Althouse |
- Late afternoon sky.
- Listen to the oral argument, starting now.
- "Set against a pastoral Californian back yard, it at times resembled a play with three characters: a discontented (for good reason) woman, her angry and accommodating husband, and a mediator..."
- "More than 140 amicus briefs were filed in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the potentially momentous abortion case concerning a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy."
- "When confronted with the reality that the Democratic Party is losing Black and Latino moderates, the response on the left is often to treat their views as morally beyond the pale."
- "My goal in 1982 was justice – not to perpetuate injustice. And certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine."
- "West Side Story is fantastic. White people gonna be big mad tho and good. Bless you Steven Spielberg for not subtitling when our people use our language."
- Sunrise — 7:03.
- Melania was cold. Jill is warm.
- "I remember that day well" — the day Roe was decided — "because it was also the day when former president Lyndon B. Johnson died."
- "[Elizabeth] Holmes became teary-eyed on the stand as she described dropping out of Stanford University, in part, because she had been raped."
- Random movie watched yesterday: The Luis Bunuel version of "Robinson Crusoe" from 1954.
- "We have always been trying to strike the right balance between enforcement, rehabilitation and prevention."
- "Everybody learned a lot this year, and I just want to make sure there’s absolutely nothing that could ever be considered as insulting to Chinese culture."
- Sunrise — 7:00.
- "Though it’s the film’s quieter absurdities – like its glorious shot of Crawford, sheathed in platinum sequins, descending a curved staircase while she scowls at a plate of cold, congealed steak – that tickle me more than its chaotic, cacophonous climaxes."
- George yawns as Paul invents "Get Back" out of thin air.
- "But what Biden knows, after three-plus decades of being politically left for dead, is that nothing’s over just because a bunch of unnamed staffers who spend too much time reading polls say it’s over."
- Elon Musk "became a bright antithesis to Russian capitalism, a guide on how you can get rich in the right way and how you can spend the money you earned in the right way."
- "There are two pronouns: he and she. Our language is beautiful. And two pronouns are appropriate."
- "As South Koreans enter the living-with-corona phase of the pandemic, some are easing back into social life by visiting public spaces where they can be alone and do very little."
- Sunrise — 7:11, 7:17.
| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 03:03 PM PST No sunrise run this morning. It was raining — raining on December 1st. Snow would have been much nicer, but it didn't happen. At 3:45 p.m. it was 48° — which was chilly enough on the exposed prairie (AKA the dog park). The pre-sunset sky looked like this:  Talk about anything you want in the comments, and think about supporting this blog by doing your shopping through the Althouse portal to Amazon. |
| Listen to the oral argument, starting now. Posted: 01 Dec 2021 09:39 AM PST Here. UPDATE: I listened to the entire thing. I predict stare decisis will prevail. The lawyer for the state was particularly weak in his effort to assure the Court that Roe and Casey could fall without endangering any other precedent (e.g., Obergefell). There was some effort to discover a compromise position, drawing the line somewhere other than viability, but nothing emerged. Not that I could hear on this first pass. I will probably say more when I get the transcript. ADDED: Thinking about Obergefell, I wanted to quote this passage from the Chief Justice's dissenting opinion: By deciding this question under the Constitution, the Court removes it from the realm of democratic decision. There will be consequences to shutting down the political process on an issue of such profound public significance. Closing debate tends to close minds. People denied a voice are less likely to accept the ruling of a court on an issue that does not seem to be the sort of thing courts usually decide. As a thoughtful commentator observed about another issue, "The political process was moving . . . , not swiftly enough for advocates of quick, complete change, but majoritarian institutions were listening and acting. Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict." Ginsburg, Some Thoughts on Autonomy and Equality in Relation to Roe v. Wade, 63 N. C. L. Rev. 375, 385–386 (1985) (footnote omitted). Indeed, however heartened the proponents of same-sex marriage might be on this day, it is worth acknowledging what they have lost, and lost forever: the opportunity to win the true acceptance that comes from persuading their fellow citizens of the justice of their cause. And they lose this just when the winds of change were freshening at their backs. Boldface added. That was 6 years ago. What "winds of change" are "freshening... backs" today? In any case, the question then was whether to take something out of the political arena. The question now is whether to throw something back in after it's been out for 50 years! AND: On the theme of keeping the government's hands out of our body, Amy Coney Barrett brought up mandatory vaccination. |
| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 06:38 AM PST "... tasked with drawing them out while acting as a stand-in for the curious public. Winfrey... is not just an interviewer but 'something of an emissary, a reactive translator of emotion, a master weaver, pulling disparate revelations into a collective portrait that colonizes the mind.' Some of Winfrey's lines—like a simple, incredulous 'What?'—were among the most emotionally lucid moments of the broadcast. Of her many successes, this may be what she does best: listen, react, and press a little harder for the truth. As a television performance, it was a role that perhaps no other human being was equipped to play." From "The Best Performances of 2021/The people who burst through the excess of amusements, onscreen or onstage, and did something extraordinary" (The New Yorker), designating, among the best, "Oprah Winfrey in 'Oprah with Meghan and Harry.'" |
| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 06:39 AM PST "The briefs come from professors, politicians, states, and interest groups from across the ideological spectrum. We reviewed them all, identified some of the most noteworthy and novel arguments, and summarized them.... Numerous groups attack the viability standard that the court adopted in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.... Many amici focus on the principle of stare decisis – and urge the court not to follow it in this case.... Twenty-four states... criticize the court's 'erroneous and constantly changing abortion precedent.'... Twelve governors write... that the court's abortion precedent represents an 'intrusion into the sovereign sphere of the States.'.... Textualism and originalism Professors Mary Ann Glendon and O. Carter Snead write that the court's abortion precedent is 'completely untethered' from the text, history, and tradition of the Constitution.... The Thomas More Society argues that the right to reproductive freedom is not supported by history or legal tradition.... A brief from the Susan B. Anthony List and 79 women [argues]... 'there is no longer a need — if there ever was — for this Court to assume that women cannot adequately protect their own interests through state political processes'.... The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists argues that the Mississippi legislature was correct to conclude that abortions performed after 15 weeks pose 'significant physical and psychological risks' to the patient.... Medical ethics The Christian Medical & Dental Associations argue that performing abortions violates a physician's duty to protect life and avoid doing harm.... The Pacific Justice Institute suggests that abortion violates the 13th Amendment's prohibition of slavery. 'When aborting her fetus, a mother treats her child as slave property'...." From "We read all the amicus briefs in Dobbs so you don't have to" at SCOTUSblog. The oral argument is today, at 10 Eastern Time. You'll be able to listen to the audio here. From the summary of amicus briefs supporting abortion rights:
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| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 05:34 AM PST "'Yes, it turns out that a number of people of color, especially those without a college education, can see the allure of the jackboot authoritarian thuggery offered by modern Republicans,' wrote The Nation's Elie Mystal.... Obviously, nobody is proposing Democrats run on authoritarian thuggery. The question is whether any compromise with the center is acceptable. Obama competed for moderate views by promising that people could keep their private insurance even as he covered those who couldn't get any coverage, that he would secure the border even as he gave amnesty to Dreamers. Reducing all these spectra of belief to a simple binary, then declaring the opposing position so horrific it cannot be accommodated, is not a political strategy. It is a kind of anti-politics. This anti-politics did not materialize out of thin air. It is the working assumption of a vast array of progressive nonprofit organizations and the millionaires who fund them. Over the past half-dozen years, several people who work in and around the nonprofit world have told me, the internal political culture at progressive foundations has undergone the same changes that have torn through elite universities, mainstream-media newsrooms, and private schools. An uncompromising version of left-wing political rhetoric has put the leadership of these organizations on the defensive and often prodded them to fund more radical organizations and ideas than before." From "Joe Biden's Big Squeeze Progressive donors to the left of him, cynical centrists to the right — a theory of why his popular agenda is so unpopular" by Jonathan Chait (NY Magazine). |
| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 05:34 AM PST "I am grateful that Mr Broadwater has finally been vindicated, but the fact remains that 40 years ago, he became another young Black man brutalized by our flawed legal system. I will forever be sorry for what was done to him.... It has taken me these past eight days to comprehend how this could have happened.... I will continue to struggle with the role that I unwittingly played within a system that sent an innocent man to jail. I will also grapple with the fact that my rapist will, in all likelihood, never be known, may have gone on to rape other women, and certainly will never serve the time in prison that Mr Broadwater did." |
| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 06:55 AM PST "In a country where nearly 20 percent of the population speaks Spanish, the subtitles just further keep us othered." Tweeted journalist Yolanda Machado — reportedly (it's been deleted now) — in "Steven Spielberg's 'West Side Story' earns early praise for omitting English subtitles: 'That's how it should be'" (Yahoo). Are "White people gonna be big mad"? I think we all know how to watch a scene where a character is going on in some language you don't understand. It's how we first watched movies — and by "we" I mean the people who were around back in the silent movie era. The mouths moved, there were gestures, you got the story. It was accepted. If there's no translation into subtitles, you get the message that the actual words don't matter. Go on the feeling. Many of us who are around today learned when we were very young how to enjoy a show with a character speaking Spanish that we didn't understand: We got it. Ricky got mad. The specific meaning didn't matter. Now, with "West Side Story," the risk is that the Spanish characters — as seen by those who don't understand Spanish — may become less important compared to the characters who have the advantage of comprehensible speech. They may seem comical or like bundles of emotion. This could unintentionally lead to more stereotyping. It's interesting to see how Spanish-speaking people are experiencing this choice to omit subtitles. Do they feel — as the deleted tweet says — less "othered"? Or do they feel more othered, as they are the ones who understand some things that are closed off to the rest of the audience? There could be a feeling of being the other but in a good way: We are the elite, in-the-know group. From what I've seen of Americans over the years, I'd say we tend not to feel pressure to learn other languages. Some of us get irritated — you know, the louts who say "Speak English!" But most of us, I think, just tune out the other language — perhaps after showing some mild interest. It would be good to learn other languages, but why should one group think its language is the second language that Americans ought to learn? It's funny to express grievance from a minority position and at the same time to claim priority because your language group is so large — 20% (or is it 13.5%?). Isn't that othering the Americans who speak Chinese or Arabic or French? |
| Posted: 30 Nov 2021 09:09 AM PST  |
| Melania was cold. Jill is warm. Posted: 30 Nov 2021 08:27 AM PST Ugh. I should have steeled myself against this offensive goo. It's so very predictable. But I wasn't ready — it's still November — and this caught me before I'd prepared myself to simply laugh cynically, which is what it deserves: A taste of the holiday fare:
So "some said" Melania's Christmas decorations were "scary." Why not cherry-pick the meanest things "some" are saying about Jill's decorations? I'll just read between the lines and flip the descriptions of Jill's stuff into the negative: It's so thudding uncreative. No grandeur, no awe, just the rich and powerful serving up their idea of what ordinary Americans supposedly do with their own home. Now, I must admit that WaPo isn't completely partisan, because — did you notice? — it takes a shot at Michelle Obama too, though the insult is a quote from her husband, who thought her snowmen and -women were "creepy" and Chucky-like. Ugh. The competition assigned to first ladies. Who's warm? Who's genuine? Who's got the best taste in clothes and interior decoration? Why is this still going on? |
| Posted: 30 Nov 2021 07:41 AM PST "I was one of the editors of the Michigan Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Michigan, and we had a passionate argument that went late into the evening over which should be our lead story. Should it be legalized abortion across the nation? Or the man who sent tens of thousands of young Americans to die in the Vietnam War? Most of the female editors saw the historic importance of Roe and understood the impact it would have on women's lives. Most of the male editors — myself included, I confess — could not see past Vietnam and pushed hard for LBJ. We won, sort of: The paper ended up stripping Johnson's death across the top of the front page and putting the Roe decision right beneath it, still above the fold, with a boldface two-line headline. For history's sake, I thought that was the right call. I was spectacularly wrong. Johnson was indeed a towering figure, but he'd been long out of office and had to die at some point anyway. Roe was like a bolt from the blue, and with it the nation took a giant stride toward treating women as full and equal citizens under the law. The decision's impact continues to this day — but perhaps not for many days longer." Writes Eugene Robinson in "If the Supreme Court throws out 'Roe v. Wade,' it will tear the country apart" (WaPo). I was a student there at the time, so I know I read that edition of the Michigan Daily. I didn't follow the Supreme Court, and I remember being completely surprised that the Court would do something so dramatic, to change so much about our experience of life. Isn't it interesting that the editors split by sex — everyone dominated by the importance of sovereignty over one's own body? As for the assertion in today's headline — who knows? Will overruling Roe "tear the country apart"? More than it's already torn apart? We may find out. I think it will help the Democratic Party, but you don't hear Democrats expressing hope for this gift of overruling. |
| Posted: 30 Nov 2021 06:59 AM PST "Shortly after, she said, she struck up a relationship with Balwani, who would go on to become a Theranos executive. 'He said that I was safe now that I had met him,' she said. Holmes had met Balwani the summer before starting at Stanford. She was 18, and he is about two decades older. Balwani had a specific idea of how to make her into a good entrepreneur, Holmes testified, including her eating only certain foods that would make her 'pure' and give her energy for the company, not sleeping much and having a "very disciplined and intense lifestyle.' When she failed to live up to his expectations, Holmes said, Balwani would yell at her and sometimes force her to have sex with him when she didn't want to, because 'he would say to me that he wanted me to know that he still loved me.' In Holmes's first days testifying, she stuck to her defense that she was acting in good faith while she ran the start-up and said that she trusted staffers when they told her things were going well in the lab and with the business...." The top-rated comment over there: "Holmes is a sociopath who thinks she's smarter than everyone else. She conned her investors, her board and her customers, and now she's trying to con the jury." |
| Random movie watched yesterday: The Luis Bunuel version of "Robinson Crusoe" from 1954. Posted: 30 Nov 2021 06:52 AM PST I know Bunuel from "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) and "Belle de Jour" (1967) and I wondered what he did with "Robinson Crusoe." I'll just say he had a very long career with many stages and quote the NYT obituary (1983) — "an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later." The entire "Robinson Crusoe" film is on YouTube. I ran into it on the Criterion Channel, but here's the whole thing, and I'll just clip out the one 4-minute section that I think is most distinctive, which happens when he's been alone for a very long time and before he has any thought that he'll ever see anyone again. His dog Rex has just died. "Now, truly alone, starved for the sound of a voice, any voice": Here's the full text of the book. Have you read it? Recently? I don't think I have, though I do remember reading 2 of Daniel Defoe's novels: "A Journal of the Plague Year" and "Moll Flanders." From his Wikipedia page:
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| Posted: 30 Nov 2021 06:01 AM PST "I would rather have people who are going to shoot up do it in a safe and secure venue as opposed to a McDonald's bathroom, an alleyway or a subway staircase." Said Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., quoted in "Supervised Injection Sites for Drug Users to Open in New York City/The Manhattan facilities will provide clean needles, administer medication to reverse overdoses and provide users with options for addiction treatment" (NYT). |
| Posted: 30 Nov 2021 05:52 AM PST "We look at everything through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion. That's the way of the future." Said Mikko Nissinen, artistic director of Boston Ballet, quoted in "As 'Nutcracker' Returns, Companies Rethink Depictions of Asians/Ballet companies are reworking the holiday classic partly in response to a wave of anti-Asian hate that has intensified during the pandemic" (NYT). Dancers and choreographers of Asian descent say the revisions to "Nutcracker" are long overdue. Ma Cong, resident choreographer of Tulsa Ballet, said he was confused when he first saw "Nutcracker" productions featuring exaggerated makeup and stereotypical costumes. Ma, who grew up in China, recalled thinking, "That is not Chinese." For reference, here's the Chinese dance — "Tea" — as it was performed by the Bolshoi Ballet in 2018: |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2021 03:33 PM PST  Talk about whatever you like in the comments, and if you're doing some shopping, remember the Althouse portal to Amazon. Thanks! |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2021 03:22 PM PST From "Mommie Dearest at 40: the derided camp classic that deserves a closer look/Faye Dunaway's all-guns-blazing performance as Joan Crawford is one of many reasons why the reviled biodrama is not the disaster many have labelled it" by Guy Lodge (The Guardian). Yes, it has been 40 years, and I rewatched it for the first time this week. Not because I noticed it's the 40 year anniversary but because it's in a collection of Frank Perry movies on the Criterion Channel, and I'd just watched one of them — "Diary of a Mad Housewife" — for reasons discussed in a November 9th post. And I'd watched another — "The Swimmer" — back in 2018, discussed here. Frank Perry is a strange director. All 3 of these movies have a heightened surreality. They're all heavily focused on an awfully unpleasant central character who's jammed right up in your face for 2 hours. There are 2 more Frank Perry movies collected at Criterion — "David and Lisa" (which I saw sometime in the 1960s and have never rewatched) and "Man on a Swing" (a 1974 movie that I don't think I'd ever noticed before). Have you got anything to say about Frank Perry? If you know him at all, which of these movies is your opinion based on? If it's "Mommie Dearest," do you agree — as I do! — that these are the best 6 1/2 minutes in the movie? |
| George yawns as Paul invents "Get Back" out of thin air. Posted: 29 Nov 2021 11:39 AM PST
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| Posted: 29 Nov 2021 11:37 AM PST "He knows from experience that the more monolithic and reflexive the popular wisdom, the more likely it will be proved wrong. Does Biden run again? Personally, I've always thought he was most likely a one-term, stabilizing president, and I don't really believe he has made up his mind to seek another term. But it's early yet, and I'm pretty sure Biden won't be spooked into accepting everybody else's idea of political reality." From "Panicked Democrats are ready to shove Biden aside. Again" by Matt Bai (WaPo). |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2021 10:56 AM PST "The Russian environment could not produce this cultlike figure. And it is an easy import because Musk is not associated with some Wall Street billionaire, he is not a native American and he engages with Russia. So he is not perceived as a stranger, and this image is important to a stratum of people who are in need of one." Said Alexey Firsov, founder of the Platforma sociological research and consulting firm, quoted in "Memes, merchandise and Mars cocktails: Russia's mania for Elon Musk has no bounds" (WaPo). And there's this, from a 29-year-old Moscow bartender who attracted the attention of SpaceX by applying for the job of bartending on its mission to Mars: "Probably the decisive thing that inspired me to follow Musk is when he said that you shouldn't be afraid of failure. I think, here in Russia, if you make one mistake, it follows you. His view seems to be that if you make a mistake, you get experience and learn from it and won't make it again. I think it's unique for people in Russia." In Russia, we're told, people love wearing Elon Musk imagery on their shirts:  |
| "There are two pronouns: he and she. Our language is beautiful. And two pronouns are appropriate." Posted: 29 Nov 2021 11:48 AM PST Said the French first lady, Brigitte Macron, quoted in "In a Nonbinary Pronoun, France Sees a U.S. Attack on the Republic/When a French dictionary included the gender-nonspecific 'iel' for the first time, a virulent reaction erupted over 'wokisme' exported from American universities" (NYT). Lilian Delhomme, 24, a gender-nonconforming student of international affairs at the University of Paris 8 who has been using the pronoun "iel" for about a year, was appalled by Ms. Macron's statement. "This for me was very violent," Mx. Delhomme said in an interview. "Coming from the first lady, from a woman, from a French teacher, from someone whose relationship went against many societal norms, it made me lose hope." Mx. Delhomme was referring to the fact that the relationship between Ms. Macron, 68, and Mr. Macron, 43, began in high school when he was a teenager and she was his drama teacher, married with three children....That's a nice example of going on the offense, but I wonder if the French who are outraged about the invention of ungendered pronouns might also reject the "many societal norms" that stand in the way of a sexual relationship between a teenaged student and his high school teacher. I don't know. I am not French. I don't have my finger on the pulse of the French. But, from afar, I empathize with the sentiment "Our language is beautiful." It is true of French and it is true of English, though awful writing and speech is possible in both languages, and it's hard to speak beautifully of the desire to control the growth of the language. There are always many extra words, and who could you trust to pare away the extra words? One answer is: The dictionary! I remember when some people would eschew any word that wasn't "in the dictionary." ADDED: If you object to adding weird words, why would you say "wokeisme"? I detect eepocreeezeee. |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2021 04:46 AM PST "Nothing is the new something in South Korea as people desperately seek refuge from the pressures of living as functioning adults in a global pandemic in a high-stress and fast-paced society with soaring real estate prices and often-grueling work schedules. At a Space Out Competition this year, competitors sought to achieve the lowest heart rate possible while sitting in a 'healing forest' on the southern island of Jeju....Spacing out is known in Korean as 'hitting mung,' a slang usage of the word 'mung' to describe a state of being totally zoned out.... With the weather change this fall, now popular are the terms 'forest mung' and 'foliage mung,' meaning spacing out while looking at trees or foliage. There's 'fire mung,' or spacing out while watching logs burn, and 'water mung,' being meditative near bodies of water.... On Ganghwa Island, off South Korea's west coast, a cafe named Mung Hit also offers no-activity relaxation areas. In one section is a single chair facing a mirror for anyone who wants to sit and stare. There are nooks for meditating, reading, sitting by a pond or the garden, or enjoying mountain views. No pets or children are allowed.... '"Hitting mung" is a concept of emptying your heart and your brain so that you can fill them with new ideas and thoughts. We opened because we wanted to create a space for people to do just that'...." |
| Posted: 28 Nov 2021 04:53 PM PST I took this picture at 7:11:  And Meade took this picture — I'm in it — at 7:17:  Talk about anything you want in the comments. And please think of supporting this blog by doing your shopping through the Althouse portal to Amazon, which is always right there in the sidebar. Thanks!   |
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