Why was that prop so important to David Gregory?

"Yeah, asking for permission is pretty damning when you ignore what you are told directly from the law enforcement authority and do it anyway."

But what it tells us is that the prop was really, really important to Gregory. Let's think about why. He knew he was going to have NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre across the table and that he'd push him with one question after another, building the pressure. Here's how that moment looked:



You hear the tension in Gregory's voice as he's about to confront LaPierre with the prop — actually 2 props: the high-capacity magazine and then the smaller one. At the point when Gregory picks up the first prop, you see his eyes dart over to the side. He doesn't have the script memorized, but the precise text is important as he displays one prop and then the other. He need the prompter.

Of course, if this prop display is supposed to be explosive, it doesn't work, because LaPierre is good at not getting agitated. Predictably good, so Gregory's routine looks silly to me. But maybe it inflamed some people in the "Meet the Press" viewership. Maybe there were lots of folks at home going "OMG that thing is huge!!"

I'm trying to think of other examples in political/policy debates when somebody whipped out a prop for dramatic effect. Especially examples where it really worked. I remember President Clinton waggling his pen. Anything else?

ADDED: I was thinking about the value of a fetus replica for a pro-lifers, and, googling, happened upon this 3D-printed replica made from an MRI image.

UPDATE: I figured it out!

Prof. Jacobson is refraining from tokenism.

1. "I would never be so insulting as to accuse the NY Times of tokenism."

2. "I would never be so insulting as to accuse the U. Penn Political Science Department of tokenism."

3. [To be continued?]

Lawprof blogs.

Ranked by traffic.

ADDED: A poll, suggested by the fact that while I'm still #1 — on this list that doesn't include Instapundit — my page views are down 1.5% from last year, and Prof. Jacobson's are up 83.0%.

Should Althouse do things to crank up the traffic here?
	No, just keep doing your thing and whatever happens happens.
	No, it's bad form to try to increase traffic and it diminishes you.
	Yes, but only if you're into the intrinsic pleasure of playing that game.
	Yes, but only if you do it by freaking out the kind of people I don't like.
	Yes, there's a dimension of blogging that's a game, and traffic is the score. It's better to win.
	Yes, you've hit #1 and it would look bad to slip back down.
pollcode.com free polls

"Everytime I think the Democratic race card players could not get more vile..."

"... more deranged, more patronizingly demeaning to blacks, someone manages to defy even my vivid imagination."

This time, it is the Editorial Board of The Washington Post, which issued a truly amazing screed... claiming that critics of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice are motivated by race and sex, as demonstrated by the facts that most are male and a significant percentage come from former confederate states....

It's an obvious scheme — actually, I am not amazed — to scare conservatives into believing that there are some Democrats who may not be criticized. If you accept the pushback, it will occur again and again. It's bullying, really. The key is to recognize it and confront it soundly, or it will go on and on.

Everyone holding power is open to criticism. Anyone resting on the argument that black/female politicians cannot be criticized is actually arguing that black/female individuals should be excluded from power. That is the racist argument that should be moved to the center. That is my answer to the bullying.

Professor Jacobson drops a "bombshell" on Elizabeth Warren.

And I'm only quoting the word "bombshell" because it's from someone who's been defending Warren from Jacobson's attack: "With this bombshell, I would no longer view the case against her as weak."

Grand gesticulations over things small and large.

At Drudge just now now (click to enlarge):



In the right column, we've got Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day swearing and gesticulating over his show time getting cut down to 1 minute.

In the middle column, it's Senate candidate/lawprof Elizabeth Warren:

DOES ELIZABETH WARREN HAVE A LAW LICENSE PROBLEM?

If you keep scrolling, beyond my screen grab, there's also:

... On defensive again over heritage claim

And a picture of a stink bug...



... "Feds brace for historic stink bug outbreak..."

The gap in the Romney "secret" video: Corn says "the recording device inadvertently turned off"...

... according to his unnamed source who, he says "noticed this quickly and turned it back one [sic]. The source estimates that one to two minutes, maybe less, of recording was missed."

Really only 2 minutes? You sure it wasn't 18 minutes? Could the name of the source be Rosemary?

"Dead Ambassador dragged through streets, MSM furious at Romney criticism of Obama."

The media strains "to shift the focus from the Obama administration’s failure to protect our embassies and for its apologies (both before and after the attack on the Cairo Embassy) to whether Mitt Romney was wrong to criticize Obama last night."

ADDED: Ridiculous NYT headline: "Many Republicans Join Democrats in Denouncing Attack in Libya." Everyone denounces it! What's this notion that the Dems are all one and some but not all Republicans "join" them? I think they're trying to separate Mitt Romney as the one who isn't joining. The item ends:

As those statements [from various Republicans] came out, Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, stood by his criticism that a statement from the American Embassy in Cairo condemning the intolerance of an anti-Muslim Internet video was tantamount to “an apology for American values.”

As if that means Romney doesn't denounce the attack! That's a way of flipping the problem, which is the Obama administration's insufficient denouncement, as if the murderers had some justification... which reminded me, on 9/11, of lefty chatter I heard on 9/11/01 that the terrorist attacks were provoked by racism in the United States.

College Insurrection...

... an offshoot of Professor Jacobson's Legal Insurrection.

"Insurrection" — a brand. (Like "Occupy"?)

ADDED: Maybe "Althouse" should be a brand, sending off shoots. But what could it be? I mean the name could be "-house," but what could the substance of the brand be? My blog has always only been: topics I'm interested in, written about from my point of view. If anyone else did that, it would have no relationship to what I'm doing. It would just be another blog.

"I’d like to feel sorry for NBC for coming under such a plainly false accusation of racial intent."

"Except it’s what NBC does to others all the time, including when dealing with Mitt Romney...."

"Here we go – upset brewing in Wisconsin Rep Senate Primary?"

The candidate who would be upset is Tommy Thompson... but if you want to upset him, you need to pick one. There are 2 potential upsetters.

Give Wisconsin conservatives some advice. Let's say they want a not-Tommy. What's the scenario for getting the not-Tommy votes to go to one place — to Hovde/Neumann?

"Perjury charge against Shellie Zimmerman raises more questions of prosecutorial overreaching."

Says Professor Jacobson, combing the transcript for the statement that's supposed to be "a specific material false statement which the person believes not to be true at the time of testimony."

Rush Limbaugh's ratings plunged last month.

Which thrilled some Rush haters. But it turns out the ratings were only down relative to the previous month... when they spiked because of all the attention Rush got from the haters who were trying to drive him off the air.

And here's Rush yesterday:

We do not, on our side of the aisle, attempt to rid the world of our enemies by personally impugning them or destroying them or shutting them down.... [I]f we don't like a radio or TV show, we turn it off.  If they don't like it, they try to shut it down.  If we don't want to eat vegetables, we don't eat 'em.  If they want to eat vegetables, they want everybody else to do what they do and not do what they don't do....

All I know is... that success is the sweetest revenge.  When they try to wipe you out, when they try to shut you down, just like this last time they tried to.  They thought they had me.  It was nirvana. They thought the day had finally come, and they are now so discombobulated that they failed, that they don't understand it.  Their days were ruined.  And of course I take satisfaction in that.  Another way I deal with it.  "Well, I chose to do this. I chose to be public about what I believe and who I am."

"One of enduring mysteries is how and why a well-regarded genealogical society would rely on an obviously flimsy family newsletter to opine on a hot political topic."

"And, with that, how did they find this obscure family newsletter in the first place, was it from the Warren campaign which also found an obscure Native American cookbook partially authored by a relative of [Elizabeth] Warren?"

Catching up on the news about Elizabeth Warren.

1. "The University of Pennsylvania, where Warren worked from 1987 to 1994, listed her as a minority in a 'Minority Equity Report.'  The report comes after Harvard Law School claimed Warren as a diversity hire in 1996."

2. "There is nothing left of the claim that Elizabeth Warren is 1/32 Cherokee. The documentary sources have been debunked, and the genealogist and genealogical society which originated the story and upon whom the Warren campaign relies are not talking."

3. As for Warren, she says: "I feel like Scott Brown is raising ugly insinuations and I think he is doing it because he doesn’t want to talk about what is happening to Americas families. Middle class families are getting hammered and 72 hours ago Scott Brown voted to hammer them harder. And that is what this campaign should be about. Whose side do you stand on?"

4. Meanwhile: "Ben Affleck, Matt Damon to host Warren fundraiser."

"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.

"The dust up over Sleep Train, along with the blowback suffered by Carbonite over that company’s public denunciation of Limbaugh..."

"... demonstrates that the iconic radio talk show host is dealing from a position of strength in the campaign to deprive him of advertisers. One tends to prosper when one advertises on Limbaugh’s show. But cross him, and one will suffer."

Writes the lefty Drudge Retort, noting that Limbaugh hasn't lost listeners (and has probably gained listeners, people who are "curious about what the fuss is all about").

Quoted by Professor Jacobson, who says: "[T]his never has been about those two words or even the three days.  It’s an attempt to intimidate and silence conservative talk radio, so better safe than sorry."

Limbaugh is likely to make this controversy work for him. For years, he's been tweaking the media and using its pushback to generate interesting/funny/pithy material. This pushback may be a lot more than he wanted from that particular tweak, but if he's the master of radio that he purports to be, he'll get it working for him.

How many times have I heard Rush quote Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." (That's Rule 13, in case you're counting. Page 130 in the Vintage, Kindle Edition.)

One of the criteria in picking your target is the target’s vulnerability—where do you have the power to start? Furthermore, any target can always say, “Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?” When you “freeze the target,” you disregard these arguments and, for the moment, all the others to blame. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all of the “others” come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target. The other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract...

Let nothing get you off your target. With this focus comes a polarization. As we have indicated before, all issues must be polarized if action is to follow. The classic statement on polarization comes from Christ: “He that is not with me is against me” (Luke 11:23). He allowed no middle ground to the money-changers in the Temple. One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other....

Rush knows he's the target they've picked and the game they are playing. Can he outplay them? With half his brain tied behind his back, just to make it fair?

"I reserved the phrase 'contraceptive sponges' very clearly and specifically..."

"... for people who demand subsidies without offering any reasons beyond the fact that they’d prefer to be subsidized. In other words, the targets of this phrase are people who have not actually stated any views on the matter at hand, namely how do we know when a subsidy is justified."

University of Rochester Professor Steven Landsburg schooling Joel Seligman, the president of that university, on the meaning of free speech and vigorous debate.

Via Instapundit, who suspects that Seligman intended to chill "the speech of faculty who are less eminent than Steven Landsburg."

And Professor Jacobson says: "Why did the President of the University feel the need to get involved? Is he the thought policeman? Sure, the President of the University is entitled to an opinion, but it’s clear that he was trying to tamp down a dissenting view using the power of his presidency."

Jacobson also embeds a video the University of Rochester admissions department and asks: "Will President Seligman accept responsibility and apologize for Univ. of Rochester not celebrating diversity in this video?" Ha. I watched the video before reading that question, and what I said out loud was: "Apparently, they don't have enough male students at that school." That video is desperately projecting maleness. It's all white too, which I think is mostly Jacobson's point, but the exaggerated masculinity is funny in connection with the current controversy, which is about protecting women from the feeling disrespected.

"Who cares about duplicate signatures in Wisconsin Recall?"

"Anti-recall forces will have to establish their own database and run checks for duplicates, in other words, do the government’s work for it."

AND: "Is Hulsey running for governor?" (Remember Hulsey? Hint: He used to run from...)

"I have to wonder about the perspective of anyone who considers Althouse 'a crazed right-wing blog'..."

"... what with her voting for Obama in 2008 and all. Clearly, she’s extreme!"

From a discussion based on a blog post by a lefty lawprof who just can't understand why "right-wing" lawprof blogs get so many more readers than lefty lawprof blogs. The answers are so obvious and his whining is so unattractive that I can't be bothered spelling it out, but I'm sure said lefty lawprof won't really mind, since he's got so many other lefty lawprofs to look to for succour. With all that in-house comfort, are you surprised he's so flabby?