Al Gore jokes, then quips about the Supreme Court.

On "The Tonight Show":

Former Vice President Al Gore took a swipe at Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Wednesday, referencing the conservative jurist's recent skepticism in a global warming case and role in the 2000 presidential election.

"In the arguments, Justice Scalia said, 'I'm not a scientist, I don't want to deal with global warming.' I just wish he felt that way about presidential elections," Gore joked on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

Responding to the audience's cheer, he quipped: "I think 51 percent of the audience clapped for it."

The quip is sort of funny (though a good joke actually makes people laugh, not "cheer" or clap), but the joke is strained. (It doesn't fit together. Getting involved in the presidential election isn't something that you do because you think you have scientific expertise. But, in any case, Scalia's position in Bush v. Gore worked to extract judges from the election, as it pushed back the Florida Supreme Court, which thought it had the expertise to run things.)

"I used to be bi-curious, but now I've just gone all the way to becoming 'bi.'"

Says Glenn Reynolds. I approve! (And despite my long experience, I have no idea what to do about that problem. It never works that way for me.)

Hanging in there... for -- what is it? -- 30 years?

I believe I have discovered the last surviving "Hang in There, Baby!" poster.



Do you remember these things? They used to be all over the place in the 1970s. This one, you can tell by the faded colors, has been hanging in there all these years. I sort of remember what this poster meant when it was so popular, but it has by now acquired many layers of meaning. I can't tell whether it's richly ironic or sadly pathetic or whether it got back to being sweet again or whether it's gone on to being annoying the way it was in the 70s. Is it still up for no other reason than that it hasn't been taken down? It is behind a file cabinet (on what has long been an unused door between two offices). Or is the professor in the office trying to tell us something? And, if he is, what are the chances that it's "Hang in There, Baby!"?

Googling around, I found this old Ask Metafilter thread asking where to get the old poster, and that notes that "RetroCrush celebrates it." Do click on the RetroCrush link. You'll enjoy it. For one reason or another. I'm pretty sure.

(But it makes me think that the poster I've photographed here is an imposter. A second-rate follow on kitty cat, something like Jane Mansfield to Marilyn Monroe!)

People seem to be enjoying the new complexity to this Kramer character.

Sales soar on the new "Seinfeld" DVD. Still, no one could think it was a deliberate publicity stunt. No. No. Life's not that weird.

Survey.

Please take this survey about blogs. I did, and it's a research project that I think is worthy.

Who can sue to force the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases?

Here's the Linda Greenhouse account of yesterday's oral argument in the global warming case, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency:

“You have to show the harm is imminent,” Justice Scalia instructed [General James R. Milkey, representing the various states, cities and environmental groups who sued], asking, “I mean, when is the cataclysm?”

Mr. Milkey replied, “It’s not so much a cataclysm as ongoing harm,” arguing that Massachusetts, New York, and other coastal states faced losing “sovereign territory” to rising sea levels. “So the harm is already occurring,” he said. “It is ongoing, and it will happen well into the future.”

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito both suggested that because motor vehicles account for only about 6 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, even aggressive federal regulation would not be great enough to make a difference, another requirement of the standing doctrine.

When Mr. Milkey replied that over time, “even small reductions can be significant,” Chief Justice Roberts responded: “That assumes everything else is going to remain constant, though, right? It assumes there isn’t going to be a greater contribution of greenhouse gases from economic development in China and other places that’s going to displace whatever marginal benefit you get here.” At another point, the chief justice said the plaintiffs’ evidence “strikes me as sort of spitting out conjecture on conjecture.”

In other words, even if you think the injury is enough for standing, there are problems on the "causation" and "redressability" prongs on the standing doctrine. Don't be distracted by Scalia's wondering about the "cataclysm." You can assume for the sake of argument that the plaintiffs face injury and still find no standing, for the sole reason that the relief they are seeking isn't likely enough to change the situation. But, looking at the transcript, I see they did focus more strongly on the injury question. Back to Greenhouse:

On the other side, Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter appeared strongly inclined to find that the plaintiffs had met the standing test.

They generally do apply standing doctrine less strictly... which means that Justice Kennedy is the swing voter.

[Kennedy's] relatively few comments were ambiguous. Early in the argument he challenged the assertion by Mr. Milkey, the states’ lawyer, that the case “turns on ordinary principles of statutory interpretation and administrative law” and that there was no need for the court “to pass judgment on the science of climate change.”

That was “reassuring,” Justice Kennedy said. But, he added, “Don’t we have to do that in order to decide the standing argument, because there’s no injury if there’s not global warming?”

"We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job done so long as the government wants us there."

Said President Bush today, responding to what he called "a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq."

Yeah, don't go believing those reports about a graceful exit. Cue the lampoonery.

The economic analysis of cosmetic medicine.

Here's a big article about how all sorts of doctors are moving into cosmetic medicine -- where the patient forks out the money up front -- and how the plastic surgeons, facial surgeons and dermatologists are miffed about them horning in on their lucrative specialty. Everybody wants to be the one who gets to spend her life giving a zillion little injections into tiny wrinkles.

Bob Dylan meets Ricky Gervais.

And Bob's the interviewer. Perfect.

"Webb... has become a pompous poseur and an abuser of the English language before actually becoming a senator."

Says George Will, who, deploying a triple-D alliteration to express his dismay, opines that "Washington has a way of quickly acculturating people, especially those who are most susceptible to derangement by the derivative dignity of office." He points to the wild, wacky Webb's encounter with the brusque, bullying Bush, who triggered Webb's ire by asking "How's your boy?"

In his novels and his political commentary, Webb has been a writer of genuine distinction, using language with care and precision. But just days after winning an election, he was turning out slapdash prose that would be rejected by a reasonably demanding high school teacher.

Webb, Will whispers, said that the rich are "literally living in a different country." The loathsome "literally" lapse!

I haven't read Webb's books, so I'm in no position to say whether they are written in such excellent style, and I don't know whether the language Webb wields in his new senatorial guise is all that different from his novelist's approach. But I suspect that what we're seeing is not a man who has instantly succumbed to Washington's ways but a man with a novelist's mentality in a new setting. One way to explain his awkward behavior with respect to the presidential receiving line is that he thought through that scene like a novelist. If you were writing a novel about a character like him going through a receiving line with a President like Bush, wouldn't that be exactly the sort of scene you'd want to think up?

Ordinarily, in all sorts of social and political situations, people try to figure out how other people usually act and to stick to the convention and proceed smoothly along. This is nice enough, but rather boring. In a novel, a conventional social situation tends to be a set up for our hero to do something that shakes things up. The ordinary characters are aghast. They condemn the bad behavior of the protaganist, and we readers, in our armchairs, know how right he is. Of course, a novelist who concocts scenes like that is himself utterly conventional.

I don't think Webb has quickly picked up the Washington style. I think he's got the novelist's style, and he's his own hero Senator in a novel about Washington. And, what immense fun this is going to be! It looks like a great read:

Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn't long before Bush found him.

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

I can't put it down.

"Only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations."

"More than 100 of the other issuers vary their bills in size according to denomination, and every other issuer includes at least some features that help the visually impaired."

It hurts the blind and violates the Rehabilitation Act, a federal judge says.

This is an interesting manifestation of the notion that what other countries do says something about what American law means. (Discussed back here.)

It's an uphill slog.

Here in Madison, Wisconsin, as the semester winds to a close:



It looks a little grim and foreboding from here:



But it is kind of nicely warm here today. Did you notice the young woman in that first photo with bare legs and flipflops?

The Bush-Webb encounter.

I wonder who reported this as verbatim dialogue (via Memeorandum):

“How’s your boy?” Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

“That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said. “How’s your boy?”

“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

And then there's the part where Webb supposedly could barely control his impulse to punch Bush in the face. Sources say.

ADDED: There's a lot of talk in the comments. I just want to say that I don't believe that Bush responded to Webb quite like that. I don't believe Webb was quite like that either. He sounds mental. I want to know who told the anecdote, because the whole thing is phrased strangely. It compliments neither man.

"It's good to be on top."

The ad agency celebrates itself with an ad that everyone will see and talk about. You got a problem with that?

In a stab at paying tribute to all the winners of the coveted Lion awards at the 2006 Cannes International Advertising Festival -- considered the most prestigious of many annual advertising competitions -- Draft FCB placed a display ad in the November issue of Creativity magazine that is an astoundingly large and graphic image of two real lions in the act of having sex surrounded by a huge amount of white space....

At best the Draft FCB tribute ad -- with its overt visual and verbal sexual bent -- represents an inexplicable lapse in good taste. At worst, it's a downright vulgar and hugely inappropriate means of applauding winners of awards intended to honor the world's most creative advertising....

A Draft FCB spokesman admitted the ad was "a terrible mistake," and further claimed the work was "submitted without proper approval."

Isn't that what you always say about your viral ads?

Are you buying the Borat broke up Pam's marriage story?

I'm not. Too PR-y.

News flash: Sad people look sad.

Experts explain.

Catchphrases, caught and uncaught.

100 Greatest TV Quotes & Catchphrases -- via Throwing Things -- currently arranged in alphabetical order.... Well, so, have your fun: Put them in the right order. I'll just pick a few I like:

Here's Johnny! (Ed McMahon, The Tonight Show)
How sweet it is! (Jackie Gleason, The Jackie Gleason Show)
I want my MTV! (MTV)
I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV. (Vicks Formula 44)
Jane, you ignorant slut. (Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, Saturday Night
Live)
The tribe has spoken. (Jeff Probst, Survivor)
Yabba dabba do! (Fred Flintstone, The Flintstones)
You rang? (Lurch, The Addams Family)

Hey, wait a minute! Just a darn minute. Where is "Dobie Gillis"? "You rang" gets a Lurch credit?

"So how about that Kramer?"

"The way he just says stuff."

(Via Throwing Things via Hypertext.)

"Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

So said Alcee Hastings, responding to the news that he will not chair the House Intelligence Committee.

Do you have "every right" to create a new word and "deploy" it as you see fit?

Neologisms are fine, says Stephen Bainbridge. I agree. I played the neologist -- -ist! -- early on in this post -- twice! -- when I said "intrablogospherical squabblage." Bainbridge reminds us that Thomas Jefferson wrote: "I am a friend to neology. It is the only way to give to a language copiousness and euphony." The problem is not the creation of a new word per se, it's what you do with with that word and what effect you have on other people.

MORE: Classical Values continues the allusions to Alice: "The Red Queen shook her head, `You may call it "nonsense" if you like,' she said, 'but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!'"

Why does Andrew Sullivan keep talking about me without linking to me?

See the update on this post. It's getting ridiculous. I consider it a gross breach of blogging ethics.

UPDATE: And he doesn't tip.

"Christianist."

With all this talk of the word "Christianist," I thought I'd do a Lexis/Nexis search to see how often it appears. In the Law Reviews & Journals database, "Christianist" (or "Christianists") is used only once, in an article by Robert J. Morris called "Intersections: Sexuality, Cultural Tradition, and the Law: Configuring the Bo(u)nds of Marriage: The Implications of Hawaiian Culture & Values for the Debate About Homogamy," 8 Yale J.L. & Human. 105 (1996)("Homogamy"? That's new to me.)

Despite the common law's formal deference to local custom, Anglo-Saxons in Hawai"i in the early 1800's hardly viewed Hawaiian custom as legitimate. Many of the foreigners who came to Hawai"i in the early 1800's called it (and its language) childish, simplistic, deficient, defective, heathen, pagan, native, and feudal. In doing so, they defined themselves in opposition to the Other and simultaneously changed the Other. They necessarily viewed Hawai"i as the despotic, barbaric Other; and a good part of this Otherness was the Hawaiians' sexuality.

Calvinist missionaries dealt with a culture that had aikane by calling christianist and capitalist culture "manly," Hawaiian society "feudal," and feudalism "effeminate." Any language other than the King's English was "emasculated."The discussion was in sexual terms, and the patriarchy-driven mission off-handedly acknowledged that "no nation on earth perhaps allows females a higher proportionate rank [than Hawai"i]." For Hawai"i, this was the "dawn of tyranny" under the new foreignization.

In the Major Newspapers file, there are only 25, with only one before 1990. It's in a letter to the editor of the Toronto Star, published on April 27, 1988:

Tom Harpur's column, New scientific views upsetting for atheists (April 17), may be amusing pap for the Sunday readers, particularly the smug christianists, but it is not an accurate or insightful depiction of the new physics....

PIERRE SAVOIE

Toronto

(Blame Canada!)

The usage is noted in a William Safire "On Language" column on May 15, 2005:

Two weeks after writing about the fervor of the late Terri Schiavo's ''Christianist 'supporters,''' Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker last month described Representative Tom Delay as a ''hard-right Christianist crusader.'' A few months before, soon after President Bush was re-elected, the conservative Weekly Standard reported that an Ohio cartoonist had sent out a communication deploring ''militant Christianist Republicans.''

Obviously there is a difference in meaning between the adjectives Christian and Christianist. Thanks to Jon Goldman, an editor at Webster's New World Dictionaries, I have the modern coinage of the latter with its pejorative connotation. ''I have a new term for those on the fringes of the religious right,'' wrote the blogging Andrew Sullivan on June 1, 2003, ''who have used the Gospels to perpetuate their own aspirations for power, control and oppression: Christianists. They are as anathema to true Christians as the Islamists are to true Islam.''

Not such a new term. You have to be careful about claiming coinage, as I learned to my rue (my 1970's baby, workfare, turned out to have been coined earlier; same with neuroethics). In 1883, W.H. Wynn wrote a homily that said ''Christianism -- if I may invent that term -- is but making a sun-picture of the love of God.'' He didn't invent the term, either. In the early 1800's, the painter Henry Fuseli wrote scornfully that ''Christianism was inimical to the progress of arts.'' And John Milton used it in 1649.

Adding ist or ism to a word usually colors it negatively, as can be seen in secularist....

As Christianist, with its evocation of Islamist, gains wider usage as an attack word on what used to be called the religious right, another suffix is being used in counterattack to derogate those who denounce church influence in politics. ''The Catholic scholar George Weigel calls this phenomenon 'Christophobia,''' the columnist Anne Applebaum wrote in The Washington Post. She noted that he borrowed the word from the American legal scholar, J.H.H. Weiler. The word was used by Weigel ''after being struck by the European Union's fierce resistance to any mention of the continent's Christian origins in the draft versions of the new, and still unratified, European constitution.''

Just some info.

ADDED: In the comments, amba asks for a definition of "aikne," which is not susceptible to Googling. Actually, it's printed in the article as "aikne." I'm not sure how that is meant to appear. I think it's aikane with a line over the middle "a." I've corrected that in the original text. Anyway, according to the article it refers to partners in a same-sex relationship:

Exact translation is not an easy task. Some concepts of the Hawaiian language were buried with the advent of Christianity and capitalism in Hawai"i. Aikane was among these. Aikane marks persons of any gender in a homogamous relationship. Despite Christianity, this meaning persists well into the twentieth century among those who know Hawaiian....

The traditional meaning of aikane as a same-sex lover is crucial. From the first day of Captain Cook's arrival in Hawai"i through the formative years of the American and other foreign presence in Hawai"i, the aikane of the chiefs (ali"i) of each island facilitated the foreigners' livelihoods, their use of land, their very existence.

Global Post Barometer.

It's the Global Post Barometer, and right now it's showing the U.S. trending negative, and the Islamists trending positive.

ADDED: Cue to Glenn Greenwald: I used the word "Islamists." Spin out your crazy fantasies about what dastardly things are implied by my copying of the word from the Washington Post's chart.

My brain as a hypodermic needle. Your brain as an international airport.

A new book:

[W]omen talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day - 13,000 more than the average man.

Women also speak more quickly, devote more brainpower to chit-chat - and actually get a buzz out of hearing their own voices, a new book suggests....

In The Female Mind, Dr Luan Brizendine says women devote more brain cells to talking than men.

And, if that wasn't enough, the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high....

But what the male brain may lack in converstation and emotion, they more than make up with in their ability to think about sex.

Dr Brizendine says the brain's "sex processor" - the areas responsible for sexual thoughts - is twice as big as in men than in women, perhaps explaining why men are stereotyped as having sex on the mind.

Or, to put it another way, men have an international airport for dealing with thoughts about sex, "where women have an airfield nearby that lands small and private planes".

I love when a book explains supposedly scientific information in language that approximates that Prince song "International Lover."

ADDED: Mark Liberman notes that the book is actually called "The Female Brain" and indicates that the book is more substantial than the linked Daily Mail piece makes it look.

Are tall people better because they are tall...

... or tall because they are better? Let me rephrase that: Is the relative success of taller people the result of the favoritism they receive from people who admire tallness, or is it that the good nutrition that produced tallness also produced smartness?

"Americans know who he is, and have pretty much decided they don't like him."

John Kerry finishes last in a likability poll. Possibly a botched poll.

(Via Memeorandum.)

"Pay is a complicated thing."

Linda Greenhouse elegantly explains a difficult Supreme Court case about the lingering effects of long-ago job discrimination:

Is each new paycheck, reflecting a salary lower than it would have been without the initial discrimination, a recurring violation that sets the [statute of limitations] clock running again? Or does the passage of time, without fresh acts of intentional discrimination, render the initial injury a nonevent in the eyes of the law?...

[T]he E.E.O.C. ... has long applied what is known as the “paycheck accrual rule,” under which each pay period of uncorrected discrimination is seen as a fresh incident of discrimination. So although the 180-day limit applies to discrete actions like a discriminatory refusal to hire or failure to promote, it does not, in the view of the federal agency charged with administering the statute, prevent lawsuits for the continuing effects of past discrimination in pay.

But the Bush administration has disavowed the commission’s position....

When Justice Antonin Scalia asked, “Why should we listen to the solicitor general rather than the E.E.O.C.?”...

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer appeared most sympathetic to Mr. Russell’s argument. Justice Breyer commented at one point that “there will be probably a significant number of circumstances where a woman is being paid less, and all she does is for the last six months get her paychecks and she doesn’t really know it because pay is a complicated thing.” It could take “even a year for her to find out,” he said.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appeared the most skeptical, several times raising the question of how employers could shoulder the burden of defending long-ago pay decisions.

“It could be 40 years, right?” Chief Justice Roberts asked Mr. Russell, adding, “I mean, if it happened once 20 years ago, you have a case that you can bring” under the plaintiff’s analysis.

The case is Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company Inc.

150 things to love about Madison.

A nice list. Let me highlight a few things:

UW-Madison students. A continuously cycled transfusion of new blood for the city. Plus, move-in day is good entertainment; move-out day means good junk-picking....

Ice skating on Tenney Park lagoon....

Williamson Street. If it's not the hippie enclave it was in the past, it's still a thriving alternative to chains and the mass-produced, while providing goods and services to the near east side. It's also home to the Willy Street Co-op and the... Willy Street Fair and Parade... and its star attraction the Bubble Car. Not to mention the graffiti wall at Mother Fool's coffeehouse....

The Pro Arte Quartet + Mendelssohn. A match made in heaven....

UW Cinematheque. Vintage, experimental and foreign films at this mecca for movie buffs....

Smart Studios. Nirvana's Nevermind was recorded here. What more do you need to know?

The Innocence Project. The Justice system sometimes screws up, putting innocent people in prison, then mightily resists admitting that it made a mistake. Thankfully, this UW Law School team has helped gather the incontrovertible evidence needed to overturn several wrongful convictions....

UW pianist Christopher Taylor interpreting Olivier Messiaen....

Night swimming. Why does it seem like everyone we know has a story about being spotlighted by cops in the middle of the night at B.B. Clarke Beach in various states of undress?

Lots more. Go to the link.

The end of "Air America" in Madison.

I'd say: if they can't make it here, they can't make it anywhere.

Mike Malloy reading long passages from Orwell's "1984" was not mentioned by anyone as something they'll miss should Air America programming be dropped from WXXM/FM 92.1 "The Mic."

The station is set to switch to sports programming on Jan. 1. We asked readers what they will miss about The Mic if the switch is a done deal, and quite a few responded. Some responses were edited for space and clarity:

• Karl Marx observed, accurately, I believe, that in every age the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling classes. It follows that any other ideas will be dismissed by, for example, the owners of the broadcast media as "unpopular," whether or not they are shared by two persons or by 200 million.

For all its flaws, a progressive radio format such as the one that WXXM/FM will abandon on New Year's Day demonstrates the powerfully subversive fact that ideas about getting out of Iraq now, creating a single-payer health care system, adopting instant runoff voting, etc., are not at all unpopular. I will miss Madison's part in creating that progressive national sensibility and that the soon-to-be absent voices do it so entertainingly. (Alan Bickley, Madison)....

So... sort of like... it's unpopular because it's popular? Or is it the other way around? Maybe if I read more Marx (and less Orwell) that would make more sense to me.

Moving on:

• With the loss of 92.1, the progressive voice in Madison will again be silenced (well, except for WHA, WERN, WORT, WTDY, the Progressive, Isthmus, the editorial page of The Capital Times and most of the editorial page of the Wisconsin State Journal, but you know what I mean).

I listen because nowhere else can you find such raw, spittle-flecked emotionalism combined with such robust disinterest in facts. (Dale Aldridge, Madison)

Okay. I'm going to stop while I'm amused. More opinion from the locals at the link.

"A 'quintessential Madison case' of animal rights vs. the university."

A local contracts case with a nice free speech dimension:

Dane County judge said Monday that the law is on the side of animal-rights activists who want to buy buildings next to the UW-Madison's primate labs and open a museum highlighting the cruelty they say happens at the labs.

Budget Bicycle owner Roger Charly, who owns the property, cannot back out of an agreement he made to sell it to Dr. Richard McLellan, a retired California physician who is bankrolling the $675,000 purchase for the National Primate Research Center Exhibition Hall, Dane County Circuit Judge Sarah O'Brien ruled.

The buildings are directly between the Harlow Primate Psychology Laboratory and the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, a location coveted by animal-rights activists for its proximity to the labs.

In July 2005, Charly tried to back out of an agreement he made with McLellan and animal- rights activist Rick Bogle about eight months earlier and instead sell the property to UW-Madison for $1 million. Charly previously turned down offers from UW-Madison as inadequate.

Charly argued -- unsuccessfully -- that it was not a contract because there was no consideration.

...O'Brien pointed out, the university has condemnation powers and could seek to take the property for the public good. Bogle said he is worried about that possibility.

"If they do that now, it will be clear that they are trying to stifle debate," Bogle said.

But primate center director Joe Kemnitz said he is concerned about the effect the museum would have on his staff.

"If, in fact, they were able to do what they plan to do, to open the museum to attract other activists, that could be disruptive to our operation," Kemnitz said. "It would have a negative impact on the well-being of our staff."

Don't you think it would violate Bogle's free speech rights to use eminent domain to take the property now? (There's no sign that the university plans to do this, it should be noted.)

Why not engage with me instead of trying to make me into your enemy?

Despite yesterday's forbearance, I feel I have to respond to this post of Andrew Sullivan's. I didn't say I'd resist forever. I just said I was sensitive about too much in a row of the intrablogospherical squabblage. But now that I've hit a couple other subjects and have a bit of time this morning to stir up a reasonably bloggy mix, I'm going to respond.

Here's his post, in its entirety, under the heading "Quote for the Day":

"What seems to be guiding Althouse and Reynolds' hatred of the term "Christianist" is that it highlights a fact which they both are eager to ignore - namely, that the political party to which they are so devoted is dominated by individuals who believe that their religious/Christian beliefs ought to dictate the American political process, shape secular law, and exploit coercive state power to constrain the choices of their fellow citizens," - Glenn Greenwald, responding to increasingly hysterical attacks on yours truly by some Republican bloggers.

Is this decent, Andrew? Greenwald, an extremely partisan blogger, known for swinging wildly, produced a post that was obviously designed to vilify me. Did you bother to check whether any of his assertions are fair or true, or do you think it's acceptable to just reprint something and let it work its damage because you're irked at me for raising some questions about your hostility to religious people? I see that you seem to be trying to make amends to the religious people you offended by printing some long emails from Mormons, so I have the feeling that my criticism had some effect. So why just reprint a hostile quote?

First, I'm not only not "so devoted to" the Republican Party, I'm not a Republican at all. The main reason I'm not a Republican is that I object to the social conservatism aspect of the party. I'm not a Democrat either, because of the Democratic Party's weakness on national security. I'm on record, time and again on this blog, as disliking both parties. In short, the entire premise of Greenwald's quote -- my supposed party affiliation -- is a lie.

Second, I don't have a "hatred" of your word "Christianist." As I said in the very post of mine that criticized you and that linked to Greenwald's abusive material:

I don't object to the word "Christianists" if it is used fairly to refer to something that is the equivalent of "Islamists." I use the word "religionists" myself. See here, here, here, and here. Words like this mean something and have a place. The key is to use them in the right place. I criticize Sullivan when he shows a hostility toward ordinary religious people who aren't trying to bully their way around the political world. There are distinctions to be made here.

Instead of letting Greenwald be your mouthpiece, why not engage with the issue I raised about your use of the word? I share your opposition about the social conservative political agenda, and I'm a strong supporter of the separation of church and state. Why not engage with me instead of trying to make me into your enemy? I have supported gay marriage in numerous posts on this blog for almost three years, and I am a law professor who teaches a course in Religion and the Constitution. Why don't you see me as a valuable ally or, at the least, a person to avoid reprinting lies about?

UPDATE: Sullivan responds to this post without linking to it. Great. I guess you want to make it hard for your readers to see what I actually said. He prefers to link to the Instapundit post that links to this. What's that all about? How many times is he going to print my name over there and talk about me without linking to me? It's really unfair! It flaunts unfairness! Here's what he writes -- note how it just merges me with Glenn Reynolds, knocks me, then proceeds to talk about things Reynolds wrote. Here's the part that is about me:

Today, the Althouse-Reynolds Axis begs for me to engage them on the issues, rather than making them my "enemy." I'm befuddled. I linked to a quote by Glenn Greenwald, which was very long and included many links to Althouse and Reynolds and others over the question of whether "Christianist" is an appropriate term to use to describe the fusion of political ideology and religious faith. Greenwald shows that Reynolds and Althouse simply refuse to allow me to deploy a word in a manner that makes sense to me. Althouse writes:

I criticize Sullivan when he shows a hostility toward ordinary religious people who aren't trying to bully their way around the political world. There are distinctions to be made here.

Indeed there are. That's why I call "ordinary religious people" Christians and call those who are "trying to bully their way around the political world" Christianists. Is that so hard for her to understand? I've stated it quite clearly from the beginning, but she refuses to take me at my word.

And you, Andrew Sullivan, refuse to engage with the serious argument I am making here. If you linked to the posts you talk about and cut way down, your readers would have a fair chance to see what I am saying. I have obviously agreed with your basic definition but called you on your overuse of it and the air of hostility toward religious people you're giving off. Why don't you deal with my argument fairly, including links to me, and why don't you treat me as an individual instead of lamely and inaccurately merging me with Glenn Reynolds? Glenn and I have taken different positions on this, and I'm the main blogger writing about the subject, so why are you linking to him linking to me? I would suggest it's sexism -- it certainly gives off a whiff of sexism -- but I think the real reason is that Reynolds's position is easier for you to oppose by trotting out your usual points.

"Maybe the next frontier in the academic battle against all varieties of oppression should be 'drunk studies.'"

Cathy Young riffs, a propos of "Fat Studies":

Why not an academic program championing the idea that "alcohol abuse" is an artificial construct based on the mainstream culture's oppressive notions of what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate consumption of alcohol? "Drunk studies" could tell us that the stigmatization of drunkenness stems from the Western valorization of such dubious values as self-control, rationality, and obedience to social norms, and reflects a pernicious fear of rebellion against inhibitions and authority. Of course, it would also question conventional wisdom -- supposedly based on scientific evidence, but really rooted in anti-drunk bias -- about the deleterious health consequences of alcohol abuse and the dangers of drunk driving. After all, the goal of "drunk studies" would be to empower drunks!

You could repackage all the vices. The first commenter over there brings up laziness -- sloth. I mean, why are we sinners persecuted so much? Prejudice! Convention!

"And then they went to the 20th-year reunion and saw that somebody else who was 10 times less smart was making much more money."

Hey, it's front page news in the NYT that some people make a lot less money than others who begin their careers with worse credentials but choose a career path that pays more. For example, a doctor became a Wall Street adviser on medical investments and makes a lot more than doctors who practice medicine. (Via Memeorandum.)

(Could people stop saying things like "10 times less smart"? It doesn't make sense. It should be one tenth as smart. Just a usage point. I know he's only talking, but he's a rich guy, so why not give him as hard a time as possible?)

ADDED: Glenn Reynolds mocks the headline "Lure of great wealth affects career choices." That made me go over and see the photograph again. The Wall Street doctor guy, who sounds perfectly decent throughout the article, is pictured sitting in what looks like a modest room, with his wife and two kids, playing Monopoly. Aw, nice family scene, he must have thought. Here we are, TV off, no video games. We're playing a board game. But the shot used has one child holding up play money and counting it just as the wife is leaning over toward him with a slightly intense look on her face. Oh, noooo! Don't you know those rich people play Monopoly. And look at that woman implanting the message that it's good to get rich!

Resisting...

I am resisting getting drawn into intrablogospherical squabbles. I hope you appreciate it!

After that long, sole post this morning, I feel I would be doing my regular readers a disservice if I posted what I just composed in my head, which is a response to a couple of very conspicuous taunts that are out there today.

But you taunters -- you know who you are! -- be advised: I could taunt you right back so hard it wouldn't even be funny.

But I want to be funny. I need something frothy and amusing to talk about. Oh, here's a quote. Let's just call it my "Quote of the Day.".. if you know what I mean.... Andrew???.... Anyway, no intrablogospherical squabbling! Really! I mean it. I don't want squabbling! I want amusement! Here's the quote:

The other day I got out my can opener and was opening a can of worms when I thought, "What am I doing?!" --- Jack Handey, "Deepest Thoughts."

So much for moderation.

After writing a post on Saturday, expressing my dismay at seeing Andrew Sullivan showing disrespect toward Mormons (and denying it), I did another post on Sunday, linking to The Moderate Voice, which, like Sullivan, had printed a photograph of Mormon undergarments and wondered about how people would respond to a Mormon -- Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney -- running for President. (I intend to follow this issue closely in the coming months.)

The author of the post at TMV, Shaun Mullen, chose -- immoderately -- to lash out at me, calling me names, in a way that was just weirdly out of line. (Details below, at "Let me just remind you about how Shaun acted.")

Co-blogger Greg Piper wrote:

Shaun's post on the coming media circus surrounding Mitt Romney's likely run for president as the first serious Mormon (properly speaking, "LDS") candidate is generating some upset comments from the LDS faithful who appear to not like the posting of people in the temple underwear....

But I'd remind those that consider the shot offensive that it indeed illustrates (literally) what is coming in 2008 - if Romney keeps hinting he'll run, a slew of stories for the next 2 years about the LDS church, its history, controversies and role in America and abroad, including its rather secretive leadership structure....

Yes, a bit crude - but the underwear shot gets attention, and is something that a lot of folks like myself never even heard of. Let's also consider the difficulty of describing temple underwear without something visual. If "South Park" can make fun of Latinos selling "Native American" tampons made from their hair to a gullible, progressive audience, and secular and faithful alike can pillory the Christian merchandising trend of the past decade, I don't see how LDS temple underwear is off limits. LDSers could take a page from certain Middle Easterners that self-identify as Muslims (the efforts I make to be PC!) and start killing people that highlight temple underwear, but they're too civilized for that. I happen to agree with the commenter in Shaun's post that implied this was a side issue as long as people were dying over offense.

That said, I found Shaun's three responses to Ann Althouse's criticism to be in poor taste, especially patronizing a serious, intelligent blogger as "Annie Pooh." A public apology from Shaun, many of whose readers at TMV probably didn't see his responses at Althouse's blog, wouldn't be inapt.

Thanks, Greg. And let me add that Shaun's invented nickname for me is sexist. He needs to be called on that. I know there are some folks who seem to think sexism doesn't count when aimed in a rightward direction -- you should see some of the things they said in the comments -- but it does, and I'm keeping score.

Co-blogger Andrew Quinn writes:

In short, I'm shocked.... When I came back to blog here after a recent and extended leave of absence, I quickly and easily noticed a less moderate tone. Every coblogger that posts with any regularity offers an extensively left-wing viewpoint, and (here's the real offense) often stooping to ridiculous levels to claw at the knees of the Republicans....

I'm appalled. This site is too rapidly becoming an echo chamber like those we once were proudly able to sneer down at.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised to see religious bigotry from a new coblogger who wrote on his own blog the following gem of "moderation" :

Just do me a favor: If someone tells you how proud they are to be an American this Thanksgiving, don't bother to get tangled up in some long winded discussion about what The Decider has wrought. Just ask to have the cranberry sauce passed to you and throw it at them.

Well, Shaun, the Moderate Voice once used to stand for civil debate ("long-winded discussion") and not so much for throwing of food. But I guess acting like children is in vogue now - it just doesn't seem so moderate to me.

Okay. Let's post pictures of what others consider sacred for a cheap laugh because "it was coming anyways." Let's be ashamed of being Americans. And let's devolve our debate to the point where we're arguing that the Administration plans for the maximum casualties.

I love this site and what it has stood for. I really do, and that's why it sickens me to see us take this path. Because if we continue along our current trajectory, a name change will be in order....

I'd like to preempt any criticism or calling me a "neocon," a Halliburton puppet or anything similar by saying that I supported Kerry in 2004, supported mostly Republicans in 2006, and that this post was not based on any specific opinions but rather a yearning for the educated and civil debate we used to have here. Not a forum where cobloggers respond to intelligent criticisms of their work by calling respected lawblogger Ann Althouse "Annie Pooh." Is this a joke?

Thanks, Andrew.

Joe Gandelman, the founder of TMV, writes a post, ostensibly for new readers, where he explains his site, what moderation means, and what the co-bloggers are:

We are adding some new cobloggers. Each has a different perspective and style. This weekend passions ran high, even among our cobloggers. I have asked everyone who writes on this site to email their concerns to me in the future about the site and we can discuss it privately.

Nothing specifically about me there. And Joe has a second post, a short one, where he links back to Shaun's original post and to Greg's post, the one that suggests Shaun should apologize to me, but again, Joe says nothing about me.

I think Joe had a nice blog going, one that lived up to its title. Maybe it's not a good idea to have a blog title that makes such a distinct claim, but anyhow, I think Shaun Mullen is hurting Joe's reputation. I don't know why Joe hasn't addressed the way Shaun treated me.

Let me just remind you about how Shaun acted. Here's his first appearance in the comments to my blog:

Hi Annie Pooh:

Thanks for the drive-by-hit hit on The Moderate Voice post. I wrote it. You took it out of context to suit your own ends.

While I'm not surprised, I'm kinda sad. But it is so much easier to flail than think something through.

Your readers can judge for themselves:

http://www.themoderatevoice.com/posts/1164544870.shtml

Best, Shaun

As several readers immediately pointed out, my post did link to his post. I mistook his comment for private email and wrote back:

What "ends" are you referring to? Preserving civility and opposing
bigotry? Yes, I did. You should be glad I wasn't harsher to you as I
believe was justifiable.

And why are you acting like I didn't link to your post? People can go
over there and see how far you went. You went seriously wrong when you posted the photograph.

You really don't sound too moderate. You sound insulting and
mocking... and unconcerned about religious persecution.

My email prompted Shaun to comment in the post thread again:

Ann has replied to be me privately, but has not posted her response to me in the comments section of her own blog. Or maybe Blogger is acting up again. Oh, well.

Anyhow, my advice for Ann remains the same: Stop flailing.

I discussed some of the issues that Mitt Romney will draw, most of them frivolous and unworthy of discussion, in the context as a preview of Things to Come, not a knock on the Church of Latter Day Saints or their underwear.

Chill, Ann, chill. Go play with that squirrel in your yard.

When I saw that, I added this comment:

Shaun: You really don't come across as moderate at all. As for replying to you privately rather than here, I saw your private email to me first and didn't yet see that it was also a comment here. What I responded privately was:

[Text of email omitted.]

Does Joe know you're screwing up his blog?

Shaun then commented:

Annie Pooh:

I did not send you a private email. Somebody copied me in on your screed.

It is a beautifully sunny day here on the East Coast. I have just come in from a bike ride.

Do you have a bike? If so, I'd suggest you get on it and pedal away your demons.

I commented again to say that I really mistook Shaun's comment for private email. (The comments on the blog come to me as email, allowing me to keep track of things.) I don't think Shaun returned. But what a strange performance! What was it about my original post that even arguably called for his attitude? I think it's truly weird, especially for someone who is given the stage of a blog someone else created and built up under the name "The Moderate Voice."

But Joe's later posts demonstrate that Joe knows Shaun is "screwing up his blog" or has the basis to know that but has drawn a different conclusion. Frankly, Joe's failure to call Shaun on his ridiculous abuse or to reach out to me in any way really says something. I haven't been keeping track of his blog that well, and I really don't know why he's loaded it up with co-bloggers after creating such a distinctive persona for himself. But something is awry.

I suppose I should say something like: These people who call themselves moderates are usually playing some game. They really are partisan -- otherwise why are they writing about politics? -- and they're just posing under the label "moderate" to try to pull you in and put one over on you. Be very suspicious.

But then that's what people keep saying about me.

"I'm sleeping in the same house as her for 11 days, looking for her. And she's right in the bedroom."

???!!!

Keisha and Mary.

The 16-year-old actress Keisha Castle-Hughes, who plays the Virgin Mary in the new movie "The Nativity Story," is pregnant. More here ("'Who cares if she is only 16?' said one family member, who did not wish to be named.") And how old was Mary? "The opinion that Joseph at the time of the Annunciation was an aged widower and Mary twelve or fifteen years of age, is founded only upon apocryphal documents." The movie did cast a very young woman, however, and now the young actress is herself pregnant. Response?

"Can Romney endure the media exposure that awaits him? What if his great-great grandfather was a bigamist? And what about that underwear?"

And that's from the so-called Moderate Voice. Steel yourself folks. There's going to be a lot of this sort of thing in the coming months.

Here's a substantial article from the Dallas Morning News:

No Mormon presidential candidate has ever posed a real threat – until Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The buzz about his potential 2008 candidacy has been growing for several months now, especially as the star of the early Republican favorite, George Allen, has dimmed. Given that prominent conservative evangelicals like columnist Cal Thomas and the Rev. Jerry Falwell have stated that Mr. Romney's faith should not be a barrier to the presidency, Mr. Romney might be the first Mormon candidate whom mainstream evangelicals can support....

[C]onservative Christians' opposition to Mormonism, while historically a reaction to Smith's violation of cultural taboos, is also rooted in theology....

The LDS church's professionalism and skillful image management worry many conservative Christians. The Mormon church has tried to position itself in the mainstream by conducting a careful marketing campaign....

For conservative Christians, this rebranding of Mormonism as a mainstream Christian faith is a threatening and duplicitous move, especially considering the church's high conversion and birth rates. They have continued their efforts to marginalize the LDS church. In October, Dr. James Dobson himself – considered by some observers the most influential figure on the Christian right – said on national radio that he doubted a Mormon could earn evangelical votes. Some view Mr. Romney's candidacy as the latest – and most aggressive – step in the Mormon PR campaign to convince Americans that Mormonism is just another denomination of Christianity.

"There is the perception that, if Mormonism is legitimized at that level, many American Protestants will become Mormon," says Greg Johnson, an ex-Mormon who now leads efforts in Mormon-evangelical dialogue.

Mr. Romney, who has balanced the Massachusetts budget, reformed health care and stuck to his conservative social beliefs, is aware of this perception. Over the last few months, he has made several efforts to meet with conservative Christians and convince them that he shares their most sacred moral and social positions – such as opposition to abortion and gay marriage – no matter his theology....

And here's a piece by Andrew Sullivan in the London Times:

Romney has proven himself a competent executive, he is a red governor from a blue state, he’s a fiscal conservative, a health policy innovator — and he’s good looking in a generic all-American way. The one problem is that he is now, and always has been, a Mormon. This would and should be irrelevant, except that his primary campaign must necessarily appeal to the Republican base on evangelical Christian grounds. When a political party has become a religious organisation, as the Republicans have under Bush and Rove, it’s hard to nominate a heretic as leader. Mormons insist they are Christians but not many other Christians easily agree.

Many evangelicals are keen to look past the issue, arguing that private faith and public office are unrelated issues. But this is a little rich coming from people who believe George W Bush is divinely guided. And the more the actual doctrines of Mormonism emerge, the deeper the awkwardness could be. All humans can become gods? Jesus returned to earth after his resurrection . . . in America? Moreover, the secrecy of the Mormon leadership, its insistence on mandatory tithing, and accusations of cult-like practices are likely to stir at least some controversy among the very religious right whose support Romney badly needs.

Personally, I have no interest in someone’s private faith in his or her pursuit of public office. Romney, to my mind, should be judged on his public record. The trouble is: this is not what the religious right has come to expect in a leader. They look for a religious figure in a political leader, “one of them”.

There is going to be a lot to monitor on this story. There's the usual way social conservatives and social liberals import religion into their struggle, but the addition of a distinctive new religion is making everything old new again. It could get really ugly. And make no mistake: Sullivan's move is an ugly one. He doesn't like social conservatives and the way they use religion, and he sees an opportunity to drive a wedge into them by raising questions about religious doctrine and prodding people to feel hostility toward Mormons. He thinks this is justified because -- he asserts -- the Republicans have won power by styling themselves as a "religious organisation." They've used religion to their advantage, so they deserve to have it used against them. But stirring up hostility toward one sect? That is a dangerous thing that goes far beyond the targets you think you're aiming at.

IN THE COMMENTS: Shaun Mullen, author of the Moderate Voice post, drops by, hangs around, and eventually provokes me to say "Does Joe know you're screwing up his blog?"

Fat studies.

Why not major in Fat Studies?

Proponents of fat studies see it as the sister subject — and it is most often women promoting the study, many of whom are lesbian activists — to women’s studies, queer studies, disability studies and ethnic studies. In many of its permutations, then, it is the study of a people its supporters believe are victims of prejudice, stereotypes and oppression by mainstream society.

“It’s about a dominant culture’s ideals of what a real person should be,” said Stefanie Snider, 29, a graduate student at the University of Southern California, whose dissertation will be on the intersection of queer and fat identities in the United States in the 20th century. “And whether that has to do with skin color or heritage or sexual orientation or ability, it ends up being similar in a lot of ways.”

In the other corner, we have the people who hate this sort of thing:

“In one field after another, passion and venting have come to define the nature of what academics do,” said Stephen H. Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, a group of university professors and academics who have a more traditional view of higher education. “Ethnic studies, women’s studies, queer studies — they’re all about vindicating the grievances of some particular group. That’s not what the academy should be about.

“Obviously in the classroom you can look at issues of right and wrong and justice and injustice,” he added, “But if the purpose is to vindicate fatness, to make fatness seem better in the eyes of society, then that purpose begs a fundamental intellectual question.”

They're here, they're fat, and they want a department devoted to them.

Cool people can't go out on Saturday anymore.

Because the uncool people are out.

“In the old days, Saturday was the destination night for chic New Yorkers headed to Studio 54 at its most resplendent,” [said Michael Musto, the longtime Village Voice night-life columnist.] “But things changed as more and more tri-staters were willing to use the bridges and tunnels for here-we-come Gotham weekends, so the locals started staying home and triple-bolting their doors as if in a George Romero film.”...

Last Saturday, four Manhattanites in their early 30s were huddling over a low table downstairs at Buddakan, the cavernous pan-Asian restaurant in the meatpacking district. “During the weekends, you get a lot of clutter, if you will,” said Brian Kirimdar, 30, an investment banker. He and his wife, Ashley, tend to hide out in restaurants on Saturdays, avoiding all but a few of the Chelsea clubs. “You don’t find too many bridge-and-tunnel people at Cielo or Marquee,” he said. “You really have to pick and choose.”

Zombies! Clutter! The aversion to other people permeates human life. The wonder is that anyone ever ventures out at all. What riffraff is out there!

And yet they do go out. They go out and still imagine that they are hiding out in restaurants and only a few clubs.

The new "blog magazine" trend.

Stephen Bainbridge is back from his blogging hiatus and has revamped his bloggage into "a blog magazine in three sections." The professional is separated from the personal, and the wine is in another place altogether. Good idea? Personally, I like one blog with mixed topics, but I can see how someone else might prefer to highlight a topic (like wine) and to keep the professional part completely professional. It's likely to be more comprehensible to colleagues, and there probably are some people who would only be interested in following you down one path but not the others. But you lose the surprise of the mix.

Bainbridge keeps his Site Meter private, so we can't see, but it will be interesting for him to see what entry and exit pages people are using. I would expect the personal blog to get the most readers -- it's the one I'm blogrolling -- because culture, religion, and politics interest people so much. If the corporate law blog gets relatively low numbers, he will surely -- and fairly -- assume these are high quality readers, people whose admiration will help him professionally.

Is Bainbridge's way the way of the future? We shall see. It's one way. I think it will appeal to some who blog a lot -- most people can't keep up three blogs -- and who want to write about their professional subject in a style that they worry is not entertaining enough for lay readers or who want to maximize the credit they get for the professional writing they are doing on the blog. It may work as a way to get more of your colleagues to read your blog. Some of them probably don't want to wade through the daily posts to see what you are writing about law.

The Top 100 Cover Songs.

I love Retrocrush, and I'm just finishing the 99th podcast, which is about the top 25 of the Top 100 Cover Songs. If you haven't heard Robert Berry's podcasting, you really need to listen. He's got a hilarious voice and delivery style: adorably nerdy. He's pretty knowledgeable and articulate too. And I like a lot of his choices, though all 100 could easily be different songs. Here's the whole top 100 (with lots of YouTube clips). Don't miss #57: Crispin Glover's "Ben."

"'Strawberry Fields Forever' builds ... into a psychedelic swirl ... of 'Hello Goodbye,' 'Baby You're a Rich Man,' 'Penny Lane' and Piggies.''"

Are you listening to the new Beatles album "Love," the soundtrack for the Cirque du Soleil show? I am.

"I had fresh ears -- if you can have fresh ears to the Beatles -- and my job was to make things different,'' said [George Martin's son Giles] Martin, who was born in 1969 as the band was breaking up.

The rules were simple: Beatles tracks only, no electronic distortion of what they recorded, and no newly recorded music. The single exception was a string arrangement, written by original Beatles producer George Martin, to accompany an acoustic version of Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps.''...

I'm disappointed,'' [Beatles biographer Bob] Spitz said. "Not by the end product but by the fact that they are the Beatles' songs and overdubbing them and massaging them allows other people to impose their own creative ideas on something that was so immediate and of a particular time. I thought that legacy was virtually tamper-proof, until now.

"Once you meddle with something so fixed in the public's mind, you will risk having a failure on the proportion to Twyla Tharp doing Bob Dylan,'' Spitz said, in a reference to the musical that closed this month after less than a month on Broadway.

Is risk-taking inherently bad? You have the record. Judge it! Is it bad? I find it quite amusing. It's fun to encounter the lovable snippets -- e.g., the initial chord from "Hard Day's Night" -- out of place and leading to something surprising. It's nice to have the cool part of a song -- e.g., "Hela, heba helloa/Hela, heba helloa" -- extracted from the dross that is the rest of the song -- "Hello, Goodbye."

Let's look for some more opinion. There's this:

[I]t's exhausting.... There are 26 tracks which take elements from 130 different songs, whether it's a whole song or a guitar lick or a drum beat.

Some of them vaguely work as a curiosity, but are pretty obvious - Tomorrow Never Knows is one of the most mind-bending pop songs ever written (never mind that the group came up with it way back in 1966), but if you were going to mix it with another track, then Harrison's similarly Eastern-leaning Within You Without You is staring you in the face.

There are tweety birds in the background of an a capella Because. They place a live version and the studio version of I Want To Hold Your Hand over the top of each other. Drive My Car gets caught in a traffic jam with The Word and What You're Doing. Immediately after what is possibly the most famous sustained guitar chord in modern music (from the opening of A Hard Day's Night) comes possibly my favourite drum fill of all time (from The End on Abbey Road), and they're both bolted on rather clumsily to the front of Get Back.

Why? Martin is like a master chef, and these songs in their original form are gourmet meals, but Love takes these delicious dishes, pours them into a blender, hits the puree button, sticks a straw in it and asks you to suck.

And there's this:

[M]y skepticism was evaporated about 10 seconds into the album. "Love" is a work of art from original Beatles producer George Martin and his son Giles that keeps the spirit of originality and inventiveness that the Beatles poured into their songwriting and recording.

What the two Martins did is nothing short of audio voodoo. They've created the ultimate Beatles "mash-up." Combing through all the Beatles original master tapes, they grouped together songs of the same tempo, same key and same feel and layered parts of some songs into the middle of others. For example, the intro to "Get Back" is Ringo's rollicking drum solo from Abbey Road's "The End." "Blackbird" segues seamlessly into "Yesterday." Vocal harmonies from "Hello Goodbye" float throughout the background of many of the songs. I got a huge kick out of hearing the solo from "Taxman" inserted into "Drive My Car." And who knew "I Want You She's So Heavy" would make an absolutely perfect outro to "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite?" Those examples merely scratch the surface of the mix-and-match approach that makes this album brilliant.

And:

Every fibre in my Beatles-freak being warned me not to be excited about the new Beatles album, Love....

[R]emixing all these classic tunes – as the soundtrack to a Cirque de Soleil Las Vegas show – is like messing with Picasso, or cut-and-pasting Tolstoy. Why do it?

Here's the answer. It's brilliant....

Love begins with the exquisite harmony vocals from Because floating in the ether. Then comes – what's that! – the closing chord from A Day in the Life played backwards so that it builds to a crescendo, followed by that unmissable opening chord from A Hard Day's Night, then Ringo's drums from The End, before somehow slipping in to Get Back as if that's the way it had always been done.

That magically segues into Glass Onion, seamlessly blended with hints of Hello Goodbye and what must be bits of brass reconstituted from Pepper. Nothing is real, indeed....

Play it without looking at the track listing and feel the buzz when you recognise what that tape-flipped-backwards choir is that leads to Something, or the guitar part from Blackbird turning into Yesterday.

And when Being for fhe Benefit of Mr Kite meets the heavy riff from I Want You and parts of Helter Skelter, the effect is totally in keeping with the spirit of The Beatles and the way they pushed the envelope of studio technology in the first place.

Enough. The point is made.

"I mean no disrespect."

Says Andrew Sullivan, chided by a Mormon for his post about Mormon undergarments. Here's the post. Do you buy "I mean no disrespect"?

ADDED: And here's an earlier post. Sullivan is so sure of himself on the subject of religion. He seems to think he knows just where it's right to dish out contempt about religion. But his contempt is mostly for religious people who he thinks are too sure of themselves. [ADDED: But that is exactly his character flaw.] In this case, it seems that Mitt Romney's opposition to gay marriage makes it morally upright for Sullivan to attack Mormons:

Mitt Romney will surely provide a fascinating glimpse into the Christianist mindset in the coming two years. He will be the candidate for the Christianist right, but he's not a Christian. And many Christianists may well recoil at the man's Mormon faith.... I'm sorry if I have little sympathy for Romney's plight. Live by fundamentalism; die by fundamentalism.

I wonder how many people "recoil" at Sullivan's sanctimonious pronouncements about "Christianists." He's become so devoted to that word of his. Does he not notice how snide and hostile it feels even to people who are not fundamentalists?

AND: I just noticed that last-linked post is titled "The Mormon Question." Wow. Is that tone deaf!

ONE MORE THING: The word isn't "sacreligious," as Sullivan has it at the first link, it's "sacrilegious." The word is not related to "religion":

Sacrilege’s Latin etymon was formed of sacer, “sacred” and legere, “to gather or steal”; sacrilege is “the stealing of sacred things” or doing other violence to them.

AND ANOTHER THING: Lest you freak out and think that last thing is meant as more of a put down of Sullivan than it is. I'm just talking about etymology and spelling.

AND: Glenn Greenwald is such an idiot. Am I supposed to respond to this foolishness? Glenn, you moron, in case you didn't notice, Sullivan is mocking Mormons in general. That's what bothered me. I don't object to the word "Christianists" if it is used fairly to refer to something that is the equivalent of "Islamists." I use the word "religionists" myself. See here, here, here, and here. Words like this mean something and have a place. The key is to use them in the right place. I criticize Sullivan when he shows a hostility toward ordinary religious people who aren't trying to bully their way around the political world. There are distinctions to be made here. Why not take a little trouble to try to understand the person you are criticizing before you write, you disreputable slimeball? (And your writing is putrid.) [But I do love the pathetic jealousy of your post title.]

EVEN MORE: From the good Glenn, Glenn Reynolds, linking here:

WELL, YES. Glenn Greenwald is extraordinarily lame, even when he's writing under his own name.The problem with the term "Christianist" isn't that it adds "ist" to the end of a religion. It's that, by parallelling "Islamist," it is a deliberate attempt at conflating people who oppose gay marriage -- or, apparently, Madonna's schlocky posturing -- with people who blow up discos and mosques, and throw gay people off of walls. That's the kind of execrable moral equivalence engaged in by the Soviets and their proxies, and it's the sort of thing that Andrew Sullivan used to oppose eloquently, before he started to engage in it himself.

Indeed. And it should be noted that using "Islamist" is a way to avoid using the word "Muslim." The idea is to distinguish a dangerous subgroup from the much larger group of ordinary religious people. I see "Islamist," "Christianist," and "religionist" all as useful terms to refer to political actors who rely on religious ideology. But the usefulness of the terms depends on making careful distinctions. You have to be careful not to drift over into the expression of hostility toward a religious group, as I believe Sullivan has been doing with Mormons. More generally, he simply is so hot about the gay marriage cause that he apparently really is willing to express contempt for the groups that stand against it. I support gay marriage and am much more socially liberal that most religious people, but I think it is terribly important to be respectful toward people with religious beliefs.

UPDATE: I have a new post on the subject here.

"But he's quiet, introspective, even paranoid. He's a very wound-up guy. But I don't think he's a racist."

The real Kramer reminds us that Michael Richards is not the real Kramer.

"I know the public is smart enough to realize that Michael Richards' personal actions in no way reflect on the character he portrayed on television or me, Kenny Kramer, the real person that the character was based on."

I know the public is smart enough... That's touching. Makes me think of: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

"The central principle of spin: However bad the trouble you're in, you can generally make the other side look worse."

From a description of Christopher Buckley's book "Thank You for Smoking," from a list of the 5 best books about PR.

A man who saved us so much time.

H. Donald Wilson, the man who thought up Lexis-Nexis, back in 1969, has died:

A turning point for the acceptance of Lexis came in the early 1970s, when Mr. Wilson arranged for a skeptical audience at the Supreme Court to use the new system. The Lexis system found more cases than the court clerks found by using manual research methods.

Sounds like a scene from the movie "Desk Set"... except in the movie -- spoiler alert! -- the human beings beat the computer.

Bunny Watson: I don't smoke, I only drink champagne when I'm lucky enough to get it, my hair is naturally natural, I live alone... and so do you.

Richard Sumner: How do you know that?

Bunny Watson: Because you're wearing one brown sock and one black sock.

See? People are better. But thanks for the machine!

Why the wine ads don't mention the benefits of resveratrol.

They don't want to litigate:

In 1991, some aggressive winemakers sought to trumpet the health benefits of wine, but they were quickly shut down by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which then regulated the industry at the federal level. Even the industry’s trade organization, the Wine Institute, counseled against promoting wine as a health drink....

“We put on a back label, that wine is healthy and recommended in the Bible,” [Michael Mondavi said]. “The B.A.T.F. sent us a cease and desist letter and made us change the label even though we went back to Washington and showed them the scientific evidence and read them the Bible passages.”

The article doesn't identify the passages. There's this:

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun— all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

And this one, which is less grand but actually makes a health claim:

Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.

Audible Althouse #72.

It's a new podcast! It's about: how I don't want to be called "Ann," what it means to be "Conservative Blogress Diva," the Krash of Kramer, my message to Jerry Seinfeld, the effect of the Kramer Krash on Borat, dressing like Bob Dylan, anorexia, horrifying 80s music, plastic surgery for your kids, and... "Rigoletto."

Stream it right through your computer here. But all the divas and the guys who can sing a cute aria subscribe on iTunes:

ADDED: Here's the Wikipedia entry for the song "Sussudio" (which I revile on the podcast), which I see was "was ranked number twenty-four on VH1's '50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever.'" The other song I rail against in this podcast is "I'm the Only One" (which I was forced to endure while sitting in a dentist's chair this week): "Please baby can't you see/My mind's a burnin' hell/I got razors a rippin' and tearin' and strippin'/My heart apart as well...."

YET MORE: I'm not actually mad at people for calling me "Ann," just slightly annoyed at people who criticize me for calling myself "Althouse."

O.J. on eBay.

There's a selling frenzy on of O.J. Simpson's canceled book "If I Did It." Here's a current auction, with the bid now over $60,000. Can you honestly say that if you had received a review copy you would not be trying to sell it? The question is: Who's buying? Or are these "fictitious bids to ruin auction"?

UPDATE: eBay seems to have taken down the book auctions.

Doesn't Althouse watch any reality shows anymore?

Now that TV seems to be the subject of the day -- TV and leftover squirrelage (≈ squism) -- you may be thinking: Doesn't Althouse watch any reality shows anymore? The fact is I do. Even though I haven't been blogging the weekly episodes, I have two shows that I'm following. (That seems to be my pattern: I like to have two reality shows to watch.)

1. "Top Chef." Great characters this season. The Thanksgiving episode was sublime, with Anthony Bourdain's exquisite insults ("Flintstonian"), Sam pushing Frank's buttons -- toothbrush on the floor! -- to make him terrorize little Marcel, Betty finally revealing the horror behind her ever-present toothy smile. Yummy!

2. "Survivor." I'd avoided watching this show since the first season, but the controversy about dividing the teams up by race made me tune in, and the characters kept me hooked. It's been interesting to see how members of the original (race-based) teams have behaved when the teams have realigned. Obviously, the editors have crafted what we get to hear about racial alliances, so we haven't heard the contestants say much about it (though they did let us hear white people talk about reforming their original team). But we are in a position to observe and talk about it on our own, which I think the producers intended. Ostensibly, however, they want us to see -- and they've edited it to highlight -- that everyone is an individual.

"I found myself saying 'these girls don't look all that thin...'"

A Television Without Pity comment on the HBO documentary "Thin," about a treatment center for anorexics:

[O]ne of the most disturbing things was when I found myself saying "these girls don't look all that thin..." and I realized it is because everyone woman on television is so skinny now that I didn't see anything out of the ordinary about the women on the show. (until they undressed anyway) This is such a rampant problem it's boggling.

Absolutely right! I tuned in expecting to see some lurid images of scarily emaciated women, but they all just looked like the usual actresses we see all the time and think of as pretty. What's going on out there? Are all the actresses we're so fond of these days actually -- like the women we see in the documentary -- spending their private moments leaning over the toilet vomiting out their last meal?

Is "Seinfeld" ruined? (My advice to Jerry.)

David Bernstein has started a conversation over at Volokh Conspiracy about whether Michael Richards' racist rant makes his Kramer character unwatchable.

I happened to try an old episode of the show the other day. The TiVo had dragged in the "real and... spectacular" episode, which begins with a lot of Jerry and Elaine. I wasn't really thinking about the Michael Richards incident. I was just passing the time, fooling with the TiVo. But when Kramer came in, after a few seconds, I turned it off. You know, there's usually a Kramerless beginning, and then, at some point, Kramer makes his entrance. Traditionally, you'd get a real lift at that point. The whole arc of the show is now screwed up!

But I'd love to see one more episode of the show where we discover that Kramer is a racist. We were always learning just one more odd fact about Kramer -- his first name, some hobby, some arcane field of knowledge, some impressive skill. And we were always tantalized by the unknown: What does the inside of his apartment look like? How does he support himself? Why don't we ever encounter the oft-referenced Bob Sacamano? And -- as one of the commenters on Bernstein's thread says -- the idea of the show was always that the four characters were not good people. We may have loved them, but it was not because they were purely lovable. So it would actually seamlessly fit with the show to have an epilogue episode where we learn that Kramer is evil.

Come on, Jerry. You like to push the envelope. Do a reunion show where we discover Kramer is a racist!

(Does anyone remember the old parody -- I think it was in the National Lampoon -- about "The Andy Griffith Show" where a black person comes to town and we learn that the lovely Mayberry folk are all racists?) [IN THE COMMENTS: Someone reminds me that it was in RAW, the comics journal, and drawn by Drew Friedman. I did have the Friedmanesque pictures in my head when I wrote this post. I must have the old copy of Raw around somewhere, as I never threw those things out.]

(And on the question whether a racist sitcom character could be lovable: That's a conversation we had back in the 70s when "All in the Family" came out. Is the answer different today?)

Looking back on the Thanksgiving squirrel.

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. What did you have?

Squirrel, because it's not only different, it also happens to be the only type of animal my boys and I shot while out hunting at my parents' farm recently. No wild turkeys, No wild boar, no deer to grace the Thanksgiving table, but the more unusual Thanksgiving squirrel. After we cleaned them my dad made me take them home so I decided to toss them into the freezer where they would wait alongside the turkey for the Thanksgiving dinner.

Holiday.

The commenters on the previous post claim to be suffering from withdrawal on account of low Althouse bloggage today, so let me give you another picture:



I seem to be specializing in green. Check the pictures in the previous two posts. And I seem to be anticipating the next holiday on this holiday. Should I say holly day?

It's in the mid-50s today, here in Madison, Wisconsin. So it's not as if I'm buried in snow and longing for the green of summer. It seems rather green here right now, especially after I raked all the brown leaves off my lawn today.

Hear that? I finally raked the leaves! I've been feeling bad for weeks... almost months... because of my failure to deal with the leaf situation. I'd been on the verge of calling my lawn/snow service people and hiring them to do the leaves for me -- and I've never hired anyone to do my leaves -- and then wavering, thinking that it's more trouble to call and arrange for them to be done than to just do them myself. Two interchangeable chores, and me not doing either.

But this morning, it was warm and sunny, and I finally did it. Doing the leaves, I got a chance to see things in the yard that I normally overlook. Like that rabbit hole. (I kind of fell in it. Not big time. Just would have sprained my ankle if my foot were smaller style.) And I noticed that the little holly bush had grown lots of red berries. So I cut a few sprigs -- they weren't boughs of holly -- and put them in a glass on the glass table.

Then I noticed the shadows and got out the camera:



After focusing on the hard shadows, I was able to perceive the soft light effects in the room:



The leaded glass made subtle rainbows on the painted cabinet.

Beauty is everywhere.

Thanks.

Oh, my! There he is!

It's the Thanksgiving Squirrel!



Keep safe everyone. Boil your meat well.

The Thanksgiving fish.

Godspeed on your trek to Grandmother's house! May the fish be crispy and the squirrel succulent!

Hasn't it all been said before?

No. Everything is actually amazingly new:

[D]on't people accidentally repeat each other's sentences all the time? It seems to me that this should not be unusual. Yet try plugging that last sentence word by word into Google Book Search, and watch what happens.

It: Rejected—too many hits to count
It seems: 11,160,000 matches
It seems to: 3,050,000
It seems to me: 1,580,000
It seems to me that: 844,000
It seems to me that this: 29,700
It seems to me that this should: 237
It seems to me that this should not: 20
It seems to me that this should not be: 9
It seems to me that this should not be unusual: 0

It seems to me that this should not be unusual is itself ... unusual.

(From an article on catching plagiarists.)

Why this strange preference for a digital camera with AA batteries?

Glenn Reynolds has a big post about digital cameras with this line:

Ann Althouse has this small Sony, and a look at her blog will illustrate that it does excellent work. Unlike mine, though, it uses a proprietary rechargeable battery instead of AA batteries. I like the flexibility of being able to pick up fresh batteries anywhere in a pinch, though in truth I seldom have to do that.

But you end up with a clunkier camera! Look how elegantly slim mine is! If you're really worried about running low, buy an extra battery. It's tiny -- 1.4 x .2 x 1.8 inches. Really, that would be much better than having to look around for a store where you could buy batteries, which isn't always so easy anyway.

"A minor show-business miracle took place."

Virginia Heffernan admires the genuine spontaneity of Michael Richards' apology for his (also spontaneous) comedy club rant.

[T]he actor known almost exclusively as Kramer on “Seinfeld” managed, as he has not been able to do in his post-“Seinfeld” career, to fumble his way into a new and surprisingly credible — if unsympathetic — persona.... Mr. Richards was simply an angry white man laid bare.

As he put it in his act: “This shocks you. It shocks you. To see what’s buried beneath.”...

“You know,” Mr. Richards said at one point, seeming to address Mr. Letterman directly, “I’m a performer. I push the envelope. I work in a very uncontrolled manner onstage. I do a lot of free-association” — he slurred the word a bit — “and spontaneous. I go into character.”

That fairly simple point seemed, in the delivery, important. In the Laugh Factory clip, which was cut, framed and semiliterately subtitled by AOL’s entertainment site, TMZ.com, Mr. Richards begins by saying, “Shut up! Fifty years ago ...” and then the material becomes unpublishable. But viewed with the possibility in mind that he’s creating characters, it’s easy to see a trace of parody in the way he hams up his racist word, shaking his fist like the leader of a lynch mob.

A second later, when he retreats into another voice, one of hushed horror — “Ooh, Ooh” — it certainly seems as though the hang-’em-high character has been at least partly that, a character.

To Mr. Richards’s credit, he didn’t spend too much time in his appearance with Mr. Letterman on the question of whether he is or is not a racist. Sure, he delivered this magisterially messed-up sentence: “You can’t — I don’t — I know peop — people could — blacks could feel — what he’s — I’m not a racist. That’s what’s so insane about this.”

But what he emphasized so hard there, he seemed to retract a moment later. “And yet,” he said, looking caught. “It’s said!”

Ooh — that passive voice. “It’s said.” That can’t feel good.

Then Mr. Richards caught his breath for one last time. “It comes through! It fires out of me! Even now, in the passion, and the — and the — that’s here, as I — as I — confront myself.”

On Letterman, Richards did not offer up the explanation that he was playing a character that was not him. He was admitting that those feelings lay inside him. The only time the tried to lessen his responsibility for the hateful words was when he referred to the rage in everyone -- rage that drives nations into war. I think if had been less spontaneous, he might have worked through the material -- as Heffernan has done -- for evidence that he was playing a character or a sequence of characters. He could have said, essentially, it was a -- to coin a phrase -- botched joke and stuck to that story. But he laid himself out there, and that's worth something in the world of show-business fakery.