Althouse |
- At the Sunrise Café...
- I've selected 7 TikTok videos for you this time. Let me know which one you like best.
- "We use stare decisis as a mantra when we don’t want to think."
- "How dare you!"
- "Pleasure is to women what the sun is to the flower; if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, etiolates, and destroys."
- At the Dark Sunrise Café...
- "On April 14 of this year, I was fired by Netflix for what they determined to be unacceptable behavior on set...."
- "It's what I call a human issue: It's a very complicated issue. It's so fraught with emotion. And it's so political."
- "When she asks me, 'What do you recommend?' I tell her, 'There’s no real basis for a medical recommendation in this case. Any of the options I’ve presented'..."
- "When Justice Stevens wrote his opinion in Chevron, he meant to solve a knotty problem, but he did not mean to produce a major ruling, or even to make any change in the law."
- "You opened your eyes and looked around—supposing that you were young and critically alert, wherever you might stand in that constellation of twentieth-century urban centers—and a diagnosis suggested itself."
- This is a reference to "The Inferno" — to the 9th Circle of Hell — right?
- If you won't say "women," you are embracing the self-subordination of weak political speech.
- "Can the women’s movement be as effective without the word ‘women’?"
- At the Sunrise Café...
- Just 5 selections from TikTok for you tonight. Let me know what you like best.
- Why does he cry? Why don't you cry?
- "On Saturday, the comedian Trevor Noah stood before a ballroom of 2,600 journalists, celebrities and political figures at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and asked: What are we doing here?"
- Putin apologizes.
- "In a room filled with artifacts like Dylan’s leather jacket from the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and a photograph of a 16-year-old Bobby Zimmerman posing with a guitar at a Jewish summer camp in Wisconsin..."
- Finally, there's good reason for Kamala Harris to burst out laughing, but she can't do it.
| Posted: 07 May 2022 04:26 PM PDT  ... you can talk all night. |
| I've selected 7 TikTok videos for you this time. Let me know which one you like best. Posted: 07 May 2022 10:33 AM PDT 1. If you combined Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, and The Doors into one voice, how would it sound? 2. Never seen an adult male cry? It's "weird"? 3. Imitating rock stars by their walk. 4. The inside of one of those twee cabins. 5. Nominees for the Dad Award for Food-Related Fails. 7. The "My dog stepped on a bee" meme. (Don't worry: No dogs stepping on bees — or even any dogs or bees — in this video.) |
| "We use stare decisis as a mantra when we don’t want to think." Posted: 07 May 2022 05:08 AM PDT Said Justice Clarence Thomas, quoted in "Clarence Thomas says he worries respect for institutions is eroding" (WaPo). Some of the people who think think about the way stare decisis preserves respect for the Court. Thomas worried about the "different attitude of the young" and how they bully the Court when they don't get the outcome they want, but how deferential to authority should young people be? When you impugn stare decisis as a "mantra," you call for more analysis and criticism and less passive obeisance to authority. I would say that's inconsistent with a demand that we accept the outcomes handed down by the Court from on high. That too is obeisance. The Court seems to be withdrawing a right that was in place for 50 years. You can't expect people to humbly receive the new version of what the law is. Did you think we'd all sit quietly reading a hundred pages of careful reasoning and be impressed by the cogency of it all? There's a good chance that no one has dutifully read every word. We jump into guesses and theories about what's really going on. It's not just these kids today. People have never regarded the Supreme Court as an oracle of truth. We can and should criticize the Court. It's not bullying! |
| Posted: 07 May 2022 05:30 AM PDT When I hear the phrase "How dare you!" I think of Greta Thunberg — at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit— famously orating:
How dare you steal from the future lives of the children. But now "How dare you!" has been deployed in the abortion debate, by the pro-abortion rights side:
"Some Republican leaders are trying to weaponize the use of the law against women. How dare they? How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body? How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?" Politico — the publisher of the leaked Supreme Court draft — calls that Kamala Harris speech "the Biden administration's most forceful defense of reproductive rights." Technically, to say that is not to call the speech forceful. The "most forceful" thing could be quite weak. What was the competition? But I think praise was intended. What an opening for critics! All they have to do is answer the question: "How dare they?" Look back at the iconic Thunberg speech. Greta demanded that the adults of today make sacrifices for the children of the future. The anti-abortion rhetoric springs quickly to mind.
ADDED: Andrew Sullivan's new column is titled "How Dare They?" Subtitle: "The left's attitude problem when it comes to democracy."
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| Posted: 07 May 2022 06:01 AM PDT Wrote Charles Caleb Colton in "Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words : Addressed to Those who Think," in 1820:
That's quoted at the OED definition for "etiolate," which means "To lessen or undermine the strength, vigour, or effectiveness of (a quality, group, movement, etc.); to have a weakening effect upon." That's the second meaning. The oldest meaning is about plants: "To cause (a plant) to develop with reduced levels of chlorophyll (esp. by restricting light), causing bleaching of the green tissues, elongated internodes, weakened stems, deficiencies in vascular structure, and abnormally small leaves." You take the plant out of the sun to etiolate it, but the woman needs to be kept out of the sun, lest she etiolate. So said Colton, anyway. He was one of the "boys" referenced in the more recent aphorism: "Some boys take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world/I want to be the one to walk in the sun...." The sun, Colton. But C.C. Colton is long gone. He died in 1832 — forever excluded from the sun — died of suicide, committed because, we're told, he had an illness that required surgery, and he dreaded surgery. 1. Here, I quote Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian's architecture critic, criticizing the ridiculously tall and skinny new skyscrapers in NYC: "Poking up above the Manhattan skyline like etiolated beanpoles, they seem to defy the laws of both gravity and commercial sense." In both of those quotes — and in the Charles Caleb Colton quote — the supposedly etiolated thing is getting plenty of sun! But the etiolation that's done to plants is to keep them out of the sun. So how do we weaken ourselves — figuratively — with more sun or less sun? Think about: hiding women away within their traditional household function, deciding whether or not to let a newly conceived human being ever emerge into the light, weakening speech by keeping the word "women" out of the public discourse, and releasing a Supreme Court opinion draft out into the sunlight. ADDED: Oh, there is one more use of "etiolate" in the archive, a quoted from "How To Write a (Good) Sentence/Adam Haslett on Stanley Fish":
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| Posted: 06 May 2022 05:39 PM PDT  ... you can shed some light.
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| Posted: 06 May 2022 09:06 AM PDT "I was playing the leading role of Roderick Usher in Edgar Allan Poe's classic The Fall of the House of Usher, modernized as an eight-episode series for Netflix. It is a glorious role, and I had come to regard it as, most likely, my last hurrah... On March 25 of this year, I was performing a love scene with the actress playing my young wife. Both of us were fully clothed. I was sitting on a couch, she was standing in front of me. The director called 'cut.' 'He touched my leg,' said the actress. 'That was not in the blocking.' She then turned and walked off the set, followed by the director and the intimacy coordinator.... [Someone from Human Resources contacted him a week later and said] 'Before the love scene began on March 25... our intimacy coordinator suggested where you both should put your hands. It has been brought to our attention that you said, "This is absurd!"' 'Yes,' I said, 'I did. And I still think so.' It was a love scene on camera. Legislating the placement of hands, to my mind, is ludicrous. It undermines instinct and spontaneity. Toward the end of our conversation, she suggested that I not contact the young lady, the intimacy coordinator, or anyone else in the company. 'We don't want to risk retaliation... Intention is not our concern. Netflix deals only with impact.'" Writes Frank Langella in "Fired By Netflix, Frank Langella Refutes Allegations Of 'Unacceptable Behavior'" (Deadline). Langella is 84 years old. |
| Posted: 06 May 2022 08:45 AM PDT It's a "human issue"... compared to what? What's the unspoken other sort of issue? The first alternative I thought of was: legal issue. But it could also be considered a matter of natural science. And it could be considered a matter of religion. |
| Posted: 06 May 2022 08:36 AM PDT "... are safe and reasonable. It's a personal decision. It's really up to you.' Then I see a look in her eyes, like: You're kidding. Up to me? Sometimes it is a look of fear, at least at first. But inevitably it transforms into something else: a deep, probing, inward gaze that shows me she is, in my presence, accessing a very private place within herself. I have not provided her access to this place—she can get there without me—but I have given her permission to enter it. To withdraw, for a moment, from me and my medical expertise, from the judgments and biases of her friends and family, from the shouts of the protesters in the parking lot. This is one of my favorite parts of my job: watching her go into that place and emerge from it with a decision—or a thoughtful question, or just a word, or yet another expression on her face, one of resolution or sadness or grief or relief. Whatever it is, it comes from within her. It belongs to her." From "Aspirations/As an abortion provider, what I give my patients is not just a procedure but the space to make their own decisions about their bodies" by Christine Henneberg (NYRB). That corresponds to the sentiment expressed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which I've quoted many times on this blog:
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| Posted: 06 May 2022 09:20 AM PDT "Justice Harry Blackmun's private papers, which are now public, show that members of the Court found the case to be highly technical and difficult to decide.... Revealingly, Chevron had hardly any influence on the Supreme Court in its first years. Everything changed after Justice Scalia joined the Court in 1986 and became Chevron's champion, urging that it inaugurated a new approach for courts to apply in reviewing the interpretations of administrative agencies. Justice Stevens repeatedly disagreed with him; he insisted that Chevron did not make any big change in the law, and that questions of law were for courts, not agencies. By the early 1990s, Scalia had prevailed: whenever an agency's interpretation of a congressional enactment was at issue, Chevron was widely understood to give the administrative state a lot of room to maneuver. If you worked at a federal agency at the time, Chevron was your best friend." Writes Cass Sunstein in "Who Should Regulate? Cass R. Sunstein The question of whether federal agencies or the courts should have the right to interpret legislation may seem technical, but it significantly affects the power of the government" (NYRB)(reviewing "The Chevron Doctrine: Its Rise and Fall, and the Future of the Administrative State"by Thomas W. Merrill). For those who are uninitiated and yet not utterly bored — a small group, I'm thinking — the Chevron case provides — in Sunstein's words — "that when the language of statutes enacted by Congress is ambiguous, federal agencies are entitled to interpret it as they see fit, as long as their interpretations are not unreasonable." Don't miss this casual phrase: "Justice Harry Blackmun's private papers, which are now public..." Was that treacherous leakage? The leakage was by Blackmun, of course, but I'm still asking if making all those notes and drafts public was an example of "the gravest, most unforgivable sin." Shouldn't we have access to these materials to understand why these decisions come out the way we do? Why should we be controlled by the careful wordings and omissions of the final version? And I see that Chief Justice Roberts referred to Blackmun's papers in the oral argument about overruling Roe last December! Joan Biskupic wrote about it last December, right after the oral argument, in "Why John Roberts cited the private papers of the justice who wrote Roe v. Wade" (CNN):
Roberts started it. He wanted to use behind-the-scenes leaked information to further his cause, so his denouncement of the leaked draft as "absolutely appalling" is theatrical and a bit hypocritical. |
| Posted: 06 May 2022 06:39 AM PDT "You were witnessing an accountancy-driven compression of human potential within a global interlock of power, money, mechanization, and mass media. This condition, which Breton termed 'rationalism,' seemed to underpin all extant forms of governance, whether capitalist, Stalinist, colonial, or fascist. (A sliding scale, argued the Martinican Surrealist Aimé Césaire, for the violence the Nazis inflicted on Europe simply built on the precedent of violence inflicted by Europeans on others.) Surrealism offered a certain route out of that historical claustrophobia. Flaunting your anomaly—your disobliging, disagreeable x—you not only affirmed your personal intransigence but also signed on to an energizing counterconspiracy." From "An Impulse Felt Round the World/A recent show and catalog on Surrealism proposes that the thoughts expressed in André Breton's 1924 manifesto were latent in disparate urban centers, only awaiting his coining of a movement identity" by Julian Bell (NYRB)(reviewing "Surrealism Beyond Borders"). |
| This is a reference to "The Inferno" — to the 9th Circle of Hell — right? Posted: 06 May 2022 06:10 AM PDT I'm just focusing on this SCOTUSblog tweet from 4 days ago:
I thought "the gravest, most unforgivable sin" was an absurd overstatement. I can think of far more horrible sins. Murder springs to mind first. Mass murder. Torture murder. And so on. But I realized, no, in Dante's "Inferno," the lowest circle of hell is not for murder. It's for treachery:
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| If you won't say "women," you are embracing the self-subordination of weak political speech. Posted: 06 May 2022 05:16 AM PDT I'm collecting examples of this avoidance of the word "woman" and the resultant etiolation of speech. In "Abortion bans and penalties would vary widely by state," Politico quotes Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel to something called If/When/How:
Here's the webpage for If/When/How, subtitled "Lawyering for Reproductive Justice." It describes its purpose without saying "women":
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| "Can the women’s movement be as effective without the word ‘women’?" Posted: 06 May 2022 05:44 AM PDT Ironically and amazingly, McArdle goes about trying to answer this question without using the word "transgender" — or even "gender"! It is out of deference to transgender men (and transgender women) that we're seeing this avoidance of the word "woman." But McArdle is doing her own form of avoidance in this critique of avoidance. Let's see how she does it:
But if you're a transgender woman, you don't have the menstruation and childbirth component, and if you're a transgender man, you don't dress and act and perform social roles in a manner that expresses womanhood. So in the transgender-focused view of the world, the "thickness" becomes series of thinner layers.
And the transgender-focused position regards that sort of speech as unkind — microaggression.
Yes, so there is a political reason to keep this huge group together, to be able to appeal to them as a group. Yet a political cost will be paid, sacrificing the hard-pushed progress on transgender awareness. McArdle is demonstrating how it looks after the sacrifice. She's not even admitting she's doing it. She's just showing what it looks like after it's done.
Ah! Look at all the words she wrote to avoid saying "transgender": "those born with male bodies who identify as women and those born with female bodies who identify as men." Instead of talking about transgender people as an important political group, she portrays them as a force that has broken up the solidity of the mega-group called "women," to the detriment of women. Now, I should say, I think she's right! There are so many women, and we want our strong political representation. We disagree amongst ourselves, but all politicians must deal with us. We shouldn't give up our political power, especially when there are woman-specific interests at the very center of the present-day debate. Transgender women don't worry that they can get pregnant and don't deal with unwanted pregnancy. Transgender men may face these matters, but those interests are better served by a strong fight in the name of women, not by endless micro-inclusions that weigh down speech.
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| Posted: 05 May 2022 05:54 PM PDT  ... you can talk all night. I can't explain the color changes other than to say this is how the iPhone reacted to the moments — 5:36, 5:46, 5:47, and 5:49. No hue adjustments by me — only by nature and the phone.
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| Just 5 selections from TikTok for you tonight. Let me know what you like best. Posted: 05 May 2022 05:38 PM PDT 1. Sublimely twee cabins. 2. Dog on a log. 3. Brilliantly uninformed fashion critique. 4. There seems to be a gigantic gaping pit in this on-ramp. 5. Mouth-focused impressions of mouthy mouth actors. |
| Why does he cry? Why don't you cry? Posted: 05 May 2022 02:01 PM PDT |
| Posted: 05 May 2022 01:45 PM PDT "'Did none of you learn anything from the Gridiron Dinner? Nothing,' Mr. Noah said, referring to another elite Washington gathering in April, after which dozens of attendees tested positivefor the coronavirus. 'Do you read any of your own newspapers?' By Wednesday, Mr. Noah's chiding remarks at what he called 'the nation's most distinguished superspreader event' were beginning to appear prophetic as a growing number of attendees, including a string of journalists and Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, said they had tested positive for the virus." This is a Washington Post reporter:
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| Posted: 05 May 2022 01:39 PM PDT "In a phone call Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to [Israeli] Prime Minister Naftali Bennett for incendiary comments made by... Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claiming that Adolf Hitler had 'Jewish blood'.... [Lavrov was attempting] to explain Moscow's attempts to 'de-Nazify' Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish." |
| Posted: 05 May 2022 01:32 PM PDT "... a digital display lets visitors sift through 10 of the 17 known drafts of Dylan's cryptic 1983 song 'Jokerman.' The screen highlights typed and handwritten changes Dylan made throughout the manuscripts, showing, for example, how the line 'You a son of the angels/You a man of the clouds' in the song's earliest iteration was tweaked, little by little, to end up as 'You're a man of the mountains, you can walk on the clouds.'... In characteristic fashion, Dylan — fully active at 80, with a tour on the road and a new book coming out in the fall — has stubbornly avoided engaging with attempts to examine his own work, and had no involvement in the center that bears his name, aside from contributing one of his ironwork gates for the entryway." |
| Finally, there's good reason for Kamala Harris to burst out laughing, but she can't do it. Posted: 05 May 2022 01:47 PM PDT |
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