Althouse
A collection of Tuesday thoughts.
I stayed away from the law school today. The weather looked a little threatening, and I had some exams to grade at home. I had a 1 o'clock appointment that got me out of the house, and later I went shopping for the perfect reading chair, which I didn't find, and stopped on the way home at the Starbucks on University Avenue, with my bagful of exams. Starbucks had a big sign near the door pushing its summer drinks, but I got a cappucino and picked a comfy chair only to realize they had the fireplace going full blast. It was a bit much. I moved to a cooler nook and graded some exams, then went home, curled up in my home comfy chair and watched American Idol, took a hot bath, and curled up one last time in bed with my laptop, my remote control, and a novel. That was Tuesday!
Goodbye to Tony Randall.
Tony Randall
has died. I didn't watch the TV show "The Odd Couple" (I stopped watching sitcoms, pretty much, in about 1969), so I looked over the list of
films he was in. I was about to say, I don't like any of them! What a lot of bad movies! Then I saw
this. That was good and his character was hilarious. He was always funny on David Letterman too, where, I see, he appeared more than anyone.
New Interpretation of Soprano's Dream.
Now I've rewatched the episode of The Sopranos
I wrote about yesterday, and I have also been reminded that they are still doing another season (something I'd previously read they were not). Since there is to be a final set of 10 episodes next year, that affects what this season's pay off can be. It doesn't mean Tony can't get killed, though. It's shocking to kill off a lead character early (Psycho is the classic example), which might make it a good plot idea. Godfather II went on and was quite great without Marlon Brando. Also, since Gandolfini has been troublesome, that makes killing his character compelling for non-plot reasons. Let Buscemi take over!
So here's my interpretation of the dream and new prediction. In the dream, two key things happen to Tony. First, he's being instructed to do something (the phone call at the beginning, the constant pointing), which appears to be to kill someone. Second, he's constantly experiencing impotence (he doesn't have a gun, the gun malfunctions, Christopher takes his Toblerone, he loses his teeth, the coach who's chewing him out has a big cigar). I think the person to kill, based especially on the way he is driven up to the house in the car of death, is Carmela. When he is in the house with Carmela, he's on a horse, which she disapproves of. His being on the big horse obviously represents having sex (there are several other incidents in the dream that combine riding a horse and having sex). The horse is another one of the many phallic symbols in the dream. But here he is successfully riding the horse and approaching his wife: but she turns him away. In his real life, his horse was burned to death, and in this episode, before the dream, his girlfriend is badly burned. So the horse represents both sex and death. One could say the dream means he must either kill or get back together with Carmela. In the dream, there is also the idea of another man doing the murder instead of him. His cousin (Tony/Steve Buscemi) arrives at a scene and shoots a man before Tony Soprano can, so I think there is a good chance that cousin Tony will arrive at the scene and kill Carmela before Tony is able to. Tony will have a failure of will, as he had 20 years ago, when his impotence left his cousin to do a crime without him, to his endless shame. His failure as a man is tightly interwoven with the story of cousin Tony, so the key role in the end for cousin Tony makes sense.
The appearance of Annette Bening in the dream reinforces the prediction that Tony will try but fail to kill Carmela. Bening appears in the dream as herself. Other movie stars appear in the dream, but on a TV screen, in their roles--most notably, Gary Cooper, in High Noon, who is the model of a man who has some killing to do and does it. Bening appears in person, at the restaurant, and interacts with Tony. Now, clearly, Bening is most associated with the movie American Beauty, which has a marital breakup at its center and ends with the shooting death of the husband. In the end of American Beauty, Bening drives up to the house with a gun--she's got herself a gun--yet it is someone else who gets there first and does the shooting. Now this might mean that Carmela is going to be the one who tries to kill Tony, but I think all of the impotence symbolism in the dream suggests Tony will go to kill Carmela and cousin Tony will end up shooting her. It's hard to believe Carmela will die, but it would be very shocking, and there could be a great death scene. Emmy for Edie Falco. Oh, what the hell: let Tony die too (or instead). The new season: it's all about Steve Buscemi, the new boss, who hung an I'm-the-boss plaque on his wall in this episode.
Tennessee v. Lane comment #2: Justices Scalia and Ginsburg present an old conundrum.
There is an interesting face-off between Justices Scalia and Ginsburg in today's opinion. Justice Scalia
is critical of the §5 (Fourteenth Amendment) test stated in the cases (the requirement that the statute be a "congruent and proportional" remedy to state violations of Fourteenth Amendment rights):
[L]ike all such flabby tests, [the Court's §5 doctrine] is a standing invitation to judicial arbitrariness and policy-driven decisionmaking. Worse still, it casts this Court in the role of Congress’s taskmaster. Under it, the courts (and ultimately this Court) must regularly check Congress’s homework to make sure that it has identified sufficient constitutional violations to make its remedy congruent and proportional. As a general matter, we are ill advised to adopt or adhere to constitutional rules that bring us into constant conflict with a coequal branch of Government. And when conflict is unavoidable, we should not come to do battle with the United States Congress armed only with a test (“congruence and proportionality”) that has no demonstrable basis in the text of the Constitution and cannot objectively be shown to have been met or failed. As I wrote for the Court in an earlier case, “low walls and vague distinctions will not be judicially defensible in the heat of interbranch conflict.”
He proposes a test that would permit §5 statutes that governed how Fourteenth Amendment rights are enforced, not statutes proscribing additional conduct, beyond what the Constitution standing alone proscribes, except with respect to particular states that are shown to have a "history of relevant constitutional violations.”
Justice Ginburg
responds:
It seems to me not conducive to a harmonious federal system to require Congress, before it exercises authority under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, essentially to indict each State for disregarding the equal-citizenship stature of persons with disabilities. [Here, she cites Scalia's proposal.] Members of Congress are understandably reluctant to condemn their own States as constitutional violators, complicit in maintaining the isolated and unequal status of persons with disabilities. I would not disarm a National Legislature for resisting an adversarial approach to lawmaking better suited to the courtroom.
So, both Justices indulge in a little institutional analysis. Justice Scalia is worried about the limitations of courts: they need clear rules to maintain the will to stand up to Congress and the appearance of principled legitimacy. Justice Ginsburg is worried about the limitations of the legislature: it won't do well perceiving and calling attention to constitutional violations. Ah, it's the old conundrum: are you more concerned about a court tinging over into behavior more associated with a legislature or a legislature asked to behave in a way that seems to resemble a court's work?
I suppose if you think Congress, unconstrained, is likely to do a good job of identifying social problems and designing good remedies, you will want to give Congress more room to maneuver—especially if you don't think there is anything particularly positive that the states might do with their court-protected autonomy. But if you are more skeptical about Congress, you won't mind making its work encroaching on the states quite hard and enhancing the ability of the courts to protect state autonomy.
If you can't take a strong across-the-board position about such matters, however, you should like the congruence and proportionality test the Court actually applies: it's flexible enough to allow the decisionmaker to find a way to validate the §5 statutes it finds most appealing. Just be prepared to hear carping about " judicial arbitrariness and policy-driven decisionmaking." (I'm sure Justice O'Connor is.)
Tennessee v. Lane comment #1: Rehnquist can't complain.
The Supreme Court decided today that Congress has the power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to permit individuals to sue the states for damages if they fail to provide access to judicial proceedings, as required by the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. The 5-person majority consisted of four members of the Court who always vote against state sovereign immunity (Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer) plus Justice O'Connor. I expect to read press reports saying that somehow O'Connor is governed by fuzzy emotions that caused her to abandon her usual pro-state stance and find in favor of the plaintiff who was forced to crawl up a staircase to attend a judicial proceeding. But in fact, Justice O'Connor was voting for the same position she took in Hibbs, last summer's Familiy and Medical Leave Act case, which was written by Chief Justice Rehnquist. In Hibbs, Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas dissented. Today, the Chief Justice joins the Hibbs dissenters and even writes the principal dissent. But his words ring awfully hollow after the position he took in Hibbs.
Justice Stevens, writing for the majority today, is quite right to throw the Chief's own opinion back in his face.
We upheld the FMLA as a valid exercise of Congress’ §5 power to combat unconstitutional sex discrimination, even though there was no suggestion that the State’s leave policy was adopted or applied with a discriminatory purpose that would render it unconstitutional. ... We approved the family-care leave provision of the FMLA as valid §5 legislation based primarily on evidence of disparate provision of parenting leave, little of which concerned unconstitutional state conduct. ...
Now Rehnquist asserts that "the FMLA was 'narrowly targeted' to remedy widespread gender discrimination in the availability of family leave," but little if any of that gender discrimination amounted to a violation of a constitutional right (as the right against sex discrimination is delineated in the case law). Before Hibbs, it wasn't enough that there was a serious social problem that Congress had undertaken to remedy: it had to have a remedy framed as a cure for the violation of a constitutional right. The Chief Justice tried then and now to portray Hibbs as preserving the §5 test applied in the Court's earlier cases, but it didn't, as Justice Kennedy amply demonstrated in Hibbs. Since Rehnquist's own opinion in Hibbs took the bite out of the §5 doctrine, he has no basis to complain about what the majority did today, which was to see what really happened in Hibbs.
Gay marriage message of the day.
Here.
Those moral-superiority feminists and the leverage they provide.
Barbara Ehrenreich addresses the topic that it seems everyone will need to talk about forever: the assumptions of feminism and the reality of women in the military. She
writes in the LA Times (link via
A&L; Daily):
Even those people we might have thought were impervious to shame, like the secretary of Defense, admit that the photos of abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison turned their stomachs.
The photos did something else to me, as a feminist: They broke my heart. I had no illusions about the U.S. mission in Iraq — whatever exactly it is — but it turns out that I did have some illusions about women.
The stomach/heart contrast may have some (slight) literary merit, but it is quite wrong to portray the nonfeminist photograph viewers as affected only in their stomachs. Many people who were not focusing on the question of women at all felt great pain in the loftier organ. Even if they didn’t think “how could women do this?” they surely thought “how could Americans do this?” “This is not America” has been the key idea expressed by members of the Bush administration.
Ehrenreich writes that “A certain kind of feminism, or perhaps I should say a certain kind of feminist naiveté, died in Abu Ghraib,” but it is quite clear from her article that she never subscribed to this kind of feminism--“a feminism that saw men as the perpetual perpetrators, women as the perpetual victims and male sexual violence against women as the root of all injustice.” She ties this naïve feminism to the pursuit of equality, as if those who think the basic goal of feminism is equality also believe that women are morally superior to men. She assumes those who favor equality do so because they want to reform institutions and believe women, in their superiorty, will bring reform by their magical presence. It
would be naive to think that, but in fact, most people who favor the equality version of feminism (in other words, most Americans), favor it as a matter of simple fairness to the individual. We believe it’s wrong to discriminate based on sex! Thinking she has swept equality feminism aside--Abu Ghraib destroyed it!--Ehrenreich fancies herself in a position to replace it with the feminism that is entirely subsumed into an ambitious political agenda. [ADDED ON REREADING: This agenda is, in Ehrenreich's words "the struggles for peace and social justice and against imperialist and racist arrogance."]
What we need is a tough new kind of feminism with no illusions. Women do not change institutions simply by assimilating into them, only by consciously deciding to fight for change. We need a feminism that teaches a woman to say no — not just to the date rapist or overly insistent boyfriend but, when necessary, to the military or corporate hierarchy within which she finds herself.
In short, we need a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate into the institutions that men have created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert them.
To cite an old, and far from naive, feminist saying: "If you think equality is the goal, your standards are too low." It is not enough to be equal to men, when the men are acting like beasts. It is not enough to assimilate. We need to create a world worth assimilating into.
This is not a new version of feminism—as the existence of an old saying shows—but the same expropriation of the power of feminism in the service of political goals that are not very appealing at all to the many people who easily support equality feminism and can easily continue to do so despite the role of women at Abu Ghraib. Women are individuals, capable of good and evil, who deserve to be treated fairly as individuals. There is nothing naive about that at all. It strikes me as quite a bit more naive to think that Abu Ghraib is going to excite women about your "infiltrating" and "subverting" project.
UPDATE: Ehrenreich's position is similar to one
discussed here earlier, by
Debra Dickerson.
Drudge judgment... Kaus judgment.
So the president of the Iraqi Governing Counsel is murdered, the Supreme Court comes down with a series of important cases on the power of Congress, and
Drudge thinks the thing to run above the title is the unfortunate picture (with admittedly funny pun) of John Kerry's daughter unwittingly teaching the world's women a lesson in the effect of strong flashbulbs on seemingly opaque fabric. Anyone who thinks she did this on purpose--
such as Mickey Kaus--really needs to talk to more women.
"It's congressional power day!"
So
SCOTUSblog reports: "Three cases in which congressional power was upheld against constitutional challenge, including one case (Hood) in which the SG did not even participate because of his conclusion that the statute was constitutionally indefensible."
The case I'm most interested in is Tennessee v. Lane, involving the Americans With Disabilities Act and the scope of Congress's power under the 14th Amendment (and its power to deprive states of their traditional sovereign immunity and make it possible to sue them for past damages). The Court had begun to constrain the meaning of this power back in the mid-1990s, but it's commitment to a new severity wavered last year in a case (Hibbs) that found the Family and Medical Leave Act within that power. I have an article coming out in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review on the subject (with a lot about Hibbs), and I will have a lot to say about Lane. So come back later for more about Lane (and the other congressional power cases).
The Interpretation of Soprano Dreams.
After a series of episodes tinged with foreshadowing, last night's Sopranos episode was wall-to-wall foreshadowing. But what did it all mean? We have to pick apart the lengthy dream, full of old characters and movie/TV references. This is an episode that you have to talk/read about and then rewatch retalk/reread and write about. HBO really is aiming to take over our lives. I've always found it hard to keep all the secondary male characters straight. I've just never cared enough about the complicated criminal ties, even though I know understanding this sort of thing would make watching the show much more fun as various connections pay off in plot twists. I often read Television Without Pity recaps and think: Oh, so that's why they went there/did that, etc. (
Aaron pays attention, so we don't have to.)
But it's certainly fair to say there will be a bloodbath in the end. These midseason episodes are marking the time until that happens, holding back the tide of blood. The device chosen to mark the time in last night's episode was the long dream, and you don't really have to get suckered into analyzing it and talking about it, as they want you to do. But what better media experience is available to us right now to take our minds off the troubles in the news? Going to see golden actor boys hit each other with their shields in Troy? Wondering if the force that is Diana DeGarmo will really continue to gather strength until the tiny teen defeats the towering Fantasia? I think we might as well speculate about just how the anticipated bloodbath will play out. We know Tony will die in the end, don't we? So the questions really have to do with other things, such as who will kill him. I offered my choices on this subject
last week. Today, I'm just going to predict that the bloodbath will take place in Artie's restaurant.
For one thing, the entire show began years ago with an episode centered on Artie's old restaurant: the dramatic action began with Tony's attempt to help his friend by torching the place to spare him the notoriety of having a mob killing occur there. So it would be nicely symmetrical to have the whole story end with a big mob killing there. For another thing, there have been many dark, foreboding scenes in the restaurant this season, suggesting a spiraling closing-in on the place. And finally, the restaurant was in the dream: Tony arrives late for dinner, loses another tooth, etc. Artie was in the dream car full of dead characters.
My Clue-style prediction: Janice, in the restaurant, with ... oh, I have no good ideas here ... a fork.
Safire isn't trying very hard.
William Safire has a
nice discussion of the word "vitiate," which is a word that no one ought to use in normal communication (my opinion, not Safire's), but which has a term-of-art use in Congress. Bob Woodward's book recounts an incident in which President Bush's chief legislative aid used the word, causing Bush to say, "What the fuck are you talking about, vitiate?" After his discourse on the actual meaning of "vitiate," Safire has this to say about the President's use of the word "fuck" (which I ordinarily never write, but consider importantly quotable in this context):
In his account of this stupefyingly boring episode, Woodward -- who was obviously not present in the room -- quotes the president directly asking Calio what the word meant. In so doing, the reporter has the leader of the world's only superpower using a familiar expletive not in its literal verb sense, but in a slangy nominative similar to the usage that, when broadcast, causes great concern at the Federal Communications Commission. To my knowledge, nobody has called attention to this somewhat startling report, perhaps because the whole of Page 186 is so dull that the usual sharp eyes have glazed over.
Well, Safire is not trying very hard! Just Google the sentence Woodward quotes, and you'll get a
list of mentions, beginning with the rather conspicuous article in Slate. (
"Slate reads Plan of Attack so you don't have to.") The Slate article led me to discuss the quote, back
here. I thought Bush was basically teasing Calio for using a ridiculous jargon word. The use of unnecessily odd words was a subject I
had just commented on, after Justice Scalia used the word "reticulated" in an oral argument, and I saw Bush as someone who shared my opinion: you should have a good reason for using a weird word.
Anyway, Safire does do a good job of showing that Woodward didn't have much of a grasp on the word "vitiate," for reasons that are too boring to write, but have to do with the term-of-art use being "vitiate cloture," not "vitiate the filibuster." Safire goes on to reason that since Woodward must have misquoted re cloture/filibuster, there's a good chance he was wrong about Bush using the word the Times won't print. He's right that if there aren't known examples of Bush using the beastly old word, you ought to have a very strong source for your verbatim quote.
Would it be ethical
to gratuitously insert my political opinions into my NYT Magazine ethics advice column?
Here's ethicist Randy Cohen answering the question whether a fly fisherman who has decided fly fishing is immoral can give his equipment to friends and family:
If you forswore eating sweets, a morally neutral act, you could give away your pie pans. But were you to donate your muddler or soft hackle, your crystal bugger or filibustering condoleezza -- this last may not be an actual fly; I'm a confirmed indoorsman myself -- to other fisherfolk, you'd be abetting what you regard as misconduct.
A profound encounter with individualism.
Kim Young Ok was trained to be a singer in North Korea. The
NYT reports:
She and the other student singers spent years perfecting the same movements and voice, so that the group would perform as "one mind, one body."
"The ideal," she said, "was to see one million people in a chorus singing the same song without a mistake.
"I think it's possible only in North Korea because we were trained since such a young age. It takes years to learn to smile the same way, to tilt the head the same way."
She escaped to South Korea, where she found a small ensemble to perform with ( "It's impossible for any North Korean artist to perform alone"):
In the North, her audiences were captive and she performed, she said, for honor. In the South, a foreign element - money - came into the equation.
"If our group is to survive here, we can't do anything without money, though, of course, money can't be our objective," she said before the concert here. "It became a crisis for me. I thought that only when our group is good enough will audiences pay to see us. So I felt I have to make extra efforts to survive." ...
"In South Korea, the audiences are spontaneous," she said. "If they don't like it, they'll just walk out. It they like it, they'll show their emotions. In North Korea, the audiences are mobilized, so they will clap systematically. They won't show their individual feelings, since to do that in the North is considered chaotic. In the South, the audiences show exactly what they are feeling at the moment. So I prefer performing here."
This is a very profound encounter with individualism. According to the article, though, the performing North Koreans, singing their traditional songs, seem quite strange to young South Koreans. A teenager--sounding like a character in
Ghost World--comments: "It's funny ... This is hilarious."
The gay marriage amendment predictably fizzles.
Back in February, there was a lot of talk about amending the Constitution to stave off gay marriage. At the time, I
wrote that there was no way the Constitution was going to be amended for this purpose and got into a few heated discussions with people who disagreed. My assertion was based on the extreme difficulty of amending the Constitution coupled with a belief that ordinary Americans will not like the idea of taking action against a group that has historically suffered discrimination. Here's what I said then:
[E]ven though the amendment is designed to deprive gay rights proponents of something they seek, the amendment effort provides them with new opportunities to portray the opposition in a negative light. I think Americans who have not taken sides or who may feel a bit shocked by what is happening in San Francisco will balk at the idea of an exclusionary amendment in the Constitution. The all-powerful moderate Americans will be affected by the argument that it's wrong to actively exclude the underdog and it's wrong to put something negative in the Constitution.
Today's NYT has a front-page article
detailing the "tepid response" to the amendment among the very churchgoers who were supposedly going to "revolt" against President Bush if he didn't back the amendment. At the time, Bush
made a brief statement backing the amendment but distancing himself from the bitter, angry tone of its proponents and asking people to show "kindness and good will and decency." Although people who didn't like Bush in the first place took the opportunity to denounce him—Rosie O'Donnell
called his comments "vile and vicious and hateful"—I thought at the time that he was not interested in making this his cause. He has some feeling for conservative Christians, but he did not show any interest in expressing hostility toward a discriminated-against group. In that, he really had more in common with most conservative Christians than did the church leaders who pushed for the amendment. Those church leaders, according to today's Times article are "surprised and disappointed" by their parishioners' lack of interest in fighting off gay marriage. The church leaders now "concede that [the amendment] appears all but dead in Congress for this election year."
I hope people who believed gay marriage would work as a powerful wedge issue in the campaign will now acknowledge how wrong they were and take back any statements about how eager conservative Christians were to oppress gay people.
[O]pponents of gay marriage say they are puzzling over why such a volatile cultural issue is not spurring more rank-and-file conservative Christians to rise up in support of the amendment. They are especially frustrated, they say, because opinion polls show that a large majority of voters oppose gay marriage….
Some conservatives warn that the Christian leaders rallying behind the amendment may now face a loss of credibility. Their influence with evangelical believers is a subject of keen interest in Washington, in part because the Bush campaign has made ensuring their turnout at the polls a top priority. …
Gay rights groups argue that social conservatives in Washington overestimated the level of anxiety about gay marriage among their supporters. "Other issues are far more important to most Americans, including evangelicals — issues like the economy, jobs, health care, the war in Iraq," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
It's more than just that Americans are distracted by other issues. Gay marriage is actually the kind of issue that people would engage with if they really cared. Foreman is just bringing up the laundry list of issues Democrats want to talk about. I'd like to see people like Foreman acknowledge that ordinary Americans, including evangelicals and social conservatives, do not like the idea of excluding or discriminating against gay people. They may resist doing positive things, but they aren't interested in taking negative actions.
The Times article continues:
The amendment's backers contend that the reason people are not responding more vocally is that many grass-roots conservatives do not yet understand how same-sex marriages affect them personally.
Yeah, well, and they never will. People are showing their essential decency as they fail to "understand" it. They instinctively reject it. If they spent more time intellectually engaging with the complexities of the argument—which they won't, of course—they still wouldn't "understand" it, because it is simply not coherent or compelling enough to win over people who begin with the intuitive sense that it isn't very decent or fair to amend the Constitution to exclude gay people from marriage.
"The thing that we keep focusing on is, there is no place that people have voted for same-sex marriage," said Gary Bauer, a social conservative who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.
This should not be a source of puzzlement for the amendment's supporters. Ordinary people don't want to do something positive, but they still won't do anything negative. It is a mistake in understanding human nature to think that not taking positive action reveals an interest in taking a negative action. It's not just that inertia is a powerful force; it is that most Americans take a tolerant, live-and-let-live attitude. They might not want to help the needy and oppressed all that much, but you can't get them excited about hurting them.
Adding comments.
I decided to try the comments function. I have had a lot of reasons for not turning this function on, but for no particular reason, I just decided I wanted comments. So go ahead and comment, even on the old ones. Blogger sends out an email when there is a comment, so if you decide to comment on an old one, I'll see it.
Hey, Nina's in Paris!
Now, I'm jealous. What a warm familiar place! Maybe it is, as she says, like Madison.
Blog fiction.
It will be interesting to see if novels can be successfully presented in the form of blogs. Remember when hypertext novels seemed like they might be important? Does anyone care about them now? There must be a lot of blogs that convey made-up stories about the blogger's life, with the blogger being a fictional first-person narrator. I Googled "fiction blog" and came up with a recent article in the Guardian, which included
this:
Blogs are now so familiar that print writers are imitating them. An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil, the fourth novel by Canadian author Jim Munroe takes the form of a blog roommatefromhell.net written by a woman worried that her Goth flatmate is genuinely demonic. Munroe was tempted to make fun of blogging's stylistic tics. "But I tried to stay away from broader humour to look at how the character, a woman in her early 30s, uses the blog to explore her need to be public and private at the same time."
Appropriately enough, when the novel comes out in the US and Canada in September, Munroe will post the 100 entries that make up the story, one a day, on a real blog. He's also planning to add photos and links to fake sites connected to the story. "There'll also be an Is She or Isn't She? feature, where readers can vote on whether the roommate is, in fact, a demon. Depending on how the vote goes, I'll be writing and posting a bonus story that won't be in the print version."
Munroe's novel shows how blogs have become part of the cultural landscape. Rob Wittig thinks that blog fiction will become similarly popular. "I can easily see blog fiction becoming part of everyday computer-literate life, especially for the twentysomething generation. So much of their social life is being lived in messages already." Others suggest it will take a while for things to develop. The personal diary seems to work well in blog form at the moment, says Paul Ford. "But I don't think we have any way of knowing, just yet, what other sorts of stories are going to work. It's still too new."
So maybe novel-writing will end up where it started: in epistolary form, published in installments.
A sidenote: according to
Munroe's website, he's going to be appearing in Madison soon, at
"the world's only feminist science fiction convention."
UPDATE: My battery got too low at the café where I was writing that, so I didn't get to say what I had to say. So let me say it now. What I want from blog fiction is
not a traditional print writer trying to get in on the blog action by breaking a novel up into a mere 100 entries, even if it includes a poll about what ending you want (like the movie of
Clue). (Plus, please don't bore me with the following phrases: "cultural landscape," "computer-literate life," "twentysomething generation.") Good fiction blogging would involve several fictional characters, each with their own blog, linking to each other, discussing various fictional events in their lives, perhaps along with interesting other commentary on real world events. It would have to go on for years, like a comic strip that you read daily, and would contain thousands of entries.
ONE MORE THING: "Munroe was tempted to make fun of blogging's stylistic tics." Translation: Munroe doesn't care enough about blogging to have any usable ideas about how to satirize bloggers.
Standing out in a "noneccentric, nonsarcastic way."
So what did all those elite boy's school kids think of John Kerry when he was 16? From a
good long article in the NYT:
"I think hatred is too strong a word ... Loathing is too strong a word. He may have seemed a little calculating to some people, and perhaps to me as well at the time, but he wanted to be liked. He may have just been a little more obvious about it. Not bad training for a politician. He wanted recognition, and in a place like that, anybody who did stand out in a noneccentric, nonsarcastic way, some people might be a little suspicious of."
The trials of being a not rich enough, not Protestant, not Republican, and openly serious about politics.
Small-time anti-Bush politics in Madison.
State Street is teeming with visitors as well as locals this Saturday after graduation. Is there any campaigning going on here in this famous hotbed of political activity? Why, yes. The Boot Bush Guy is back.
You can buy a button to display proudly on your person.
And here we see the pro-Kerry effort.
A weasel seeks shade.
Biscuits produce Apple.
Well, I guess all those
biscuits Gwenyth Paltrow ate while pregnant must have really worked because she
supersized that baby: it came out weighing 9 pounds, 11 ounces. And she named the baby Apple, so let the joking begin. I wonder what computer this child will choose when the time comes?
Her husband Chris Martin described the process as "a long labor." Ending with a Caesarean section, one assumes, given that size baby and that size mother. If it's a C-section, say it's a C-section. Don't do
what Kate Winslet did. She recently confessed:
I've never talked about this—I've actually gone to great pains to cover it up. But Mia was an emergency C-section. I just said that I had a natural birth because I was so completely traumatized by the fact that I hadn't given birth. I felt like a complete failure. My whole Me, I'd been told I had great childbearing hips. There's this thing amongst women in the world that if you can handle childbirth, you can handle anything. I had never handled childbirth, and I felt like, in some way that I couldn't join that "powerful women's club." So it was an amazing feeling having Joe naturally, vaginally. Fourteen hours with no drugs at all, but then I had to have an epidural because I was so tired. I honestly thought I'd never be able to do it. It was an incredible birth. It laid all the ghosts to rest. It was really triumphant.
"Great childbearing hips" is probably not a compliment ever aimed at Paltrow. It seems unlikely that 9 pounds, 11 ounces exited "vaginally." Bragging about natural childbirth is forgivable, but insufferable. I love the "no drugs for me at all ... until I took the drugs" preening and the whole "my hips ... my vagina" attitude, but it's really awfully lame. And it gave her an "amazing feeling"--"vaginally"--which sounds a little too much like part of your sex life.
Why the triumphalism? One way or the other, that baby is coming out. You will be there, you will endure it, but is there an accomplishment worth mentioning? Do you get an A if you escaped the knife and the drugs, a B if you took the drugs, a B+ if you took drugs only in the end, and a C if you got a C-section? Is that why they call it a C-section? Oh, and you get a D if you had that C-section with general anaesthesia? Competitive, comparative childbirth is unseemly. We go through what we go through, and very little of it reflects any particular virtue on our part. Spare me the preening, the bragging, and the sentimental goo.
ONE MORE THING: Just to state the obvious, to complete the grading scale: who gets an F for her childbearing efforts? Well, you should know by now. Who are the least eligible for the "powerful women club," the ones who
really can't "handle childbirth," who really lack "childbearing hips," who
really can't "do it"? They are the millions of women who have died in childbirth. See why it's unseemly to be competitive about how well you did?
"Haunted."
I read some of the reader opinions at the link for the novel in the previous post. You always have to wonder, reading those things, whether they are written by friends or relatives of the author (though the book really did sound good as described on the radio).
Ever notice how often a book is called "haunting"? Two out of eight customer reviews at that link called the book "haunting." It seems any time people actually like a book, they are
haunted by it. That's rather disturbing. You wouldn't read the book at all if you knew you weren't going to like it. But then you like it and it dogs you in some eerie, scary way.
"Haunt" ought to be a strong word. My favorite use of the word is in the movie Wuthering Heights, when
Laurence Olivier says "Haunt me, Cathy!" He doesn't mean he'd like a poignant memory of her to linger. He really means he wants her ghost to haunt him.
...I know that ghosts have wandered on the Earth. Be with me always. Take any form. Drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this dark alone where I cannot find you. I cannot live without my life. I cannot die without my soul.
That's haunt. I love that movie scene, but let me give you the
original Emily Bronte text too:
"Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered DO haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!"
The screenplay stayed pretty close to the original. Replacing "Oh, God! it is unutterable!" was the sheer presence of Laurence Olivier. "Dark alone" replaced "abyss," which they couldn't trust people to understand. "I can not live without my life!"--that's great movie-talk, straight out of the original. The second "I cannot live" in the original became "I cannot die" in the screenplay. Interesting! Instead of parallelism and repetition, the movie has Cathy's death create a dilemma: "I cannot live" and "I cannot die." That's quite good. (Quality
screenwriting by Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, and (uncredited) John Huston.)
But I know it's futile to inform the world that they ought to preserve the strength of the word "haunt." The sad thing about taking a strong word and using it as an ordinary word is that as an ordinary word it becomes a cliché, so it really has lost its entire reason for being. A whole category of words that have had their strong meaning sucked out of them by overuse consists of words that express approval: grand, great, magnificent, marvelous, awesome. A subcategory consists of words that originally suggested unreality: fantastic, incredible, unreal, fabulous. Fortunately, there are so many of these words of praise in English, that we can fend off the cliché problem by periodically switching to a new one. I remember when no one used "awesome," then it got started, then it got overused, and then it became generally recognized that it was idiotic to say it, even as a joke. So maybe it will lie fallow for a long time and become reusable. There's no chance of "haunting" going through that process though, because though it is overused, it's certainly not overused the way "awesome" was. It's got to be quite conspicuous before people become embarrassed. On the other hand, since "haunting" is overused by people who seem to want to appear elegant and educated, maybe there is some hope that embarrassment will set in more easily.
A very quiet Saturday.
It's a very quiet Saturday here at the Law School, the day after graduation. It was 49 degrees when I left the house; you have to check the temperature before heading out on a Spring day in Wisconsin. So I drove in, listening to an NPR segment on a
novel about a Japanese pearl diver sent to a leper colony. It's a nice clear day, and though I'm in my office now, putting together notes for a talk I need to do next month on federalism and medical marijuana, I plan to walk down State Street soon enough and get some coffee and a sandwich at a café--where I will undoubtedly sent up my mobile office and continue putting my notes together. That really is my idea of getting out of the house on a nice day!
Graduating the Law School class that began with 9/11.
The law school class graduating today began just days before the 9/11 attacks. How strange it must have been to go to law school, motivated for reasons individual to one's own life, surrounded by other individuals who had arrived in the same place along various different paths, as yet unknown to you, and then, in the second week of law school, to have 9/11 change everything. How did that unexpected, shattering beginning change the law school experience? I sat on the stage through the graduation ceremony today, as the Dean welcomed the throng of students and their family and friends, followed by an introduction from a University regent, a keynote speaker (the state Secretary of Commerce), and three students speakers, and not one mentioned the unusual beginning that marked law school for this class. It was only the faculty speaker, Jane Schacter, who raised the subject. How very odd--especially that not one student spoke of it.
Someone passed a handwritten note to the Dean, asking that the ceremony include the Pledge of Allegiance (there was, indeed, a flag on the stage). The Dean showed the note to me and at least one other faculty member. It would have been hard to change the program to include something unplanned and hard for this group to say the Pledge--there were many foreign students among us, most notably. But I understand the sentiment. Prof. Schacter's speech concentrated on the important legal services given to the accused and to persons who might suffer abuse by the government. The role serving the public interest through government service is much less often mentioned. The Pledge might have given the ceremony a dimension that really was missing.
Am I criticizing the student speakers for never mentioning 9/11? (It is possible that there was a mention that I missed, and if so, please correct me.) Not really. We have all moved beyond the feelings we had in the fall of 2001, feelings it seemed--to me at least--would never lose their edge. Maybe the lack of any mention of 9/11 should be celebrated: the terrorists didn't "win." They didn't knock the students off the paths they had set out on when they came to law school. It's not for me to know what effect 9/11 had. I only know the student speakers didn't mention it. What did they talk about? Overwhelmingly, they talked about what they always talk about: how much they owe to their family, how much their family helped them, how important family is, how important love is. The most profound moment was when one student asked that we thank the members of our family who are in Heaven, like her grandfather, who had taught her so much. She called for a moment of silence to think about those who had helped them. And then, because she had made herself cry, she called for a second moment of silence. The Dean got her a glass of water.
There is a certain sort of student that my heart goes out to at times like these: the student who got no help from family. Repeatedly, speakers said, "None of us have gotten where we are without the help of someone else." But surely, there are at least a few persons who did have to go it alone, who have no family, who are estranged from their family, or who are actively discouraged by their family. Surely, there are some students who lost the love of their life along the way in law school and students whose family troubles had only a negative effect. Graduation adds feelings of envy and loneliness to the burdens these students bear, and no one ever offers them a world of solace. In fact, they try to deny them the sense of accomplishment they ought to have in knowing that they did it on their own. So a word of congratulations to those unrecognized students.
And good-bye to the class of '04, those with family and those without family, those profoundly changed by 9/11 and those who held fast to their pre-set dreams. Good luck to all the great people who passed through our wonderful school these past three years.
New York to the rest of the country: go soak your head.
Here's Sam Sifton leading off his "Diner's Journal" entry in the NYT:
There are times in this city when the pulse rate quickens and sweat breaks out on the brows of the citizenry and it seems for one horrible moment as if everyone in sight is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It's just you, though.
In another place — in the cool sylvan embrace of Portland, Ore., say, or under the dappled sun of Charleston, S.C. — people so suffering would go home and soak their heads. In New York City, they go to restaurants. Restaurants of a particular sort, that is. New Yorkers are nothing if not precise in their self-medication.
It turns out, there are restaurants in New York that serve
comfort food! And people there
eat as a way of tending to emotional stress. How very urbane! I must try that sometime.
Now, now, now, don't be so sarcastic, I hear the Voice of Sifton chiding me: in New York, comfort food is "a perfect Venn diagram of spice, salt, sweet and nutty." So are you Sam! That was perfectly delightful. I'll keep reading.
The Triplets of Belleville: pure nonsense or French anti-Americanism?
The DVD of
The Triplets of Belleville is out already (though the film is still in the theaters), and it arrived in the mail yesterday. So many of the DVDs I order sit on the coffee table unwatched and eventually get shelved, perhaps never to be watched. I'm sure my DVD bookcase has at least 30 that I've never even put in the machine. But The Triplets of Belleville made it straight into the machine and got watched the evening of its arrival. It opens with a sequence that was shockingly crudely animated, but then we see that this is a cartoon on a TV that within the beautifully drawn world of the characters of the rest of the movie. The elegant detail of the line and the subtle color make a profound impression when they replace the bluntly drawn black and white TV cartoon that begins the film. So is the movie basically a dreamworld fantasy of pure nonsense or is it an expression of French anti-Americanism? I have the impression that's a debate people have about the movie. You might gravitate toward the first position if you enjoyed the movie and the second if you don't want to bother to see it or if you saw it and it put you in a bad mood for one reason or another. I find those two positions too boring to take, so let me offer some other things to think about.
1. This is basically a silent movie. There is no sound that functions as narrative. If you turned off the sound entirely, you would only miss the music and the sound effects. The music, like the drawings, are distinctive, and in no way "nonsense," unless all music is nonsense. It doesn't make sense to think of music (excluding lyrics) as nonsense. So the visual and sonic beauty of the film stand apart from anything you might have to say about the narrative. The narrative might be just something to engage you to look at drawings and listen to music for a sustained stretch of time.
2. The boy was a rather horrifying character, who seemed to exist only to ride a bicycle. He was a depressed lump until he got his first tricycle, and the old woman driving him on was perhaps helping him achieve his own heartfelt goal. Even though she seemed cruel, she was a coach. It was a grim life, and the boy's face is nothing but grim, throughout his life, but he was worse off when kidnapped and exploited for his fabulous bicycling ability. The life of the French countryside may be hard, but if you leave it and go to the big city, it will be much worse. Better to go back home and live your limited little life, because the world of commerce is the worst exploitation of all. In this, the film reminds me of the Wizard of Oz and Pinocchio.
3. The three old women were not the only triplets. The French Mafia characters were three-in-one entities. And the core family group--grandmother, boy, and dog--are a set of three. So, consider three-ness. If three-ness is central, the trinity must be contemplated. Consider the possibility of religious allegory.
4. Think about machines. The bicycle is the central machine. (You can have a bicycle triple feature--celebrating three-ness--if you watch this movie and Breaking Away and
The Bicycle Thief.) But the movie has a thing about machines. A clock machine determines when the dog is fed, the trains and subways drive right by the window, music is made from a refrigerator and a vacuum cleaner, a weird movie-bicycle-gambling-device is a place of imprisonment and a device for escape, and so forth. The interest in machines (especially since this is a silent movie) reminds me of Chaplin, who not only made Modern Times, which included a big evil work machine that entraps the hero, but also had the uplifting speech at the end of The Great Dictator be mostly about overcoming, not fascism, but
machines. If you've read Chaplin's
Autobiography, you know he was oddly overconcerned about machines.
5. Think about fire. The grandmother, alone in Belleville, sits under a bridge and lights a little fire, which causes the Triplets to appear and begin to sing. Food is acquired by using an incendiary device, a hand grenade thrown into the water, producing a harvest of frogs. And in the end, the gambling theater is exploded and set afire.
6. Is Belleville Manhattan? It's an island full of skyscrapers with the Statue of Liberty out in front, but the villainous men in suits are quite French. There is much guzzling of red wine, and the buildings are made in part of large wine bottles. There is an America diner that served big hamburgers to very fat people too. I think Belleville is a conglomeration of all things that are feared about cities and overgrown commerce. Belleville is globalization, which mixes Americans with the French, and the solution to the problem is isolationism--as the boy and his grandmother return to the little house to spend the rest of their lives soaking up the joys of poverty outside of the reach of evil commerce and big city excitement.
Justices O'Connor and Kennedy have a little something to say about the Iraqi detainees.
Gina Holland
writes for AP about a meeting of international law experts that included Justices O'Connor and Kennedy as well as 28 Iraqi judges. The meeting took place last week in the Netherlands. Here's a key passage in the news story that shows the Justices' concern about the treatment of detainees:
The subject of detainee abuse did not come up, the justices said, but the way to handle deposed leader Saddam Hussein and other former Iraqi leaders did....The justices did not disclose specifics of what was discussed but said Iraqis alone should determine the appropriate punishment.
"The people of Iraq and certainly the judges there will have to come to grips in time with what to do about the former regime and leaders in it and whether some should be held criminally accountable for past crimes and, if so, where do you draw the line," O'Connor said. "We don't have answers for that," she said, noting other wartorn countries have used such prosecutions as healing experiences.
Added Kennedy: "It's not for us to enter into that debate. There was some difference of opinion, but discussed in a very rational, balanced, reflective way." ... "You have to find small islands, small pockets of stability and reliability and build out from there," Kennedy said. "And it was apparent to us ... that these dedicated jurists represent a reliable source of stability, responsibility, respect for the law." ...
On the issue of Iraqi inmate abuse at the hands of U.S. military personnel, Kennedy said the Iraqi judges "innately knew, instinctively knew how concerned we were. They also knew that we can't really comment because we are actually in the legal system where we have review of military court-martials."
"They also knew we represent a process that is open, that recognizes that human fallibility is the reason we have democracy," he said.
One can only speculate about what effect the abuse of Iraqi detainees might have on the Justices' reasoning about the power of the President with respect to the Guantanamo detainees. The comments of the Justices are typically inscrutable. We are left to "innately ... instinctively" divine what they might be thinking.
Rehnquist to emulate Robert E. Lee.
Chief Justice Rehnquist will appear in an interview on CSpan's Book TV (at 11 EDT on Saturday). He has
this to say about not writing a memoir:
"I've always admired Robert E. Lee. He said the reason he didn't write memoirs was he would have to deal harshly with some people whom he liked very well and who had worked with him ... And I feel the same way. You know, bland memoirs are really of no use to anyone, and they certainly don't sell. And critical memoirs, you know, where you really take off and go after some of the people who you've disliked or who have been on other sides - I just don't care to do that."
Yes, that's quite astute. Either write a good memoir or don't write a memoir. And he's right about what makes a good memoir. But there is an additional point, even more important, about how to write a good memoir: you have to put your own vanity aside and deal most pitilessly with yourself. A good reason not to become a judge is that you will have such a stake in the respect for the court as an institution that you can never drop that guard and tell all. [UPDATE: Or even much of anything.] You're committed to a lifetime of playing the role of a sober, respectable, functioning member of a grand institution.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court rules against Gov. Doyle on Indian gambling.
The Capital Times
reports:
The state Supreme Court ruled today that provisions of new American Indian gambling agreements are unconstitutional - a decision that will at least temporarily reduce casino activities and create a gaping hole in the state budget.
A spokesman for Gov. Jim Doyle said the decision likely will be appealed to the federal courts.
On a 4-3 vote, the state Supreme Court ruled that Doyle exceeded his authority to create a long-term agreement, to create a new resolution approach involving waiver of sovereign immunity, and to authorize additional table games.
Adding keno, roulette, craps and poker was contrary to the state constitution and state criminal law, Justice David Prosser wrote for the majority. Betting on simulcast racing is legal because the state constitution has allowed pari-mutuel betting. Blackjack and slot machines would continue to be allowed under the ruling.
"Appealed to the federal courts"? As opposed to the U.S. Supreme Court? That doesn't make much sense: you can't redo a case in federal court even if there are federal questions. He may mean the U.S. Supreme Court, but if so, it certainly looks like a decision resting on state law grounds.
Getting the oil changed and reading People magazine.
I’m waiting for my car to be serviced, and I check out the new cars. I peer inside one and think, yeah I could enjoy sitting in this space. I look for the price. First, I see $1500 gas guzzler tax. Hmmm…. Oh, here’s the price. Over $75,000. Okay. Well, I wouldn’t have wanted to pay that gas guzzler tax anyway, and now I completely approve of someone else having to pay it. And who the hell do they think they are, driving a gas guzzler?
No Wi-Fi here, so I’m jotting down notes for later blogging. Here’s the new People magazine—all about reality TV. (A typo there led me to think: Yeah, why not have some “realty TV”? And then: I guess we do have whole channels of realty TV.)
Ooh, a picture of baby-Jerry-Seinfeld (Sascha) on page 10.
Page 12: When did Brooke Shields start looking like Joan Cusack?
Page 14: Ben Affleck hugs Jessica Lynch!
Page 20: Gwyneth Paltrow’s bare pregnant belly. Ooh, and she gave up macrobiotics and started eating biscuits for her little biscuit!
Here’s a mini-interview with John Stevens (the American Idol guy, of course—not the Supreme Court Justice): he became good friends with Diana and Jasmine, because the three of them had to do three hours of schooling a day. (Note that the non-school-age contestants have more time to relax/prepare, which could explain Jasmine’s flagging capabilities and should inspire awe for the ever-strengthening force that is Diana.)
Ah … and the pager starts buzzing way too soon. So much for People magazine, and I’m back in my car, listening to the audiobook of “Running With Scissors,” and now I’m back home, blogging.
Blogger profiles.
Okay, I went ahead and filled in the form for a Blogger
profile, and I can see that it let me avoid showing some things, but it didn't even ask if I wanted an astrological sign listed. That irks me no end! And if you think you know the astrological sign of people who are irked by astrological signs ... It also rejected my photo url for being too long...
UPDATE: Sorry for having the wrong link before. (To the photograph I couldn't post.)
FURTHER UPDATE: I got rid of the astrological sign by deleting my birthday. Easy solution!
A reality show about a law firm? I want one about a law school!
Gordon is blogging about the new TV show "The Partner."
Here's some descriptive material (from a page rendered unreadable, to me at least, by all kinds of animated crap moving around):
[T]he hour-long show ... will be eight to ten episodes in length and, similar to NBC's The Apprentice, feature two competing teams. Unlike Apprentice, however, rather than be divided by gender, the composition of the teams will be determined by the prestige of the contestants' law schools -- with Ivy Leaguers forming one team and graduates of 'less prestigious' schools forming the other.
Each week, the two teams will compete as prosecutors and defenders in mock trial cases that will be presented before a jury of real people which will have been selected by the contestants. After hearing the arguments, the jury will determine the winner of the trial, with the losing team having to appear before a fictitious judge.
So great, I can watch moot court on TV. It's well known, isn't it, that "less prestigious" schools typically win moot court competitions? Does it show whether "prestigious" schools are not really what they're cracked up to be? No, because it all depends on the motivations of particular individuals choose to enter competitions rather than to take advantage of some other option. Note that the cases for the show are all criminal law cases. Aren't those prestigious school grads going into corporate law or some other glossy opportunity?
Gordon asks, "Who decides which law schools are 'prestigious'?" That's easy: U.S. News!
Hey, they need to make a reality show out of law school itself. Get some really tough retro lawprofs to wield intense Socratic method in faux classrooms. You could do exciting issues with discussions of law and social policy (rather than questions of fact about whether a (nonexistent) criminal defendant is guilty). At the end of each episode, the lawprof could do a version of that old routine of giving the student a dime and saying, "Call your mother and tell her you'll never be a lawyer." Yeah, pay phones aren't a dime anymore, but who uses a pay phone now. Have Cranky Old Retro Lawprof hand one student a cell phone.
Carrying a purse: a feminist issue?
I found the article discussed in the previous post not because I was reading about the prison abuses, but because I was looking up the subject of feminism and carrying a purse, which I'd just had a conversation about. My cap and gown for tomorrow's graduation ceremony was delivered to me, along with the information that I could put it on after I arrive at the
Monona Terrace in a little side room, where I could also leave my purse. No way I'm going to be separated from my purse, even if the room will have an attendant. I'll find some way to carry my things unobtrusively, somewhere within the robe. This led to a conversation about how both of us had for a long time refused to carry a purse and viewed it as a feminist issue. For years, I only bought clothes with pockets and made it a point to keep a thin wallet and only two keys. I used to view clothing manufacturers as anti-feminist because they gave men pockets but denied them to women. Even when they gave us pockets, they were often shallow and slanted-- designed for the elegant placement of a hand, perhaps. The clothing manufacturers were part of the elaborate system designed to oppress women. I'm still a little irked about it! But some time ago, I adopted the feminine practice of carrying a purse. (Note that it's so feminine that it used to be a common slur to say about a man, "He carries a purse.") Along with carrying a purse comes the elaborate mental training of keeping track of your purse. The discipline of purse carrying becomes so lodged in your brain that you have dreams about losing your purse. Women even look out for other women: "Where's your purse?" Of course, in my non-purse-carrying days, I had some scorn for the women who would bark "Where's your purse?" because I viewed them as enforcing the feminine norm, when in fact, they were probably just so used to making sure they didn't lose their purses that they had branched out to worrying about other people losing their purses. So do I still wish for adequate pockets in women's clothes so I could opt out of purse carrying? I don't know. I like to carry my digital camera around now. And now that there are cell phones, the pocket approach is just too bulky. You can't go around with all those things weighing down and bulging out your clothing. Can you?
UPDATE: A reader points to
this discussion--quite recent, so, apparently a hot topic--from the other side: Capn Design wants to carry a purse into a place and is stopped by a discriminatory security guard:
When I asked a security guard why I couldn't bring my bag in, he explained that purses are allowed but bags are not. I told him my bag was a purse and he asked if I was a woman. "If being a woman means I can bring my bag in, then yes, I am a woman." That didn't work.
"The military isn’t feminized enough and that includes the females."
Here's a piece from Debra Dickerson from Washington Monthly about the role of women in the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib. We should be seeing many meditations on this subject in the coming days (and years). Those who have liked to think that the world would be more civil if only women had a bigger role to play in public affairs will need to theorize or retheorize. One gambit, whenever women participate in anything that is other than what you were hoping women would do if given power, is to say that somehow these particular women don't really count as real women. Dickerson has personal experience behind her theory:
I spent the first few years of my 12 in the Air Force trying my damndest to be one of the boys. I started smoking, drank like an idiot, cursed like a sailor, always wore fatigues and combat boots, didn’t carry a purse. Even wore a man’s watch. Once, when they took me to a club (in 1981 South Korea) which hosted live sex shows, I refused to punk out and leave until after the first ‘act.’ Longest half hour of my life but I was too bought into my macho new environment, the environment which was oh so much more empowering than the misogynist ghetto I was fleeing from, to back off from any of it. I told myself that keeping up with the men, whatever they were doing, was feminist.
After a few years, though, I rebelled, if only in my personal comportment, and determined to be both female and a GI. ...
Still, I'm pretty skeptical of this idea that when women do the things you've associated with men, it's because those women were still in thrall to men. It's really a twist on the retro notion that the real women are the good women.
"The Pentagon crew hated Colin Powell, and wanted to see him humiliated 10 times more than Saddam."
Shockingly harsh words from Thomas Friedman. If there is one commentator who seems in command of language, it is NYT columnist Thomas Friedman. A line like that is no accident.
"TV Images Driving Public Discourse on War."
AP draws attention to the important subject of how photographs affect public opinion:
CNN Pentagon reporter Barbara Starr, who reported on the alleged abuse at least four times before the pictures came out, said they illustrated a breakdown in military discipline that hadn't been seen in generations. The U.S. military was cast in the unfamiliar public role of bad guys.
The episode should be a lesson for the news media, Starr said.
"It's very clear that potentially terrible abuses were taking place," she said, "and it didn't become a big story until people could see these virtually pornographic images."
The pictures themselves depict human beings seemingly descending to an animal level. In a less lurid way, the public's instinctive response to the pictures and lack response to the words, also reveal the animal side of human nature. Yet, at least the response to the pictures has been disgust, horror, and desire to end the abuse, rather than bloodthirst and sexual excitement. It seems that our animal side is part of what moves us toward the good.
"A lot of people are saying that he's a real American idol."
Here's how a Hawaiian newspaper
headlines an article about Major General Antonio Taguba, who authored the report on the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners and who lived in Hawaii as a teenager: "Leilehua grad turns out to be 'real American idol.'" That gives some perspective on what a big deal Jasmine Trias and American Idol are to Hawaiians. Here's a typical
Hawaiian newspaper article all about how important it is for Hawaiians to vote for Jasmine. People should not marvel over her survival.
American Idol: 60 minutes of results.
Well, the results show tonight is an exercise in prolongation. We see the kids at the EW photo shoot. We see them pretending to love being told a bunch of nonsense by a psychic, including the priceless, "You're a cancer." Thanks! I suppose when they sign on to the show, they agree to everything, but it strikes me that a lot of the contestants are quite religious--church choirs being a common source of training--and that a psychic consultation would offend many religious persons. Here's this inane California-style psychic lady telling them about their past lives. They've repeatedly tagged Diana as an "old soul," and so forth. Well, I'm offended by psychics for any number of reasons.... Right now the height of cheesiness is being reached--or should I say cakiness?--Donna Summer is singing "MacArthur Park" and I don't think that I can take it because it took so long for me to forget about that song. I plugged my ears to disco in the 70s. I didn't even know this song had been discofied. I remember the original version by Richard Harris in the 60s, when it was a weird steaming pile of ... cake ... melting cake. But then there aren't enough songs about cake ...
Why are you babbling? Because I'm simulblogging and they are insanely prolonging the reporting of a fact that could be said in two seconds. ... So...
What did you think of Clay? Clay seemed a bit off tonight. He's lost his crispy freshness. And what was that thing he was singing? Some sort of song, apparently. He seemed strangely ill at ease. And he was wearing his glasses. Maybe he has some sort of dispute with the producers.... Ah, back from commercial. Diana safe. Fantasia, bottom two. And the other one in the bottom two: La Toya. Jasmine is safe. Note:
I predicted this. The audience is booing--essentially booing Jasmine! That's cruel. The state of Hawaii loves that girl. Leave her alone. Ack! Another commercial break. Who will leave? I hope La Toya, because I just find Fantasia more interesting and exciting. And it's La Toya who's leaving. Leaving at number four: the Tamyra position. Good-bye, La Toya! Aw, Paula's crying. Group hug!
Re-yellow-izing
I missed the old gold color. I'd gone to gray, but decided to restore the yellow look (and bring back the old photograph). Actually, this is a slightly different gold color, but I think I like it better. Hope it looks right on your screen. I know all the screens are different.
Not funny.
I'm actually a big fan of Dennis Miller's, but the jokes he told last night about the Abu Graib photographs are just awful. In case you missed the show, here they are:
In preparation for today's hearings, senators spent this morning viewing more pictures of naked, bound Iraqi men--or, as Richard Simmons calls them, screen savers. ...
According to Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Congress will see even more cruel and sadistic photos and videos from Abu Graib prison. Here's an example. Brace yourselves. [Image on screen: a marquee reading "Abu Ghraib Prison/Now Appearing/Tonite/Carrot Top" with an image of the comedian Carrot Top.] That's how bad it's gotten. ...
By the way, am I the only one who's having recurring dreams of a short-haired woman with a cigarette hanging from her lips, holding me by a leash? [Image on screen: the famous picture of Lynndie England.]
The first two are especially bad, because they are the sort of stock jokes that rely mostly on invoking the name of celebrity whose name alone is supposed to trigger scoffing laughter. The third joke is offensive, but at least it's daring and in a distinctive style.
Later, interviewing Jim Lehrer, Miller asks "How's the PSB crowd digesting these photos from the prison? What's the word?" Lehrer reports shock and disbelief, followed by the thought that the behavior is part of human nature, given certain conditions. Miller then says:
Yeah, I had trouble digesting it at first, and then, over the weekend, as I ruminated about it, I ... am I imagining this or have things settled down a little in the Iraqi war theater? Is there less RPG fire? Is there less roadside bombings? I'm wondering if it's some odd way ... like in War of the Worlds, when they stumble onto the fact that it's our oxygen that killed the people from another planet or in Day of the Triffids when we found out it's salt water, in some weird way you could not threaten these people with death over there, but it seems to be that the one thing that might quell some of them is embarrassment. Is that an odd take on it, or could it be true? ... I'm thinking that maybe we should start sending over these guys who've hazed in fraternities. You know, you just ... this is how we deal with you: you take one of those planes we combat forest fires with, fill it with bacon grease and start dropping it on Fallujah. There you go! We gotta think outside the box.
I noticed that this Daily News
column complaining about the level of humor on Air America got some play today--I saw it linked on
Drudge Report--but these examples of Miller's humor (which strongly supports the Bush Administration) are much worse.
The way things look from a ripe old age.
It's Kurt Vonnegut, at 81,
ranting, and even if he's wildly off-track most of the time here, he's got a way with words so I'll listen. (Link via
Blogdex.) Here's a point about the Constitution:
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
Well, that might be sort of right. I think anyone who wants to do what it takes to get elected President is someone I wouldn't pick if I could look at the whole pool of those who have the capacity to do the job. But I'm also grateful there are some capable and decent people who are willing to do all those crazy things. There was a point watching the Democratic debate last winter, when there were still nine or so candidates, when it crossed my mind: these are all good people who would rise to the occasion if the Presidency were imposed on them. They specifically were not nutty, quite interestingly--even the fringe candidates who had no shot at election.
More from Vonnegut, following up on "[o]nly nut cases want to be president":
But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are.
I sometimes like to think that we
were given a choice whether to be born, that there was a beforelife (we like to think there's an afterlife) in which the range of possibilities in a human life were fully explained and we could say yes or no, just like you can look at a rollercoaster and decide if you want to take the ride. So all of us here are the ones who decided to take the ride. I like to speculate about what percentage of beforelife dwellers decide to say yes. I imagine Vonnegut's suggestion is correct: the percentage would be small. The downside risks are too horrible. But we're the brave souls--we're Vonnegut's nuts--who once found the idea of being human so appealing.
Vonnegut quotes Camus--“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide”--and says "All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being." He says, "I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me." Ah, but I can't believe he's sorry he's alive. Not if he has the spirit to rant like that.
Showing and not showing photographs
The web release of the videotape of the beheading of Nick Berg so soon after the release of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse pictures forces us to think about the power of photography. Photographs have a profound effect on the human mind, but do they help us think or distort our thinking? There are some things we cannot accept or cannot take as seriously as we should until we see the photographs. But since photographs have such a strong impact, people who want to shape public opinion will naturally seize the opportunity to bend minds with astonishing and disturbing photographs. Courts face the problem all the time and have a rule of evidence to control the misuse of photographs:
Rule 403. Exclusion of Relevant Evidence on Grounds of Prejudice, Confusion, or Waste of Time
Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.
The courts tip toward permitting the evidence: the prejudicial effect must "substantially outweigh" the value in proving something the jury is asked to decide, but there is a recognition here that passion can overtake reason. Still, reason without any element of emotion is not possible, and not desirable.
There is no way to sanitize the fight for political advantage out of the release of information, though one hopes for the best from journalists and politicians. But when should we who are taking in all this material call "politics" (
or worse) on people who want to show photographs? The video of the slaughter of Nick Berg was released to terrorize and intimidate and revel in revenge. The photographs of Abu Ghraib are released, at least in part, to inform, to draw attention to a problem, and to inspire resolve to take action to solve it. As time wears on and as further photographs are released, less noble motives seem to be in play.
But it may be that those who release the images want to push and push and make sure the public doesn't turn away from the problem. But why then shouldn't people who care about other matters--the death penalty and abortion, for example--compete for attention with gruesome photographs? Why shouldn't people who want to steel our nerves for military action stoke our passions with an endless stream of the many, many pictures of the 9/11 victims that we have never seen?
Mickey Kaus
raises the important point that opponents of the war should be the
most opposed to the release of the photographs, since they tend to think that in fighting this war, we face not a limited number of hardcore enemies, but large numbers of persons whose minds might be turned in our favor or inflamed into hatred. If the world is full of people sitting in judgment about whether or not to see us as their enemy, then we should want to withhold inflammatory photographs.
Quite aside from that, since it is harmful to a person to make him stand naked and since that harm is magnified if he is also photographed, the display of the photograph is a further harm to the person in the photograph.
Whatever we may think about the initial use of the photographs, the release of repetitive photographs is different. The release of some of the pictures has made us care deeply about the problem and has created a capacity to picture what we hear in verbal descriptions. I thoroughly agree with a point Senator Clinton made in the hearing on Friday: we should have been able all along to fathom the problem, because we had written descriptions. The pictures have made such an impression precisely because, though we seem so often to be creatures of language, we do not really understand without pictures. But now that we have seen some of the pictures, can we not begin to understand the written word?
