Let's dance like it's 1958 in Idaho.

That's nice and slow. I think you can all learn that, and I think it would be nice if kids today learned that dance, maybe in gym class. I think it would help them in many ways. And feel free to dress like that, even unironically.

I found that because YouTube suggested it after I watched this 1965 clip from the TV show "Hollywood a Go-Go" with Del Shannon singing "Runaway" and the "Hollywood a Go-Go" go go dancers were dancing around him doing some dance that represented running away, even though their forward motion only took them in a circle so they never got away. It's faster and more frenetic dancing, but I think you might be able to figure out the moves, even though we never get to see the feet.

Seemingly bridging the time gap between the first and second video — and also suggested by YouTube — here's Little Eva singing about the brand-new dance "The Loco-Motion." I say "seemingly" because it looks early 60s and the "Runaway" dance looks later 60s, but in fact, both clips are from 1965. A lot of old and new intersected in 1965. Personally, I was 14 years old, and I was rooting for progress. I watched "Hollywood a Go-Go" and "Shindig" (the show Little Eva's on), and I tuned in hoping to see British invasion stuff like The Kinks or folk rock stuff like The Byrds. I would have regarded Del Shannon as an intrusion from the pre-Beatles era. "Runaway" was a hit in 1961. It was one of the singles we played at slumber parties when we were children.

"The Loco-Motion" was a hit in 1962. Little Eva — Eva Narcissus Boyd — was a maid who also worked as a babysitter for Carole King and Gerry Goffin: "It is often claimed that Goffin and King were amused by Boyd's individual dancing style, so they wrote 'The Loco-Motion' for her" — but maybe that's not true. Little Eva doesn't look too interested in dancing in that "Shindig" clip. The notorious song "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" was based on what Little Eva told Carole King about her relationship with her boyfriend. That song was originally recorded by The Crystals — produced by the not-yet-a-murderer Phil Spector — and in recent years, it's been covered by Courtney Love and Grizzly Bear — with some unknown degree of irony.

"Don't You Fret."

Hey! I feel like I made this video...



But it's from jenzeppelin, who says: "Don't You Fret" is "a beautiful song, often overlooked." I wasn't overlooking it. I was scanning the songs in my computer picking out a Kinks song I was in the mood to hear, and that was the song I picked. And the driving-around-the-city-to-music video is just the sort of thing I'd been doing.

"Don't You Fret" was originally on the album "Kinkdom." I have the CD set "Remastered," but if you want a CD available these days, I recommend "Well Respected Kinks." 10 songs, all richly playable after — gasp! — almost half a century.

And here's jenzeppelin's channel. She's got a driving-around-video for "I Am Free" and a bunch of other Kinks songs. She specializes in The Kinks and... who would go with The Kinks if you had exactly one other musical passion?



Django Reinhardt!

Ray Davies...

... back, with friends. Listen to the 11-minute audio at the link. Lots of music on it. The one thing I definitely dislike is Ray singing with Bruce Springsteen. The notion that their voices blend together... ridiculous. Bring back Dave. There's a voice that goes with Ray's.

"If I perform again with my brother, it will not be in a position of peace and harmony, because that's not a great situation for us... The fire and energy is the important thing. It's the thing that made us fight and punch our way into a career."

Yeah, who needs friends? But the new album is called "See My Friends" — and you can buy it here.

It is time for you to stop all of your sobbing.

I hear Meade playing the Garnet Mimms version of "Cry Baby," and after a conversation that I will discuss below, I ask him why he was playing that. He pointed to this comment by Kirby Olson in the "Nate Silver does the math" post:

I wonder if anybody else remembers the Garnett Mimms hit, Cry Cry Baby, that briefly lit the charts in about what 1964? Janis Joplin later covered it, but Garnett Mimms had such a wonderful range in his voice. Mimms is still alive, but I bet he can't still sing like he did then. What an athletic, operatic voice for lovely rock. We should turn it on for all our Democratic friends who have come home crying that they lost again.

People do need to grieve when they've lost, but an invitation to cry coming from the winners is more of a taunt. And I've spent so many nights, reading comments on this blog, and so many times, lefties have countered the complaints of righties by saying things like "whine and bitch, whine and bitch," "call the wahmbulance," and "waaaaaaahh." It's meant to rub it in, and it's not Mimmsy at all.

But what I said to Meade was I remember when that song — and I mean the Garnet Mimms version — was on the radio. It was 1963. I was 12. I listened to top 40 AM radio, and I liked the songs that felt like they were about teenagers. There was a brightness and a happiness to the songs that dominated the top 40. Even the songs about crying. The biggest song about crying in 1963 was "It's My Party." Lesley Gore is gloriously triumphant in her claim of the right to cry.

"Cry Baby" seemed to come from a dreary 1950s world of old people and their problems. Meade says he loved music like that. Maybe that look into the weighty, complicated lives of adults was enticing to some really young radio listeners, but I wanted it on a different station. Here, I said, here's my answer to that "Cry Baby":



I love the original Kinks version too, and you'd better believe I had all the early Kinks albums. Kinks, Kinda Kinks, and Kinks Kontroversy. I still love that kind of [kinda] thing. It still appeals to me more than the anguished bellyaching of soul music.

***

Bonus: "Best Songs About Crying."

"If your last joint was experienced while coughing along to a Bob Dylan album in the '70s, Ramsay's offerings will seem incredibly far out. I mean, incredibly."

I haven't been in the presence of marijuana since The Kinks did the Felt Forum, so I keep up with the horticultural advances by reading stuff like this:

Many Americans of a certain age will remember that in the 1970s, seedy homegrown pot was reviled for its raw, throat-burning quality. Now dope-smoking locavores steer clear of cheap, low- and mid-grade weed in favor of organically grown boutique strains. They speak of "presentation" and varieties so agreeably complex that "you inhale one flavor and exhale another." Just as in the vineyards of the Napa Valley a few miles to the north, complexities come from the soil, from the fruits of labor, from careful breeding. Suddenly, pot has terroir....

Terroir.

[Ed Rosenthal, a horticultural instructor at Oaksterdam University] says the cannabis world is now seeing a fourth breeding wave whose intent is to produce plants that are "tweaked to produce connoisseur highs."

At Harborside, Ramsay hands me a list of all of the clones he has received in recent months. The list runs to 222, and includes such choice varieties as Casey Jones...  a sativa-rich hybrid that is "up, trippy"; Blue Cheese, indica-dominant and "highly euphoric" but "very functional"; and the sativa-heavy Purps, "giggly, blissful."...

Experts such as Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, say the high potency has transformed marijuana for many users into a drug that can induce psychosis and paranoia and increase addiction....

Does this transformation of marijuana make you think more highly of legalization — now that you can be a connoisseur? Or are you worried, because you don't know what it is anymore?

"The tax man's taken all my dough and left me in my stately home... and I can't sail my yacht — he's taken everything I've got..."

That's the song playing in my head after reading about University of Chicago lawprof Todd Henderson, who's desolated that people don't sympathize with how hard it is to get by in Chicago on $250,000 a year. The pushback he got was totally predictable, and, indeed, it was only the anticipation of criticism that made it an interesting thing to say in the first place. How much courage does it take — especially for a highly privileged and experienced speaker — to state an opinion and stand by it when it's criticized? I really don't see why William A. Jacobson and Glenn Reynolds are babying this man.

UPDATE: I continue here.

"Megan McArdle Really Hates Sex at Dawn"...

... is a funny title for an article, written by the author of "Sex at Dawn," which book title he declines to put in italics or quotes in his article title. I thought it would be interesting to discuss sex at dawn, in the literal sense, but I find myself confronted with an author who's miffed at a blogger who's dissing his book:

Her comments begin strangely, with the admission that she's "in the middle" of the book. Note the urgency to condemn it publicly, even before reading the damned thing! 

Oh, blah! I hate this criticism. McArdle is blogging, not doing the official book review for the Atlantic. A rule against criticizing books you haven't finished would overprotect authors, since you shouldn't finish a bad book, and it would also underprotect authors, since the critics wouldn't disclose that they hadn't read the whole thing.

But bloggers... bloggers can open a book to a random page, read one sentence, cogitate furiously, then open up their laptops — maybe right there at Borders, where they picked up the book they didn't buy — and tap out a free-association blog post saying anything that occurs to them and publish — using the WiFi they didn't pay for either. It's not the slightest bit strange. And it's not unfair either. It is what it is, and we know what it is. It's blogging.

And boy, does she lash out:

•    "It reads like horsefeathers . . . like an undergraduate thesis,"
•    "breathless rather than scientific"
•    "cherry-picked evidence stretched far out of shape to support their theory,"
•    "they don't even attempt to paper over the enormous holes in their theory."

Ouch! And that's just the first paragraph. 

Eh! There are only 4 paragraphs. By the way, "their theory" — if I can trust McArdle — is that "people are naturally polyamorous." The dispute continues with McArdle and the author (Christopher Ryan) throwing shit at each other in a fight about whether people are like bonobos. I'm just saying "throwing shit at each other" because that's how bonobos fight, and people are like bonobos, right? Not right? Advantage McArdle!!!!!

Anyway, as you've probably figured out by now, the book is not about sex at dawn — the practice of having sex upon first awakening in the morning — but sex and evolution — "dawn" in the sense of "the dawn of man."

So where am I going with this? It's a blog post. I'm a blogger. I'll go where I want, which is where I always go when this subject comes up, and I don't feel safe in this conversation no more...

"I felt like a session man most of the time. Ray wanted complete control of everything. He was a control freak."

Said Pete Quaife, the bassist for one of the best bands ever, The Kinks. I've lifted that quote from what is, unfortunately, his obituary. He was 66.

"The tax man's taken all my dough..."

What happens when you blog about cereal?

Yesterday, I made fun of "Good Friends" cereal. Today, I get this email:

Hi Ann,

First off, like the new picture of you, it looks great. Second, I work on some of the Kashi Cereal Projects and I have to tell you that I was quite amused to see our “Good Friends” cereal making your site.

As you can see, that is the Left Coast ideal of what our 7 Grains can do for folks. The man and the woman picture actually is a characterization that depicts two former neighbors in Rialto, CA, who used to feud with one another, until they both realized that they both loved our “Good Friends” cereal and as such she no longer needed to complain about his son’s loud car stereo or he about her daughter’s drunken soirees by the pool, when she is gone. In fact they have become “Good Friends”. If only we could sneak some “Good Friends” into the Gaza Strip, alongside the Kassam rockets and some into northern Israel, imagine what the world could be!! Of course we would have to remove the Kosher designation. ;-)

I would like to send you some samples of our other fine products, though not of this one, which doesn’t seem to tickle your fine central Wisconsin sensibilities. We do make many other very good products which I think you might enjoy both visually as an ad and as a foodstuff. If so inclined, please send me your work address and I will send you off a care package.

Thanks for the great blog site and for your appreciation of the Kinks!!

Sincerely,

[I'm withholding the name for no particular reason.]

Manager, Contract Manufacturing

Kellogg Company

I feel like an accidental Lazlo Toth.

IN THE COMMENTS: Paul Zrimsek writes:

Maybe I've been watching too much Bloggingheads lately but every time I see those paired faces on the cereal boxes I expect to see them start arguing about Heller.

"The only time I feel all right is by your side."

Hanne Hukkelberg... Norwegian... doing Kinks.

ADDED: Is YouTube down?

AND: It was. It's back up, and so is the embedded video.

"As the example of Nuremberg suggests, journalists who act as propagandists for war crimes may one day find themselves on the scaffold."

"You would be well advised to strive for more balanced and accurate coverage in the future," writes 9/11 conspiracy theorist -- and erstwhile UW part-timer -- Kevin Barrett. He's displeased with the way a journalist covered the recent 9/11 "Truth" conference here in Madison.

The reporter's aim in offering such a wildly distorted view of the conference can only have been to libel 9/11 truth seekers as paranoid -- a task that Isthmus already accomplished last summer, to its eternal shame and perhaps its eventual prosecution.

This libel, like the 9/11 blood libel against Muslims, dehumanizes its victims and makes its author, editor and publisher complicit in the holocaust of the 9/11 wars -- a holocaust that has already killed more than 650,000 people in Iraq alone and destroyed the lives of more than 6 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan by making them refugees.

Paranoid about being considered paranoid, the paranoid want you to be paranoid too.

By the way, the last time I wrote about Barrett, he emailed me asking me to come on his radio show. I said, "No thanks. Sorry." Which I thought was pretty nice, considering. He comes back with: "Guess I'll have to update the Cowards List." With that is a link to a website with "a long list of gutless wonders who have publicly insulted him but chickened out of debate proposals." There, I'm listed as "chatter-blogger Ann Althouse."

My response to that email was one word: "Whatever." Which, again, I think is damned nice, considering. He responds with an insult: "didn't realize you were capable of brevity ; )."

And then I start getting cc'd on email between him and some other character:

I heard UW Law professor Ann Althouse has declined your invitation to be on your radio show.

That's pretty lame. She has been bashing you on her blog for over a year now, with childish comments. And this is a person supposedly qualified to teach UW students?

My ex-girlfriend had her for a professor a few years ago, and her controversial political views showed through according to my ex.

Republicans have some twisted views on the Constitution.

Most republican voters still think Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, which gives you some idea of their lack of intelligence.

Talk about a wacked out view! The hijackers were linked to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, not Iraq. Only a racist would think that Iraqi's were behind it.

Good luck on your radio show.

Note the "you, a law professor" theme. I wonder what my "controversial political views" were. That the states might serve as laboratories of democracy? That Scalia is actually not the devil incarnate? That Al Gore in fact lost the election in 2000, quite aside from anything the Supreme Court did. I mean, what, really?

Barrett responds to his emailer:

You would think that if I were so crazy and my views were so baseless, a law professor of all people would be capable of publicly dismantling me and my views, and would jump at the opportunity.

The fact that nobody on the other side is willing to debate, and their ever-increasing hysteria when discussing the issue, suggests that they know they're wrong, which means that at some level they know they're complicit in covering up mass murder and high treason. No wonder they just ram their heads further and further up their...I mean, in the sand.

Again with the you-a-law-professor.

Funny how he can't think of some other reason(s) why I might not want to go on his show.

I do have some curiosity about how he could still -- after what's gone on in Iraq -- cling to a theory that requires bizarre hyper-competence from the government.

The other emailer responds:

I doubt Ann knows much about 9/11 so she is not going to debate you.

All she knows is that the Arabs did it, which I find a bit racist.

Both the airplane stewardesses on Flight 11 who called in said there were FOUR hijackers on board.

Yet people like Ann insist there were five hijackers.

How does she know this?

Because there were FIVE Arabs on the flight manifest.

Sounds pretty racist to me.

And the stewardesses gave the seat numbers of the hijackers, many of which were non-Arab passengers.

People like Ann presume to know more about went on board Flight 11 than the airplane stewardesses themselves.

Interesting to see the conspiracy mind at work, isn't it? I've never written or even thought about the number of Arabs on Flight 11. Yet somehow I'm insisting. And racist.

Barrett responds:

well if she admits her relative ignorance on 9/11 and apologizes for her ignorant insults we could always skip 9/11 and talk about things we're both interested in, like the Beatles and the Kinks ; )

Again with the emoticon. Are conspiracy theorists always winking at each other. And what's with this pathetic desire to get friendly with me? Yeesh.

I don't feel safe in this world no more.

"American Idol" -- tonight's show: The British Invasion.

Okay, this is the perfect show for me. The songs are the British Invasion songs, with Peter Noone tutoring the boys and LuLu for the girls. I love Peter Noone, let me say, so I'm really happy. I'm unashamed to say I was a huge Herman's Hermits fan. LuLu, I couldn't care less about, but in the first segment, we see her helping Hayley Scarnato, giving her really precise, quality instruction.

1. Simon leers horribly at Hayley, who's wearing heels, hot pants, and a silky backless top that's attached to her torso with a wacky amount of double-stick tape. She sings "Tell Him" and stomps all over the stage, up and down the stairs. She does not trip and fall, so okay.

2. Chris Richardson sings "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying," and follows the melody -- the great melody -- the way Peter Noone told him to.

3. LuLu looks like my sister. I was trying to figure out who it was she reminded me of. And Stephanie Edwards reminds Lulu of Beyoncé. Stephanie sings "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me." It's hard not to think about how beautifully Dusty Springfield sang this song. By contrast, Stephanie's singing is clunky and heavy-handed. But they're praising everyone today, and I'm sure they'll like her too. They've revealed that tonight is especially important, because they're eliminating the eleventh person, and the top ten get to go on tour. Actually, they are hard on her. Simon: "I think you are losing your edge... you're losing your soul."

4. Blake Lewis -- my personal favorite -- sings a song I love: "Time of the Season." He sings it much like the Zombies original, and the beat box thing imitates the original instrumentation. He gets a ton of praise for making the song sound contemporary, which just mystifies me. It was just like the original, but not as good.

5. LaKisha Jones sings a crappy song: "Diamonds Are Forever." She's a good singer, but she didn't belt it out like Shirley Bassey, and she didn't do something else interesting with it. Simon complains that she looks 50 years older than her age. Her problem is already that she seems old.

6. Phil Stacey wails "Tobacco Road" and seems kind of Bo Bice-y. But not as profound. [ADDED: And he reminds us of Bat Boy.]

7. Jordin Sparks emotes "I Who Have Nothing," a melodramatic song I've never liked. Tom Jones did it, and it really is more of a man's song, all about how the other guy buys "you" diamonds and takes "you" to fancy restaurants, while the singer just has some big love to share. Or so he claims.

8. The incredibly cute youngster Sanjaya tells Peter Noone he's torn between two songs. One is "You Really Got Me," and there's just nothing at all better than the early Kinks. But the other is Herman's Hermits' first hit "I'm Into Something Good." It's inexpressibly adorable to see the kid Sanjaya sing Peter's own song to him. Peter says Sanjaya looks more like one of Herman's Hermits than one of the Kinks, but advises him to go with the Kinks and "really get into it." He picks the Kinks. They keep showing a 12-year-old girl in the audience who's crying like a Beatles fan at "The Ed Sullivan Show." He's sort of shout-singing and running all over the place and at one point he just completely shouts "You got me so I can't sleep at night!" and it's really quite perfect. Simon: "I think the little girl's face says it all." Ryan sends Sanjay down to give the girl a hug. Very sweet!

9. Gina Glocksen is asked how she's holding up, and she talks about the stress, including "critiques that we see on blogs and everything." (Hi, Gina! Have I said anything mean about you?) The song is "Paint It Black." LuLu gets her to raise the key a half step and advises her to "devour" it. Gina really is the best rocker chick they've ever had on the show, and I'm not just saying that because I think she might read this. I said it before.

10. Chris Sligh is doing "She's Not There," one of the very best 60s songs. (Only The Zombies get picked twice tonight.) He enters walking through the audience and really obviously fails to interact with the girls reaching out to him. He practically brushes them away. I think the tone is not that pretty and he's not soulful enough. He needs to be better.

11. They save Melinda Doolittle for last, which signals that she's best. I'm tired of the way they keep presenting her as the best. It's too unsubtle. Let us decide! She's doing the musical comedy song from "Oliver!": "As Long As He Needs Me." This is famous for being just about the least feminist song ever. She's sitting on the edge of the stage, which, in the language of the show means, deep and meaningful. She sings the first line so it sounds like "as long as she needs me." There's also that line "I'll Klingon steadfastly." Man, I hate this song. Have you seen "Oliver!"? The character is an abused woman, manifesting the ultimate in Abused Woman Syndrome. And couldn't you have found a real British Invasion song instead of this mawkish, politically incorrect showtune?

So who might go home? Maybe poor Gina. Possibly Chris or Phil or Stephanie. It would viewed as upsetting if LaKisha got the boot, but, really, if it happens, it will be because of that draggy song and the way too old-looking bright green cocktail dress. If I had to bet on one person to stay though, it would be the supremely adorable Sanjaya (even if he's actually the worst singer).

"Bong Hits 4 Jesus," "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," "Bong Hits 4 Jesus"...

It never gets old, does it? It's funny, and it will always be funny. "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." People will be laughing about that line in Conlaw classes years and years from now. I hope the Supreme Court writes an interesting opinion, so it can be a main case in the case book, to lighten the load of studying free speech forever. Oh, you think I'm not taking drugs seriously enough... taking drugs seriously... taking drugs ... heh heh heh... what are you, the principal or something? The Principal of the Blogosphere? Eric Alterman already has that job, so settle down. It's time to talk about "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." Heh heh... It never gets old, does it?

Well, I had a nice, detailed post on on the "Bong hits 4 Jesus" case -- boringly aka Morse v. Frederick -- but my computer ate it last night. It got the munchies. I had all the lines from the Justices that cracked me up, like when Justice Ginsburg tried to make a hypothetical out of the notion -- who knows why it popped into her head? -- what if instead of "Bong hits 4 Jesus," the banner had said "Bong stinks for Jesus." Now, I assure you I'm not high. For one thing, it's 6 a.m. For another, I haven't been anywhere near marijuana since I sat next to those guys at a Kinks concert in 1973. Also, it's illegal. And unlike some people, for me, the fact that something is illegal is enough to keep me from doing it.

Now, take down that banner! Don't you see the Olympic torch is coming through town? It's a torch to ignite all the hopes and aspirations and lofty, sporty thoughts of mankind. Not a cue to light up illicit botanicals.

Since I lost the heart to reconstruct my hilarious post from scratch, let me link to Dahlia Litwick's write-up and offer a little commentary:

... [Joseph] Frederick wanted to annoy school administrators, and he wanted media attention, and as we discovered today, he chose well on both fronts. He was suspended for 10 days. And we are out in droves to cover his case....

[A]ccording to Kenneth Starr, former righteous independent counsel—now tanned Californian law-school dean—the fate of the drug wars depends upon the unconditional school message that drugs are bad, yet schools cannot enforce that message because smartass kids keep undermining them.

I love that Ken Starr is the one embodying the principal's censoriousness. Like a perfectly phrased 15-foot banner, he's the perfectly chosen purveyor of high school moral standards.

Starr's alternative...: Schools get limitless discretion to craft broad "educational missions" and are then free to squelch any student speech that "undermines" them.

I love the way that formulation is so well-framed as a general principle yet so utterly disturbing. To be fair, Starr doesn't argue for "limitless discretion." He argues for deference to the reasonable decision of the school official.

Souter ... insists that the "bong hits" statement itself should be scrutinized for its meaning. The way Cheech and Chong might strive to seek meaning in a Hansen song. But Kneedler responds that the only person who can determine the banner's meaning is the educator who banned it. "But won't the principal always prevail?" asks Justice John Paul Stevens. Um, yes. That seems to be the point.

Souter had a really good point, actually. Kneedler was making a distinction between speech that supports illegal drug use and speech that advocates legalizing marijuana. Souter posited that "Bong hits 4 Jesus" could be construed as an argument for legalization, through the literary device of ridicule.

By the time Douglas Mertz gets up to argue on the students' side, it looks like he's already won, if for no other reason than the justices appear horrified by the limitless [sic] power the schools are asserting. But somehow he manages to trigger a second, more terrifying episode of paranoia in them. "This is a case about free speech, not drugs," he opens, but Roberts clocks him with: "This is a case about money. Your client wants money from the principal for her actions." Then Kennedy jumps in to ask what kind of kid would go after "a teacher who has devoted her life to this school, and you're seeking damages from her for a sophomoric sign."

I was surprised to see Kennedy blatantly show sympathy for one party over the other like that. And Roberts's point seemed strange. Cases about things that happened in the past are nearly always, in some way, "about money." Why bring it up here? Because it's horrible that a poor educator should ever have to pay?

Later, however, Roberts nails it. The case is about whether there was clear law that the principal should have known, which is required before damages are available against a government official who has what is called "qualified immunity":

Can we get back to what the case is about? You think the law was so clearly established when this happened that the principal, that the instant that the banner was unfurled, snowballs are flying around, the torch is coming, should have said oh, I remember under Tinker I can only take the sign down if it's disruptive. But then under Frazier I can do something if it interferes with the basic mission, and under Kuhlmeier I've got this other thing. So she should have known at that point that she could not take the banner down, and it was so clear that she should have to pay out of her own pocket because of it?...And so it should be perfectly clear to her exactly what she could and couldn't do.

MR. MERTZ: Yes.

The opportunity for humor is ripe and Scalia snags it:

As it is to us, right?

Souter explains the joke:

I mean, we have had a debate here for going on 50 minutes about what Tinker means, about the proper characterization of the behavior, the nonspeech behavior.

One of the finest points in this case is what it means for a message to be "disruptive" (a key concept in Tinker). This case is about something that happened on the street and not in a classroom. The banner was, of course, silent, and the occasion was a parade. It's quite different from disruptive speech during a lesson. Scalia offered a distinction between "disruptive" and "undermining." The school's real objection is that a pro-drug message undermines the message it endorses. That is, they don't want disagreement and debate. They still convey their anti-drug message all the time, and this student isn't interrupting them or even distracting anyone from hearing that message. He's just delivering a counter-message on another occasion, and they object to the argument. That should be held to violate the First Amendment.

But the Court can also say that this wasn't yet clear, which would save the principal from having to pay damages. It would, however, set the stage for the next suit for damages, as the Court can use this case to make the law clear. And it should.

Omakase.

I've put Amazon "Omakase" ads up in the sidebar:

Omakase is a Japanese word meaning 'leave it up to us'. It is commonly used in Japanese restaurants for a meal where the chef uses their experience and knowledge to select and prepare the meal for a customer without specific directions.

Amazon somehow reads the contents of the blog and constructs ads based on what it learns. Some of its learning is impressive. Like, right now, it's putting up links to George Orwell writings. But some of it is off. I keep getting books by guys named Althouse. I've seen the name Jay Althouse before. He does music books for kids. He's no one I know. Then, I was wondering why there was a book about welding. Had I ever mentioned welding? But, again, it's just an author named Althouse. You might think anyone named Althouse is someone significant to me. It's funny how often people have asked me: "Do you know [first name] Althouse?" The answer is always "no." I will blog about it if this fact ever changes, but I have never in my entire life met anyone named Althouse who was not a member of my extended family, which is really small.

Anyway, I like the Omakase program at Amazon. It's pretty smart. But they need to iron out the kink that believes anyone with my last name is making something my readers are likely to be interested in. But I'm sure some of you are interested in teaching music to kids. And welding.

"The 50 greatest conservative rock songs."

John J. Miller at the National Review has a list. I was surprised to see "Gloria" at number six, and I was starting to think over the lyrics and come up with a theory. Like to tell ya about my baby/You know she comes around/She about five feet four/A-from her head to the ground... Nothing was clicking. Is it the interest in correct spelling? G-L-O-R-I-A. Then I saw it was "Gloria" by U2, a completely different composition. Gloria...in te domine/Gloria...exultate/Oh Lord, if I had anything/Anything at all/I'd give it to you... Quite different. In Van Morrison's song, Gloria was giving it all to him.

Anyway, what does Miller count as conservative:

The lyrics must convey a conservative idea or sentiment, such as skepticism of government or support for traditional values.

Skepticism of government? Surely, that's grasping at a lot of stuff that wasn't meant as conservative. But what the hell? Conservatives can enjoy it. Most mentions of the government in rock songs are skeptical of it. Can you even think of any pro-government rock songs? I mean where it's not sarcasm or the voice of a character you're not supposed to believe.

Well, go read the list. I think in a lot of cases the song leaves room to argue whether the message is actually conservative. Rock song lyrics can be blunt and plain -- when they are about sex, like Van Morrison's "Gloria" -- but they're usually fuzzy and ambiguous when they get to political and social topics -- especially if they're any good. That makes the more of a Rorschach test.

Miller's quite keen on the notion that The Kinks are conservative. (I should say konservative.) I think what he likes to read as conservative is really an artist's aversion to politics -- you know, that thing artists do: standing at a distance, observing, alternating between bemusement and critiquing human character.

When you can't attack the message, attack the messenger.

Thanks, Steven.

UPDATE: "Looks like they’re backing away like Murtha from the war," says Jeff Jarvis (who, like Steven Taylor, links to these posts from David Corn and Glenn Reynolds).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dennis the Peasant tells his version of the history of the founding of OSM, in a post that could have been titled "The Revenge of Jethro Bodine." MORE: Dennis's previous post is on point too, and unlike the later one has a comments section.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Atrios has unleashed the commenters on Roger. I can almost empathize. It's actually a good opportunity to compare the behavior of lefty and righty commenters. The lefties, in this sample, are all over the place, in "open thread" mode, despite the assigned topic.

Elsewhere in the the left blogo-hemisphere, Kos inflicts a different kind of pain. Noting, as I have, that frequently nearly all of the headlines displayed at OSM are from Xinhua News Agency -- "the official propaganda mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party" -- Kos quips: "So, um, did OSM's $3.5 million in venture funds come from the Chinese government?" When the first commenter doesn't get the joke of his title ("OSM is Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece"), Kos explains that he's joking and adds, cogently:

[This is t]he kind of kink they should've worked out before their all-too-public launch.

That's why I'm a big fan of soft-launches. Quietly launch, work out the kinks with the help of early adopters, and then make your big splash announcement.

Yes. I really cannot fathom the thinking behind opening big with what little they had. Was it hubris? Sheer recklessness?

MORE: Funniest Kos comment: "They stole Cialis's logo." I knew that spit curl looked familiar. Spit curl. It's this. I'm not bodily-fluids blogging again. My bodily fluids post of the day was here. And what a nutty photo on Cialis's page [when I visited]. The man's hand is in the nose-thumbing position, and the couple seems to have a relationship that is the furthest thing from sexual. But I guess that's their pitch: "If a playful moment turns into the right moment, you can be ready." Nice marketing, really, encouraging guys to take the drug "just in case." Why would OSM invoke Cialis imagery? They've got a website up, "just in case," somewhere down along the line, they have something to write.

YET MORE: Dan at Riehl World View has some serious questions for Roger L. Simon:

From what I've read of Kelly [AKA Dennis the Peasant], he has attacked OSM, ... [b]ut it appears you are dodging legitimate ethics questions by suggesting it's only personal.... You asked this Dennis to share his ideas and after going quite a ways down the road with him and hitting on some new, perhaps even better ones, you simply dropped him? Is that true? Come on, Roger - you're better than this. At least I hope you are.

It's too shrewd by half for you to now say no contracts were signed. This isn't fiction writing you're into now, Roger. OSM is supposed to be about reporting credible information. If the CEO of OSM is going to kick the thing off by saying, hey, don't mind my hand shakes, they don't amount to anything, it's an ominous start.

In the end, no one cares about Kelly - if he is out, he's out. But you have started and are by design now the purported leader of a serious new venture. Might I suggest you start acting like one? Either get serious, or go back to playing around with a less than wealth enhancing blog like the rest of us.

AND EVEN MORE: Jeff Jarvis amused me with this:

Yet Open Source Media, the whatever-it-is, promises this — with more haughtiness than I’d ever heard from Dan Rather — on its prevaricating post about the name:

The goal of our enterprise is to bring gravitas and legitimacy to the blogosphere.

Oh, gag me with a mitre.

I don’t think that blogs need to have legitimacy laid upon them … and who died and made you the legitimizer?

How could the prominent bloggers who put OSM together have retained so little sense of the spirit of blogging?

ON REREADING: To that last question, why did great bloggers lose the spirit of blogging? Perhaps, it was that they wanted to expand beyond blogging and had to leave blogging behind to pursue their ambitions. Oddly, lots of people trusted them to become business managers because they were good bloggers, but the enterprise involved sloughing off the blogger's attitude. Indeed, there was never any reason to think that because a person is good at blogging he'd be good at business.

"You Really Got Me."

The Telegraph reports:

The Kinks' You Really Got Me is officially the best song of its period. Radio 2 listeners voted it above Dusty Springfield's I Only Want to Be with You, Let There be Love by Nat King Cole, and the Beatles' Please Please Me and She Loves You in the first of a series of "songs of the decades" contests to celebrate the Ivor Novello Awards' 50th anniversary.

Ah! I remember when that song came out and some people said it shouldn't count as a song at all and music had reached a new low. Da-da-da-da. They'd sing "Stronger than dirt" -- the Ajax Laundry Detergent jingle -- to prove the point. Me, I'm eternally dedicated to The Kinks.

(You can hear the "Stronger Than Dirt" jingle and other 60s commercials here.)

UPDATE: My son sends this correction:

Da-da-da-da

should be:

Da-da-da-da-da

Which, I note severely undercuts the "Stronger Than Dirt" criticism. Several emailers have written to say that they thought this was something about "Touch Me" by the Doors. I think the Doors thing is that Morrison actually audibly sings the jingle. With "You Really Got Me," people were ridiculing the guitar riff: it was dumb because it sounded like a dumb commercial. "You Really Got Me" substantially predates "Touch Me."

Things retrieved from a car wreck.

Nine days ago, I wrecked my car. I was physically and mentally together enough to retrieve some things from my car -- my handbag, the hang tag for parking on campus, the registration and insurance materials. But there were still some things left. Yesterday, we went over to the towing company's car lot and had a chance to empty out the car. A man who worked there helped me eject the cartridge from the CD player, and I was glad to find a shopping bag -- from Soulman -- in the trunk to stuff all the various items in. Today, I dumped all these things on my living room floor:















There's the gold flower that was in the vase by the steering wheel and landed on the car's floor after the crash. Dumped out of the Soulman bag, it lands on top of the image of an autumn leaf on the cover of the atlas, where it looks so fallen, so over. Simultaneously, a man comes to the door to deliver a bouquet of flowers. It's from the man who sold me the new car, the car I must transfer my love to. Do I feel a new thrill with my new love, Silvio? Ah, I'm still a bit shaken from the accident. I bought Li'l Greenie to replace a boring old car (a Honda Civic), and I felt such a happy thrill as soon as I started driving him around. People would smile at the cute fun car. It was July, and I drove with the windows down and the moon roof open, and played music that went with the car: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Kinks, even Herman's Hermits.



My new car is so much more adult. But it's a sports car! It should be a big thrill. I'll tell you something about a sports car, something I didn't really understand before. It does not give you an exciting sensation of speed. What it gives you is a feeling of solid ordinariness at a high speed. Seventy feels like thirty-five. Silvio gives me security, along with a sense that now I -- and not just those other people -- have a luxury car. So, quite the opposite from the feeling I got from Li'l Greenie, Silvio gives a feeling of privileged adulthood, serious maturity. But perhaps it's too soon after the accident to feel overwhelmed with thrills and fun. We need to go on a long honeymoon together, Silvio and I.



I pick up the atlas from the living room floor and look for some routes out into the beautiful landscapes of the west.

Laptops and law school exams.

My law school does not yet allow students to take exams on computers. I chaired a committee many years ago that addressed the question whether to allow them, and we decided against it. For me the deciding factor at the time was the expense: we would need to make students buy laptops, and many students wanted their better, cheaper desktops. A related concern was that students from more affluent backgrounds would be more comfortable with computers and more adept, and that would be daunting to students from less privileged backgrounds who would see the test-taker next to them speed-typing and cutting and pasting with great ease. My committee surveyed the students, and a huge concern was how annoying and possibly unnerving the sound of fast typing would be. Then there was the complicated question of exam software to prevent students from cutting and pasting from their notes: would it work, would students have to keep buying it forever?



These days, laptops are, of course, much cheaper than they were then, keyboards are quieter, and everyone is much more used to them. Most students are going to buy them anyway for taking notes in class and using the internet around campus and around town. And handwriting is becoming worse. Word counts can be imposed to keep speed-typers from producing excessively long answers, and word counts are much more effective than page limits on handwritten exams, because page limits create an incentive for small writing, which exacerbates the bad handwriting problem. And as many faculty members switch to take-home exams to avoid having to read handwriting, a change in the computer policy may be needed to preserve the traditional, in-class, time-pressure, proctored exam.



But what about that software? Presumably, the kinks have been worked out. But what is this I see? "The exam software we use does NOT support Macs." (It's not just one law school: see here and here and here and here and here and here and I'll stop now.) Do these schools have any idea of the feelings of revulsion a statement like that on their websites provokes? If you've been using Macintosh all your computer-life, the idea of being forced to use those other things is really depressing. If I were going to law school today and had a choice of schools, support for Macintosh would be a factor. For your damned exam software, you're going to make everyone who has bonded with Apple give up a central pleasure of daily life? It's hard and intimidating enough to go to law school. To make young people give up their Apples? No! Not acceptable!



Law school websites try so hard to project a friendly and welcoming image to prospective applicants. May I suggest supporting Macintosh and highlighting the fact that, unlike many law schools, you do? I look out on my class full of students and the lit-up Apple icons on the lids of laptops are everywhere. No switch to the use of computers on exams should entail taking this basic happiness away from them.



UPDATE: Some of the exam software requires a floppy drive, and of course Mac laptops haven't had floppy drives in quite a while. (And, when we had them, our discs were never floppy.) But a floppy drive is an add-on option for a Dell laptop, so this feature is falling out of favor even outside of the Mac fold. Be careful new law students! You may receive a memo from your law school telling you the requirements for a laptop to use to take exams that does not bother to tell you that you'll need a floppy drive. I know of at least one prominent law school that is setting up law students for this surprise. Call your school's tech advisor--don't rely on the website or some prepared memo.