Health insurance companies across the country: April 2012

Monday, April 30, 2012

"New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism"... and Wisconsin.

Drudge pushed me over to the Washington Times, where I was surprised to read:

The Obama campaign apparently didn't look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, "Forward" — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism.

Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates....

The slogan "Forward!" reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism.

What?! "Forward" is the Wisconsin state motto, and I've heard it used over and over again by politicians. The origin of the motto goes back to 1848 — "a chance encounter in New York City between Gov. Nelson Dewey and Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Edward Ryan."

Dewey asked University of Wisconsin chancellor John Lathrop to design [an official state seal]. Lathrop delivered a sketch inspired by European heraldry that repeated Wisconsin Territory's Latin motto, "Civilitas Successit Barbaruin" ("Civilization Succeeds Barbarism"). Dewey took this to New York to be cast in metal.

While there, he ran into Milwaukee attorney Edward Ryan. Both were plain-spoken, no-nonsense characters and neither of them liked the fancy Lathrop design with its pretentious Latin maxim. So they sat down on the steps of a Wall Street bank and redrew the state's official seal themselves.

Ryan suggested that it repeat New York's motto, "Excelsior," but Dewey refused. They toyed with "Upward" and "Onward" before settling finally on "Forward."

By the way, "The Communist Manifesto" was first published in 1848, a cute coincidence, but I doubt it had much to do with the Dewey-Ryan confabulation.

Anyway, if this motto is embarrassing to Obama, he's free to switch it to "Civilization Succeeds Barbarism."

Arianna Huffington calls Obama's bin Laden ad "despicable."

She said:

"I don't think there should be an ad about that... It's the same thing Hillary Clinton did with the 3 a.m. call. 'You're not ready to be commander-in-chief.' It's also what makes politicians and political leaders act irrationally when it comes to matters of war because they're so afraid to be called wimps, that they make decisions, which are incredible destructive for the country. I'm sure the president would not have escalated in Afghanistan if he was not as concerned, as Democrats are, that Republicans are going to use not escalating against him in a campaign."

James Taranto theorizes that Elizabeth Warren "downplayed her alleged Indian roots after coming to Harvard to avoid the stigma of 'affirmative action.'"

Now, he's bouncing off something I said:

As Althouse points out, early in her career, "minority status" would have been useful to her advancement. But once she was on the tenure track at an Ivy League law school, she had more or less reached the pinnacle of academia. At that point, if people thought of her as white, they would assume she got the job entirely on the merits, without benefit of racial preferences.

What I said was — guessing — "Being on the list of minority law professors served her interest in advancement, but the claim was weak and potentially embarrassing, so it was deleted . . . after she achieved what was the ultimate advancement (to Harvard Law School)." I didn't specify what I thought was "potentially embarrassing," and Taranto's theory in fact never crossed my mind. He goes on:

Not all minority professors could pull that off. If Warren were black, for instance, everyone would know it, and there would be no way of escaping the stereotype. Because she is--or can pass for--white, she was in a position to have the best of both worlds, advancing through affirmative action, then enjoying the white privilege of appearing to have gotten ahead solely on the merits.

What I thought was "potentially embarrassing" was that people might begin to ask if she really was Native American, and she might not be able to verify her status. (She is not an enrolled member of a tribe, which is something students coming to her as a mentor might ask about, perhaps in a challenging way.)

From my perspective — as a lawprof with 25+ years of experience — I do not think the lawprofs who are members of minority groups go around feeling stigmatized. But I do think it would be embarrassing if you were recruited because you were perceived as a member of a minority group that you in fact did not belong to. Harvard was under a lot of pressure at that time to do something about the lack of racial diversity on the faculty, and I'm skeptical of the claim that Warren's minority status never came up during the hiring process. Well, it's not really even a claim. It's just a statement of inability to "recall" that it did.

Was the "Protest Whisperer" — Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs — forced out...

... by mean old Republicans who are saying he "coddled" protesters?

For days in February 2011, protesters slept in the Capitol and spent their days booing and jeering Republican Gov. Scott Walker and GOP legislators....

Supporters of Tubbs, 58, say his willingness to negotiate was the reason that there were no major injuries, no permanent damage to the Capitol and no riots. But his opponents say that same personal style turned the Capitol into the first Occupy campsite....

There’s another theory on why Tubbs chose June 1 to start his new job: He doesn’t want to be around for what some say could be “Round 2.”

Walker’s recall election is June 5....

Oh, no. The post-recall protests....

But why wait for June 6th? Tomorrow is May Day... and it's coming just as the city is (supposedly) breaking up the Occupy Madison encampment...

On Sunday night, the mood among site residents could only be described as desperate as many of them realized that it could be their last night at the site....

Meanwhile, other members of the Occupy Madison movement are gearing up for a big day on Tuesday. Occupy Wall Street is using social media to attract a big crowd for its May Day rally.

Sigh.

"Is Twitter working on a solution to keep liberals from abusing the spam submission system in the future?"

"Dana Loesch and many others want answers from Twitter. Why did they suspend Chris Loesch’s account? Was the suspension due to liberals flag-spamming him?"

ADDED: More here.

As our late-night-owl readers know, after Twitter reinstated conservative activist Chris Loesch’s account in the wee hours of Sunday night/Monday morning, the progressive flag-spam lynch mob — a vicious group of free speech-squelching Twitter users who trigger automatic suspensions by falsely “mass reporting” conservatives as “spammers” — took him down again and again.

"Bus, under."

"Top EPA Official Resigns Over 'Crucify' Comment."

Imagine your career wrecked over a slightly edgy analogy.

Meanwhile, Hilary Rosen — who said something much more inopportune — was back on "Meet the Press" yesterday.

ADDED: Based on the comments to this post, I'd say the problem wasn't so much that the analogy was edgy, but that it was too true. He said something that can't be said so openly. The setting wasn't really too open, which is why he said it, presumably, but the analogy was so vivid that it busted out into the internet-o-sphere.

Obama announces his retirement from politics.

I received email from the President just now. The subject line: My last campaign.

Ann --

In a few days, I'll be hitting the trail for my last campaign.

[Blah.. blah... request for donation omitted.]

Thanks,

Barack

His last campaign?

The man is 50 years old. His career is young. He's packing it in so early? This troubles me. Why no more stamina in the political arena?

I mean, what if he loses in November? He could run again. He could let 3 presidential terms pass and come back and only be as old as Romney is right now!

But even if he wins, what's he going to do? He can't run for President again, but there are other elective offices. Look at John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, and Andrew Johnson. All of them went on to seek other elective office and to win.

(Also at that link: the names of the 7 Presidents who sought the presidency after they were out of office. You probably know the name of the individual who won, but do you know the 6 who tried and failed?)

Why doesn't Obama have more gumption? It makes him seem too weak even now as he seeks reelection. Last campaign. That's annoying.

You know, the first time I ever voted for a Republican, it was 1976 and I decided I couldn't vote for Carter. It was one thing that he said that turned me against him. He was asked — very shortly before election day — what he would do if he lost. He said he'd go back to his peanut farm and be a farmer. I didn't like that. I thought: Not much of a statesman.

A scientific calculation of the advantages and disadvantages of the 2 leading candidates in the Wisconsin recall primary...

"Final score: +1 for The Kathleen. (Toasting Mary Bell of WEAC and Marty Beil of AFSCME.)"

"But don’t worry, Harvard Law School racked up their identity-group bonus points on the basis of the authoritative evidence of Ms Warren’s family 'lore'..."

"... which surely ought to be good enough for faculty-lounge affirmative-action credits."

Mark Steyn aptly notes.

We were talking about this yesterday, and tmitsss reminded us of the "Dear Prudence" column that we were talking about a couple weeks ago. You remember, the Slate advice columnist Emily Yoffe got a question from a student who wondered whether it was ethical to accept a scholarship that was available only to Hispanic students when, in fact, he had recently learned that he had no Hispanic ancestors. (He was adopted and had a Hispanic surname.)

Yoffe told him:

There is one essential criteria people must meet in order to be considered Hispanic by the U.S. Census Bureau: That’s what they say they are.

Your say-so makes it so. And there's money in it!

You were raised by a Hispanic father and have his last name. For most of your life you identified yourself as Hispanic.

So family "lore" is good enough!

On your behalf the “Hispanic” box was checked on the relevant forms. If you want to shed your Hispanic identity, of course you are free to do so. But given your last name, people will still assume that's what you are, even if you are no longer checking the appropriate boxes. This Pew Hispanic Center report shows just how squishy and variable the term “Hispanic” is. I’m confident your college is thrilled to include you in their count of Hispanic students and doesn’t really want to know you may be thinking of yourself as Armenian.

Your college is thrilled. You and the college, benefiting together... and who is harmed by this thrilling fantasy... this mutual stimulation to self-pleasure....? Let the frottage continue!

Given the price of tuition, a substantial scholarship is a blessing and you should claim it with equanimity.

Claim your blessings! Everybody wins! Not a loser in sight. Ah! Beautiful!

UPDATE: Yoffe links to this post and makes an offensive, inaccurate statement about it.

"The Five Stages Of GOP Reaction To Osama Bin Laden’s Death — And What’s Next."

The top post at Talking Points Memo, which I visited after I noticed it on my Blogroll and thought hey, I haven't gone there in a long time and then I wonder why I never go there anymore and then oh, I see.

ADDED: ... and then I'm going to blog about this and then hey, I need 5 stages.

"Because I criticized the President, it’s news?"

"Last I checked, he’s President, not King! This is America! Freedom of Speech. what’s the bfd?"

***

I know I've made a lot of Obama tags over the years, but looking for the right one for this post made me realize I have a serious Obama tag proliferation problem on this blog. Few other characters have even one additional tags beyond their name. For example, Hillary Clinton only has 2 extra tags, one dedicated to her work as Secretary of State and another one called "Hillary snaps." But look at my list of Obama tags:

I need to do some tag consolidation! At the very least, all the one-timers ought to go. Including the obvious mistake "obama the." Or is that fascinatingly evocative?

"Other cities do have working tent cities. And I think this shows that a tent city can work..."

"... as imperfect as it is, for various reasons... and it's really sad that the city is dismissing it altogether, and it's going to be broken down in a couple of days."

Allen Barkoff, defending the homeless shelter into which Occupy Madison transmogrified. (Via Isthmus.)

Barkoff is identified on the video as "Occupy Organizer." Allen Barkoff is also the name of the Vice-Chair of the Socialist Party of South Central Wisconsin. From the Socialist Party website:

In a socialist system the people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically controlled public agencies, cooperatives, or other collective groups. The primary goal of economic activity is to provide the necessities of life, including food, shelter, health care, education, child care, cultural opportunities, and social services.

These social services include care for the chronically ill, persons with mental disabilities, the infirm and the aging. Planning takes place at the community, regional, and national levels, and is determined democratically with the input of workers, consumers, and the public to be served.

"It's almost an art to be so obnoxious, really."

"You will find nothing in her blog that would get her in trouble with state government or the University of Wisconsin, and yet she is terribly offensive about many serious people and worthy endeavors... She is a confused thinker, and her writing is hard to follow. Sometimes she has nothing to say but says things anyway. But there is a certain consistency in her written equivalent of blather that reassures her regular readers."

Stray antiAlthousiana.

It amused me. It's almost right about some things. "Almost an art"? It is an art.

"No one who writes for a living wouldn't want to be the person behind Jonah Goldberg's 'Liberal Fascism..."

"... which was not only a number-one New York Times' bestseller, but also a seminal publication in the growing canon of conservative-leaning books. What I would wish on no writer, however, is having to face the challenge and pressure of writing a follow-up to such a stunning debut. But with 'The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas'..., not only has Goldberg (editor-at-large for National Review Online) avoided the sophomore slump -- in many ways he has an even bigger triumph on his hands."

So begins a review over at Breitbart.com of a book I actually do want to read. (And if you do, please buy it here.) Speaking of "stunning," I'm stunned by the density of the packing in of implausible overstatements.

Breitbart.com strains at self-delegitimizing. Sad.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

"Yet the walls still have to be guarded by independent bloggers who bear a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom..."

"... and while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, you want us on that wall, you need us on that wall," blogs Professor Jacobson dramatically, but I think he really means it.

He's talking about Don Surber's quitting blogging after 7 years: "I am exhausted. It was simply too much work."

Via Instapundit, who says: "I’m still around. But I suppose it’ll get me too, someday. But today is not that day!"

For me, the secret has always been the intrinsic reward. Read "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience."

Jacobson talks of "feeling that your blog is all that stands between the Great Mainstream Media-Nutroots Conspiracy and the abyss can create imagined pressure." That's extrinsic. I'm all about intrinsic. I'm not trying to write anything other than as part of a process of being interested in things. It's just the opposite of entropy.

But Surber writes a lot of columns. I suspect he's simply discovered that he'll write better if he concentrates his writing on columns, which require a different rhythm.

"That's Why God Made The Radio."

A beautiful new song by the (surviving) Beach Boys — Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine (with Bruce Johnston and David Marks). You can listen to it at the link.

If you're lucky, you can hear The Beach Boys on tour — the band began a world tour for their 50th anniversary last night in Tucson, performing an astonishing 42 songs!

Tomorrow, 1 World Trade Center will become the tallest building in NYC.

The addition of a steel column will put it 21 feet taller than the Empire State Building.

This is the second time a skyscraper called 1 World Trade Center has edged over the Empire State Building. The first was on Oct. 19, 1970, when a section of steel framework elevated the north tower of the trade center to 1,254 feet, four feet above Empire State’s 1,250-foot benchmark.

"So, we know one thing with almost 100% certainty: Elizabeth Warren identified herself as a minority law professor."

David Bernstein affirms:

We know something else with 90%+ certainty: (at least some) folks at Harvard were almost certainly aware that she identified as a minority law professor, though they may not have known which ethnic group she claimed to be belong to, and it may not have played any role in her hiring.

But it gets even more interesting: once Warren joined the Harvard faculty, she dropped off the list of minority law faculty. Now that’s passing strange. When the AALS directory form came around before Warren arrived at Harvard, she was proud enough of her Native American ancestry to ask that she be listed among the minority law professors.... Once she arrived at Harvard, however, she no longer chose to be listed as a minority law professor.

If those are the facts, what should we infer? Being on the list of minority law professors served her interest in advancement, but the claim was weak and potentially embarrassing, so it was deleted... after she achieved what was the ultimate advancement (to Harvard Law School)? I'm just guessing. Do you have a more apt inference? In any event, it's a question that goes to honesty.

Salon analyzes "Who’s better to beat Scott Walker?"

Lots of background on Kathleen Falk, including the story of how she challenged the incumbent Democratic attorney general, Peg Lautenschlager, and then went on to lose to the Republican in 2006, when the Democrat (Jim Doyle) won the governorship:

The official margin of victory for Van Hollen was 9,071 votes, a difference of 0.4 percent. In Dane County, Falk received 11,850 votes fewer than Doyle; had she simply run even with him on her home turf, she would have won the race.

“Those were folks pissed off that she challenged Lautenschlager,” said [Joe Winike, a former state Democratic chairman who is neutral in the Barrett-Falk race]. “So you could make an argument that the leftist base that refused to vote for Kathleen cost her the election.”

In the recall primary, being from Dane County (that is, Madison and the surrounding area) is characterized as a negative, because people around the state see Madison as a big lefty enclave. So many anti-Walkerites gravitate to Tom Barrett (the Milwaukee mayor), who seems more detached from the protests that led to the recall... which seems to undermine the whole idea of the recall. In fact, the Barrett ads I've seen talk about how he's the one that can make things normal again. But what's abnormal is a recall.

ADDED: Looking forward to seeing Scott Walker and Tom Barrett debate over who should be governor? Wait no more. It's right here:

"Illinois is a lesson in why companies are starting to pay more attention to the long-term fiscal prospects of governments."

"Indiana's debt for unfunded retiree health-care benefits, for example, amounts to just $81 per person. Neighboring Illinois's accumulated obligations for the same benefit average $3,399 per person."

... Dana Levenson, Chicago's former chief financial officer, has projected that the average city homeowner paying $3,000 in annual property taxes could see his tax bill rise within five years as much as $1,400. The reason: A 2010 Illinois law requires municipalities to raise the funding levels in their pension systems using property tax revenues but no additional contributions from government employees. The legislation prompted former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley in December to warn residents that the increases might be so high, "you won't be able to sell your house."

No additional contributions from government employees... In other words: Don't do what they did in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile in Wisconsin, we've been pulled into a recall election to replace the current governor with someone who thinks Illinois has got the right idea.

"Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the 'Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich'..."

"... which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean. Today, that tactic is used by hundreds of other corporations — some of which directly imitated Apple’s methods...."

Apple is only taking advantage of opportunities that exist in the tax code. Why do they exist?

A completely separate question, woven through the linked NYT article, is the way some states — notably California — take so much in tax that they drive businesses away. There's a competition among the states, and it punishes them for getting too greedy.

I get the impression the NYT would like to shame corporations into willingly forking over more money to the government. Here's a great anecdote:

In one of his last public appearances before his death, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, addressed Cupertino’s City Council last June, seeking approval to build a new headquarters.

Most of the Council was effusive in its praise of the proposal. But one councilwoman, Kris Wang, had questions.

How will residents benefit? she asked. Perhaps Apple could provide free wireless Internet to Cupertino, she suggested, something Google had done in neighboring Mountain View.

“See, I’m a simpleton; I’ve always had this view that we pay taxes, and the city should do those things,” Mr. Jobs replied, according to a video of the meeting. “That’s why we pay taxes. Now, if we can get out of paying taxes, I’ll be glad to put up Wi-Fi.”

He suggested that, if the City Council were unhappy, perhaps Apple could move. The company is Cupertino’s largest taxpayer, with more than $8 million in property taxes assessed by local officials last year.

Ms. Wang dropped her suggestion.

Cupertino, Ms. Wang said in an interview, has real financial problems. “We’re proud to have Apple here,” said Ms. Wang, who has since left the Council. “But how do you get them to feel more connected?”

Feel more connected.... Absurd! The article ends with a quote from the president of a Cupertino area community community college complaining that companies like Apple are "philosophically antitax, and it’s decimating the state." I'd love to hear what Steve Jobs would say to that. It's the pro-tax philosophy that decimates a state.

IN THE COMMENTS: Maguro said:

Needs an "Apple is like Elizabeth Warren" tag.

Obama does dog-eating jokes at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.

At 1:30, "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?... A pit bull is delicious."

More here.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

"President Obama is increasingly taking the unusual route of bragging about how he killed a man."

"That's how I might expect a very far-left fringe candidate to describe our successful mission to kill the head of al Qaeda."

"Nothing bores me more than to be in New York and have a dinner in a big fancy restaurant, where you have to sit for three fucking hours."

"You know and people will have drinks before, wine after, then three courses, then they want coffee and someone is going to ask for a fucking French press and all the rest of this crap. To me my idea of what’s good is to drive here and go to Waffle House, get a couple of eggs and waffle. When I see the first Waffle House, I know I’m in the South. That’s good."

Stephen King, talking to Neil Gaiman. Lots of nice stuff here. (Via Metafilter.)

"But, has anyone else been as creeped-out on this blog, as I've been lately?"

Says Jay Vogt, off topic, in the "Science of sitting" post. He continues:

Over the past two days, we been presented with posts on giant cannibal shrimp, revenge by extraneous dentistry, testicular mutilation, necrophilia, the legal writings of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and infanticide.

I'm not sure that I'm up for much more work on this vein.

I haven't been this upset since I attended the the brunch reception for the debut screening of "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife And Her Lover."

Funny, just as you were writing that, I was doing a new post about the "inescapable shame of being a storyteller." Maybe there's an inescapable shame of being a blogger. But if it's any consolation, years ago, I went to "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife And Her Lover," and, leaving at the end, I felt very uncomfortable just to be in the crowd of people who had seen it.

Now, Jonathan Franzen has a memoir called "The Discomfort Zone." I don't think you're supposed to feel comfortable. I like that book. I've read it. Another book I've read and liked is "Don't Get Too Comfortable," by David Rakoff, which has the subtitle "The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never- Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems," so you see the idea there.

Franzen also has a new book of essays, which I just bought. It's "Farther Away." (I guess you're supposed to feel alienated.) It contains his essay about David Foster Wallace that was what David Haglund shamed him about.

The "inescapable shame of being a storyteller."

An enactment of shame, by Jonathan Franzen:

Via David Haglund, who proceeds to further shame Franzen.

The science of sitting.

We all know — don't we? — that sitting too much isn't healthy. (I love my motorized sit-stand desk, which I demonstrate here.) I'm interested in reading the science of sitting, and there's some good material here, but the family life part of it kind of annoyed me:

In [one study], researchers determined that watching an hour of television can snip 22 minutes from someone’s life. If an average man watched no TV in his adult life, the authors concluded, his life span might be 1.8 years longer, and a TV-less woman might live for a year and half longer than otherwise.

So I canceled our cable, leaving my 14-year-old son staggered. I’d deprived him of his favorite shows on The Food Network, a channel that, combined with sitting, explains much about the American waistline. (Thankfully, my son is blessed with his father’s lanky, string-bean physique.)

1. Did you take his books away too? What if he were willing to watch TV standing up? It seems to me this anti-TV agenda is wholly separate. Maybe you have some other reason for canceling cable, but this is bad science (and kind of a mean thing to do to the kid, but you report it as if it was funny to "stagger" him).

2. You inform us that America is fat, but your son and husband are skinny. Insults + bragging = annoying.

"Occupy Student Debt."

Nice poster... but what's going on? There's this:

The Occupy Student Debt Campaign, organised by members of Occupy Wall Street, planned rallies in at least a dozen cities including the college towns of Ann Arbor in Michigan, Madison in Wisconsin, and Newark in Delaware, the home of the lender Sallie Mae.

Madison, Wisconsin? Here we go again...

Finally! "The Greening of America" is out on Kindle.

Got it!

[CAVEAT: The Kindle version is newly abridged, "compressing the original 125,000 words to an Internet-friendly 24,000 words and eliminating most of the sections on "Consciousness III." Updated? Charles Reich wrote a new preface and final chapter." Damn. As you see below, I'm most interested in the stuff that is outdated and embarrassing!]

[From the first link:]

In 1970, The New Yorker Magazine ran a 39,000-word excerpt of ‘The Greening of America' -- the longest in its history. Then the book was published. It caused a firestorm. Written by Charles Reich, a distinguished professor at Yale Law, it showed how a once-free America had become a Corporate State that made no one happy. And then it suggested a remedy.

The way out? It wasn't political change — for Reich, politics came last. The first and most important thing: Consciousness. As he saw it, America had outgrown "Consciousness I," which had helped form a nation of free individuals. It had outgrown "Consciousness II," which was corporate and heartless. Now it was time for "Consciousness III," in which people would turn away from the quest for traditional success and forge a new, personal path to satisfaction.

In short: Change the way you think, help others do the same, and soon the system has to change.

Ah, soon the system has to change. Hope and change, baby. It's 42 years later and look at all this change. It's change as far as the eye can see.

I love reading these pop culture books of the past, that is, my past. Especially circa 1970.

I also got the Kindle version of Roger Kimball's "The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America," which I have already read and enjoyed, because I wanted to be able to cut and paste a little something of what Kimball says about "The Greening of America," which he memorably savages:

Though it spread like the measles, Consciousness III is difficult to describe because, as Reich notes, the very attempt to say what it is draws on intellectual habits that Consciousness III rejects: “Authority, schedules, time, accepted customs, are all forms which must be questioned. Accepted patterns of thought must be broken; what is considered ‘rational thought’ must be opposed by ‘nonrational thought’— drug-thought, mysticism, impulses.”

Not entirely, though. Reich does allow that the “foundation” of Consciousness III is “liberation.” He adds that “the meaning of liberation is that the individual is free to build his own philosophy and values, his own life-style, and his own culture from a new beginning.” More generally, Consciousness III comes into being when an individual frees himself from the “false consciousness” that society imposes. People infused with the spirit of Consciousness III do “not believe in the antagonistic or competitive doctrine of life,” they “do not compete ‘in real life.’ ... People are brothers, the world is ample for all.... No one judges anyone else.” Also, everyone rather likes himself: “Consciousness III says, ‘I’m glad I’m me.’”

ADDED: From Woodward and Armstrong's book "The Brethren," about the Supreme Court, describing the funeral of Justice Hugo Black:

The minister selected to deliver the eulogy went to Black’s library and found various books that Black had underlined, including The Greening of America, by Charles Reich, one of his former clerks. The minister selected some of the underlined portions to read at the funeral. During the eulogy, Brennan gently nudged Stewart. “Hugo would turn over in his grave if he heard that,” Brennan said. Only Black’s intimates knew that Black thought Reich’s book absurd, and that Black underlined the sections he disliked.

AND: More about the new edition, from the second link, above, written by the editor of the new version:

The other reason to read The Greening of America is for its brilliant and original suggestion of a way out: the radical, idealistic "Consciousness III."...

Then why did you edit most of this stuff out?

Last year, we saw the emergence of the "Occupy" movement, and, with it, ideas that would be instantly familiar to anyone who had read The Greening of America.

Now we are in the middle of a Presidential election, with a campaign that sounds a lot like a debate between a "Consciousness II" Administration (which argues that the federal government can best protect us from an unregulated marketplace and a shredded safety net) and "Consciousness I" Republican candidates (who tell us that the solution to all our problems is a return to a time when men took care of their own business and government barely existed).

In short: "The Greening of America" is reappearing at a time when it can contribute to — and shape —the national conversation.

Because you've got another alternative but you're not going to embarrass yourselves by telling us the details of what it is.

"Nearly a dozen of high school journalists walked out of a lecture by Dan Savage, the prominent ant-bullying advocate..."

Sorry... I just love the typo: ant-bullying. Is that something done with a magnifying glass?

But... okay... let's talk about the underlying story. Dan Savage was doing his thing....

'People often say that they can’t help with the anti-gay bullying acts because it says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans, that being gay is wrong,' Mr Savage said.

'We can learn to ignore the bullsh*t in the Bible and what it says about gay people.'

He compared dogmatic acceptance of anti-gay teachings equivalent to adhering to verses about slavery and eating shellfish, two issues that have been reinterpreted in modern day.

My question is whether the school engages in viewpoint discrimination. Does it bring in other speakers who present other interpretations of the Bible? I doubt it.

Why are we so hostile to non-natives?

"Giant cannibal shrimp more than a FOOT long invade waters off Gulf Coast."

The black-and-white-striped shrimp can grow 13 inches long and weigh a quarter-pound, compared to eight inches and a bit over an ounce for domestic white, brown and pink shrimp.

Scientists fear the tigers will bring disease and competition for native shrimp. Both, however, can be eaten by humans.

‘They’re supposed to be very good,’ Pam Fuller, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey told CNN. ‘But they can get very large, sorta like lobsters.’

They're very good. They're the size of lobsters. Does everything have to be a problem? Can't we just say thanks?

This reminds me of #Asian Carp on an American Rampage# — the Chinese puzzlement at our anguish over Asian carp, their favorite food fish.

"I tried to be professional and detach myself from my emotions."

"But when I saw him lying there I just thought, 'What a b******.'"

Warning: Horrifying story at the link. The story comes all the way from Poland, so you're on you own deciding whether it's true.

Meanwhile, and now that I've linked to that, Drudge has been pimping this story (that came all the way from China): "Woman kills man by squeezing his testicles over parking dispute."

It seems the women of the world are on a rampage.

Is this the right way to exploit "17-year old blogging prodigy Bebe Zeva"?

I stumbled across this article in the Washington Square News, which is the NYU student newspaper, because my Google alert on NYU School of Law (my alma mater) brought in a headline — "V.P. Biden visits NYU, praises Obama" — that made me click over to the site.

Okay, first, the Biden stuff:

In his speech, Biden framed the victories the president has won. He also discounted Romney's remarks against Obama's foreign policy. "Romney wants to take us back to the past we've worked so hard to move beyond," Biden said. "He is looking through the glass of a rear-view window."...

CAS sophomore Danielle Herring left the talk convinced that she will be voting for Obama in November. "I was expecting more of a speech on foreign policy in general, more of an overview on what America is planning on doing in the future," Herring said. "But I think it did a good job of explaining our foreign policy and what America has done in the last four years."

So then Biden was looking through the glass of a rear-view window. Whatever. At least he convinced Danielle Herring that she will be voting for Obama.

Now, check out the article about the filmmaker — Tao Lin, an NYU alumnus — who's made a documentary about a 17-year old female blogger. The film "tails the up-and-coming blogger through one night in Las Vegas, her hometown."

"The simple, utilitarian storytelling set against the absurd, over-the-top backdrop of Vegas calls to mind the similar tone of Lin's books," reads a description of the film on MDMA's website. "Bebe Zeva provides an opportunity to see [Tao Lin's] literary aesthetic translated into the world of cinema."

Sounds interesting. But then I clicked through to the trailer for the film and... wow...

That is not the right way to use a minor. The literary aesthetic translated into the world of cinema literally nauseated me.

PJ Media's stupid effort to attack Obama through Derrick Bell's book "Afrolantica Legacies."

Did anyone over there realize how dumb this is?

As a 28-year-old student at Harvard Law Barack Obama supported the activism of Professor Derrick Bell and urged his peers to open their hearts and minds to the words of Critical Race Theory's founder.

I've already blogged about the stupidity of attributing significance to the student who gave a nice introduction to a venerable professor. I won't repeat that. This is about PJ Media's failure to see that Bell is attacking liberals. It's stupid to tear down Bell as a way to attack Democrats. Bell is attacking Democrats!

PJ Media is reading one of the lesser Bell works, "Afrolantica Legacies." It's not available in Kindle, or I'd buy a copy right now, but I see that it's like about the 7 millionth best-selling book over at Amazon right now. The book is a collection of essays, and PJM displays photos of some pages in the book, including a collection of "rules of racial preservation," which is the first thing the PJM article decides to trash. But let's look at Bell's first rule:

No matter how justified by racial injustices they are intended to remedy, civil rights policies, including affirmative action, are implemented only when they further the interests of whites.

Hello? Who implements these race-based policies like affirmative action? Liberals! Derrick Bell is saying that white people do this when and only when it works for their advantage! The critical race thinking you're invited to do here is to understand how, when white people purport to advance black people, they are really exploiting black people for their own advantage. This is an attack on the work of the Democratic Party and other liberals. Conservatives are on the sidelines of this battle.

I am reminded of the dissenting opinion that Clarence Thomas wrote in Grutter v. Bollinger, the case that upheld the affirmative action admissions at the University of Michigan Law School:

Frederick Douglass, speaking to a group of abolitionists almost 140 years ago, delivered a message lost on today’s majority:

“[I]n regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice . The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us… . I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! … And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! … [Y]our interference is doing him positive injury.” What the Black Man Wants: An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on 26 January 1865, reprinted in 4 The Frederick Douglass Papers 59, 68 (J. Blassingame & J. McKivigan eds. 1991) (emphasis in original)....

Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. We hear the echo of the cry in Bell's first rule. Thomas ends his dissent:

It has been nearly 140 years since Frederick Douglass asked the intellectual ancestors of the Law School to “[d]o nothing with us!” and the Nation adopted the Fourteenth Amendment. Now we must wait another 25 years to see this principle of equality vindicated.

(Only 16 more years, if that's a serious time limit.)

Here's Bell's 3d rule:

Coalition building is an enterprise with valuable potential as long as its pursuit does not obscure the basic fact: nobody can free us but ourselves.

That's so much blander and duller than Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! But it's sounding the same chord.

Yeah, there's plenty of left-wing stuff in Bell's old book, but the basic insight of Critical Race Theory is skepticism about liberals. Why dig up Bell in 2012 and smack him around unless you yourself want to racialize everything?

Why? Ironically, Bell's Rule #1 might apply: The things white people do in the name of race are done only when they further the interests of whites.

Why aren't we all talking about the "secret plan to evacuate some residents of Chicago in the event of major trouble during the NATO summit next month"?

3 days ago CBS 2 reported on an e-mail that the Red Cross sent out to volunteers in the Milwaukee area:

It said the NATO summit “may create unrest or another national security incident. The American Red Cross in southeastern Wisconsin has been asked to place a number of shelters on standby in the event of evacuation of Chicago.”

According to a chapter spokesperson, the evacuation plan is not theirs alone.

“Our direction has come from the City of Chicago and the Secret Service,” she said.

What's going on?

You know I'm already agitated about the potential for Chicago folk to come up to Milwaukee to vote in the Scott Walker recall election. (Remember: "Chicago is up in the house!"/"Everyone left is from Chicago"?) The Wisconsin courts, conveniently, have blocked the voter ID law.

And now there's this secret evacuation plan, with the City of Chicago and the Secret Service — the Secret Service, will there be prostitutes?! — working together? And Milwaukee is the evacuation zone?

Sorry to verge into the conspiracy-theory area of thinking, but why isn't this evacuation plan story big news?

ADDED: Instapundit links and says "Well, I did have a post last week, though this sounds bigger." That link goes to this:

Residents of a Chicago condo whose building will be in the eye of the NATO storm are being warned that they should move out for the weekend ... or risk being trapped inside by rioters.

Wow.

What do Bob Dylan, Toni Morrison, John Glenn, and Madeleine Albright have in common?

Obama is giving them all a medal — the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Speaking for freedom, Bob's got an old song called "I Shall Be Free." It says:

Well, my telephone rang it would not stop
It’s President Kennedy callin’ me up
He said, “My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?”
I said, “My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren”
(Put ’em all in the same room with Ernest Borgnine!)

It's not a slow jam, but like that Obama's slow jam the other day, it got that idea that sexual stimulation is what the country needs. (Speaking of old, there's that old Woody Allen joke: "I ... interestingly had, uh, dated ... a woman in the Eisenhower Administration ... briefly ... and, uh, it was ironic to me 'cause, uh . . . 'cause I was trying to, u-u-uh, do to her what Eisenhower has been doing to the country for the last eight years.)

Bob's most famous reference to the President is in "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)":

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

Lest you think that was sexy-naked, the year was 1965, and the President was LBJ.

Finally, back to the subject of freedom, here's one of my favorite obscure Bob Dylan songs, from the album we listened to all the time in college, "New Morning":

If dogs run free, then why not we
Across the swooping plain?
My ears hear a symphony
Of two mules, trains and rain
The best is always yet to come
That’s what they explain to me
Just do your thing, you’ll be king
If dogs run free

Run, dogs, run!

Friday, April 27, 2012

"It can get a little gory, watching the parents tear up rabbits and squirrels, but that's nature."

"I just think it's been nice for us to be able to put it out there so a worldwide audience can watch these hawks."

"Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?"

That's the fifth most "liked" quote on the topic of "sin" at goodreads. It's from Chuck Palahniuk, Diary (which is a novel, not a diary). The forth most liked also involves poor old Adam. It's by Mark Twain:

Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

But I've heard snake is tough, tougher than dog (and less crunchy than grasshopper).

Sorry for the gratuitous Obama-eats-dog/snake punchline. It was not my motivation to look up quotes. I was actually searching for a quote about boredom, something like the only sin is being boring. Interestingly, the most-liked goodreads quotes on the topic of "boredom" are boring. Seriously, how many ways are there to say If you're bored, it's because you are boring? And now I've lost track of what somebody said that made me what that sin-of-boringness quote, which might not even exist.

“Life is for living and working at. If you find anything or anybody a bore, the fault is in yourself.”
― Elizabeth I

Am I boring you? You must be boring.

IN THE COMMENTS: Sweetbriar and Jody both point me to the answer: Christopher Hitchens, in his memoir, "Hitch-22." Page 13. His mother used to say: "The one unforgivable sin is to be boring."

And I think what got me looking in the first place was a comment by Patrick over in the "Predictable Althouse Is Predictable" post:

Honestly, when I first came to this blog, back in the day, I assumed that you, a law professor especially at Madison, would be a typical lefty law professor. In fact, I likely put off reading the blog for awhile because I assumed it would be the same old boring lefty stuff. This is a very interesting blog, and your political opinions or votes are part of that, but really, there's a lot more to it. Vote for Ron Paul for all I care, or Dennis Kucinich. Just don't be boring about it!

Dalai Lama: "I love George Bush... the younger one... as a human being."

"As a person: very nice person. I love him."

"Alleged proposals to allow Egyptian husbands to legally have sex with their dead wives for up to 6 hours after their death have been branded a 'complete nonsense.'"

"The controversial new 'farewell intercourse' law was claimed, in Arab media, to be part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament."

Who even thinks about making laws on this subject?

But now that we are thinking about it, what do you think: How much physical love may a husband express toward his newly dead wife (or a wife to her husband)? Clearly, kissing the dead loved one is considered normal, but where is the line? If you had to make a law defining what constitutes a crime with respect to the treatment of a dead body, how much leeway would you give to the new widowers and widows?

Let's not get all embroiled in what the Egyptian Islamists do. Let's look at our own values. We're talking about when the state should prosecute somebody. Who should go to prison? Take into account that, under the Constitution, we have a right of privacy:

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights — older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects.

ADDED: This subject makes me want to reprint the last paragraph of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame":

About eighteen months or two years after the events which terminate this story, when search was made in that cavern for the body of Olivier le Daim, who had been hanged two days previously, and to whom Charles VIII. had granted the favor of being buried in Saint Laurent, in better company, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrézarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.

Tages-Anzeiger "starved to death after embarking on a spiritual diet that required her to stop eating or drinking and live off sunlight alone."

Another saint, gone.

Having gotten that far drafting this post, I went looking for saints who have starved to death. I found the story of Maximilian Kolbe. Now, I'm ashamed to have begun this post so sarcastically, but I'll leave it the way it is and invite you to contemplate the extent of the contrast between these 2 stories.

Is Eric Hovde the new Ron Johnson?

Larry Kaufman on the GOP Senate primary in Wisconsin.

But Ron Johnson did not have to fight off Tommy Thompson, the former governor who chose not to go for a Senate seat when it required ousting an incumbent. It's an easier seat to get in the general election because the incumbent is retiring, but that makes the primary more contentious.

Is Thompson up for that fight? Or is he just assuming we know him and like him? So far...

... Thompson is a no-show for debates and often "phones in" speeches at the events he does attend. There's a growing sense that Thompson is acting like he's entitled to the job...

When is the Senate primary anyway? It's August 14, after the recall elections, which are June 5th. Kaufman tries to predict the post-recall political climate:

If Gov. Scott Walker loses, dispirited GOP voters will be far more likely to hunker down and cast a "safe" vote for Thompson to take on Democratic challenger Tammy Baldwin.

Really? Wow. GOP folk go completely beta? Gotta win something.

But in the more likely case where Walker wins, the surge in Republican confidence would favor candidates like Hovde running on a stronger and more forthright fiscal conservatism. Wisconsin's open primary could also favor Hovde, since he's a fresh face with more crossover appeal than his opponents.

Why wouldn't they cross over and vote for whoever is the weakest candidate to face Baldwin? These open primaries are a bitch.

IN THE COMMENTS: Original Mike said:

Thompson clearly doesn't have it in him anymore. He should step aside.

If the GOP had a brain, all the other candidates would step down and endorse Hovde. Don't you think? There's only one declared candidate on the Democratic side, the primary isn't until August, and it's an open primary.

"Predictable Althouse is predictable."

Says a familiar lefty commenter, provoking me to say:

Does that include the idea — see Ipso Fatso, supra — that I'm surely going to vote for Obama?

I love that I'm so obviously totally for him and against him.

Somebody please explain.

It's really quite weird. My regular right-leaning readers keep seeing me as secretly devoted to Obama, no matter what mockery I indulge in. They think I'm just trying to trick them into thinking I've got what I like to call cruel neutrality. And yet the left-leaning readers assume I loathe Obama.

What's so annoying about this is that I want to write things that are fresh and surprising. And seeming to be both for and against Obama should work for that end, and yet it doesn't, because everyone seems to assume I'm on the side that they are not. They think I'm predictable — but which way?

Oh, maybe I should be the opposite of annoyed. Pleased. Because I'm not giving anybody what they want, and yet people — some people, who are they? — keep reading. To be denied what you want and still want more from that source... I'm going to be happy to be that source.

Cruel neutrality, baby.

Pete Fornatale "was at the forefront of the FM revolution, along with WNEW-FM colleagues..."

"... like Scott Muni, Rosko, Vin Scelsa, Dennis Elsas, Jonathan Schwartz and Alison Steele (who called herself “the Nightbird”). They played long versions of songs, and sometimes entire albums, and talked to their audiences in a conversational tone very different from the hard-sell approach of their AM counterparts."

That meant so much. Maybe you had to be there back then to understand how this mattered, but I'm sad to say goodbye to Pete Fornatale, who died of a stroke yesterday, at the age of 66.

As a sophomore at Fordham University in 1964, he persuaded the school’s Jesuit leaders to let him do a free-form rock show on what was officially an educational station....

Mr. Fornatale came on board in 1969 and quickly moved to the center of New York’s music scene. He gave early exposure to country-rock bands like Buffalo Springfield and Poco. He did one of the first American interviews with Elton John, and got a rousing ovation when he brought a rented surfboard to Carnegie Hall for a Beach Boys show. He introduced Curtis Mayfield to Bob Dylan at a Muhammad Ali fight....

One of Mr. Fornatale’s signatures was playing songs that followed a theme. It might be colors, with a playlist including the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” and Joni Mitchell’s “Blue.” Or it might be great inventions, as when he celebrated the 214th anniversary of the United States Patent Office. Or the theme might simply be radio....

Radio.

What's the best position for a 2012 candidate to take on the Arizona approach to immigration enforcement?

The Obama administration fought this law, in what culminated in an embarrassing performance at the Supreme Court this week. And Chuck Schumer's saying that if the Supreme Court upholds Arizona's law, the Democrats in Congress will rise up and kill it. But polls show that a big majority of Americans — and about half of Hispanic-Americans — support what Arizona has done — even after extensive efforts by the Democrats+MSM to make us all feel as though only terrible, racist people think Arizona's okay.

And I just want to remind you of something that you may have forgotten: the reason Barack Obama was able to overtake Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination. What was the issue that tripped her up and gave Obama the opening to look like the sensible, moderate person?

But it was a question about driver's licenses for “undocumented workers'' – the politically neutral terminology for “illegal aliens'' which she prefers – that created the most trouble for Clinton during last night's two-hour debate of the Democrats staged in Philadelphia....

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has proposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, NBC moderator Tim Russert reminded Clinton. “You told the Nashua, N.H., editorial board it makes a lot of sense,'' he said. “Why does it make a lot of sense to give an illegal immigrant a driver's license? ''

“ Well, what Gov. Spitzer is trying to do is fill the vacuum left by the failure of this administration to bring about comprehensive immigration reform,'' she said. “We know in New York we have several million at any one time who are in New York illegally. They are undocumented workers.

We know all about Spitzer trying to "fill the vacuum," but let's not digress into the subject of prostitution in this post.

“They are driving on our roads,'' she said. “The possibility of them having an accident that harms themselves or others is just a matter of the odds. It's probability. So what Gov. Spitzer is trying to do is to fill the vacuum.

Ahem. I'm trying not to get distracted!

“I believe we need to get back to comprehensive immigration reform because no state, no matter how well-intentioned, can fill this gap,'' Clinton continued. “There needs to be federal action on immigration reform. ''

“Does anyone here believe an illegal immigrant should not have a driver's license?'' Russert asked the other six Democrats assembled on stage.

Damn! I miss Tim Russert! Here's video. I love the point — at 2:53 — when she complains that "everybody" — i.e. Tim — is playing "gotcha." Because he got her. And that's the moment when she loses.

After that point, it looks as though they are moving on to the next topic: protecting children — children! — from — horrors! — the Internet. We got a laugh watching the now-disgraced John Edwards scramble to: Children? Protect children? I would. But he shifts back to the immigration topic, not to take an actual position himself, but to attack Hillary for taking more than one position, and after all the years of "double-talk from Bush and from Cheney... America deserves us to be straight.'' (Yeah, be straight, John. Tell it to the jury.)

And then Barack Obama gets his chance. At 4:10, the moderator (Brian Williams) calls on him: "Senator Obama, why are you nodding your head?"

“Well, I was confused on Sen. Clinton's answer,'' Obama said. “I can't tell whether she was for it or against it, and I do think that is important.

“You know, one of the things that we have to do in this country is to be honest about the challenges that we face,'' Obama said. “Immigration is a difficult issue. But part of leadership is not just looking backwards and seeing what's popular, or trying to gauge popular sentiment. It's about setting a direction for the country, and that's what I intend to do as president.''

That's obviously total mush, but he sounds calm saying it. He's pushed to take a position and — caught — he says that Spitzer has "the right idea... because there is a public safety concern":

"We can make sure that drivers who are illegal come out of the shadows, that they can be tracked, that they are properly trained, and that will make our roads safer. That doesn't negate the need for us to reform illegal immigration.''

So he agrees with Hillary's first position. I had forgotten that. I can't remember how this issue played out and why it hurt Hillary so much and helped Obama. Maybe it was simply that she lost her cool and sounded dishonest, and he lucked into an opportunity to seem solid and competent.

Could you give me the street address so I can Google map the directions?

That's my response to this really cool invitation I just got in the email — I am so psyched! — from Michelle Obama:

Ann --

Barack and I know how hard so many of you are working on this campaign -- and we're grateful for it.

But sometimes you just need to have a little fun, too.

That's why I hope you'll take us up on the chance to join Barack at George Clooney's house on May 10th for what will be a pretty amazing event.

Chip in with a grassroots donation today, and you'll be automatically entered to join them:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Barack-and-George

Thanks for all you do,

Michelle

Oh, hell. Chance to join Barack... Key word: chance. Send money and you're entered in a raffle for an invitation. It's all a big crap shoot. Remember when the key word for Obama was: hope. And: change. They changed one letter in "change" and now it's: chance.

Come on, baby, won't you take a chance...

There's another key word in that email. It's: you. In this sentence: "But sometimes you just need to have a little fun, too." Sometimes you just need to have a little fun, too. You, lowly peon, in addition to... me and my glamorous husband and my gorgeous Hollywood friend. You may need, but you're only going to get it, if you win the crap shoot, which you've got to be in to win, so give us money, because that's what we need. We have plenty of fun, and we want to have more, but we need what you have: money. Or to put that in email-friendly form: a grassroots donation.

What's grassroots about making a donation in response to the First Lady of the United States luring you to a movie star's party?

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Dog dinners.

For the first time, a Supreme Court opinion uses the word "feminist."

The case is Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland, which came out this year on March 20th. There are 19 other Supreme Court opinions where the word "feminist/s" appears, but only in the name of an entity like "the Feminist Majority Foundation" or the "Feminists for Life of America" or (once) in the name of a cited law review article.

The article is "The Victim In a Forcible Rape Case; A Feminist View," cited for the proposition that "Rape is very often accompanied by physical injury to the female and can also inflict mental and psychological damage," in the case that says it's cruel and unusual punishment to impose the death penalty for rape. Interesting, isn't it, that it took "A Feminist View" to see that "Rape is very often accompanied by physical injury"? Often? Accompanied? Rape is a physical injury! "Can also inflict mental and psychological damage"?! Can? Do you really have to hedge it?

Anyway, the actual use of the word "feminist" occurs in a dissenting opinion written by Justice Ginsburg. She is explaining why she thinks that Congress had power under §5 of the 14th amendment to enact the self-care provisions of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. To fit the §5 doctrine, the law needs to be portrayed as some kind of remedy for a 14th Amendment rights violation, but both males and females use sick leave, and getting sick leave doesn't seem to be about alleviating unconstitutional sex discrimination.

But Ginsburg says the law had roots in a California effort to require pregnancy or childbirth leave to women:

The California law sharply divided women’s rights advocates. “Equal-treatment” feminists asserted it violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act’s (PDA) commitment to treating pregnancy the same as other disabilities.... “Equal-opportunity” feminists disagreed, urging that the California law was consistent with the PDA because it remedied the discriminatory burden that inadequate leave policies placed on a woman’s right to procreate.

So the first time a Supreme Court Justice uses "feminist," she's talking about 2 types of feminists, the "'equal-treatment' feminists" and the "'equal-opportunity' feminists." Ginsburg refers to the debate between the 2 factions about whether gender-neutrality or special accommodations better served the interests of women. For example Prof. Eleanor Holmes Norton testified that if employers "provide something for women affected by pregnancy that they are not required to provide for other employees [it] gives fodder to those who seek to discriminate against women in employment."

By the way, the word "feminism" only appears in one Supreme Court opinion, and that was back in 1968, in a case called Ginsberg v. New York. (Ginsburg... Ginsberg... just a coincidence.) But the word appears only in quoted material in the appendix to a dissenting opinion by Justice Douglas (who didn't agree that the state could prosecute a man for selling a "girlie" magazine to a minor). Douglas quotes J. Rinaldo, "Psychoanalysis of the 'Reformer'":

In our own day we have reached another of those critical periods strikingly similar in its psychological symptoms and reactions, at least, to decadent Rome. We have the same development of extravagant religious cults, Spiritism, Dowieism, "The Purple Mother," all eagerly seized upon, filling the world with clamor and frenzy; the same mad seeking for pleasure, the same breaking and scattering of forms, the same orgy of gluttony and extravagance, the same crude emotionalism in art, letter and the theater, the same deformed and inverted sexual life.

Homo-sexualism may not be openly admitted, but the "sissy" and his red necktie are a familiar and easily understood property of popular jest and pantomime. It is all a mad jazz jumble of hysterical incongruities, dog dinners, monkey marriages, cubism, birth control, feminism, free-love, verse libre, and moving pictures. Through it all runs the strident note of puritanism. As one grows so does the other. Neither seems to precede or follow.

Crazy stuff. Dog dinners, monkey marriages, cubism, birth control, feminism, free-love, verse libre, and moving pictures....

Man, I need to do word searches in the Supreme Court opinions more often.

Dog dinners. I did not go looking for that.

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