"Can you believe this Reverend Wright guy?" Bill O'Reilly asks Hillary Clinton.

In a clip from the show that airs tonight. (Set your TiVo.)

UPDATE: I liked the part when he told her that Obama's a nice guy, but she's a jerk like he is.

AND: Here's the video: Part 1. Part 2.

Things not to think about during a Beckett play.

1. What to put on the conlaw exam.

2. ...

3. ...

ADDED: Here's the link I had in the title before. And here's a link that includes this great photo of John Turturro:



The play is "Endgame." And I really do need to get my conlaw exam written. I'm dreading hearing lines like "Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished" and thinking about the exam.

What is the "sex toy controversy" at the UW Law School?

The Badger Herald tells the story with clickable pictures of the fliers that were posted at the Law School. The enlarged pictures are NSFW, but I guess if the women put them up, then it's not sexual harassment.

The Wisconsin Law Students for Reproductive Justice had planned an event called “Sex Toys 101” to promote safe alternatives to sex, educate about sexual health and pleasure, and discuss law concerning sex toys, according to the group.

Members of the organization submitted a formal complaint to Law School Dean Ken Davis Friday, requesting a formal apology, refund of event expenses and clarification of student organization event rules.

In an interview Monday, Law School Associate Dean Walter Dickey said the event was canceled for content-neutral reasons, pointing to a Student Organization Office policy that prohibits the promotion or sale of commercial products by a private company...

In their complaint sent Friday, however, the students contend even after they told Law School administrators the event did not involve any sales or promotions, Dickey indicated the event should be canceled.

“Dean Dickey’s response was that it did not matter whether it was a sale or not, there were to be ‘no sex toys on law school premises,’” the group said, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by The Badger Herald....

Organizers also took issue with the removal of their posters advertising the event within the halls of the Law School. The posters advertised sex toys as trivia contest prizes, included bondage references and said the event was to be “presented by A Woman’s Touch.”

“We believe they were taken down because some people found them offensive,” [said the student who chairs he Wisconsin Law Students for Reproductive Justice Chair.] “If some people did find them offensive, that’s one thing, but to go around ripping them down we don’t feel is the proper way to go about the situation.”

So the question is whether the event was canceled because it violated some neutral rule about selling things. As for the posters, though, surely the law school is allowed to forbid plastering images of penises on our walls.

ADDED: I'm looking at the letter the Law School dean, Kenneth B. Davis, sent to the student, which makes some important assertions of fact:

[T]he only previous formal communication from your group had proposed an event at which the vendor’s products would be sold. Your subsequent internal correspondence, which you attached to your complaint, reveals after reviewing the University’s guidelines as recommended by Dean Robarts, you proposed telling the vendor that it could feature its products (rather than sell them) and get good PR from the event. However, those guidelines prohibit not only sales, but the use of University facilities “to promote or endorse commercial products or businesses.”

Because the posters advertising the event named the vendor and pictured specific products, Dean Dickey deemed them inappropriate. He ordered that the posters, many of which had been hung in unauthorized locations, be removed. He also determined that because it was inappropriate to sell, promote, or advertise the vendor’s products on Law School premises, the event should be canceled, and Dean Robarts then undertook to notify the students to that effect.

So, note, that the official position is not that you can't post pictures of dildos — which I am calling depictions of penises — around the law school. It's that you can't post pictures of commercial products you're promoting or selling.

When the students responded that no sales had been planned, Dean Dickey determined that the event could go ahead so long as it did not involve the sale or promotion of commercial products. That important distinction may not have been communicated to all the students as unambiguously or on as timely a basis as we might have desired. For that, the Law School administration bears the responsibility.

Given that background, I will honor your request for reimbursement for the food and beverages you purchased. I cannot, however, use Law School funds to repay you for the merchandise you had intended to give away.

I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday in the early evening.

And there was that one guy skateboarding across:



Oh! I was ravenous when I got to the other side:



I craved sustenance:



And I found a comfortable little corner:



In an old favorite place:



Where I ate, among other things, a fig:

Arkansas Lawprof Richard J. Peltz is suing two students and the Black Law Student Association.

Inside Higher Ed reports. (Via Instapundit.)

Peltz charges them with defamation, saying that his comments about affirmative action were used unfairly to accuse him of racism in a way that tarnished his reputation....

The dispute over Peltz concerns his opposition to affirmative action — and how he expressed it. Complicating matters is that no one who was present when the statements were actually made is discussing them....

In a memo sent to Charles Goldner, dean of the law school, the students accuse Peltz of engaging in a “rant” about affirmative action, of saying that affirmative action helps “unqualified black people,” of displaying a satirical article from The Onion about the death of Rosa Parks, of allowing a student to give “incorrect facts” about a key affirmative action case, of passing out a form on which he asked for students’ name and race and linking this form to grades, and of denigrating black students in a debate about affirmative action, among other charges.

The student memo said that the organization had “no problem with the difference of opinion about affirmative action,” but that Peltz’s actions were “hateful and inciting speech” and were used “to attack and demean the black students in class.”

The black student group demanded that Peltz be “openly reprimanded,” that he be barred from teaching constitutional law “or any other required course where black students would be forced to have him as a professor,” that the university mention in his personnel file that he is unable “to deal fairly with black students,” and that he be required to attend diversity training.

Suing students! It seems unthinkable. But this is the direction we head when free speech and academic freedom lose their grip on us. Do we feel like blaming the students for trying to suppress the teacher first, or should we blame the teachers who taught them that they are entitled not to hear what to them feels "hateful and inciting"? Or is it just obvious that teachers should never sue our students for even the most horrible things they about us? What a sad, sad story!

I'd like to hear from other law professors and law students about whether classroom critique of affirmative action gets called racism at your school. I have encountered people in law schools who will cry racism when all you have done is seriously present the legal reasoning in the affirmative action opinions of Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and William Rehnquist.

The Peltz story hits close to home for me because of something that you can read about in my old posts with the tag "Kaplan story."

It's not a recession.

It's just not:

Economy grows by only 0.6 percent in 1st quarter of 2008

The bruised economy limped through the first quarter of this year at only 0.6 percent as housing and credit problems forced people and businesses alike to hunker down.

The country's economic growth during January through March was the same as in the final three months of last year, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The statistic did not meet what economists consider the classic definition of a recession, which is a retraction of the economy. This means that although the economy is stuck in a rut, it is still managing to grow, even if modestly.

Damned economists with their "classic" "definitions"... Why can't we just report what we know we all feel?

Thoughts on reading the transcript of Barack Obama's press conference about Jeremiah Wright.

Let's read the transcript of Barack Obama's press conference about Jeremiah Wright. I'll make some excerpts and comments, concentrating on things other than the quotes I read yesterday (which I discussed here):

The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.

This is carefully phrased. He does not say he saw something new yesterday or how big a difference there was between yesterday's Jeremiah and the Jeremiah of the last few years. But you're meant to think that he suddenly faced new facts, so that there is no concession of bad judgment earlier.

Now, I've already denounced the comments that had appeared in these previous sermons. As I said, I had not heard them before.

See how precisely he's implying that he always made correct judgments on the facts he had at the time? (Presidents need to do this, by the way. Ironically, it reminds me of the way President Bush has justified his decisions on the Iraq war.)

I'm particularly distressed that this has caused such a distraction from what this campaign should be about, which is the American people.... And the fact that Reverend Wright would think that somehow it was appropriate to command the stage, for three or four consecutive days, in the midst of this major debate, is something that not only makes me angry but also saddens me.

Oh, how I wish I could have heard the way that feeling was expressed behind closed doors! What an outrageous betrayal Obama experienced! And I would love to have heard Wright's thoughts as he decided to wreak havoc on his protege.

Surely, we'll have a movie someday that will flesh all this out. Jeremiah and Barack. In my screenplay, Jeremiah the main character. He's the one with the fire and the complex problems and emotions, the jealousy that turns him to villainous betrayal.

Back to the transcript, we're up to the Q&A:

Q: Why the change of tone from yesterday? When you spoke to us on the tarmac yesterday, you didn't have this sense of anger, outrage --

SEN. OBAMA: Yeah. I'll be honest with you: because I hadn't seen it yet.

Watch for a politician's verbal tics. I'll be honest with you. Let me make one thing perfectly clear.

Q: Had you heard the reports about the AIDS comment?

SEN. OBAMA: I had not. I had not seen the transcript. What I had heard was that he had given a performance. And I thought at the time that it would be sufficient simply to reiterate what I had said in Philadelphia. Upon watching it, what became clear to me was that it was more than just a -- it was more than just him defending himself. What became clear to me was that he was presenting a world view that -- that -- that contradicts who I am and what I stand for. And what I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing. Anybody who knows me and anybody who knows what I'm about knows that -- that I am about trying to bridge gaps and that I see the -- the commonality in all people.

That — that — that.... What sets a man to stuttering? Here I must choose my words carefully. What might he have said that he needed to shape his words not to say? Look at sentences that follow the stutter. Obama is saying that his campaign is framed around carefully composed ideas about bringing people together, and those ideas conflicted with Wright's racialized "world view." Obama is not saying here that the racial critique is untenable only that it is not what he has chosen to present in his campaign rhetoric.

But it's not mere political posturing, and he's mad at Wright for saying it is. Now, why exactly is it not political posturing? Obama does not say that the racial critique of what's wrong with America is false. He hasn't said that. He's said that he's the kind of person who desires national unity — it's in his DNA! — and racial critique must be edited out to achieve that effect.

And so when I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS and suggestions that somehow Minister Farrakhan has -- has been a great voice in the 20th century, then that goes directly at who I am and what I believe this country needs.

See what I mean? These ideas are not helpful to his agenda. Notice that he does not say that Farrakhan has been an odious voice or even that he's not a great voice, only that the idea of Farrakhan's greatness is not helpful to the country and is not an element that fits the Obama political persona.

Obama makes this point again in a long answer to another question:

You know, after seeing Reverend Wright's performance, I felt as if there was a complete disregard, for what the American people are going through and the need for them to rally together to solve these problems.

You know, now is the time for us not to get distracted. Now is the time for us to pull together.

And that's what we've been doing in this campaign. And, you know, there was a sense that that did not matter to Reverend Wright. What mattered was him What mattered was him commanding center stage.

Wright has intruded himself on the American public to say the things that Obama believes are not useful to be saying now. In my screenplay, which would give Wright center stage, Wright is a wounded and outraged egomaniac, but he also has righteous anger against the young man who wants to suppress racial critique and who has won favor from white people because of that.

I don't think that he showed much concern for me. I don't -- more importantly, I don't think he showed much concern for what we are trying to do in this campaign and what we're trying to do for the American people and with the American people.

Oh, he's concerned for you. He just hates what you are doing.

And obviously, he's free to speak out on issues that are of concern to him and he can do it in any ways that he wants. But I feel very strongly that -- well, I want to make absolutely clear that I do not subscribe to the views that he expressed. I believe they are wrong. I think they are destructive. And to the extent that he continues to speak out, I do not expect those views to be attributed to me.

That boldfaced line is something he did not say in his prepared remarks, as noted above.

[W]hat I tried to do in Philadelphia was to provide a context and to lift up some of the contradictions and complexities of race in America -- of which, you know, Reverend Wright is a part and we're all a part -- and try to make something constructive out of it. But there wasn't anything constructive out of yesterday. All it was, was a bunch of rants that -- that aren't grounded in truth, and you know, I can't construct something positive out of that. I can understand it. I, you know, the -- you know, people do all sorts of things.

Now, he is combining a rejection of the racial critique with the insight that it is not helpful to his campaign. And "a bunch of rants" is a harsh insult to Wright, as Obama tries to package him away as a senile old man.

Now, here's an excellent set of questions:

Q: Reverend Wright said that it was not an attack on him but an attack on the black church. First of all, do you agree with that?

And second of all, the strain of theology that he preached, black liberation theology, you explained something about the anger, that feeds some of the sentiments in the church, in Philadelphia.

How important a strain is liberation theology in the black church? And why did you choose to attend a church that preached that?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, first of all, in terms of liberation theology, I'm not a theologian. So I think to some theologians, there might be some well-worked-out theory of what constitutes liberation theology versus non-liberation-theology.

Cop out. If he can't understand a black liberation sermon, how can it be preached? He's grasping at the word "theology" to distance himself from the very serious question.

I went to church and listened to sermons. And in the sermons that I heard, and this is true, I do think, across the board in many black churches, there is an emphasis on the importance of social struggle, the importance of striving for equality and justice and fairness -- a social gospel.

Okay. He's saying that whatever "black liberation theology" is, he and other parishioners hear it as a call to action for social justice.

So I think a lot of people would rather, rather than using a fancy word like that, simply talk about preaching the social gospel. And that -- there's nothing particularly odd about that. Dr. King obviously was the most prominent example of that kind of preaching.

Well put. The question is refocused on what Obama's politics are — and whether they are too left wing for Americans.

But you know, what I do think can happen, and I didn't see this as a member of the church but I saw it yesterday, is when you start focusing so much on the plight of the historically oppressed, that you lose sight of what we have in common; that it overrides everything else; that we're not concerned about the struggles of others because we're looking at things only through a particular lens. Then it doesn't describe properly what I believe, in the power of faith, to overcome but also to bring people together.

Excellent! Back to his original theme. People who like to say he's terrible when he's off script should study this passage.

The last question:

Q: You talked about giving the benefit of the doubt before -- mostly, I guess, in the Philadelphia speech, trying to create something positive about that. Did you consult with him before the speech or talk to him after the speech in Philadelphia to get his reaction -- (off mike) --

SEN. OBAMA: You know, I tried to talk to him before the speech in Philadelphia. Wasn't able to reach him because he was on a -- he was on a cruise.

Aw, come on. I've never been on a cruise, but they get telephone reception, don't they? And why was he on a cruise in the first place? Too bad for Obama it wasn't a longer cruise.

Screenplay notes: What happened on that cruise? There is Wright is sitting on his deck chair, pondering his passivity. He's been put out in the middle of the ocean's nothingness, and back home, there's this upstart who's swathing America in comforting nothingness.... He must go back! He must speak! Suddenly, he's running from one end of the ship to the other. Wait. No. That's "Titanic."

"At home, I lay down and sank into a not-unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination."

"In a dreamlike state I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours, this condition faded away."

Albert Hofmann, the man who discovered LSD, has died at the grand age of 102.

"Before, I had believed there was only one reality: the reality of everyday life.

"Under LSD, however, I entered into realities which were as real and even more real than the one of everyday." He also "became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the plant and animal kingdom. I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us."

Reading those lines, does it not make you sad that LSD is illegal?

Neil Diamond on "American Idol."

I'm just catching up with the TiVo'd show. (As I said, I was walking over the Brooklyn Bridge. Just an after work walk. Midway through the bridge I realized I was starving, and I felt like a zombie stalking the rest of the way over and for blocks into Manhattan to get to a restaurant. Restaurant! Restaurant! It was gruesome.)

Neil is doing a great job. He's been well advised: Be like Barry Manilow. Not Dolly! Help the nice, young kids. Don't self-promote. Does Neil actually care about these the kids? I don't know, but he seems like he does, and that's enough to make me like him.

They're singing 2 songs each, and — in a shocking break from tradition — the contestants sing their first songs without hearing from the judges. Then they're lined up on the stage together for judgment. Horrible idea. Randy goes down the line and gives each one a little opinion on their first song. Then Paula starts with Jason and tells him what she thinks of his first and his second song, even though he hasn't sung his second song yet. This is the biggest Paula screw-up of all time. We see Ryan Seacrest glance nervously over to the side. The audience giggles. She's about to go on to David Cook, and Randy interrupts and says, "We should just do the first song, uh." And now the truth is out! They prepare beforehand, based on rehearsal performances! Arrrggghhh! My AI world is torn apart. Ryan relies on his tiny wit: "You're seein' the future." Simon is making that hand gesture where he holds his thumb to his forehead and flares out his fingers. What is it? The half moose? Simon squelches Paula. Just say who your favorite was and shut up. Then Simon tells all the kids they sucked.

Then we get another round of songs, but we don't see Neil again, and it's all quite forgettable.

I think we all know either Jason or Brooke is going to leave. And, frankly, I think we know that Jason, Brooke, and Syesha are going to be leaving in the next 3 weeks. The only interesting question is: Which David will win?

IN THE COMMENTS: Jennifer says:

Oh, and I thought you would say that Neil Diamond didn't go the Barry Manilow route. He didn't seem to give a whole lot of advice...? But, I guess they gave him very little screen time.

Hmm. Yeah. He wasn't making the Dolly mistake (making it all about oneself), but he didn't really achieve Manilosity, because he didn't have a lot of detailed, individualized advice. Maybe he's just not as smart or he didn't take the time with the singers. And there was a time issue. Was it caused by cramming 10 songs into 1 hour, or did they choose to make it 1 hour because Diamond didn't give them enough material?

Ruth Anne wants a palate cleanser.

Here:



Sorry. I was out walking over the Brooklyn Bridge.

"The rooms are described as being neat and tidy. There are no windows."

"The three children who lived in the cellar, 19-year-old Kerstin and her two brothers aged 18 and five, had never seen daylight, and grew up with artificial light."

This is such a horrible story. I hate even to mention it. But this link goes to a story that depicts the underground living quarters Josef Fritzl somehow constructed and maintained and kept hidden for 24 years... as he went about his life as perhaps the most evil father ever.

AND: Could it be that it wasn't so dreadful for the youngest children?

Professor Jay Belsky, an expert in the field of child development and family studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, says the fact that the children were with their mother - a source of security - and with each other, could have mitigated the amount of trauma they suffered.

"Potentially, the children could have led tolerably rich social lives - there were four people there, at least three of them for a long period of time. This isn't a story about a child being locked in a closet all by himself," he told the BBC News website.

He said that in terms of the five-year-old, he would have been unlikely to have known what he was missing.

"As a youngster, your immediate environment is your whole world," he says.

"If there were books, games and a TV, there were things for all the children to make a psychological life around. It need not be as atrocious as it might first appear," he says.

That reminds me of Dr. Strangelove's description of life underground. But at this point, one hopes the professor is right.

Did Obama "denounce Wright"?

That's what the headline at the Politico says. But read the body of the post by Ben Smith:

"I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people. That’s in my DNA, trying to promote mutual understanding to insist that we all share common hopes and common dreams as Americans and as human beings. That’s who I am, that’s what I believe, and that’s what this campaign has been about," Obama said.

"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday," he said.

Obama also distanced himself from the man in a way he has been reluctant to in the past.

"The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," he said. "His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church."

"They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs," he said.

"If Reverend Wright thinks that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, I may not know him as well as I thought either."

"I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church," he said. "But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the U.S. wartime efforts with terrorism – then there are no [excuses]. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced, and that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today."

"It is antithetical to my campaign. It is antithetical to what I’m about. It is not what I think America stands for," he said.

They should be denounced? There's a lot of "they" in that statement. The antecedent is "his comments." It's a strong statement, but it does stop short of denouncing the man. He's denounced his comments before. Remember, in the last debate, he held back, as I noted:

Obama is asked why didn't he disassociate himself from Jeremiah Wright sooner. He mainly relies on the assertion that he hadn't heard most of the bad statements. At some point he says "someone I've disowned" and has to correct it to "statements I've disowned."

And, of course, in the Philadelphia speech, he famously said:

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

He's stuck to this refusal to denounce, and give him some credit for maintaining integrity over this concept that "these people are a part of me." Whether Americans want him as President if Jeremiah Wright is a part of him is another question.

ADDED: Glenn Reynolds collects links — including to here — and opines that Obama's being "too lawyerly"... and characterizes my criticism as calling him too lawyerly. Meanwhile, one reader seems to think I'm the one that's being too lawyerly about this. He emails:

You always come up with some way to say that people weren't saying what they clearly were saying. You might have a valid semantic point, but you're missing the big picture. Just endlessly parsing words — boring.

WELL: We're all law professors: me, Glenn, Obama... Or should I parse some words again about whether Obama was really a law professor? And "was" not "is," depending on what the meaning of... I need to get some fresh air.... It's a lovely day now... not like this morning.... almost 5 o'clock....

Jeremiah Wright may drive us into the arms of Barack Obama.

Jeremiah Wright is "angry at Barack Obama for trying to be disingenuous," said Newt Gingrich. Wright is outraged that Obama tried to suppress and minimize him. Asked if Wright was trying to hurt Obama, Newt said: "I think Reverend Wright has a greater investment in his own self-importance than he does in Senator Obama's victory." Yes, Reverend Wright is on a tear. He's an egomaniac lit afire by this opportunity of a lifetime.

But I see a way for this awful problem to help Obama. It ties back to the original reason he became so popular. Obama seemed to offer a path out of the old-style racial politics that is based on grievances and demands and race as victimhood. Obama did not talk about race. He was black but he didn't talk about race. Now, Wright is rubbing our faces in the racial issues that Obama didn't want to talk about, and maybe he was disingenuous for submerging these things. But if Obama loses, Wright and his ilk will be magnified. They will have been instrumental in destroying Obama, yet they will use fact that Americans rejected Obama to reinforce their critique of America.

The message Obama needs to convey is: Take me now, whatever my flaws, or you will be saddled with people like Wright for decades. If we are disgusted by Wright, we shouldn't reject Obama. We should embrace him as the best hope we're ever going to have.

ADDED: Amba responds:

But the best hope of what?... Obama has been thrown up there like a litmus test to prove how racist the nation still is or isn't. And if you question his judgment or maturity or readiness, that becomes a checkmark on the "racist" side. That's infuriating. In fact, it could be argued that to judge Obama as sternly as you'd judge any human being who wanted to be president is less racist than insisting he be elected to prove we're not racist!

I have often said that we need to test Obama, and that letting him off easy is basically racist. But here my point is that his becoming President would quell the power of the Wrights of this world and we might overcome what will otherwise be a long impasse on race.

George Jones, Tom Waits, Dinah Washington, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, Louis Armstrong, Van Morrison...

Those are the artists Bob Dylan has played most often on "Theme Time Radio Hour" — from a nice, long set of lists of things from the brilliant radio show. Poets referenced, authors referenced, movies referenced, TV shows... Here are the TV shows:

The Beverly Hillbillies, Chico and the Man, The Ed Sullivan Show, Hee Haw, Josie and the Pussycats, The Honeymooners, Leave it to Beaver, Lil’ Abner, Welcome Back Kotter, Sanford and Son, Roots, 60 Minutes, The Simpsons, The Sopranos, The Tonight Show, The Wire

Li'l — put the apostrophe in the right place — Abner was a TV show? I don't think so. I remember the movie musical with Stubby Kaye, but that just-linked Wikipedia article notes an earlier movie version of the comic strip. And it had Buster Keaton in it. Do you think it's in YouTube? Yes! Scroll in to about 2:00 to get to the Buster Keaton part. (Warning: It's not politically correct.)



Back to the Bob Dylan stuff. (Sorry for the stream-of-consciousness. Not really.) History Lessons From Bob:

Famous Electric Chairs (e.g. Old Sparky and Gruesome Gerty)
Famous People Who Were Cheerleaders (e.g. Ann Margaret, George W. Bush)
Famous People Who Were Valedictorians (e.g. Cindy Crawford, William Rehnquist, Weird Al – “I wonder if William Rehnquist gave the same type of speech as Weird Al. Somehow I doubt it.”)
Famous People Who Had Burials At Sea (e.g. Steve McQueen, Ingrid Bergman, Vincent Price, Jerry Garcia)
History of the Wobblies, the U.S. labor organization
People Who Died While Playing Cards (e.g. Wild Bill Hickok, Al Jolson, Buster Keaton, the gangster Arnold Rothstein)
Famous People Who Drove Cadillacs (e.g. Pope Pius XII, Teddy Roosevelt, Bill Clinton)
History of Constantinople

Speaking of people who died while playing cards, have you ever noticed how many poker blogs there are? I wonder if anybody ever died while blogging about poker? (Cf., death by blogging.)

Useful tips (How to Walk Like A Runway Model)... One-Liners (“I always liked songs with parentheses in the title.”)... Deep Thoughts (“I leave you with the words of Benjamin Franklin. ‘He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.’ Thank you, Ben. Peace out.”)... Bad Jokes (“I gave a bald-headed friend a comb. You know what he said? ‘I’ll never part with it.’”)... Recipes (Figgy Pudding)...

Read the whole thing. It's pretty cool. By the way, what's your favorite song with parentheses in the title? I can only think of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."

Biobigotry.

Some animals really piss Natalie Angier off. And she's looking into her bigotry problem:

Our proneness to biobigotry, experts said, arises from several salient human traits. For one, we are equipped with an often overactive theory of mind — the conviction that those around you have their own minds, goals and desires, and that it might behoove you to anticipate what they’ll do next. We spin elaborate narratives out of the slenderest of observational threads: Look, the blue jay is trying to dislodge the cowbird from the feeder. Could the jay know the cowbird is a nest parasite and be trying to drum it out of town? “We interpret animal behaviors through a human lens and human morality,” said Mr. Fraser, the conservation psychologist.

Yeah? Well, I'm mad. And that's a fact:

"I'm sorry that my portrait of Miley has been misinterpreted," said the famous photographer Annie Leibovitz.

"Miley and I looked at fashion photographs together and we discussed the picture in that context before we shot it. The photograph is a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little makeup, and I think it is very beautiful."

Vanity Fair got millions of hits, and Disney says: "A situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old" ... whose father was right there the whole time.

Here's the slideshow at Vanity Fair. Judge for yourself. I think the photographs were intended to get the attention they got, but don't actually cross the line into scandalous. The girl is beautiful. Deal with it. Bare shoulders are not nudity. But to say "very little makeup" when there is red lipstick... well, that's disingenuous.

ADDED: Compare this, from another era. Scroll to 2:51 to start.

It's not that I didn't see it. It's that I didn't see it.

It's hard being a feminist, you know. You know everything, and there are so many things you know, and then it's like you don't know a damned thing. Look at this tragic attempt at thinking on the page or pretending to think on the page:

I read It’s a Jungle Out There. And it’s not that I didn’t notice the images were racist — it’s that I didn’t bother to look at the images. It’s not that I don’t understand why images of white women kicking dark-skinned natives are problematic. It’s that I was a sloppy reader who didn’t check out the pictures, even though they’re part of the book and I should have. My not looking at the pictures is part of the problem. Obviously I saw the pictures, because I had to turn the page. If I had taken two seconds to look at them, I would have been pretty pissed. But I didn’t — because, as a white girl, there’s nothing about “jungle theme” that puts me on notice. There’s nothing in my experience that makes me take notice and actually look when I glance past a retro jungle cartoon. That is privilege. I failed to check mine. I failed in a lot of ways.

Someone you were in solidarity with had a book and so you had to promote it.

I initially promoted the book because it’s a fun, funny, quick read.

Why are you helping sell books that are mere fluff? This blog post goes on and on, and I'm too busy to wade through it. But skipping ahead:

The feminist blogosphere has been poison lately. A lot of people have left. Tonight, for the first time in a long while, I’ve seriously considered dropping out, too. I promised myself that I would quit when I felt like blogging was doing me more harm than good; that is how I feel right now....

That post, by Jill of Feministe went up a few days ago. Today, she says she's quitting blogging:

... I feel like an untrustworthy back-stabbing bitch who threw someone she likes and respects under the bus in order to give herself some undeserved moral superiority and undo un-doable wrongs. That wasn’t my intention, of course. It never is. But that’s what it feels like....

That isn’t to say that I don’t stand by what I wrote in the apology post. I do. I just I feel like I’m spinning in circles and I have no idea what I’m even trying to accomplish anymore....

So I need to just stop.

You know, I don't read the feminist blogs, but from what little I've seen of them, I can see why someone would wake up screaming let me the hell out of here. Feminism should feel like freedom. Obviously, it doesn't. I don't really know what you characters have been doing to each other lately, but get some sleep. Get some fresh air.

IN THE COMMENTS: Cyrus writes:

I know you say that you "don't read the feminist blogs," ... [b]ut ... Jill ends the blog entry you link to... with the sentence: "I'll come back in a couple of weeks"...

You're right. I confess that I stopped when I got to the line "So I need to just stop." It's also clear that she was going to quit for a few weeks anyway to work on exams. So really, what was all this parading of angst about? Ugh. Must go back to not reading feminist blogs. Involuted nonsense. Life goes on.

"We will be looking for anti-racist trainings offered here in the Bay Area."

Oops. What a hilarious screw up! Not that we needed our comic relief of the day on a racial theme.

(Via Instapundit and Protein Wisdom.)

Obama is letting Wright overpower him.

Dana Milbank says that Wright's speech today may have doomed the Obama candidacy. He summarizes the Q&A session pithily:

His claim that the September 11 attacks mean "America's chickens are coming home to roost"?

Wright defended it: "Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."

His views on Farrakhan and Israel? "Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago. He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him.... Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color."

He denounced those who "can worship God on Sunday morning, wearing a black clergy robe, and kill others on Sunday evening, wearing a white Klan robe." He praised the communist Sandinista regime of Nicaragua. He renewed his belief that the government created AIDS as a means of genocide against people of color ("I believe our government is capable of doing anything").

Obama needs to take control of the situation. But what is he saying today?

Some of the comments that Reverend Wright has made offended me and I understand why they offend the American people. He does not speak for me. He does not speak for the campaign.

So bland. So uninspiring. Obama is letting Wright overpower him.

"Wright has now removed any guilt or conflict Obama might feel about denouncing him and his approach to race and politics," says Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan had been giving Wright a pass, but now he says:

[What Wright] said today extemporaneously, the way in which he said it, the unrepentant manner in which he reiterated some of his most absurd and offensive views, his attempt to equate everything he believes with the black church as a whole, and his open public embrace of Farrakhan and hostility to the existence of Israel Zionism, make any further defense of him impossible. This was a calculated, ugly, repulsive, vile display of arrogance, egotism, and self-regard.

ADDED: Video of the Q&A:

Live-streaming Madonna's "Hard Candy."

My son Christopher Althouse Cohen — a longtime Madonna fan — emails:

Madonna just recently put her whole new album, which comes out tomorrow, on her myspace page, and I just listened to it. I just barely like it enough to buy it, even though the only Madonna album I've never purchased is "American Life." Several of the songs are well-written, but I just hate the way it's produced. She collaborated with mainstream hip hop producers for all these songs, and that just ruins the album for me. If you go on her myspace page and listen to the song "Incredible," you'll hear the problem. She comes up with a quality hook, and they add a big, overbearing hip hop beat that has nothing to do with the song and drowns everything else out. The style only really works with the first three songs ("Candy Shop," "4 Minutes," and "Give It 2 Me"), which seem written for that kind of production.

Madonna has always seemed a little bit out of the mainstream, or at least worked with people who were experimental or against the current trends in some way. Here, she decided to collaborate with the most mainstream people she could find and just generically follow the trend of female pop singers working with hip hop producers. She also sold more than half the songs on the album for use in commercials. It's a little strange to sell out after you've already sold 200 million records.

I think she's trying to reconnect with American audiences. Her last album was a big hit in other countries, but not as big here. "Hung Up" was one of the biggest hit songs ever worldwide, and was #1 in 45 countries, but only peaked at #7 here. So, I guess that's the reason. Or maybe she's influenced by her children's taste in music, if that's what they like. Seems unnecessary, though, and you feel much less that you're listening to a real artist with this album than with any other Madonna album.

Why Christopher Hitchens tries never to wear a tie.

It's "the advantage that it so easily confers on anyone who goes berserk on you."

There you are, with a ready-made noose already fastened around your neck.

Said in the course of cogitating about whether John McCain's angriness ought to worry us.

If you think I'm supposed to feel bad about...

... this. You don't know my history with it.

Jimmy Carter defends his Hamas trip...

... and pushes his 23d book. Much as I'm outraged by his Hamas trip, I'm also outraged that he's published 23 books. Who does he think he is, that he has 23 books in him? This one is about his mother, just in time for Mother's Day. Get out your wallets, please, for the smiling fuzzball of an ex-President.

Jeramiah Wright is not lying low.

Speaking at the National Press Club:

... Wright said that political opponents of Senator Obama were exploiting the fact that the style of prayer and preaching in black churches was different from European church traditions....

As if the problems are all a matter of form and not content.

In questions and answers after his prepared remarks, Mr. Wright bristled when it was suggested that some of his past statements seemed unpatriotic. He served six years in the military, he declared, adding a jibe at the vice president, “How many years did Cheney serve?”

That's not an answer, but a classroom-perfect example of 2 types of faulty argument. That he was in the military in the past doesn't give him some sort of lifetime patriotism insurance. And Cheney's military service is utterly irrelevant. I wonder how approvingly the National Press Club received these clever non-answers — that is, I wonder if they responded like journalists.

ADDED: Christopher Beam argues that Wright's current publicity tour is good for Obama. I'm not seeing it, but it's a good "what if you had to argue" argument.

AND: Here's Rush Limbaugh arguing that Wright is destroying Obama — intentionally, to serve his own ends. I think Wright is a man with a tremendous ego and very strong left-wing politics who has been lit afire by the criticism and sees the opportunity of a lifetime to advance his cause.

It's not unconstitutional to make voters show a photo ID.

The Supreme Court rules, 6-3, in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board:

The voter ID ruling may turn out to be a significant victory for Republicans at election time, since the requirement for proof of identification is likely to fall most heavily on voters long assumed to be identified with the Democrats — particularly, minority and poor voters. The GOP for years has been actively pursuing a campaign against what it calls “voter fraud,” and the Court’s ruling Monday appears to validate that effort....

The plurality opinion leaves room for an "as-applied" challenge, and I'll have more in a little while about what it would take to succeed in such a case.

UPDATE: There are two opinions with 3 votes each and then 2 dissenting opinions. The first opinion is written by Justice Stevens, joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy. Stevens demands "that burdens on a political party, an individual voter, or a discrete class of voters... however slight... must be justified by relevant and legitimate state interests 'sufficiently weighty to justify the limitation." And the record in this case, which challenged the law on its face, does not show an excessive burden.

What to make of the fact that all the Republicans in the Indiana legislature voted for the law and all the Democrats voted against it?

[I]f a nondiscriminatory law is supported by valid neutral justifications, those justifications should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators.

Since preserving the "integrity and reliability of the electoral process" is a neutral justification for the law, it doesn't matter to constitutional interpretation that Republicans saw partisan advantage in it and Democrats saw the opposite.

The other 3 votes for upholding the law came from Justice Scalia joined by Justices Thomas and Alito. Scalia doesn't approve of the mushiness of Stevens's free-form balancing test, which he thinks invites "endless" litigation:

That sort of detailed judicial supervision of the election process would flout the Constitution’s express commitment of the task to the States.

For Justice Scalia, the "universally applicable requirements of Indiana’s voter-identification law are eminently reasonable," and that is enough. I'm seeing some criticisms of the case that emphasize that Indiana did have enough of a reason to pass such a strict law, but Scalia's point is that the democratic process came up with this law, and there is not enough reason for the courts to overturn it.

I want to look at Justice Breyer's dissent next:

Were I ... to believe, as Justice Stevens believes, that the burden imposed by the Indiana statute on eligible voters who lack photo IDs is indeterminate “on the basis of the record that has been made in this litigation,” or were I to believe, as Justice Scalia believes, that the burden the statute imposes is “minimal” or “justified,” then I too would reject the petitioners’ facial attack... I cannot agree, however...

[A]n Indiana nondriver, most likely to be poor, elderly, or disabled, will find it difficult and expensive to travel to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, particularly if he or she resides in one of the many Indiana counties lacking a public transportation system. For another, many of these individuals may be uncertain about how to obtain the underlying documentation, usually a passport or a birth certificate, upon which the statute insists. And some may find the costs associated with these documents unduly burdensome (up to $12 for a copy of a birth certificate; up to $100 for a passport). By way of comparison, this Court previously found unconstitutionally burdensome a poll tax of $1.50 (less than $10 today, inflation-adjusted).

Breyer emphasizes that other states with ID requirements are less demanding. Florida, for example, accepts an "employee badge or ID, a debit or credit card, a student ID, a retirement center ID, a neighborhood association ID, and a public assistance ID." Quite simply, Breyer sees an unjustified burden.

Finally, here's Justice Souter's dissenting opinion, which is joined by Justice Ginsburg:

Without a shred of evidence that in-person voter impersonation is a problem in the State, much less a crisis, Indiana has adopted one of the most restrictive photo identification requirements in the country....

[The law] targets the poor and the weak.... [B]eing poor has nothing to do with being qualified to vote.... [T]he onus of the Indiana law is illegitimate just because it correlates with no state interest so well as it does with the object of deterring poorer residents from exercising the franchise.

Bloom...

... in your own quirky way.

"As the Ghost of a Person dead these 250 Years and more, who had seen enough of Bedlam..."

"... I may tell you than an Imbalance of Humours was ever at the Root of a Madman’s Distemper."

Sir Archy visits the comments section of "I don't get too high when I'm high, and I don't get too low when I'm low" (the post where I called Barack Obama phlegmatic).

Going to the dump to shoot rats.

= Megan McArdle's "weirdest date."

What is the Instapundit formula?

If it's so easy, why don't more people do it? Acephalous has an excuse — I mean other than his absence of a head — he doesn't "think disjointedly" and he can't "stop thinking about something seconds after I've started." And, I add, can't stop complimenting himself for his extensive thinking. (Are we calling that being your own Chris Matthews now?)

There's a reason that Glenn Reynolds gets 250 times as much traffic as Acephalous, and it can't be that what he is doing is so easy to do. Don't be so proud of your arduous lengthiness. The trick is to make it look effortless and to get yourself into a place where you don't seem to be about showcasing your intelligence.

Thanks to Simon for the link.

A new week buds.

Happy Monday.

AND: Please, please, please feel free to amuse me by Photoshopping my photographs the way Chip Ahoy did yesterday. I am still laughing about that.

"When Young Teachers Go Wild on the Web."

Well, at least I know that's not about me. Because I'm not young.

How to fold a t-shirt in 2 seconds.

How To Fold A T-Shirt In 2 Seconds

Perfect! Don't try to learn it from watching the video. It's methodically explained here, and after one watch, you too will fold t-shirts amazingly. But be careful. You can become absorbed for hours poking into how-to videos once you go to that link.

Obama needs to "stop citing the world-historical greatness of his own speeches as if [he] were his own personal Chris Matthews."

Mickey Kaus wants to see some fake humility.

"I have to restore myself to not looking ridiculous."

A quote from Courtney Love, talking (only!) about getting her face redone after screwing it up with plastic surgery. From an article about bad plastic surgery, linked by Glenn Reynolds, who says: "My theory is that certain celebrities and socialites are around so many people who've had lots of work done that what looks weird to everyone else just looks normal to them."

But what is normal? The standard is constantly changing, and these socialites and celebrities are on the leading edge of that change. We've already adjusted to some of the things that looked abnormal to us a few years back. In a few years, seeing a smooth, tight, immobile face won't cause us look awry... and that's assuming our own faces will retain any capacity to look awry.

Hillary Clinton is a schoolyard bully.

Says Michael Goodwin:

It's a gang-girl taunt when she tells a big rally she will go anywhere, anytime for a throwdown.
She offers to [debate] without a moderator, just the two of them asking and answering questions. Stripped of her gauzy spin that it could be like Lincoln-Douglas, she's really challenging him to a bareknuckle punchout. On TV.

It's what a schoolyard tough would do: Knock on a rival's door and dare him to come out and fight on the street. Right here, right now. No rules, just a slugfest, you and me.

And that's a good thing, right? I want this in my President. Don't you?

IN THE COMMENTS: Somefeller said:

The Goodwin article is further evidence of a certain wussy factor among many of Obama's supporters. I don't know if Goodwin is an official supporter, but he sounds like a standard Obama press fanboy. I was going to use another word that ends in "ssy" to describe this phenomenon, but I didn't want Ann to say I was sexist.

I'll say it: sissy. Obama should debate.

Drew W said:

The nastier Hillary gets, the more I like her, I agree.

Me too.

Maguro said:

This is a lot better than the crying schtick. You go, girl!

Exactly.

Fen said:

Iran is a bit of a bully too.

Maybe Obama can ask his teacher to speak with Ahmadinejad's parents.

Owie. That hurt.

Let's read an excerpt from Justice Scalia's book "Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges."

Last night, on "60 Minutes," Justice Scalia talked about his new book — written with legal writing whiz Bryan Garner — "Making Your Case: Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges." Now, the ABA Journal provides a nice, long excerpt.

The Journal also quotes me in the intro, saying I "constantly dearly" wish the other Justices would write as well as Scalia. "Constantly dearly" — oh, good Lord, I wonder what Bryan Garner thinks of that sort of writing. It sounds like I'm having a Harlequin romance with the pugnacious jurist. I just wrote "pugnacious jurist" as a language joke to try to make Bryan Garner laugh. Anyway, I had to dig deeply, industriously, to find the old post where I said "constantly dearly" in some fulsome plaudit to the scrappy jurisprudent. It was way back in May 2004, in the fifth month of the blog:

Slogging through Supreme Court opinions and imposing them on my students, I constantly dearly wish all the Justices would write like Scalia (or Jackson or Holmes, to whom Scalia is compared elsewhere in the article). Like most law review articles, the Justices' opinions are usually written in a characterless, "learned" tone. Does persuasion consist of boring your opponent into submission? If you were going to write ten (or twenty or forty) pages that thousands of students were going to meticuously study, shouldn't you take the trouble--the opportunity!--to write something engaging? Reading the opinions of the other Justices, I often suspect the point is to give everything a look of tedious, unexceptionable regularity to disguise all the seams and shortcomings.

I guess I could write a book aimed at judges — "Writing Your Case: The Art of Enlightening the People Who Ought to Believe You Deserve Your Vast Power." But Scalia and Garner are writing to the lawyers who must beseech those judges, and let's get to the excerpt:

In brief-writing, one feature of a good style trumps all others. Literary elegance, erudition, sophistication of expression—these and all other qualities must be sac­rificed if they detract from clarity....

[Shun] puffed-up, legalistic language. Make your points and ask for your relief in a blunt, straightforward manner....

The clearer your arguments, the harder it will be for your opponent to mischaracterize them. Put yourself in the shoes of a lawyer confronting an opposing brief that is almost incomprehensible. You struggle to figure out what it means—and so does the court. What an opportunity to characterize the opposing argument in a way that makes it weak!

This is great stuff. Writing a book like this, the co-authors had to make sure their own writing style was terrific.

It's a long excerpt, so go to the link and read the whole thing or, better, buy the book. I'll just pick out some highlights.

1. Now, we have a Scalia cite for the important point that it's just fine to begin a sentence with a conjunction:

There’s a myth abroad that you should never begin a sentence with a conjunction. But look at any species of reputable writing—whether it’s a good newspaper, journal, novel or nonfiction work—and you’re likely to find several sentences per page beginning with one of those little connectives. You can hardly achieve a flowing narrative or argument without them.

And Virginia Woolf begins a whole book with one.

2. Don't be boring! It's the loser's way to try to look legalistic.

Banish jargon, hackneyed expressions and needless Latin. By “jargon” we mean the words and phrases used almost exclusively by lawyers in place of plain-English words and phrases that express the same thought. Jargon adds nothing but a phony air of expertise. A nexus, for example, is nothing more or less than a link or a connection. And what is the instant case? Does it have anything to do with instant coffee? Alas, to tell the truth, it’s no different from this case or even here.

We readers of Scalia opinions already know he loathes the word "nexus."

3. Stop saying "fatally flawed," "flies in the face of," "painting with a broad brush," and all those other things that you imagine make you sound like a lawyer. They just make you sound like a hack. Don't say "beyond peradventure." Ha ha. I have been making fun of the use of "beyond peradventure" for a long time. (See my old post "It cannot be gainsaid" — which is aimed at judicial writing.)

4. They tell us to avoid Latin phrases like ceteris paribus, inter alia, mutatis mutandis and pari passu. And I was just about to cite Scalia opinions that use them when I was brought up short by the next 2 sentences: "Judges are permitted to show off in this fashion, but lawyers must not. And the judge who does not happen to know the obscure Latin phrase you have flaunted will think you a twit." So the judge is allowed to lord it over you in a way that you dare not lord it over him? Are we talking strategy now or good writing? I contend that the judge ought to talk straight and not be any more obscure than the material requires. The judge is wielding power and ought to feel compelled constantly (dearly!) to prove to us that he deserves it. With those Latin phrases, it's as if he's chortling ha, ha, I have the power. I wonder if the judicial exception was in the first draft. I'm picturing Scalia making additions to a passage composed by Garner.

Oh, even my highlights are going on too long for a blog post, mainly because the text is inspiring commentary — which is an excellent thing. So I'll stop here for now. More highlights with commentary later. Buy the book and read along with me.

Scalia on "60 Minutes."

Jeralyn aptly identifies the highlights:

• torture is not punishment when you are trying to get information out of someone
• Fetuses are not persons within the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause. Persons means people who can walk around. Pregnant women shouldn't be counted twice.
• He has 9 kids and 28 grandkids. He was an only child. Why? They practiced their version of "Vatican Roulette."

And then there was the part where Leslie Stahl tried to ambush him with evidence that he suffered from depression in the mid-90s, and he managed to reduce it to mere concern that he was repeating himself. He feels better now, he noted.

ADDED: Here are the transcript and the video — part 1 and part 2 — thanks to How Appealing.

Commenter of the day? The nominees are: Meade and Chip Ahoy.

1. Meade: After Sheepman complained that the Dylanesque song about Obama "goes on for a few verses too many," Meade said:

Dude, if you think that one goes on for a few verses too many, wait until you hear Sad-Eyed Law Professor of the Eastern Ridges and Lowlands...

With your Alito mouth and your New York times,
And your eyes on breasts and your prayers for mimes,
And your tulip shots, and your vortex crimes,
Oh, who among them do they think could bear your vow of cruel neutrality?

2. Chip Ahoy. On that post with the dogs in the baby stroller, Chip Ahoy wrote, "Althouse, hope you don't mind, I fixed the mannequin in your photostream."

A modern place.

Here's a big fisheye overview of the "modern life" section of the Brooklyn Museum of Art:



Go here for a full size version of this and zoom in on that nice painting — by Dana Schultz — of a young woman peering into her computer. I like that. There aren't enough paintings of computers!

Now, I loved this Art Deco dressing table (and not just because I could wheedle a self-portrait out of it):



And there was this excellent aluminum portable record player from the 1930s — an "RCA Victor Special":



Beautiful space:



Here's their virtual tour.

If McCain doesn't win, it will mean that no one born in the 1930s will ever have been President.

Did that era not breed leaders?

I had been thinking that if Obama wins, it will mean that we are done with Baby Boomer Presidents, after having only 2 — young Bush and male Clinton. I thought that was rather pathetic for this big, famous generation of mine. There would still be time to pick up another or 2, though. (I know: You're sick of us!)

But to think of the 30s as Presidentless. It's so strange.

AND: The commenters are in rebellion! They say Obama is a boomer. (He was born in 1961.) If he is, I blame the New York Times for this idea that is planted in my head that he has come to put an end the era of the boomers: "Shushing the Baby Boomers."

In taking the first steps toward a presidential candidacy last week, Mr. Obama, who was born in 1961 and considers himself a member of the post-boomer generation, said Americans hungered for “a different kind of politics,” one that moved beyond the tired ideological battles of the 1960s....

Mr. Obama calculates that Americans of all ages are sick of the feuding boomers and ready to turn to the generation that came of age after Vietnam, after the campus culture wars between freaks and straights, and after young people had given up on what überboomer Hillary Rodham Clinton (who made her own announcement on the Web yesterday) called in a 1969 commencement address a search for “a more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living.”...

“In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004,” he writes, “I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage.”

That Week in Review piece by John M. Broder got a lot of play on the blogs, and it made a big impression on me. Everyone has been talking about the generational shift. Especially Andrew Sullivan.

My fellow Boomers may like to think that the charismatic Senator Obama is one of us. But he's not checking the Baby Boomer box on the presidential application form. I know it's supposed to be all about us, as it always has been, as far as we're concerned. But at some point it's just not.

ALSO: Homodex checks out all the decades going back to George Washington's decade (the 1730s) and discovers that there is one — but only one — other decade before the 1930s that did not produce a President: the 1810s. He also noted that there are 3 decades that have produced 4 Presidents.

3 dogs in a baby carriage.

At Starbucks on Montague Street.

AND: Knows he's cutest:

"I don't get too high when I'm high, and I don't get too low when I'm low."

That's Barack Obama, on "Fox News Sunday," responding to the prompt: "What have you learned about running for President? What have you learned about yourself?" He says: "I've learned that I have what I believe is the right temperament for the presidency."

Here's the video of the show in 5 parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The quote above is at the end of the last segment. [ADDED: Transcript.]

This point about his temperament is interesting. It seems to implicitly criticize the reputedly hotheaded McCain. It also puts a positive spin on a quality of his that I've been thinking of as: phlegmatic.

From the Wikipedia article on the four temperaments:

A phlegmatic person is calm and unemotional. Phlegmatic means "pertaining to phlegm", corresponds to the season of winter (wet and cold), and connotes the element of water.

While phlegmatics are generally self-content and kind, their shy personality can often inhibit enthusiasm in others and make themselves lazy and resistant to change. They are very consistent, relaxed, rational, curious, and observant, making them good administrators and diplomats. Like the sanguine personality, the phlegmatic has many friends. However the phlegmatic is more reliable and compassionate; these characteristics typically make the phlegmatic a more dependable friend.

Maybe that is the best temperament for a President.

McCain is choleric, right? Hillary too!

Choleric corresponds to the fluid of yellow bile, the season of summer (dry and hot), and the element of fire. A person who is choleric is a doer and a leader. They have a lot of ambition, energy, and passion, and try to instill it in others. They can dominate people of other temperaments, especially phlegmatic types. Many great charismatic military and political figures were cholerics. On the negative side, they are easily angered or bad-tempered.

They can dominate people of other temperaments, especially phlegmatic types. Uh oh!

Why an article about how the French love Obama has me watching a clip from "Full Metal Jacket."

1. I see on Memeorandum — my favorite starting point for finding bloggable things — that the French love Obama: "Obamania Sweeps France."

2. I think about blogging the item — you know, the obvious (being supported by the French isn't helpful for a guy who's getting called elitist) — but first, since I'm already in the middle of an iChat with my Obama-supporting son John, I quote the title of the article to him. He's all "Who's Oba?" And I'm "What's nia?" He wonders if it's pronounced "Obama - NIA" or "oh - BAH - MAY - nee - uh." I observe that "Obamamania" would have the word "mama" in it. The blogging gears of my head are trying to engage. Is some fear of the mother figure causing resistance manifested at the orthographic level? Fear of Hillary? And then John responds "Obamamamamania."

3. Suddenly, all I want to do is listen to the song "Papa Oom Mow Mow," but I don't know how to spell it. (I miss the "Oom." I think it's just "Oo.") And you have to spell to do internet. But I happen to know that song is by The Trashmen, and I know another song by them that I can spell, so I figure I'll get into YouTube that way, and the hard-to-spell song should come up in the suggestions. So I look up "Surfin' Bird."

4. I get distracted by The Ramones:



5. I listen to The Trashmen version.

6. YouTube reminds me that the song was used in "Full Metal Jacket":



7. I start to think that the use of "Surfin' Bird" in "Full Metal Jacket" is a more interesting subject for blogging than the French (who, by the way, are responsible for Vietnam).

8. In the film clip, "Surfin' Bird" turns into "Papa Oom Mow Mow" and I refocus on my simple desire to hear a cool song from my younger days.

9. John comes through with the proper "Oom" spelling and a link to Wikipedia, which doesn't mention The Trashmen version of the song, only the earlier Rivingtons doo wop version. It turns out that the Rivingtons also made the precursor to "Surfin' Bird," which they called "Bird Is the Word." I barely remember the doo wop "Papa Oom Mow Mow," but I find it on YouTube as the soundtrack to a video about coffee. Coffee distracts me:



10. I still can't find "Papa Oom Mow Mow" by The Trashmen. By now, I realize that the available recording of "Surfin' Bird" ends, as it does in the movie clip, with "Papa Oom Mow Mow." But I am almost certain that The Trashmen released "Papa Oom Mow Mow" as a free-standing single before "Surfin' Bird." Yet this 1964 album of theirs makes me doubt my own memory. But I had the 45!

11. I realize my post is going to be the story of my little Sunday morning journey across the internet and into the canyons of my 1960s memories. I'm going to post it as a list, perhaps an 11-item list, and then, I'm going to sit back and see what it causes you to talk about.

Happy Sunday.

"If you have the least bit of curiosity about electronics or electronic music, or if you've ever just wanted to rip your toys apart..."

... then you want to go to the Bent Festival.



"You look over a circuit and you think: What is going on here? What are they doing?"

"These things exist that aren't supposed to exist that you can bring into existence..."

Too late to see it in New York City, but if you're in Minneapolis next weekend, you're in luck.

"What Not to Wear" is not the kind of reality show I would normally watch.

It's a "how-to" reality show, to use the Television Without Pity categories. The reality shows I enjoy are nearly all in the "competitive" category: "Survivor," "America's Next Top Model," "Project Runway," and — though "enjoy" isn't really the right word — "American Idol." I used to like "The Apprentice" and "Top Chef," too, but I don't want to watch any more seasons of the thing. I've had enough. The other category of reality show is "candid," and I love this category when it's at its best, like the first season of "The Osbournes" or the third season of "The Real World." The first season of "The Newlyweds" was good, and I don't mind stooping to some really trashy things sometimes, like "Wife Swap" and, in its day, the Anna Nicole Smith show — was it called "The Anna Nicole Smith Show"? But how-to? I don't want anybody telling me what to do, so why would it entertain me to see some purported experts telling somebody else what to do?

But I watched the new episode of "What Not to Wear" because part of it was filmed at a cool Brooklyn shop called Lee Lee's Valise:



This place is run by the wife of one of our very best commenters here on the Althouse blog, Trooper York. And he tipped me off that they were filming the episode, so I came down to the shop that evening after my class. The filming was over, but the stars of the show were there along with their how-to victim, and I wanted to photograph the store.



I wasn't trying to photograph the characters from the show or even act like I noticed them. I talked to the guy a little at one point, but just in the way that a shopper would chat with another customer. I didn't want to bother them, and I certainly wasn't going to act like a fan of the show, which I'm not. In fact, I still don't know the man's name. I'd have to look it up even now. Trooper York showed me a lot of merchandise and explained his theory of the place, which was very well worked out to appeal to young women who need large sizes but don't want to be hit in the face with the fact they they are shopping in a large-sizes store. The place is at the intersection of Court and President streets, which is easy for law types to remember — 2 out of the 3 branches of government.

Anyway, I just watched the show, which made over a 29-year-old woman who is a student at my old law school NYU. They converged on her at some law lecture and, horrifyingly informed her that they'd been secretly filming her to get footage of her wearing terrible clothes. They must get some kind of advance approval before they start the filming, right? If someone did that to me without my prior approval, I'd want to sue them. It's stalking!

So then they have to tell her everything she thinks is wrong, even when it isn't. She wears black skirts. Yes, most of them are too large, but the woman has lost a 100 pounds and is still in the process of losing weight. But the basic idea of wearing black skirts is obviously a good one, and the experts insist that it's not, and then they have to backtrack and say that actually it is. They are shocked that she wears black knee-high hosiery instead of full tights under a long skirt, but why? It's comfortable and invisible unless you yank up her skirt — which the fashion experts did, for the amusement of TV viewers. She had a nice, neat black jacket that was just way too large, but instead of talking about how she needed new clothes because she's lost so much weight, the experts showed her a completely different style of jacket, a gray plaid thing that they insisted was "young" and "professional" because it had wide, high lapels and buttoned up tightly under the breasts. There was no acknowledgment at all that the jacket won't look right or feel right buttoned up like that when she's sitting down, which she will be nearly all of the time working as a lawyer. They showed her a gaudy dress and contended that a loud print camouflages the shape of your body. This seemed insane, and it was also inconsistent with another one of their theories — that you should love your body as it is and show off the shape you have.

They spent some time doing the young woman's hair and makeup. Since she really needed a good haircut and wasn't wearing any makeup, this made a big improvement, but it had nothing to do with "what not to wear." Nor did it teach us anything useful. You already know you need to get a good haircut, don't you? And what woman doesn't realize she'd look better with some foundation and a little eye and lip makeup? That's not hard.

The show ends with everyone celebrating the amazing changes in the woman's appearance. You have scenes where everyone claps and cheers and the makeover target twirls around in her new clothes — which look ugly to me — and professes to be transformed. We're assured — typical woman's TV pap — that the young woman was always a wonderful person and now her exterior matches her wonderful interior. Blah! I'd rather see a show where philosophers descend on a woman with a perfect exterior and rip into her for her intellectual and spiritual failings, put her on some kind of internally transformative regime, and turn her into a human being of substance. Can we get that?

"Hamas has said they want Barack Obama to win."

"The reason for that is his policy. He wants to negotiate with the terrorist-funding, nuclear-aspiring, holocaust-denying, Israel-threatening dictator of Iran."

Said John "I will be Hamas's worst nightmare" McCain.

Late night thoughts of...

... tulips.

"Just the two of us going for 90 minutes asking and answering questions."

"We'll set whatever rules seem fair."

Hillary Clinton acts all cool about debating. Well played! Calling Obama a chicken for refusing to debate is old-fashioned. She's found a way to make herself look good bitching about his debate-shyness.

Speaking of voters in Indiana and around the country, she said "they would love seeing that kind of debate and discussion, remember that's what happened during the Lincoln-Douglas debates ..... I think that would be good for the Democratic Party, it would be good for our democracy and it would be great for Indiana."

Now, she's made him seem fusty and fussy.

"We've had 21 and so what we've said we're two weeks, two big states we want to make sure we're talking to as many folks as possible on the ground taking questions from voters," Obama said. "We're not going to have debates between now and Indiana."

Oh? Well, that's boring.

"The arrest was scary and intimidating to bloggers but also empowering."

"It made bloggers know that their blogs are influential, and now they feel more of a responsibility and take their blogs more seriously."

Said 23-year-old Ahmed al-Omran (who blogs as Saudi Jeans) about the release of Fouad al-Farhan, after 4 months in prison.

Another floral palate-cleanser.

That is intended to expunge any political nastiness that may linger from the previous post or any other post put up today.

"Obama, can this really be your friend..."

Great play on "Oh, mama, can this really be the end" in this Dylanesque riff on Obama's Jeremiah Wright problem.



Sorry for all the Obama-Jeremiah material today. That's just the way the blogging cards played out on this slow news Saturday. I'm not anti-Obama. If I were not sworn to cruel neutrality, I might rank him first of the 3 imperfect characters we much choose from. But he's running for President and he must be tested.

Have you ever had a restaurant meal so horrifically bad...

... that you acquired a phobia about eating in restaurants?

I'm going to put up another flower picture to symbolize that I'm done talking about disturbing things for a while and I'm ready to do Saturday.

Looks prickly, doesn't it? Ominous! Yet... yellow....

"Manipulative. Shameful. Race-baiting."

"Those are the only words to describe a new television ad from the Republican Party running in North Carolina that attacks Senator Barack Obama as 'too extreme' for the state."

So says the New York Times.

But look at the ad! It's about left-wing politics and anti-Americanism.



You can agree or disagree about whether Obama has a real problem on this score. But how is it racism? Is it racism simply because Jeremiah Wright and Obama are black? It would make more sense to accuse the NYT of racism for thinking that that anything that black people say or do is about their race. Here's how the Times explains it:

The assertion that Mr. Obama is “just too extreme for North Carolina” is a clear bid to stir bigotry in a Southern state. The ad’s claim that its target is actually two Democratic gubernatorial candidates who endorsed Mr. Obama is ludicrous.

This is too familiar. In his 1990 re-election campaign, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina ran the infamous “hands” ad showing two white hands crumpling up a letter while the announcer intones: “You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority.” His challenger, Harvey Gantt, a former Charlotte mayor, was, of course, African-American.

Huh? The Jesse Helms ad specifically talked about race. How is that like the anti-Obama ad?

Come on. There is a serious question here about whether Obama is too left wing. We damned well get to talk about it. If you're going to push us back and call us racists for trying to address an overwhelmingly important political problem with a black candidate for President, then what you are essentially saying is that America is not ready for a black President. And that would be racist. Either we can talk about him vigorously or we can't. And if we can't, he shouldn't be President.

***

And could John McCain watch the ad and think coherently before condemning it? Is this the man you want analyzing data and making life-or-death decisions for the world?

ADDED: For anyone who thinks I'm resistant to seeing racism in a political ad, let me remind that I was the one who wrote about the letters "NIG" on the child's pajamas in the "3 a.m." ad.