious source—the newly exploding Internet," says Chris Lehane, confessing to, explaining, and justifiying his authorship of the 1995 "Right-Wing Conspiracy" memo.
Lehane, a lawyer in the Clinton White House counsel, with access to The World Wide Web, says he felt as though he had been "transported to a parallel universe." His journey of discovery took him to "early versions of chat rooms, postings and other information showing there was an entire cottage industry devoted to discussing conspiracy theories relating to [Vince] Foster’s death, including numerous online reports of people claiming to have seen him."
Lehane says he "realized that this was just the beginning":
I have to hypothesize that the threat template came immediately to mind because from the perspective of the White House, he was part of a restrictive network of power that exercised immense control over the mainstream press.
The Wide Web really did threaten The Narrow Web.
Those reports would be picked up by so-called news sources that most Americans at the time had never heard of—conservative outlets such as Eagle Publishing’s Human Events or Richard Mellon Scaife’s the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. From there, the story would migrate to right-leaning outlets we were familiar with, such as the New York Post, the Washington Times and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal—all before eventually ending up in the mainstream press.He had discovered a "media food chain." (Funny that New York Post and the Wall Street Journal didn't count as "mainstream press" to him.)
Lehane says he "realized that this was just the beginning":
We saw the transition from an electorate that passively consumed the information put before it (a joke at the time was that a political rally was a family watching a political commercial on television) to an electorate that could use technology to actively engage in the creation, distribution and self-selection of information.I have to read that as implying that Lehane thinks an activated electorate is a bad thing. What made it a "conspiracy"? What was particularly "right-wing" about it? I agree it was vast — it was World Wide — but why did Lehane not see it as thrillingly good?
I have to hypothesize that the threat template came immediately to mind because from the perspective of the White House, he was part of a restrictive network of power that exercised immense control over the mainstream press.
The Wide Web really did threaten The Narrow Web.
Things named after Obama.
1. Aptostichus barackobamai — the new trapdoor spider.
2. Caloplaca obamae — a lichen.
3. Etheostoma obama — a fish.
4. Paragordius obamai — a parasitic worm.
5. Obamadon — an extinct lizard.
6. Barack Obama College Preparatory High School.
The first 5 items on the list are all collected at this link, sent to me by a reader who suggests that I use my longstanding, much-loved tag "insect politics." But a spider is not an insect, so I'm stuck with my arachnids tag. I have tags for insects and insect politics, but no specialized arachnid politics tag, because have you ever heard of arachnid politics? Neither have I! Arachnids don't have politics. They're very brutal. No compassion. No compromise. We can't trust the arachnid.
2. Caloplaca obamae — a lichen.
3. Etheostoma obama — a fish.
4. Paragordius obamai — a parasitic worm.
5. Obamadon — an extinct lizard.
6. Barack Obama College Preparatory High School.
The first 5 items on the list are all collected at this link, sent to me by a reader who suggests that I use my longstanding, much-loved tag "insect politics." But a spider is not an insect, so I'm stuck with my arachnids tag. I have tags for insects and insect politics, but no specialized arachnid politics tag, because have you ever heard of arachnid politics? Neither have I! Arachnids don't have politics. They're very brutal. No compassion. No compromise. We can't trust the arachnid.
"Donald Sterling and the Neverending Fantasy of ‘Democrat’ Racism/Oh, how eager the conservative press is to call Donald Sterling a Democrat!"
"It’s all part of their larger fantasy narrative about conservatism and race," says Michael Tomasky (at The Daily Beast).
It must be so annoying to Democrats that this idiot .1%-er Donald Sterling stepped on the Cliven Bundy, Republican racistfantasy story.
But Tomasky is right, I think, to say Sterling sure wasn't much of a Democrat.
It must be so annoying to Democrats that this idiot .1%-er Donald Sterling stepped on the Cliven Bundy, Republican racist
But Tomasky is right, I think, to say Sterling sure wasn't much of a Democrat.
"I have a source that told me that if Jeb Bush decides not to run, that Mitt Romney may actually try it again."
Said Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation" yesterday, discussed here, by Wesley Lowery, in The Washington Post. Lowery says:
Romney and Bush are considered similar candidates... Several major Romney donors told The Washington Post earlier this year that Bush would be their preferred Republican candidate in 2016.Can America go for a candidate who has already had the nomination and lost? I remember when Nixon thought he could do it, and I considered it a ridiculous notion — I being a teenager and Nixon being correct. You may say: 1. But Nixon got drummed out of office, or 2. It's a new era and what worked in the 60s hasn't worked since the 60s.
After shrinking out of the public light following his crushing loss to President Obama in 2012, Romney has slowly reemerged as a coveted political ally for Republicans seeking office this year.
Romney, 67, has begun to embrace the role of party elder, believing he can shape the national debate and help guide his fractured party to a governing majority.
Landfill archeology: The search for "E.T." — the video game so bad, Atari threw 728,000 copies into a dump and sealed them under concrete.
The badness of the game and the "Atari grave" had become the stuff of legend, and they're making a movie about the finding and opening the grave — a film to be released on Microsoft's Xbox.
The trash became a treasure precisely because it was trash from the start. It arrived on the market "practically broken," with "E.T. falling into traps that were almost impossible to escape and would appear constantly and unpredictably." The man who designed the game, Howard Scott Warshaw, says Atari only gave him 5 weeks, because it needed to be ready for Christmas shoppers, so it could be opened by kids who were, presumably, tormented by their ugly little hero's propensity to drop into unpredictable, unescapable traps.
Alamogordo, the location of the dump, gets to keep most of the games the film crew found. Not only does the city plan to sell the games, but the mayor expresses hope of attracting tourists to the town that is now the most significant archeological site in the history of video games.
I often wonder why people travel. It is a mystery that is little examined, perhaps because most people do not even see it as mystery. But I say it's a mystery. And within that mystery there are all the different reasons why people travel. One reason is to visit historical sites within a field of interest. For some, it seems, the field is video games. Alamogordo is on a list with... what else?
The video game travelers, arriving in Alamogordo, can interact with the Christian artifact replica travelers, who stop by The Shroud Exhibit And Museum, and the sand dune aficionados, come to gaze upon The White Sands National Monument. I like to think of these 3 sets of travelers, trekking the face of the earth and all converging one day in Alamogordo and experiencing a cosmic convergence.
The geeks who love their games and their creature from another world, the religious folk who want to get close to the corporeal form of Christ through what is reputed to be his burial sheet (even if it's only a replica, a replica of a fake), and the lovers of the beauty of Earth in its greatest extreme of dry desolation — in my mind's eye I see them out there, in a million separate rooms, packing suitcases, readying themselves for... A Voyage to Alamogordo.
The trash became a treasure precisely because it was trash from the start. It arrived on the market "practically broken," with "E.T. falling into traps that were almost impossible to escape and would appear constantly and unpredictably." The man who designed the game, Howard Scott Warshaw, says Atari only gave him 5 weeks, because it needed to be ready for Christmas shoppers, so it could be opened by kids who were, presumably, tormented by their ugly little hero's propensity to drop into unpredictable, unescapable traps.
Alamogordo, the location of the dump, gets to keep most of the games the film crew found. Not only does the city plan to sell the games, but the mayor expresses hope of attracting tourists to the town that is now the most significant archeological site in the history of video games.
I often wonder why people travel. It is a mystery that is little examined, perhaps because most people do not even see it as mystery. But I say it's a mystery. And within that mystery there are all the different reasons why people travel. One reason is to visit historical sites within a field of interest. For some, it seems, the field is video games. Alamogordo is on a list with... what else?
The video game travelers, arriving in Alamogordo, can interact with the Christian artifact replica travelers, who stop by The Shroud Exhibit And Museum, and the sand dune aficionados, come to gaze upon The White Sands National Monument. I like to think of these 3 sets of travelers, trekking the face of the earth and all converging one day in Alamogordo and experiencing a cosmic convergence.
The geeks who love their games and their creature from another world, the religious folk who want to get close to the corporeal form of Christ through what is reputed to be his burial sheet (even if it's only a replica, a replica of a fake), and the lovers of the beauty of Earth in its greatest extreme of dry desolation — in my mind's eye I see them out there, in a million separate rooms, packing suitcases, readying themselves for... A Voyage to Alamogordo.
April 27, 2014
"Obama does a great job delivering the speech, even though the words of the speech are quite banal."
"There are many references to hope. The speech is blessedly short. Cheers, waving signs. Cue the music."
The next decently substantive thing I said quoted Obama — "I think to some degree I’ve become a shorthand or symbol or stand-in for a spirit" — and commented: "It's appealing to concede that, isn't it? Though eventually Barack Obama will have to be something specific, won't he? Wouldn't it be funny if he didn't?" And:
Now here is a speaker I can stand to listen to....That's the first thing I wrote about Barack Obama on this blog. It was July 27, 2004.
The next decently substantive thing I said quoted Obama — "I think to some degree I’ve become a shorthand or symbol or stand-in for a spirit" — and commented: "It's appealing to concede that, isn't it? Though eventually Barack Obama will have to be something specific, won't he? Wouldn't it be funny if he didn't?" And:
It's actually rather embarrassing for him to campaign for the Presidency openly admitting that he's doing well because he's a blank screen upon which people project their hopes. Even purely for the sake of appearances, he needs to get some substance.
"Well, fine, Joe Squirtgun. If your rapist is a bird."
A line I pulled out of Sarah Palin's speech to the National Rifle Association's "Stand And Fight" rally to balance the line I saw pulled out in a bunch of places like Huffington Post, "Waterboarding Is How We'd Baptize Terrorists."
"Governor With Eye on 2016 Finds His Rise Under Scrutiny."
A NYT headline on an article about Scott Walker that adds nothing to what we in Wisconsin have heard many times. The man is vetted to the point of boredom, but I guess this stuff is new to nonWisconsin Americans. One time one guy on his staff forwarded a joke based on the premise that it's more of a burden in life to be a Democrat than to belong to 13 discriminated-against/burdened subcategories of humanity. And one time some campaign official tweeted her annoyance from a bus crowded with people who don't speak English. Oh, the sins that count against a Republican! If the NYT were willing to drag down Democrats over such things, it might amount to something.
All the bobbleheads.
We're back home now. Got my Carlos Gomez bobblehead:
Earlier, Meade took his Althouse bobblehead out to Miller Park:
We had a nice 3d row seat — as the home team (which has the best record in baseball) lost. [Jean Segura and Ryan Braun weren't playing after injuries in last night's game, Braun having injured Segura (unintentionally) and, independently, injured himself.]
And a close-up look at the sausages:
Earlier, Meade took his Althouse bobblehead out to Miller Park:
We had a nice 3d row seat — as the home team (which has the best record in baseball) lost. [Jean Segura and Ryan Braun weren't playing after injuries in last night's game, Braun having injured Segura (unintentionally) and, independently, injured himself.]
And a close-up look at the sausages:
"The unsettling thing about Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s ugly rant on the Virgin River on Saturday..."
"... was that there was no negative reaction from the semicircle of gun-toting and conspiracy-minded supporters who had gathered round to hear it."
It's not that there's an old guy out there somewhere in American saying things like that, it's that people had gathered 'round. He wasn't some old grandad with a family who loves him and lets him talk and lets it go. He was (is?) a folk hero, and anybody who gets into hero-promoting activities has an obligation to exercise vigilance and stand ready to speak up and talk back. But those who are susceptible to the belief that they have found a hero may have linked vices like passivity, an uncritical mind, a tendency to merge with the group, and taste for the ecstasy of proximity to the object of worship.
Hero worshipers of the world, disunite.
It's not that there's an old guy out there somewhere in American saying things like that, it's that people had gathered 'round. He wasn't some old grandad with a family who loves him and lets him talk and lets it go. He was (is?) a folk hero, and anybody who gets into hero-promoting activities has an obligation to exercise vigilance and stand ready to speak up and talk back. But those who are susceptible to the belief that they have found a hero may have linked vices like passivity, an uncritical mind, a tendency to merge with the group, and taste for the ecstasy of proximity to the object of worship.
Hero worshipers of the world, disunite.
Ducks in trees.
I'm just sitting here, drinking coffee, doing my morning blogging, facing the computer screen and the big picture window beyond it that looks out over the backyard, and 2 ducks fly in and land in the big old oak tree. Are those ducks? Do ducks land in trees? Ducks in trees? I've never seen ducks in trees. Are those ducks in trees? I'm nattering lines like that while searching for my camera and fiddling with the zoom and the focus.
I get the photos into the computer and close in on the duck, which Meade calls a "mallard," and I resist. It's got that thing on the back of its head, that projection, like on a bike racer's helmet. And those white markings. Meade figures out it's a wood duck:
ADDED: Those ducks remind me of my own parents. Site the nest well, and that's the help. You're being watched, but from the start, you have the sense that you are on your own, making your way entirely by the exercise of your own powers. Self-reliance, by parental design, supervision, and restraint.
I get the photos into the computer and close in on the duck, which Meade calls a "mallard," and I resist. It's got that thing on the back of its head, that projection, like on a bike racer's helmet. And those white markings. Meade figures out it's a wood duck:
The Wood Duck is a medium-sized perching duck.... The adult male has distinctive multicoloured iridescent plumage and red eyes, with a distinctive white flare down the neck. The female, less colourful, has a white eye-ring and a whitish throat. Both adults have crested heads.Crested! That's the word. Perching duck! I never knew of such a thing as a perching duck.
Unlike most other ducks, the Wood Duck has sharp claws for perching in trees... After hatching, the ducklings jump down from the nest tree and make their way to water. The mother calls them to her, but does not help them in any way. The ducklings may jump from heights of up to 88 m (290 ft) without injury. They prefer nesting over water so the young have a soft landing, but will nest up to 140 m (460 ft) away from the shoreline.Up to 460 feet? We're close to Lake Mendota, but not that close, so I guess they are only passing through, perching on our tree, perhaps to look out — with red eyes — over where the trees are by the lake and future ducklings can safely plop.
ADDED: Those ducks remind me of my own parents. Site the nest well, and that's the help. You're being watched, but from the start, you have the sense that you are on your own, making your way entirely by the exercise of your own powers. Self-reliance, by parental design, supervision, and restraint.
Artist who, without permission, spray-painted walls that belonged to other people says it's "disgusting people are allowed to go around displaying art on walls without getting permission."
So... that's humor, right? Banksy is playing with ideas about law and ownership. That's part of his art.
Here's The Daily Mail's article — with lots of pictures — about the "Stealing Banksy" art exhibit.
And here's the statement on the banksy.co.uk website seemingly officially distancing the artist from the exhibition and creating dissonance about whether the ownership of the walls is suspect and anyone buying these walls with the graffiti left on them will face litigation and need to come to terms with the artist:
Here's The Daily Mail's article — with lots of pictures — about the "Stealing Banksy" art exhibit.
And here's the statement on the banksy.co.uk website seemingly officially distancing the artist from the exhibition and creating dissonance about whether the ownership of the walls is suspect and anyone buying these walls with the graffiti left on them will face litigation and need to come to terms with the artist:
The title of the exhibit shows that the exhibitioners are also playing — or trying to play — with the concept of ownership, and I suspect that the artist is actually involved in the whole thing, the legal angles have been worked out behind the scenes, and the notice at banksy.co.uk is part of the PR for the show and the sale of the work that is to follow, and, yes, I know that to the extent that I — a law professor (the law professor who went to art school) — am acting like I find this all so intriguing and playful from an art-and-law standpoint, I am augmenting and propagating the PR.
April 26, 2014
"You're supposed to be a delicate white or a delicate Latina girl."/"I'm a mixed girl."/"Ok well."
Horrific people in the news. Never heard of them before. Old man with no decent right to be jealous is jealous of his arguably beautiful, inarguably younger girlfriend. Somewhat young woman lets the whole world eavesdrop on her pathetic argument with a repulsive billionaire.
"@Voxdotcom… has no idea of what Japanese popular culture is like, does it? Somebody needs to start calling this Vox-shaming, or something."
Says Moe Lane, linking to my post "Avril Lavigne picked a bad week to go all racist" and something David said in the comments: "If examined closely Japanese popular culture would explode the brain of the average political correctness warrior in the USA."
"If Vox wants to criticize cultural appropriation [then] it should find writers who are a little less provincial and a little more experienced with the culture in question," says Moe Lane, embedding "a not entirely atypical example... chosen partially because the artist (Kyary Pamyu Pamyu) is both popular and known for her adoption of Western styles and themes – but mostly because it is, by our standards, highly insane," and I have watched this astounding video, which had me alternately laughing and saying "Oh, no!"
That was truly mindbending... a great escape from the dreary, daily American chidings about what is and is not appropriate.
ADDED: In the comments yesterday Mary Beth also pointed to the "PonPonPon" which she said was "pretty popular on the internet despite its racism." ("Skip to the 34 second mark to see what I mean.")
"If Vox wants to criticize cultural appropriation [then] it should find writers who are a little less provincial and a little more experienced with the culture in question," says Moe Lane, embedding "a not entirely atypical example... chosen partially because the artist (Kyary Pamyu Pamyu) is both popular and known for her adoption of Western styles and themes – but mostly because it is, by our standards, highly insane," and I have watched this astounding video, which had me alternately laughing and saying "Oh, no!"
That was truly mindbending... a great escape from the dreary, daily American chidings about what is and is not appropriate.
ADDED: In the comments yesterday Mary Beth also pointed to the "PonPonPon" which she said was "pretty popular on the internet despite its racism." ("Skip to the 34 second mark to see what I mean.")
"Celebration, below its twee veneer and even below its shoddy craftsmanship, is a pretty sustainable idea...."
"... Public spaces, walkable streets, downscaled housing, and good schools, all within a compact downtown. Even its critics have to admit that it's better than swampy, sprawling hellscape that lies just outside of it, dripping with strip malls and sweaty drive-thrus."
So why don't we think of it as a success? For one thing, the mere whiff of utopia sets our teeth on edge these days. After a century of high-profile failures—from Fordlandia to Helicon Home Colony—most of us can't shake the idea that behind those neocolonial shutters lurks something sinister, whether as simple as tax evasion or as truly nightmarish as a violent cult. In other words, Celebration is not only a victim of its own marketing, but a victim of a public that perceives planned communities as deeply creepy....That's healthy isn't it, our suspicion of planned communities? We perceive them as creepy because excessive planning, imposed on us by experts who purport to know how we should live, is creepy.
By the way, the word "creepy" originally referred to slow movement, then to the feeling that one's flesh is moving — the feeling of horror or disgust — so that you would say, for example, "I feel somehow quite creepy at the thought of what's coming." (That's the oldest usage in that second sense found by the OED, from a 1831 work called "Cat's Tail.) Only in the late 19th century did "creepy" come to refer to the things that cause your flesh to creep.
1883 ‘G. Lloyd’ Ebb & Flow II. xxxiii. 236 The whole place seemed lonely, and, as Mildred whispered to Pauline, ‘creepy.’I get the feeling that "G. Lloyd" was portraying Mildred as misusing the word, like the way, years ago, an author might make an uneducated character say "nauseous" for "nauseating." (But the progression of the word "nauseous" goes in the opposite direction from "creepy." "Creepy" went from describing how bad you feel to describing the thing that makes you feel bad, but "nauseous" went from describing the thing that makes you feel bad to describing your bad feeling. That made it considerably more humorous to make a dumb character say "I'm nauseous" than for Mildred to say that the place is "creepy.")
"In his animal-law classes, Wise told me, he has his students consider the actual case of a 4-month-old anencephalic baby..."
"... that is, a child born without a complete brain. Her brain stem allows her to breathe and digest, but she has no consciousness or sentience. No feelings or awareness whatsoever. He asks the class why we can’t do anything we want with such a child, even eat her."
"I’m not saying that a court or legislature can’t say that just having a human form is in and of itself a sufficient condition for rights." There are 2 obvious negatives in that sentence and a few more fillips of semi-negation ("just," "in and of itself," and "sufficient"). The repetition of "to say" is also strange: I'm not saying that other people can't say. That's not the same as: I'm saying that other people can say. What is he saying?
“We’re all instantly repelled by that, of course,” Wise said. When he asked his students that question, they “get all tied up in knots and say things like ‘because she has a soul’ or ‘all life is sacred.’ I say: ‘I’m sorry, we’re not talking about any characteristics here. It’s that she has the form of a human being.’ Now I’m not saying that a court or legislature can’t say that just having a human form is in and of itself a sufficient condition for rights. I’m simply saying that it’s irrational. . . . Why is a human individual with no cognitive abilities whatsoever a legal person with rights, while cognitively complex beings such as Tommy [the chimpanzee], or a dolphin, or an orca are things with no rights at all?”The link goes to a NYT Magazine article by Charles Siebert titled "Should a Chimp Be Able to Sue Its Owner?" I'm sure the part I've excerpted will cause many readers to want to talk about abortion. The line — from law professor Steven Wise — "I’m not saying that a court or legislature can’t say that just having a human form is in and of itself a sufficient condition for rights" — seems to raise the topic without saying the word. It's a strangely twisted sentence, especially coming from a law professor who is highlighting the demands he makes on his students to think and speak precisely and clearly.
"I’m not saying that a court or legislature can’t say that just having a human form is in and of itself a sufficient condition for rights." There are 2 obvious negatives in that sentence and a few more fillips of semi-negation ("just," "in and of itself," and "sufficient"). The repetition of "to say" is also strange: I'm not saying that other people can't say. That's not the same as: I'm saying that other people can say. What is he saying?
Should the opposite of miracles count against sainthood?
"An Italian man was crushed to death on Thursday by a giant crucifix dedicated to the late Pope John Paul II, just days before the Polish pontiff will be made a saint in a ceremony at the Vatican."
In a bizarre coincidence, the 21-year-old man was reported to have been living in a street named after Pope John XXIII – who will also be canonised in the ceremony on Sunday, in an event that is unprecedented in the 2,000 year history of the Catholic Church.(There's a photograph of the fallen crucifix at the link, where the article mentions the unusual bending forward of the sculpture in its intact condition, which you can see here.)
The man, named as Marco Gusmini, was posing for a photograph with a group of friends in front of the 100ft-high cross when it suddenly collapsed.
"U.S. Reporters Grill Obama in Asia: Did You Like Your Green-Tea Ice Cream?"
The state of journalism today.
The President later burbled about it to the Empress.
ADDED: The "it" in "burbled about it" is ambiguous. Here's the reported colloquy with the Empress Michiko:
The President later burbled about it to the Empress.
ADDED: The "it" in "burbled about it" is ambiguous. Here's the reported colloquy with the Empress Michiko:
“The press was asking if I enjoyed the green tea ice cream,” Obama said.I've made a multiple choice question in the style of the new SAT approach to understanding words in context.
“Did you enjoy it?” the empress asked.
“Yes, absolutely,” he replied.
NYT editors embrace what they call "Wise Controls on E-Cigarettes."
Because when it comes to puffing on e-cigarettes: "Nobody knows what the net impact of all this would be on the nation’s health." And: "Dozens of studies are underway to find out."
If you're less of an enthusiast for nannyism, you might think that the studies should come first and that ignorance — nobody knows! — is an insufficient foundation for government action.
But think of the children:
Communist Party smoking public.
If you're less of an enthusiast for nannyism, you might think that the studies should come first and that ignorance — nobody knows! — is an insufficient foundation for government action.
But think of the children:
Some nonsmokers might become addicted to nicotine after smoking e-cigarettes and move on to regular cigarettes. And young people who smoke only e-cigarettes can still suffer damage to the developing brain.It's not just young people, of course. I "smoke" e-cigarettes for fun sometimes, and I'm not and have never been a member of the
April 25, 2014
"It was neither psychic nor much of a massage... He was more like a $250-an-hour life coach who happened to have good hands..."
"... which he ran lightly over my arms, legs, lower back and abdomen. He said he did this to get a better read of my energy. And when he was done, he reported, 'There’s nothing wrong with you, Jeremy.' He reassured me I was just sensitive."
ADDED: In this week's episode of Skeptoid — #411 — Brian Dunning returns to what was the very first topic of the long running podcast: the human body's energy fields.
ADDED: In this week's episode of Skeptoid — #411 — Brian Dunning returns to what was the very first topic of the long running podcast: the human body's energy fields.
"People in Madison are ready to talk about race. It isn't fun, but it is necessary."
"Madison has to prove itself as liberal and progressive right here and right now...."
Racism is inherent in people's disbelief that there is inequality in Madison. It is possible to be progressive and ethical and still have racist tendencies. You cannot get rid of those racist tendencies by ignoring them. It might make you vulnerable and it might make you feel bad about yourself for a little while, but once you see the racism here for yourself, you won't be able to ignore it anymore.ADDED: This is that thing of liberals getting after liberals for not being liberal enough. It reminds me of Phil Ochs singing "Love Me, I'm a Liberal." The liberal's desire to be loved for being liberal: 1. Is ludicrous and just makes you want to puncture the vanity, and 2. Creates great vulnerability to attacks based on almost nothing.
At the Dog-or-Hand-Puppet? Café...
... you never know quite what you are looking at.
(Photo from the best dog photoblog on the internet, Dogging Meade.)
"The next time you interact with a teenager, try to have a conversation with him or her about a challenging topic."
"Ask him to explain his views. Push her to go further in her answers. Hopefully, you won’t get the response Turkle did when interviewing a 16-year-old boy about how technology has impacted his communication: 'Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.'"
From "My Students Don't Know How to Have a Conversation/Students’ reliance on screens for communication is detracting—and distracting—from their engagement in real-time talk," by Paul Barnwell.
Turkle is Sherry Turkle, author of "Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Ourselves."
From "My Students Don't Know How to Have a Conversation/Students’ reliance on screens for communication is detracting—and distracting—from their engagement in real-time talk," by Paul Barnwell.
Turkle is Sherry Turkle, author of "Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Ourselves."
Avril Lavigne picked a bad week to go all racist.
She's in big trouble for this:
Do you not see what's so cliven about it? Well, then, you might want to submit to Vox, the website that explains everything to the point needed by an adequately intelligent but generally pretty busy person:
But perhaps all of this is beyond what needs to be explained to the adequately intelligent, yet awfully busy inhabitants of the internet.
ADDED: The Vox-shaming continues here.
Do you not see what's so cliven about it? Well, then, you might want to submit to Vox, the website that explains everything to the point needed by an adequately intelligent but generally pretty busy person:
Stone-faced, expressionless Japanese sidekick dancer ladies? Check. Inexplicable sushi-eating and photo-taking scenes? Check. Centering the song on a weird, creepily sexual dubstep chorus that rhymes "Hello Kitty" with "you're so pretty?" Congratulations, Avril — you've hit some kind of Orientalist Japanese Stereotype trifecta...."Hello Kitty" apes? I love those 3 words together, because I can picture "Hello Kitty" Apes... just like I can picture "King Kong" Kitties, but do not market a product called King Kong Kitties. That would be racist.
It's always hard to pinpoint background cultural influences on art specifically, but it makes sense that cultural penetration would produce unintentionally offensive cultural appropriation....
"RACIST??? LOLOLOL!!!," Avril tweeted. "I love Japanese culture...." In her defense, this kind of makes sense. Japanese pop does have a pretty camp vein running through it, one that "Hello Kitty" apes.
Racist or otherwise culturally insensitive depictions of non-Americans have been around as long as America has.Ironically, that Vox sentence is culturally insensitive to America's native people, who must be the subjects of the oldest culturally insensitive depictions in this portion of the globe (which has been around long before America):
But perhaps all of this is beyond what needs to be explained to the adequately intelligent, yet awfully busy inhabitants of the internet.
ADDED: The Vox-shaming continues here.
Remember when the President called us to "a national conversation on race" and told us to "Be blunt"?
Back in 1997.
A therapeutic model of group dynamics seems to underlie the president’s initiative. We are supposed to be getting our long-hidden fears, resentments, and frustrations out in the open. "Be blunt," the president instructed [the audience at his "artfully conducted" town hall meeting in Akron, Ohio].
Mansplaining mansplaining.
Here (and it's a woman doing the mansplaining of mansplaining, which, she mansplains, women do too).
"Compare this reception of Sotomayor’s deeply personal dissent with how her colleagues talk about Thurgood Marshall’s time at the court..."
Dahlia Lithwick invites us into the world of comparative race consciousness. There are so many disparate points of comparison. Thurgood Marshall was a black man born in 1908. Sonia Sotomayor is a Hispanic woman born in 1954. And Lithwick is comparing written responses to a written judicial opinion and spoken reminiscences about private personal interactions with a colleague. But anyway, here are Lithwick's musings:
And Lithwick never even mentions Clarence Thomas, who would seem to offer a second basis for comparison. How have his colleagues received the things he's written that disrupted the way they wanted to think about race? To be fair, Clarence Thomas did not write an opinion in this new case Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative, Integration and Immigration and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary, which had 5 opinions, only one of which was a dissenting opinion. Thomas joined Justice Scalia's opinion, which deserves a separate post. I'm just calling attention to Thomas because Lithwick is ignoring him, even as she patronizes those who act like it's passé to acknowledge that you don’t know as much as you thought you knew about race. Those other people need to acknowledge that they don't know as much as they think, but the things not known surely don't include the things Clarence Thomas has been writing — notably in Grutter v. Bollinger, which begins with a passage from Frederick Douglass, who was born 90 years before Thurgood Marshall.
Maybe the outcry at Sotomayor’s reflections on why race and racism still matter is merely a function of her tone. Nobody likes to be told they are out of touch with reality, even if they work in a palace and surround themselves with silent, sock-footed clerks. Or maybe it was different when Marshall lectured them, or browbeat them into changing language in written opinions because he was a man. Or maybe they endured it because he was funny. Or maybe, and I suspect this is it, they could hear him because he was a part of the era that the majority of the current court wants to relegate to history: Marshall argued Brown. But Brown solved racism!There's no reason to suspect that anyone on the Court thinks "Brown solved racism!" Does anyone anywhere think that?
Maybe Marshall was allowed to talk about race because Marshall lived in a time the current justices still acknowledge was an era of “real” racism. Which in their view ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Or maybe Marshall was allowed to speak so pointedly and openly about the intersection of race, law and his own life, precisely because, as Justice White explained it, White and his colleagues were well aware of all that they “did not know due to the limitations of our experience.” But maybe the time of acknowledging that you don’t know as much as you thought you knew about race is over. Because, seemingly, and by popular acclaim, racism itself is over.Where is this "popular acclaim"? Stressing the importance of "reality," Lithwick invents a cartoon picture of how other people think. The issue that divides the Court isn't whether or not racial problems persist, but whether the government should be classifying human beings by race as it goes about trying to solve the various problems and risks making them worse.
And Lithwick never even mentions Clarence Thomas, who would seem to offer a second basis for comparison. How have his colleagues received the things he's written that disrupted the way they wanted to think about race? To be fair, Clarence Thomas did not write an opinion in this new case Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative, Integration and Immigration and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary, which had 5 opinions, only one of which was a dissenting opinion. Thomas joined Justice Scalia's opinion, which deserves a separate post. I'm just calling attention to Thomas because Lithwick is ignoring him, even as she patronizes those who act like it's passé to acknowledge that you don’t know as much as you thought you knew about race. Those other people need to acknowledge that they don't know as much as they think, but the things not known surely don't include the things Clarence Thomas has been writing — notably in Grutter v. Bollinger, which begins with a passage from Frederick Douglass, who was born 90 years before Thurgood Marshall.
What happened to Robert De Niro's iPhone?
Via HuffPo. I've got to put this below the fold because I don't like something that moves on its own on the front page. You've got to click the speaker icon for the sound. It's worth it. I watched it about 20 times, mesmerized.
Cloven Bundy.
Are people deliberately making devil jokes or is this a case of the unconscious machinery of spellchecking spitting out wit?
My lassitubularity on the occasion of the phony coulrophobic reaction to the redesigning of Ronald McDonald's costume.
The Washington Post collects commentary:
2. The old old comedy topic of clowns being scary is predictably recycled in the commentary about the new costume. I find that sad. Or creepy! And scary! I have coulrophobiaphobia — a fear of the fear of clowns. Look: Here's a whole Wikipedia article on the subject of coulrophobia, with citations to the relevant episodes of "The Simpsons" and "Seinfeld" and "Frasier" and the Stephen King book on the topic and the "internet meme" and the Alice Cooper song and the 2009 movie "Zombieland." Noted. A thousand times.
3. I almost clicked on the link on "manpris" — which my reader's mind pronounced as "man priss" — then I saw it was a portmanteau of "man" and "capris," obviously pronounced "man preeze," and I was spared the trouble of clicking, and I needed to be spared, because I'm experiencing internet lassitude — let's portmanteau that into lassitube — this morning. Is there anything new this morning — new and interesting? What if that question itself becomes horribly old and boring? Then you're suffering from lassitube, and even the coinage lassitube is unutterably dull.
4. Now, pull up your short or long pants and get to work.
5. Why are you still here? Why am I adding to this numbered list? I wanted you to know that I found it vaguely interesting — moderately anti-lassitubular — that I'd typo'd "The Washington Pose" as I wrote thispose post.
Mr. McDonald’s old mustard-yellow jumpsuit and candy cane sleeves are out."Now he’s sporting a pair of 'manpris,' a red blazer and a bowtie.1. I don't really care what Ronald McDonald is wearing these days — couldn't even remember what his old getup was — but apparently some people do.
2. The old old comedy topic of clowns being scary is predictably recycled in the commentary about the new costume. I find that sad. Or creepy! And scary! I have coulrophobiaphobia — a fear of the fear of clowns. Look: Here's a whole Wikipedia article on the subject of coulrophobia, with citations to the relevant episodes of "The Simpsons" and "Seinfeld" and "Frasier" and the Stephen King book on the topic and the "internet meme" and the Alice Cooper song and the 2009 movie "Zombieland." Noted. A thousand times.
3. I almost clicked on the link on "manpris" — which my reader's mind pronounced as "man priss" — then I saw it was a portmanteau of "man" and "capris," obviously pronounced "man preeze," and I was spared the trouble of clicking, and I needed to be spared, because I'm experiencing internet lassitude — let's portmanteau that into lassitube — this morning. Is there anything new this morning — new and interesting? What if that question itself becomes horribly old and boring? Then you're suffering from lassitube, and even the coinage lassitube is unutterably dull.
4. Now, pull up your short or long pants and get to work.
5. Why are you still here? Why am I adding to this numbered list? I wanted you to know that I found it vaguely interesting — moderately anti-lassitubular — that I'd typo'd "The Washington Pose" as I wrote this
April 24, 2014
"Given his grand claims regarding what American freedom means, it is inadequate to call him historically illiterate or misinformed about the conditions of slavery..."
"... the constant, brutal violence that reinforced it and the way it robbed people of the ability to make the most basic choices about their lives...."
He talks about freedom and “ancestral” rights, but grazes his cattle on public land—our land, not his homestead—without paying his share.... Too many conservatives have been charmed by the notion of a cowboy singing the anthem on horseback and threatening to turn guns on bureaucrats. They can’t just proclaim themselves stunned here....
"Fashion is reactionary... If it’s long, it gets short, and if it’s short, it gets long."
We've been having "a close-to-the-body moment." "The shrunken silhouette has been dominant... The teeny jacket and impossibly narrow sleeves. It’s logical there is a change."
Look out! Everything's about to get huge!
My favorite theme in humor has to do with playing with size — mixing up big and small. And my favorite thing about fashion is humor. So I am up for this!
What's the most interesting/coolest oversized/undersized thing you've ever worn — not as a costume or to horse around but as actual clothing that was part of your wardrobe?
Look out! Everything's about to get huge!
My favorite theme in humor has to do with playing with size — mixing up big and small. And my favorite thing about fashion is humor. So I am up for this!
What's the most interesting/coolest oversized/undersized thing you've ever worn — not as a costume or to horse around but as actual clothing that was part of your wardrobe?
Scott Walker named one of the world's 100 most influential people (according to Time).
And the write-up is by Chris Christie (who's not).
ADDED: I don't know if Christie wrote that or just agreed to put his name on it, because from what I've seen so far on this Time list, it's all written in that flat, simple tone that assumes the reader has a mental age of about 10. For example: "Holder uses his power to defend Americans’ freedoms and thus our values of democracy and justice."
AND: "How much suffering can human beings tolerate? Unless he starts taking care of his people, the young generalissimo may be the first Kim to find out." And here's "Madeleine Albright" on Putin: "History is filled with aggressors who triumphed for a moment. Then failed." And: "Gray Davis" on Jerry Brown: "No longer the new kid, he’s now the adult in the room — the wise steward of our state’s resources." And: "If Kirsten Gillibrand wants to be a rock star, she’ll be a rock star. But she’d make a great President."
[Scott Walker's] battle to bring fairness to the taxpayers through commonsense reform of the public-sector collective-bargaining laws brought him scorn from the special interests and a recall election. Despite these threats, he stood tall. His reforms have brought tax reductions to his citizens and economic growth to his state. They have allowed public workers the freedom to choose whether to belong to a union. They have made Wisconsin a better place to live and work.Doesn't that read like it was written for a children's newspaper?
ADDED: I don't know if Christie wrote that or just agreed to put his name on it, because from what I've seen so far on this Time list, it's all written in that flat, simple tone that assumes the reader has a mental age of about 10. For example: "Holder uses his power to defend Americans’ freedoms and thus our values of democracy and justice."
AND: "How much suffering can human beings tolerate? Unless he starts taking care of his people, the young generalissimo may be the first Kim to find out." And here's "Madeleine Albright" on Putin: "History is filled with aggressors who triumphed for a moment. Then failed." And: "Gray Davis" on Jerry Brown: "No longer the new kid, he’s now the adult in the room — the wise steward of our state’s resources." And: "If Kirsten Gillibrand wants to be a rock star, she’ll be a rock star. But she’d make a great President."
"UW-Madison professors propose making first two years of college free."
"Students could have their first two years of public university paid for by the federal government, according to a plan proposed by University of Wisconsin-Madison professors."
That's the headline and the first sentence of a news article. Somehow that pairing made me laugh.
That's the headline and the first sentence of a news article. Somehow that pairing made me laugh.
Madison’s Urban Design Commission approves non-code-compliant "Tiny Houses."
Because the code-violations come from the heart.
What would Camille Paglia say about Camilla the Duchess's brother?
1. Here's Camille Paglia singing the praises of alcohol. Specifically, she's arguing for lowering the drinking age from 21, which I completely agree with, and I even agree with most of what she says about alcohol's superiority to marijuana (because of its long tradition and its enrichment of the great pleasures of food and conversation). But Paglia goes pretty far. ("Exhilaration, ecstasy and communal vision are the gifts of Dionysus, god of wine. Alcohol’s enhancement of direct face-to-face dialogue is precisely what is needed by today’s technologically agile generation....") It's not that she says nothing about drunkenness. (In fact, she stresses the big problem with the 21-year drinking age: It pushes young people into destructive house-party drinking.) In fact, I've got to say, I pretty much agree with everything she says — including the worry that marijuana "saps energy and willpower and can produce physiological feminization in men."
2. Here's Mark Shand, brother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, dead from a door — dead as a doornail, nailed by a door. He was drinking in the posh bar of the Gramercy Park Hotel, which he had to exit, through a revolving door, to smoke a cigarette — the long history of drinking and smoking having been disrupted by the demand that smokers take their disapproved-of habit outdoors. Having left through the revolving door and smoked, it was time to return to his drink, and he never got back in. Somehow the drinking and smoking and door revolving sent him falling onto the sidewalk, forever separated from that drink, gone for good. Is drinking to blame? The law that separates drinking from smoking? The revolution of the door? One more British death in an American revolution. Whatever happened to American freedom, within which a man with a drink and needing a smoke could stay put in his chair and not have to test his alcohol-laden skills in the dangerous door?
2. Here's Mark Shand, brother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, dead from a door — dead as a doornail, nailed by a door. He was drinking in the posh bar of the Gramercy Park Hotel, which he had to exit, through a revolving door, to smoke a cigarette — the long history of drinking and smoking having been disrupted by the demand that smokers take their disapproved-of habit outdoors. Having left through the revolving door and smoked, it was time to return to his drink, and he never got back in. Somehow the drinking and smoking and door revolving sent him falling onto the sidewalk, forever separated from that drink, gone for good. Is drinking to blame? The law that separates drinking from smoking? The revolution of the door? One more British death in an American revolution. Whatever happened to American freedom, within which a man with a drink and needing a smoke could stay put in his chair and not have to test his alcohol-laden skills in the dangerous door?
Sotomayor's "race-sensitive admissions policies" is not just a euphemism for "affirmative action."
James Taranto notes. It's a euphemism for a euphemism. Which puts Sotomayor on "what cognitive scientist Steven Pinker calls the euphemism treadmill."
That song is about sex, not race, but you see my point about one side to an argument/conversation making a claim to sensitivity. There's sensitivity all around. We're all sensitive people, with so much to give....
A more common expression than "race-sensitive admissions policies" — and it must be somewhere on that treadmill journey — is "race-conscious admissions policies." Why "sensitive" instead of "conscious"? "Sensitive" connotes feelings of warmth (and irritability), and "conscious" connotes mental clarity and perception. If they're going to talk about when government may take race into account, judges should be speaking about sharply observed and understood facts about the real world. It's called "strict scrutiny" for a reason. "Sensitivity" suggests a more vaguely sourced intuition about how things ought to be, the very stereotypes and prejudicial impulses that strict scrutiny is supposed to preclude.
A new euphemism is needed because the old one has lost its power to obscure: Its real meaning is too obvious, even though it is unrelated to the literal meanings of either "affirmative" or "action.""We're all sensitive people," as Marvin Gaye sang in the begging-you-to-do-what-I-want song "Let's Get It On." You're sensitive? Well, I'm sensitive too. He's arguing his case to some woman, whom we can only imagine, a woman who's been resisting his sexual action. She's presumably claimed to be very sensitive. That's why there's that line "We're all sensitive people."
Ironically, Sotomayor's new euphemism comes considerably closer than "affirmative action" to being a literal description of the underlying reality. "Admissions policies" is far clearer than "action," and "race-sensitive," unlike "affirmative," at least acknowledges that what's going on has something to do with race.
The word "sensitive" does all the euphemizing work. But it cuts both ways. Defenders of segregation were, in their own way, "sensitive" when it came to race.
That song is about sex, not race, but you see my point about one side to an argument/conversation making a claim to sensitivity. There's sensitivity all around. We're all sensitive people, with so much to give....
A more common expression than "race-sensitive admissions policies" — and it must be somewhere on that treadmill journey — is "race-conscious admissions policies." Why "sensitive" instead of "conscious"? "Sensitive" connotes feelings of warmth (and irritability), and "conscious" connotes mental clarity and perception. If they're going to talk about when government may take race into account, judges should be speaking about sharply observed and understood facts about the real world. It's called "strict scrutiny" for a reason. "Sensitivity" suggests a more vaguely sourced intuition about how things ought to be, the very stereotypes and prejudicial impulses that strict scrutiny is supposed to preclude.
April 23, 2014
"By using a common four-letter term for sexual intercourse... Lawrence was trying to remove the stain of profanity from plain English words."
Writes the NYT in an obituary for Richard H. Hoggart, the cultural historian who was the star witness in a case about the censorship of "Lady Chatterley's Lover." Hoggart testified in 1960 about why D.H. Lawrence wrote the word "fuck" in 1928, and the NYT still won't print the word in 2014.
But the NYT did print the word "fuck" 4 days ago — as I noted here — in the sentence "Fuck Brooklyn!" which is just some dumb thing a basketball team's general manager yelled:
As for the other lady, Chatterley, she asked "But what do you believe in?" and he said:
But the NYT did print the word "fuck" 4 days ago — as I noted here — in the sentence "Fuck Brooklyn!" which is just some dumb thing a basketball team's general manager yelled:
With A list celebrities, including rappers Drake, Jay-Z and Beyonce, occupying courtside seats, an embarrassing technical malfunction and a jaw-dropping expletive delivered by Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri to thousands of frenzied supporters at a pre-game pep rally, the first game of the NBA postseason offered a little bit over everything.Why print "fuck" the hurtful, intentionally brutal slam, and not "fuck" the nonmetaphor, used descriptively, with love and artistic force? Have a rule and stick to it. Your rule could be only sometimes, but what rule would justify "fuck" the sports arena epithet over "fuck" a great author's word choice for which free speech advocates fought governments? Perhaps: "Fuck" is fit to print to vividly convey how wrong it is to yell fuck in front of a lady like Beyonce.
As for the other lady, Chatterley, she asked "But what do you believe in?" and he said:
"Yes, I do believe in something. I believe in being warmhearted. I believe especially in being warm-hearted in love, in fucking with a warm heart. I believe if men could fuck with warm hearts, and the women take it warm-heartedly, everything would come all right. It's all this cold-hearted fucking that is death and idiocy."
"But you don't fuck me cold-heartedly," she protested.
"I don't want to fuck you at all. My heart's as cold as cold potatoes just now.... It's a fact!... Anything for a bit of warm-heartedness. But the women don't like it. Even you don't really like it. You like good, sharp, piercing cold-hearted fucking, and then pretending it's all sugar. Where's your tenderness for me? You're as suspicious of me as a cat is of a dog. I tell you it takes two even to be tender and warm-hearted. You love fucking all right: but you want it to be called something grand and mysterious, just to flatter your own self-importance. Your own self-importance is more to you, fifty times more, than any man, or being together with a man.... I'd rather die than do any more cold-hearted fucking."
"Benghazi attack could have been prevented if US hadn't 'switched sides in the War on Terror' and allowed $500 MILLION of weapons to reach al-Qaeda militants, reveals damning report..."
Reports the British paper The Daily Mail.
Be careful with that... The Daily Mail is part of the chain of commerce conspiracy, identified in the Clinton White House "Conspiracy Commerce" Memo of 1995 (PDF).
Be careful with that... The Daily Mail is part of the chain of commerce conspiracy, identified in the Clinton White House "Conspiracy Commerce" Memo of 1995 (PDF).
An awful lot of what seems like scientific information about nutrition deserves to be called "nutritional folklore."
According to George Johnson, who cites extensive research into cancer that has found "little evidence that fruits and vegetables are protective or that fatty foods are bad." Back in 1997, there was a big authoritative review of over 4,000 studies that pushed green vegetables to prevent lung and stomach cancer, and broccoli, cabbage and brussels sprouts for thyroid and colon cancer. Onions, tomatoes, garlic, carrots and citrus fruits seemed generally helpful in the fight against cancer. But 10 years later, it was all taken back.
The pro-produce advice had relied on interviewing people about what they remembered eating in the past, and the newer, more rigorous studies used "'prospective' protocols, in which the health of large populations was followed in real time." And:
Let me show you this passage I've remembered for a long time, from James Joyce's "Ulysses" (scroll to line 7825):
ADDED: A poll:
AND: What is the environmental cost to producing all these vegetables and trucking and flying them about? What of all the money families spend on vegetables, because they've heard the propaganda, money that could be spent on more satisfying, concentrated protein? What of all the torment we've caused schoolkids giving them lunches they hate that leave them hungry and running for the vending machines for junk food? Where is the science?
The pro-produce advice had relied on interviewing people about what they remembered eating in the past, and the newer, more rigorous studies used "'prospective' protocols, in which the health of large populations was followed in real time." And:
With even the most rigorous studies, it is hard to adjust for what epidemiologists call confounding factors: Assiduous eaters of fruits and vegetables probably weigh less, exercise more often and are vigilant about their health in other ways...All this badgering about eating lots of fruits and vegetables, all the cabbage and broccoli we've been pressured to buy and wash and cut up and cook and choke down! There was never good evidence for it. Obviously, it seemed good to people because it fit what we already thought was supposed to be good. But why?!
***
Let me show you this passage I've remembered for a long time, from James Joyce's "Ulysses" (scroll to line 7825):
Only weggebobbles and fruit.... They say it's healthier. Windandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a bloater. Dreams all night.
ADDED: A poll:
AND: What is the environmental cost to producing all these vegetables and trucking and flying them about? What of all the money families spend on vegetables, because they've heard the propaganda, money that could be spent on more satisfying, concentrated protein? What of all the torment we've caused schoolkids giving them lunches they hate that leave them hungry and running for the vending machines for junk food? Where is the science?
"D’Souza Case Is Political, Lawyer Says."
Headline at the NYT. Excerpt:
[The lawyer, Benjamin] has filed court papers contending that... there was “good reason for concern” that Mr. D’Souza, the author of the best-selling 2010 book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” was “selectively targeted for felony prosecution because of his outspoken, vigorous and politically controversial criticism and condemnation” of the president and his administration.
Mr. Brafman said that a review of similar campaign finance violation cases shows many were typically not referred for felony prosecution and where they were, it often took several years. “The speed with which the authorities responded to the conduct in this case is virtually unprecedented,” he wrote.
Shakespeare's 450th birthday.
It's today, presumably.
How will you celebrate? May I recommend searching for some word — search here — and telling us in the comments what word you searched for and what you found that was interesting? I decided to search for "America," and it appears only once in all of Shakespeare, in "The Comedy of Errors." Dromio is describing a woman whose width is the same as her height, so "she is spherical, like a globe," and he can find all the countries on her body. Antipholus proceeds to ask where various countries are. Ireland, according to Dromio, is "in her buttocks: I found it out by the bogs." Scotland is in the palm of the hand, France is in the forehead, England in the chin, Spain was not seen but felt ("hot in her breath")....
"Where America, the Indies?" asks Antipholus, and Dromio says:
Anyway, America, the nose, seems to be all of the new world, and Spain is sending a fleet of ships to get whatever can be drained out of it. And that's all America was to Shakespeare — a big, pimpled, runny nose... for Spain.
How will you celebrate? May I recommend searching for some word — search here — and telling us in the comments what word you searched for and what you found that was interesting? I decided to search for "America," and it appears only once in all of Shakespeare, in "The Comedy of Errors." Dromio is describing a woman whose width is the same as her height, so "she is spherical, like a globe," and he can find all the countries on her body. Antipholus proceeds to ask where various countries are. Ireland, according to Dromio, is "in her buttocks: I found it out by the bogs." Scotland is in the palm of the hand, France is in the forehead, England in the chin, Spain was not seen but felt ("hot in her breath")....
"Where America, the Indies?" asks Antipholus, and Dromio says:
Oh, sir, upon her nose all o'er embellished withThere's only one more question: "Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?" And the punchline answer is "Oh, sir, I did not look so low."
rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich
aspect to the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole
armadoes of caracks to be ballast at her nose.
Anyway, America, the nose, seems to be all of the new world, and Spain is sending a fleet of ships to get whatever can be drained out of it. And that's all America was to Shakespeare — a big, pimpled, runny nose... for Spain.
Lots of HBO coming to Amazon Prime video streaming.
Unlimited access all of "The Sopranos," "The Wire," "Deadwood," "Rome," "Six Feet Under,""Eastbound & Down," "Enlightened,"and "Flight of the Conchords," lots of comedy specials and miniseries (e.g., "Band of Brothers" and "John Adams") and much more.
If you don't already have Amazon Prime let me recommend using this Amazon Prime link. Like other Amazon links I put up, it let's you make a contribution to this blog without paying more for something you want to buy anyway. I'm genuinely encouraged by the appreciation for this blog readers have shown by using these links. Thanks to everyone.
If you don't already have Amazon Prime let me recommend using this Amazon Prime link. Like other Amazon links I put up, it let's you make a contribution to this blog without paying more for something you want to buy anyway. I'm genuinely encouraged by the appreciation for this blog readers have shown by using these links. Thanks to everyone.
How does Sonia Sotomayor really feel about affirmative action?
Instapundit calls attention to Sonia Sotomayor's dissent in yesterday's Schuette case. He links to James Taranto's "First Among Equals: An Orwellian dissent from a muddled ruling" and to my post "The way to get a concurring opinion out of Chief Justice Roberts is to rewrite his famous aphorism." I'd counted 11 repetitions of the phrase "race matters" within a short segment (4 paragraphs) of Sotomayor's very long dissent, and Instapundit quips: "She also repeats the phrase 'race matters' a lot. But then, it does. It’s how she got her job."
You might think, as I initially did, it's wrong to degrade a particular individual's status by saying they only got it through affirmative action. How many times has Clarence Thomas expressed his outrage at that kind of abuse? But then I happened upon The Washington Post's treatment of the Sotomayor dissent (by Robert Barnes) and saw this:
But — as Barnes detected (combing through the 58-page dissent) — Sotomayor has arrived at an aversion to the term "affirmative action." As Barnes puts it:
What if a Supreme Court Justice, writing an opinion upholding the right to abortion, suddenly announced — in a footnote — that she wasn't going to use the word "abortion" anymore, because "some comprehend" it to mean things she thought were incorrect and distracting? Henceforth, she's only going to call it "reproductive freedom."
I'm sure you can think of other examples to make the point that it's a sign of insecurity in the acceptability of the practice. Imagine a 19th-century judge writing an opinion upholding the right to own slaves and dropping a footnote to say he wasn't going to use the term "slavery" anymore, because it set opponents' minds reeling into thoughts he needed to control. He's only going to refer to it as "our peculiar institution."
So… how does Sonia Sotomayor — the Justice chosen for her empathy — really feel about affirmative action?
You might think, as I initially did, it's wrong to degrade a particular individual's status by saying they only got it through affirmative action. How many times has Clarence Thomas expressed his outrage at that kind of abuse? But then I happened upon The Washington Post's treatment of the Sotomayor dissent (by Robert Barnes) and saw this:
Sotomayor, 59, has spoken extensively about how affirmative action was key to her rise from a public housing project where her parents spoke only Spanish. The search for minorities to diversify student bodies in the 1970s won her invitations and scholarship offers from Ivy League schools she had only just learned existed.So I guess the Instapundit gibe bounces off Sotomayor and hits Clarence Thomas. And why not? Sotomayor is going to vote to uphold affirmative action, even as Thomas consistently votes against it. (Doesn't "vote" look wrong there? Is it too late or too prissy or too unrealistic to say we should scrub "vote" from our speech about the judicial work that's done in group-project form?)
She excelled at Princeton, winning the top undergraduate prize, and went to Yale Law School. But she has drawn diametrically different lessons about the experience than Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s only African American, who said affirmative action cheapened his Yale Law degree.
But — as Barnes detected (combing through the 58-page dissent) — Sotomayor has arrived at an aversion to the term "affirmative action." As Barnes puts it:
She even wrote that she was not going to use the term “affirmative action” because of its connotation of “intentional preferential treatment” such as quotas, because the court has outlawed such practices. Instead, she called it a system of “race-sensitive admissions policies.”She even wrote… What is the function of "even"? Barnes credits Sotomayor with enthusiasm for affirmative action, then encounters her rejection of the term and substitution of a euphemism. The word "even" implies additional enthusiasm, not its opposite. I found that a bit puzzling. Here's the relevant text from Sotomayor's opinion, at footnote 2:
Although the term “affirmative action” is commonly used to describe colleges’ and universities’ use of race in crafting admissions policies, I instead use the term “race-sensitive admissions policies.” Some comprehend the term “affirmative action” as connoting intentional preferential treatment based on race alone—for example, the use of a quota system, whereby a certain proportion of seats in an institution’s incoming class must be set aside for racial minorities; the use of a “points” system, whereby an institution accords a fixed numerical advantage to an applicant because of her race; or the admission of otherwise unqualified students to an institution solely on account of their race. None of this is an accurate description of the practices that public universities are permitted to adopt after this Court’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003) . There, we instructed that institutions of higher education could consider race in admissions in only a very limited way in an effort to create a diverse student body. To comport with Grutter, colleges and universities must use race flexibly, id., at 334, and must not maintain a quota, ibid. And even this limited sensitivity to race must be limited in time, id., at 341–343, and must be employed only after “serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives,” id., at 339. Grutter-compliant admissions plans, like the ones in place at Michigan’s institutions, are thus a far cry from affirmative action plans that confer preferential treatment intentionally and solely on the basis of race.Here is this term — "affirmative action" — composed of 2 very positive words — "affirmative" and "action" — a term that has been used and defended for decades, and Sotomayor decides it's time for a euphemism? She may perseverate for 58 pages, but that backing off from the traditional term of art shows insecurity in the soundness of the position. In fact, going on for 58 pages — longer than the 4 other opinions combined — can also be regarded as a sign of insecurity.
What if a Supreme Court Justice, writing an opinion upholding the right to abortion, suddenly announced — in a footnote — that she wasn't going to use the word "abortion" anymore, because "some comprehend" it to mean things she thought were incorrect and distracting? Henceforth, she's only going to call it "reproductive freedom."
I'm sure you can think of other examples to make the point that it's a sign of insecurity in the acceptability of the practice. Imagine a 19th-century judge writing an opinion upholding the right to own slaves and dropping a footnote to say he wasn't going to use the term "slavery" anymore, because it set opponents' minds reeling into thoughts he needed to control. He's only going to refer to it as "our peculiar institution."
So… how does Sonia Sotomayor — the Justice chosen for her empathy — really feel about affirmative action?
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