At the Living Roof Café....

... you can come alive.

"You will be better off looking for the future."

I see that in that last poll, I wrote, as the third option: "you will be better off looking for the future and not dwelling on the past." Looking for the future. I meant to the future. Or at least at. Looking for the future? Where's my future?

It's like what Marlene Dietrich said to Orson Welles in "Touch of Evil":

Should Elin settle for $750 million from Tiger...

... if it includes "a lifetime 'confidentiality clause' that would prevent her from writing a book or doing any interviews about the split"?

Should Elin take the money and shut up?
	Yes. That's so much money!
	Yes. We'll all be better off if that nasty material never sees the light of day.
	Yes. Elin, you will be better off looking for the future and not dwelling on the past.
	No. Tiger must pay for what he did and shouldn't get anything back in exchange.
	No. You need to explore and air this all out for your own good.
	No. I want to read all about it! Come on! Dish it out!
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: LOL.

You're all sinners/You're all racists.

We're all sinners, the preacher tells us. We get what that means, don't we? Why then don't we understand the idea that we're all racists? Why does that bother people so? I've been listening to Critical Race Theory for the last 25 years, so saying that everyone is afflicted by racism seems more tedious and trite to me than truly offensive. Is it useful — is it helpful — to approach problems this way, that's what I would ask. But I've been living in a hothouse — among the lawprofs. Out there in the larger social and political world, people feel quite offended and genuinely threatened at the suggestion that their ideas and beliefs have any relationship to racism.

James Taranto got Salon's Joan Walsh to "regret" her application of the term "racist" to the Tea Party.

"Racist" is a personal insult, and it's almost as impossible to prove it as to disprove it. It's not a terribly illuminating term, either: If you call me a racist, you haven't really described anything I've done that's objectionable. You've just somehow designated me, and my so-far unchallenged arguments, outside the pale, so to speak.

Taranto resorts to the dictionary — the Oxford English Dictionary (hello! we're Americans!) — to tell us what "racism" means. It's a restrictive definition that preserves the strong pejorative. This is like restricting "sin" to the truly terrible things that other people do, which allows you to maintain a pious sense that of course you are one of the good people. The sinners are those other people. It is possible to think of racism as a much more pervasive phenomenon that we should all contemplate in an honest and self-critical way.

But using the term to assault your political opponents is different. You're not being self-critical. You're still saying there's something terrible about those other people. There could be a serious and valuable inquiry into widespread and largely unconscious racism in American society, but the cheap use of the term "racist" for political gain pushes that inquiry out of reach. What is useful? What is helpful? Maybe it is to wield the restrictive OED definition and lambaste anybody who doesn't stick to it.

CNN is clinging to women readers.

It's so pathetic and obvious. Here's a screen grab of the center of the home page at CNN:



What makes people happy? Engagement... unhappy? Baby sloths enjoy the sweet life... aw... A big fish is in trouble! Miss USA! The lighter side of Elena Kagan! The style of the First Lady! A sitcom! Dancing With the Stars!

Reading CNN to find out the latest about happiness... that's not going to make this woman happy.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian switches the captions around:

"I don’t see Judge Weinstein as a judge."

"I see him as my father. He helps people. He doesn’t destroy lives the way the prosecutor has. He’s the one who is going to set me free from the court."

Mystery photo.

Taken by me, today. What is it?