... the music is soft and sweet and the lights are deep purple.
November 21, 2009
At the New Tree Restaurant...
... you can talk about trees, shoot the breeze, have some wine and cheese, do whatever you please. Dig in!
"Democrats Clinch Vote on Health Debate."
In case you want to talk about it. I'll just be over here in a corner curled up in a little ball.
Andrew Sullivan has discovered the Michelle Goldberg/Ann Althouse diavlog.
He says "Michelle Goldberg gets it." Fine, but did he get as far as this clip, where Michelle says something that makes me say, "You hear that, Andrew?"?
Goldberg went to Wasilla to report for The Nation during the campaign, and there she heard the wildest rumors but the one thing nearly everyone agreed about was: "Yes, we all know that Trig is her baby."
ADDED: I know Sullivan wants me to check out his list of "lies." I picked one to check out, that she said the only flag in her office was the Israeli flag. As Sullivan himself notes, she must have meant to say the only foreign flag, since she did also have an Alaskan and an American flag in her office. That's the sort of sloppy speaking that one would correct easily if it were pointed out at the time. Of course, I also have the state flag and the American flag. I mean, it would be pretty ridiculous for a state governor to only have a foreign flag! There isn't even a motivation to lie.
That there's no motivation here doesn't mean it's an "odd lie" — which is Sullivan's term. It means it's not a lie at all. What's odd is his definition of a lie. If I said I was just wearing jeans to a party, you wouldn't have exposed me as a liar if I turned up wearing a shirt and shoes as well. In fact, you'd sound like a dork — or, with good enough delivery, a comedian — if you said, "You liar. You said you were just wearing jeans!"
Calling something like this a lie marks you as someone who's centered not on finding out what is true, but on destroying someone. It doesn't motivate me to go through the rest of the long list systematically to see what each item is about, and it certainly doesn't make me want to look at the list and accept the conclusion that wow, Sarah Palin really is a terrible liar.
ADDED: Little Miss Attila is afraid to watch the diavlog, and naked Tom Maguire devises what would be a traffic-grabbing title, if anybody ever Googled that.
Goldberg went to Wasilla to report for The Nation during the campaign, and there she heard the wildest rumors but the one thing nearly everyone agreed about was: "Yes, we all know that Trig is her baby."
ADDED: I know Sullivan wants me to check out his list of "lies." I picked one to check out, that she said the only flag in her office was the Israeli flag. As Sullivan himself notes, she must have meant to say the only foreign flag, since she did also have an Alaskan and an American flag in her office. That's the sort of sloppy speaking that one would correct easily if it were pointed out at the time. Of course, I also have the state flag and the American flag. I mean, it would be pretty ridiculous for a state governor to only have a foreign flag! There isn't even a motivation to lie.
That there's no motivation here doesn't mean it's an "odd lie" — which is Sullivan's term. It means it's not a lie at all. What's odd is his definition of a lie. If I said I was just wearing jeans to a party, you wouldn't have exposed me as a liar if I turned up wearing a shirt and shoes as well. In fact, you'd sound like a dork — or, with good enough delivery, a comedian — if you said, "You liar. You said you were just wearing jeans!"
Calling something like this a lie marks you as someone who's centered not on finding out what is true, but on destroying someone. It doesn't motivate me to go through the rest of the long list systematically to see what each item is about, and it certainly doesn't make me want to look at the list and accept the conclusion that wow, Sarah Palin really is a terrible liar.
ADDED: Little Miss Attila is afraid to watch the diavlog, and naked Tom Maguire devises what would be a traffic-grabbing title, if anybody ever Googled that.
Said the President to the 1,500 troops in camouflage uniform: "You guys make a pretty good photo op,"
I'm thinking he said it with knowing — perhaps even self-deprecating — humor, but still, extracted and quoted on Drudge, it looks awful.
Also at the first link: "President Obama will not announce his decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan before the Thanksgiving holiday, senior aides said Thursday." The news is no news. It would be funny — in a Generalissimo Franco is still dead kind of way — if it weren't so not funny.
Also at the first link: "President Obama will not announce his decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan before the Thanksgiving holiday, senior aides said Thursday." The news is no news. It would be funny — in a Generalissimo Franco is still dead kind of way — if it weren't so not funny.
Steven Pinker talks to Robert Wright.
On Bloggingheads. They're talking about language and evolution.
The AP, describing a case the Supreme Court recently turned down, writes: "the school valedictorian strayed from an approved text to provide a graphic account of Jesus' crucifixion..."
That piqued my curiosity, and not just because I teach "Religion and the Constitution" and want to know about the cases in the area. I wanted to know just how graphically a high school girl would describe the crucifixion in front of the assembled graduating class.
Here's the video. Jesus comes up just after 2:00, when the student, Brittany McComb says "God's love is so great that he gave us his only son..." — and the microphone dies right there. Come on! That wasn't graphic. It wasn't even an account. And — since many Christians would think that God's giving us Jesus means the life he lived with us — it may not even refer to the crucifixion!
During McComb's speech at the Foothill High School graduation in 2006, officials turned off McComb's microphone when the school valedictorian strayed from an approved text to provide a graphic account of Jesus' crucifixion and credit God for her success in school.How much piercing and blood-spurting and agonizing pain are we talking about? Did she go all "Passion of the Christ" on them? How long did the school authorities let her go before they freaked out about the Establishment Clause (or the deviation from the approved text) and kill the microphone?
Here's the video. Jesus comes up just after 2:00, when the student, Brittany McComb says "God's love is so great that he gave us his only son..." — and the microphone dies right there. Come on! That wasn't graphic. It wasn't even an account. And — since many Christians would think that God's giving us Jesus means the life he lived with us — it may not even refer to the crucifixion!
Is "The White House Butler" an outrageously racist headline?
There's been some discussion here in Madison, Wisconsin, where former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler is a visiting professor at the law school, about whether that headline, on a Wall Street Journal editorial, is racist. The editors begin:
Now, my position is that the President of the United States, under the U.S. Constitution, has the power to appoint federal judges, and therefore he can choose liberal or conservative judges as he sees fit. If they are well enough qualified — which includes the requirement that they have a judicial temperament and are committed to legitimate legal methodology — the Senate should confirm them. This is why I supported George Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito:
But are the Wall Street Journal editors to be condemned as racist? I guess I need to nail down the point that Butler is African American. That's never mentioned in the editorial. Some of the people I have heard from are absolutely committed to the conclusion that the headline "The White House Butler" is undeniably and outrageously racist.
Now, it occurs to me that the person who came up with that headline may not even have known that Butler is black. It's not in the editorial, and I think headline writers tend to work with what's in the article. Here, the headline writer might have simply tried to come up with some play on the last name and didn't have to go very far to come up with the idea of a butler serving in the White House to insinuate that the judge would be doing Obama's bidding — carrying political ideology into the court.
The conventional image of a butler is quite white:
Those who see racism in the headline — because of the juxtaposition of "Butler" and "House"? — may perhaps be thinking of the idea of the "house negro and the field negro," as famously explained here by Malcolm X:
(Written text here.)
But there is nothing about Louis Butler's position in relation to Barack Obama that is at all like the "house negro" that Malcolm X opposed. And you'd have to stretch to say that the editorial insinuates that he is. You'd have to portray Obama as "the master" and the people of Wisconsin as the "field negroes." It's just too much to read into the editorial. You sound silly even saying it.
But that's not to say that the Wall Street Journal didn't lay a trap for Madison liberals. Maybe they knew they were putting in just enough resonance with racism to bait university types into crying racism. And if they do, as noted, those professors will sound silly, because there is nothing racial in the entire text of the editorial. And what will the people of Wisconsin think — those voters who twice rejected Louis Butler as a state judge — if they learn that Madison professors find outrageous racism in that headline?
As consolation prizes go, Louis Butler can't complain. After being twice rejected by Wisconsin voters for a place on the state Supreme Court, the former judge has instead been nominated by President Obama to a lifetime seat on the federal district court. If he is confirmed, Wisconsin voters will have years to contend with the decisions of a judge they made clear they would rather live without.The editorial proceeds with a few paragraphs about how liberal Butler supposedly is and concludes: "Mr. Butler's nomination shows the dominance of liberal ideology in Mr. Obama's judicial selections, and especially a contempt for Wisconsin voters."
Judge Butler served on the state Supreme Court for four years, enough time to have his judicial temperament grow in infamy. Having first run unsuccessfully in 2000, he was appointed by Democratic Governor Jim Doyle to the seat vacated by Justice Diane Sykes in 2004. But after serving four years, voters had seen enough of his brand of judicial philosophy, making him the first sitting justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in four decades to lose a retention election last year.
Now, my position is that the President of the United States, under the U.S. Constitution, has the power to appoint federal judges, and therefore he can choose liberal or conservative judges as he sees fit. If they are well enough qualified — which includes the requirement that they have a judicial temperament and are committed to legitimate legal methodology — the Senate should confirm them. This is why I supported George Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito:
Those Democrats who are already insisting that Judge Alito's record on the bench makes him unacceptable should keep in mind that someday they, too, will have a president with a Supreme Court seat to fill, and it would serve the country well if that president wasn't forced to choose only among candidates with no paper trail. To oppose Judge Alito because his record is conservative is to condemn us to a succession of bland nominees and to deprive future presidents of the opportunity to choose from the men and women who have dedicated long years to judicial work.So Louis Butler has a liberal record as a judge. Obama is the President. I don't see the problem with confirmation.
But are the Wall Street Journal editors to be condemned as racist? I guess I need to nail down the point that Butler is African American. That's never mentioned in the editorial. Some of the people I have heard from are absolutely committed to the conclusion that the headline "The White House Butler" is undeniably and outrageously racist.
Now, it occurs to me that the person who came up with that headline may not even have known that Butler is black. It's not in the editorial, and I think headline writers tend to work with what's in the article. Here, the headline writer might have simply tried to come up with some play on the last name and didn't have to go very far to come up with the idea of a butler serving in the White House to insinuate that the judge would be doing Obama's bidding — carrying political ideology into the court.
The conventional image of a butler is quite white:
Those who see racism in the headline — because of the juxtaposition of "Butler" and "House"? — may perhaps be thinking of the idea of the "house negro and the field negro," as famously explained here by Malcolm X:
(Written text here.)
But there is nothing about Louis Butler's position in relation to Barack Obama that is at all like the "house negro" that Malcolm X opposed. And you'd have to stretch to say that the editorial insinuates that he is. You'd have to portray Obama as "the master" and the people of Wisconsin as the "field negroes." It's just too much to read into the editorial. You sound silly even saying it.
But that's not to say that the Wall Street Journal didn't lay a trap for Madison liberals. Maybe they knew they were putting in just enough resonance with racism to bait university types into crying racism. And if they do, as noted, those professors will sound silly, because there is nothing racial in the entire text of the editorial. And what will the people of Wisconsin think — those voters who twice rejected Louis Butler as a state judge — if they learn that Madison professors find outrageous racism in that headline?
"New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step."
How do economists reach consensus? Do they confer and corroborate like climate scientists? Or is the consensus achieved through a newspaper editorial process of strategically collecting quotes and designating the speakers as "dispassionate"? Or is it more a matter of slapping a headline on an article that doesn't make a convincing case for consensus at all?
Or are my questions — they're only questions! — too cynical? Consider the sublime hedge phrase "worthy step." If Barack Obama were the captain of the Titanic, would the New York Times call rearranging the deck chairs a "worthy step"?
Or are my questions — they're only questions! — too cynical? Consider the sublime hedge phrase "worthy step." If Barack Obama were the captain of the Titanic, would the New York Times call rearranging the deck chairs a "worthy step"?
"They always understood that they might someday be called to account for that conduct and always have been prepared to accept full responsibility for it."
"They have done so today."
Walter K. Myers, 72, and Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, step up and take responsibility for 30 years of spying for Cuba, motivated by "conscience and personal commitment."
By the way, Walter Myers is the great grandson of Alexander Graham Bell.
Walter K. Myers, 72, and Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, step up and take responsibility for 30 years of spying for Cuba, motivated by "conscience and personal commitment."
By the way, Walter Myers is the great grandson of Alexander Graham Bell.
Ravenous hunger for Sarah is making even Hoosiers nasty.
Hoosiers!
What's going on? Things move from good to bad so quickly, like Woodstock to Altamont. This could be the most beautiful evening...
What's going on? Things move from good to bad so quickly, like Woodstock to Altamont. This could be the most beautiful evening...
"Say hi to forever" — the last blog post of Daul Kim.
The highly successful fashion model killed herself by hanging.
Who around us is taking their final steps? Would we notice?
"I already accepted that I relate to nothing. The more I gain the more lonely it is ... I know I'm like a ghost."Ah, but wait! I know she is already dead, but here is the blog: I Like to Fork Myself. It's not all depression and death. And many of the blog posts begin with the words "say hi," and it's not always in a dark or sarcastic way. Here's "say hi to insomnia put to good use." There's a charming picture of pancakes, and the text is:
making breakfast.She writes about her reactions to art and film and music. ("Say hi to forever" is a post with a music video.) She doesn't come across as morbidly self-absorbed. She seems intellectually alive. There's "say hi to sadist masochist" — "shel silverstein... you kinda fucked me up in a beautiful way" — about Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree." She seems to have some distance and humor about fashion: "say hi to where strange things meet" ("diiiiiioooooooooor dioooooooooooooooooooor kouttttttuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure"), "say hi to a saturday afternoon at bianca's" ("yeah this is how i/dress when im at my friends place/i wear louis barthelemy/as you can see/i dont really care about comfort ..."). If I were a regular reader of this blog, I would have seen an interesting, complex person. I wouldn't have known I was watching a person in the final steps of a dance with death.
im going to be a good wife !!!!!!!!!!!!
Who around us is taking their final steps? Would we notice?
November 20, 2009
November sunset.
IN THE COMMENTS: Amba said:
That thing in the sky looks like a Blakean comet that has something like this in it.
At the Things Looked At/Things Consumed Café...
... you can make up your own mind.
(Photos taken today at David Bacco Chocolates, where Meade had the Mayan and I had the White Violet.)
Bookstores that won't sell "Going Rogue"? "Our customers are thinking people. They're not into reading drivel."
That's Nathan Embretson, a bookseller at Pendragon Books in Oakland.
There's not a single copy on the shelf. Embretson said no one has asked for it except for one guy, who was kidding.
"He said he wanted to look at it but he also said he didn't really want to read it," Embretson said. "Anyway, he certainly didn't want to buy it. I think he regarded looking at it as a kind of punishment."
"Anything like that we wouldn't carry," said clerk Emily Stackhouse. "We're a small store and it would probably gross us all out. Some things you carry because of freedom of speech, but a book like that is just gross."
One customer did put in a special request for the book one evening but, perhaps thinking better in the light of day, failed to show up and actually pay money for it, Stackhouse said.
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