Thursday, March 24, 2022

Althouse

Althouse

"I’m fairly certain womenfolk everywhere saw themselves in that statement and felt something deep inside their souls."

Posted: 24 Mar 2022 06:42 AM PDT

Writes Michele L. Norris, in "The timeless truth Ketanji Brown Jackson said out loud" (WaPo). 

Here's the statement in question (part of Jackson's opening statement): "I know it has not been easy as I have tried to navigate the challenges of juggling my career and motherhood. And I fully admit that I did not always get the balance right. But I hope that you have seen that with hard work, determination, and love, it can be done."

Norris's statement struck me as ludicrously sententious. I've steeled myself for all the usual boosting of a President's nomination, so I would normally slough this off. But something about that "womenfolk" and "soul" combination bothers me. Is there some talking down going on that's related to Jackson's race? (I can see that Michele L. Norris is identified as African American.)

It's quite odd to say "womenfolk" other than jocosely. I searched the WaPo archive for recent uses and came up with:

1. "Why is it that the guys who look as though they've never so much as pushed a lawn mower are always the ones who want to saddle up and save the womenfolk?" (from "Opinion: Josh Hawley is unfit to raise the flag on behalf of males" by Kathleen Parker, November 12, 2021).

 2. "Owners and general managers, apparently, don't want to hire a guy who looks like he's about to pillage a hamlet and steal the pigs amid the lamentations of the womenfolk" (from "Sports Thursday: Brady better than Manning?" by Joel Achenbach, January 16, 2014).

3. "These will be the womenfolks's gifts until 2015, and I am TOTALLY the favorite, I've gotten all the big ones so far" (from "Carolyn Hax Holiday Hootenanny Guide to: Gift-giving" by Jessica Stahl, December 12, 2013).

"A Manhattan prosecutor who investigated Donald Trump’s financial dealings wrote in a resignation letter that he believed Trump 'is guilty of numerous felony violations'..."

Posted: 24 Mar 2022 05:03 AM PDT

"... and blasted the new district attorney [Alvin Bragg] for not moving ahead with an indictment... Mark Pomerantz... wrote that the team of lawyers investigating Trump had 'no doubt' he had 'committed crimes' and that Bragg's decision not to move ahead with prosecuting Trump 'will doom any future prospects that Mr Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating.' 'His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people,' Pomerantz reportedly wrote."

The Guardian reports.

Here's the letter (acquired by the NYT).

When Ketanji Brown Jackson said "Can I provide a definition? No. I can't... Not in this context I can't."

Posted: 24 Mar 2022 04:45 AM PDT

You can listen to the video here. Take note that the Republican National Committee Research gives us a distorted transcript, omitting key words and not using ellipses to show that there were omissions:

"Can I provide a definition? No. I can't... Not in this context I can't."

I find these omissions quite deceptive, though the video is there, so the deceptions stare you in the face. I suspect that if you're rooting for the GOP here, you think this is a fabulous gotcha and you won't absorb what I'm about to say. If you're rooting for the Democrats, keep reading an you might find a new perspective on this troublesome clip that's delighting your antagonists.

Blackburn asked "Can you provide a definition of the word 'woman'?" And Jackson's response — listen to the video — stressed the word "provide": "Can I provide a definition?" Jackson shows a judicial temperament: Instead of jumping to giving an answer, she inspects the question, its precise wording. What does it mean to provide a definition? 

I know I'm restraining myself from looking up the words "provide" and "definition" and spending the next 10 minutes contemplating whether providing a definition of a word is substantially different from saying what a word means. And then, can you ever really say what a word means?

"It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is," wrote Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison. "Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule."

Judges say what words mean when they have particular cases — concrete disputes to resolve — that require the understanding of words. Their powers of understanding unfold within a real context. They don't — like a dictionary — yield instant definitions of words. They refrain from giving answers in the abstract. 

Thus, it was entirely appropriate for Jackson to expand with "Not in this context I can't." I think that means: As a judge, I wait until I am presented with a real dispute that can only be resolved by determining what the word "woman" means. What would that context be? 

If I'd been in the Jackson's position, I wouldn't have made myself vulnerable by saying "I can't," and I certainly wouldn't have laughed at Blackburn in a manner that can read as contemptuous. I'd have turned the questioning back on Blackburn: When would a real case depend on finding the meaning of that word? As a judge, I need a concrete and particularized dispute to resolve. I have no expertise in defining words outside of that judicial role. 

Jackson gestured at that when she said "I'm not a biologist." Would it have been better to say "I'm not a lexicographer"? Yes, because she was asked to "provide a definition." By saying "I'm not a biologist," she suggested that if she were confronted with a real case that depended on the meaning of "woman," the expert she'd most want to hear from is "a biologist." That might have disappointed some people on the left. Is there a whiff of transphobia?

Is there any Senator who would would want to follow up with a question like "Biologist?! You're saying that biology determines who is a woman and who isn't?" It never rose to that level of sophistication, but it's obvious to me that the right answer is: It would depend on the relevant facts and legal texts in the particular case or controversy before the court, and multiple areas of professional expertise may very well come into play.

"'Someone could have filing cabinets in their office, but why not get the back of a VW bus, cut it off, put it on the wall and use it as a filing cabinet?'"

Posted: 24 Mar 2022 03:40 AM PDT

"To find just the right bus, the elder Van Peebles scoured salvage yards. Then he figured out a way to make real steam blow out of the tailpipe jutting from the wall. (The bird droppings on the skylight coffee table were fake.) 'He had this fanciful, wily sense of humor, and a love of the everyday.'"

From "MELVIN VAN PEEBLES/B. 1932/The artist filled his 'Blue Room' with scenes from everyday life and turned them into sculptures" (NYT)(excellent photograph at the link).

I hadn't known about the sculptures. I was familiar with Van Peebles as a film director. I watched his movie "Watermelon Man" on the Criterion Channel last month, as noted here. His movie "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" seems to be much more famous, but I found it unwatchable as we were expected to be highly amused by a woman having sexual intercourse with a boy. 

"The surrealists, that group of Paris-based painters and writers who reached deep into the newly fashionable unconscious for inspiration..."

Posted: 24 Mar 2022 03:44 AM PDT

"... were eager to claim the most famous artist of the day for themselves. The figurative but distorted forms that Picasso was producing resonated powerfully with the dreamscapes that paid-up surrealists such as Salvador DalĂ­ and AndrĂ© Breton were producing. While Picasso was not generally a joiner, he agreed to design the cover for the first issue of Minotaure, the influential magazine of the movement that was launched in 1933. The mythical figure of the minotaur – part-man, part-bull – functioned more personally as an alter ego for Picasso, representing all his lasciviousness, guilt and despair."

From "A Life of Picasso: Volume IV by John Richardson review – stranger things/The final volume of biography by Richardson, who died before finishing it, is a thrilling survey of Picasso's surrealist era" (The Guardian).

ADDED: The unconscious was once "fashionable," but it's rare these days — isn't it? — to hear anyone talk about the unconscious. And yet, in some ways, we're inclined to give priority to our dreams.
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