From "In Defense of the Country Lawyer/Is Jeff Sessions a 'dumb Southerner' because he didn’t go to an Ivy League school? A law professor on President Trump’s contempt for the attorney general" (NYT) by Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr., who's a lawprof at the University of Alabama, which counts Jeff Sessions among its alumni.
[O]ne could argue that while an Ivy League school provides a wonderful education in the law, it quite often sets a person on a narrowly defined career path. On the résumés of the current Supreme Court, you find academic posts, high-level government positions, corporate law partnerships — but very little of the contact with everyday people that comes from, say, working as a trial lawyer.... [I]t is schools like the University of Alabama that are producing the type of lawyers whose careers teach them to understand and practice the kind of law that impacts most Americans.Trump is — somewhere in there — a big elitist. And that must drive the elitists mad. He really is one of them, isn't he? So why doesn't he stay in his place and know that he's far down in the pecking order of elitists? How can he jump over in amongst the non-elites and win crowds? Don't those people see how he looks down on them? He needs to get back over here where the elite can look down on him, the way he looks down on the non-elite lawyers he's got in his inner circle.
What’s more, there is something telling in Mr. Trump’s sneering contempt for Southern lawyers in particular. It intersects with a general contempt for the South as an intellectually backward region and for the stereotype of the “country lawyer” as a backward, benighted legal mind....
It's a weird elite/non-elite game he's playing, and the elite don't want to understand it. They want to stop it.
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73 comments:
It's like Mr. Trump is from New York City or something.
Trump is an elistist in that he only likes people who like him back.
Nothing wrong with NYU. Lots of smart lawyers are NYU alums.
If Jeff Sessions is a dumb southerner, he was a dumb southerner before he didn't go to an Ivy League school.
This is a much smarter way to attack Trump.
Too bad nobody actually cares what they write or try to get us to think.
And it is clear Trump values results, not certificates.
New Yorker cartoon from the '30s, showing a group of wealthy snobs talking to one of their friends: "Come with us! We're going to the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt!"
What really bites is that Trump is not at all different from big-city businessmen. I worked for one in Baltimore. Owned a game company, a printing plant, and a typesetting firm that had a sweet government contract. He could have been Trump's twin: loud, boisterous, lying, always hustling for an edge. He pissed off Yogi Berra when Yogi approached him about doing a baseball game. Dott used him until Yogi twigged (I saw the letter left on Dott's desk).
Trump's not an outlier. He's an American. No wonder they hate him.
I would have been accepted at Harvard Law if I would have LIED on my application and said I was a member of the Omaha Tribe.
Plenty of idiots graduated from Harvard, Yale and Columbia.
A lot of words by a person determined to not understand insult theatre.
A lot goes into the making of a dumb southerner. It takes more than just not going to an Ivy League school.
I haven't gotten the book yet, but maybe Trump talks that way because he assumes those around him think like that. LBJ was really hung up about credentials.
But really, Cooley Law? That IS bad...
I must admit that as I was watching the Kavanaugh hearings, after I read the words on the screen informing me that Senator Coons had gone to Yale Law School, I began seeing him as quite intelligent.
Elizabeth Warren is not an ivy league educated lawyer. I wonder how many other Harvard Law professors went to law school with the great unwashed?
"Well, don't trust your soul to no backwoods Southern lawyer..."
The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia
The judge said guilty on a make-believe trial
Slapped the sheriff on the back with a smile
Said supper's waiting at home and I got to get to it
That's the night that the lights went out in Georgia
That's the night that they hung an innocent man
Well, don't trust your soul to no backwoods Southern lawyer
'Cause the judge in the town's got bloodstains on his hands
Aside, please tell me what the hell this video has to do with the song.
Mr. Trump’s sneering contempt for Southern lawyers in particular
How does the author know this? Is this more NYT/WaPo mind-reading?
I think you are trying to say too much here, Althouse. I certainly don't see any high level elite/non-elite communications strategy. I think the point is so much clearer, and more simple than your blogging in this instance.
The simple issue is Trump's own personal incoherence. And maybe the Times story also tried to do too much with it. But the paragraph that you (rightly) quoted says enough. Trump's own involvement with the Ivy League is as a bit of a tourist, only. Trump applied to Fordham and went there for two years, then transferred to Penn and went there for two years. Trump doesn't much interact with anybody from the Ivy League. He just talks about it. Few people in public life have made a bigger deal about such a thin connection with the Ivy League, than Donald Trump.
What surprises me is that Althouse seems to be accepting of the basic truth (largely unquoted and very much unattributed) that Trump is dismissive of people without Ivy League credentials in the first place. I don't doubt it, but I'd be more comfortable with a discussion of any supposed elitism or counter-elitism if we knew exactly what it was that Trump actually said in the first place.
NYT headline: Trump's Last Lawyer
I thought deplorables were painted to have thin skins. Will this work to drive a wedge in the legal community? Will the NYT succeed to project its contempt for Southerners, Westerners, Americans, maitre d's? A progressive step forward to isolation and resignation?
They have been caught in illegal or quasi-legal efforts to relieve their burden. There is more than one way to legally abort their unwanted, inconvenient baby.
Trump: Eating out the "elites" from the inside. Bummmmmmmmer for them.
The cache of Ivy League Law School is a sick cult. Independent minded clients can see reality in each lawyer: personality, aggression and communication skills are obvious in the man before you ever see the school that they attended. And the inner dignity, ritual practice , and social skills come from a man's Religious up bringing long before a law professor attempts to challenge them at age 23-25.
FTR Mercer in Macon is a top law school . As is Emory and other southern colleges. The quality of admissions is 99% responsible for the success of the graduates. Ethics is learned or not learned at about age 6.
That guy is pretty much the only person in Alabama who thinks that Trump is mad at Sessions because he has "sneering contempt for Southern lawyers in particular." Everybody else here figures he's angry at Sessions because he does not appear to be doing anything to clean up the corruption and incompetence that is rife in the DOJ and FBI.
The Ivy League in general seems to have lost whatever claim it had to excellence in education.
Obama as "president" of Harvard Law Review is only one example.
We are coming to a crisis in this country as even Engineering schools are starting to adopt affirmative action.
The competence crisis in Washington, which is full of Ivy League types, has been obvious for a while.
Ann Althouse said...
I must admit that as I was watching the Kavanaugh hearings, after I read the words on the screen informing me that Senator Coons had gone to Yale Law School, I began seeing him as quite intelligent.
I have never once listened to Chris Coons without thinking, "What a phony. There are many phonies in the Senate -- Bill Nelson is a world class phony straight out of Central Casting -- but for my money, Chris Coons is the biggest phony in the Senate."
Trump managed, by sheer force of will, to win a presidential election and improve the economy.
He graduated from what is arguably the best business school in the world.
He surrounds himself with people who can do the tasks he sets for them and reverses course when need requires.
And his comments about Sessions continue to mean very little.
The grand jury seated to hear evidence about McCabe's likely criminal behavior is important.
And Sessions can operate where it matters because Trump creates the necessary space.
Imagine Trump is not an idiot and there may be a method, discovered.
Some people cannot overcome their own prejudice.
Trump doesn't like Sessions NOT because he's a country lawyer, its because he's disloyal and lazy.
Partly, its because Sessions isn't an executive, he's was a Senator, and he obviously doesn't know how to "run things" and "get things done".
But mostly, its because of Sessions' recusal and letting Rosenstien run the Mueller investigation and half of DoJ. Plus Sessions isn't a particularly good speaker - and he's the one responsible for Rosenstein being Deputy DoJ.
Sessions is directly responsible for one of the most insane situations in POTUS-DOJ History. The DoJ - giving a blank check to a special prosecutor to investigate the Sitting president, and then providing zero oversight.
Blumenthal went to Harvard undergrad and Yale Law where he was the editor-in-chief of the Law Review. He also lied for years and years about his war record. He turns my stomach and not just because he lied about being in Vietnam. I gag every time I see him on TV and think what's wrong with the people of CT. An unlikable prick.
Maybe I'm crazy, but as a tax paying citizen I find the fact that the culture of the FBI is such that an agent feels free to express contempt for large swathes of the electorate to be a concern. That didn't happen in a vacuum. Certainly he has the right to think that, but as far as I know, he doesn't have a right to work at the FBI. If he had expressed such opinions about some minority group, or Hillary supporters, I don't think the reaction in the FBI would have been, "of course!" My guess is that FBI agents who didn't approve of Hillary would have had to be pretty circumspect about it and kept their mouths closed. Its clear to anybody who cares to pay attention that Hillary was given special treatment because of political corruption. And it appears to a lot of people that Sessions' primary loyalty is to the DOJ and therefore he is not doing what he should be doing, cleaning up the institutional rot.
Yeah it's so terrible for Trump to disparage the South--not like any of the other elites/Ivy educated important people do that! Ridiculous.
Dobie Gray: The In Crowd
SNL: Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer
I still miss Phil Hartman.
"The competence crisis in Washington, which is full of Ivy League types, has been obvious for a while."
Bruce and Nellie Ohr apparently met at Harvard/Radcliffe, where they received their undergraduate degrees, and she went back and taught at the latter after getting her PhD from Stanford. He stayed and got his law degree at HLS. Our best and brightest looking out for our best interests. /sarc
Mr. Trump’s sneering contempt for Southern lawyers in particular
How does the author know this? Is this more NYT/WaPo mind-reading?
It sounds like more leftist projection.
And it is clear Trump values results, not certificates.
Bingo! Jeff Sessions dug a hole and jumped in when he let Comey and Rosenstein roll him early in 2017. He’s done nothing since then to climb out.
Coons is lucky to be there. He was supposed to be a sacrificial lamb against “unbeatable” Mike Castle in 2010, but the Tea Party got Christine O’Donnell the Republican Nomination.
The elite class is composed of two groups the actual elite, based on accomplishments, and the self elected elite, based on the right family and school. Trump is from the former group and many of his adversaries are in the latter.
Who'd they expect Trump to hire, Atticus Finch?
The longer I look at this situation, the more Trump reminds me of Caesar: a patrician on the outs with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove who is happy to continue the norms violations that others put into place before...twice as hard.
This does not end well.
Jesus FIDO, you sound like a hand ringing democrat. Everything is going to be fine. This too will pass.
"I must admit that as I was watching the Kavanaugh hearings, after I read the words on the screen informing me that Senator Coons had gone to Yale Law School, I began seeing him as quite intelligent."
Did you not have the same feeling watching Booker and Blumenthal? Or for that matter about Klobuchar (Chicago!), or Leahy and Hirono (Georgetown), or Whitehouse (UVA)?
At what point would the manifest ignorance, bad faith, and phoniness of their graduates lead you to question the quality and judgment of the schools these people attended? More generally, what does their conduct tell you about our elite and their institutions?
"he's disloyal and lazy"
Right. Trump's insults, like most of his "convictions," are situational. If Sessions acted like a stand-up guy, he'd suddenly be great and a credit to his region
Same with Trudeau. If he caves enough to make a deal, Trump will be nice to him. Etc. etc.
Dave Begley: "Blumenthal went to Harvard undergrad and Yale Law where he was the editor-in-chief of the Law Review. He also lied for years and years about his war record. He turns my stomach and not just
because he lied about being in Vietnam."
Uh oh.
Now you have done it. You have called out one of LLR Chuck's favorite dems.
Chuckie defended and lied for Blumenthal quite vigorously not that long ago.
Right about the same time as he was praising the "competency" and "effectiveness" of that hapless dem hack Durbin.
Chuck does that quite a bit, doesnt he?
#StrongDemDefender Chuck: "The simple issue is Trump's own personal incoherence."
Looks like Trumps latest jobs and consumer confidence and manufacturers confidence and small business owners confidence and business investment and unemployment numbers are all "incoherently" fantastic!
LOL
The far left, the dems and LLR Chuck weep.
Reasonable inferences may be drawn....
One reason why Trump is frustrated and lashing out.
The President (Chief Executive) wants to declassify the FISA application material as requested. The President requests the DOJ and FBI to remove the requested redacted portions of the Carter Page FISA application. Specifically:
“pages 10-12 and 17-34 and relevant footnotes, all of the Bruce Ohr 302s and other relevant documents, including exculpatory evidence regarding Carter Page and others, that were presented to the Gang of Eight, but not presented to the FISA Court.”
So President Trump requests his FBI Director and Attorney General to declassify those documents as requested by congress. However, if the FBI Director and/or Attorney General refuse to declassify those documents, then what happens?
Remember, all current behavior reflects the current DOJ and FBI leadership are just as complicit in the current corruption -via the cover-up- as the former DOJ and FBI leadership. The current DOJ/FBI leadership (both members of the executive branch) have been refusing to turn over these and other documents.
Yes, President Trump is the Chief Executive, but unfortunately he has executive cabinet members who are actively acting against his requests. [See the numerous Trump tweets for examples of the President’s frustration].
Now the ordinary process becomes anything but ordinary.
Now the problem moves from process to politics.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions (he’s recused and of no help) so the request goes to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray. If they refuse, President Trump’s option is to fire and replace the officials who are blocking the request. However, that option is politically charged…. [hence the media drum beating the 25th amendment; see, this is all coordinated].
The comparison to Gulliver and the Lilliputians is tempting.
Of Trump’s four adult kids, three graduated from Penn like their dad. Eric graduated from Georgetown where Tiffany now goes to Law school.
Penn is a fine school filled with students who were rejected from Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. Those are the three most prestigious academic universities in the US. But back when Trump was in college they were all-male schools filled up with mostly boys from connected families like Gore and W. Perhaps the new money Trump was envious of the old money guys like Bush. Seemed to be a theme with guys his age like in the Great Gatsby. Trump might still have this view at times.
I'm not going to try to interpret the whole Trump bashing on Sessions thing, but I do think Sessions made a mistake in recusing himself before even discussing it with Trump. It's as if he was putting his personal honour first, and this may be why Trump works in "Southern" as an epithet. Those Southerners, always so quick to fight a duel ....
From the hearing yesterday, sounds like Coons and Coach K overlapped at Yale Law School back in the late 1980s. Must have been a very dull place.
I miss Scalia. He had personality. Coach K is a tool.
I didn’t know and don’t care where Sessions went to school. The Ivy League is filled with morons, too, and there are smart, effective people from every college.
Sessions is not effective. Neither was his namesake Jefferson Davis. They are both losers. I like Attorney Generals who aren’t named after Confederates.
Chuck wrote:
"What surprises me is that Althouse seems to be accepting of the basic truth (largely unquoted and very much unattributed) that Trump is dismissive of people without Ivy League credentials in the first place. I don't doubt it, but I'd be more comfortable with a discussion of any supposed elitism or counter-elitism if we knew exactly what it was that Trump actually said in the first place."
If only you applied this to your own cited "quotes" from Trump.
Michael K,
Trump could, if he wanted, have the FISA applications brought to the Oval Office and hand exactly those pages directly to the committee chairpersons. He really doesn't need the cooperation from the DoJ other than they bring the documents over to the Oval Office. Would they really refuse to bring them to Trump himself?
Of course, all of this makes me think about that NYTimes OpEd in a different light- perhaps that was someone at the DoJ setting up his own resignation as a response to the pressure to release the FISA application to Congress in unredacted form.
And here is the thing- Congress already has seen those documents in the secured location- Trump could simply go there and walk the commmittee chairpersons and the documents right out the door into the public.
I must admit that as I was watching the Kavanaugh hearings, after I read the words on the screen informing me that Senator Coons had gone to Yale Law School, I began seeing him as quite intelligent.
And I must admit that this makes me think less of you, Althouse. If you think about it, you are letting the admissions committee at Yale determine who is truly intelligent and who is merely bright for you instead of deciding on your own.
I have written it before- the biggest problem with Sessions as AG is probably his age. There aren't that many 70+ year old men with the stamina to stay atop the issues in a department that large. Trump should have appointed a much younger man to the job. I think Sessions is just not up to the task of running a department that is likely a great majority anti-Trump.
Would they really refuse to bring them to Trump himself?
@Yancey, based on the Times Op-Ed I would assume an affirmative answer.
I must admit that as I was watching the Kavanaugh hearings, after I read the words on the screen informing me that Senator Coons had gone to Yale Law School, I began seeing him as quite intelligent.
IOW, you weren't impressed by his legal reasoning. I found his questioning too arcane for my background, but not impressive. He seemed to be digging into a statement Kavanaugh made about a law which is no longer in force and ignoring the statements Kavanaugh has made about current law. The most intelligent writing and speaking imo is clarifying, doesn't confuse. So my impression of Coons was that he was working hard just trying to make himself appear impressive, but his questioning was pointless. Of course I don't disrespect him for being trained at Yale, I have to take him as he appeared in this situation.
I had to laugh at one point in an answer to a very tedious line of questioning, Kavanaugh threw in a mention about he and Coons both being at Yale together. Was it meant in a friendly, collegiate way? I thought it actually may have been a subtle dig, very sly and well deserved. While they both started out together at Yale now Kavanaugh is on the verge of a lifetime appointment to the highest court and Coons is a junior Senator who has to fund raise and campaign to be reelected every six years, so there. Nice move, Mr. Kavanaugh.
People On the Internet tell me that Trump complains about Sessions in order to force the Left to defend Sessions. That way, when Sessions reveals what he has been working on behind the scenes, the Left will be trapped in their support of him. I think these People On the Internet forget that the Left doesn't mind pretending that their former support/condemnation of someone never happened if it's more convenient to forget it.
Blogger Drago said...
#StrongDemDefender Chuck: "The simple issue is Trump's own personal incoherence."
Looks like Trumps latest jobs and consumer confidence and manufacturers confidence and small business owners confidence and business investment and unemployment numbers are all "incoherently" fantastic!
Wait a secoond, I thought those numbers were Deep State Fake News????? I knowed this becaws Dronald told me to think that during the election.
For all the posturing, Trump seems careful not to do Sessions any actual harm, and I would think he could have by now, if that is what he wanted to do.
An inference? Worse, assumes facts not in evidence.
If Trump were to speak well of Mr. Sessions, the Democrats would require no further proof that the Attorney General's Office was in collusion with the Executive it was established to serve.
When I hear "krotoszynski" i think moonlight and magnolias. Then I look at it and think scrabble.
Come on Howard. Up your game amigo.
Agreed, I also believe elitism is exactly the reason behind TDS.
It's an attitude developed greatly during Obama's 8 years: opponents are perceived as unbearably offensive for the mere pretense to be heard - of course, their being in power is a catastrophe: newspapers are even obligated (sometimes) to report other people's point of view, sometimes. Image their pain.
It's a case of "the personal is political." For Trump is surely elite, but just as surely there are different flavors of elite.
Consider (for example) "The Apprentice." Or Trump's promotion of (fake) wrestling at his N.J. casinos. Reality TV and fake wrestling aren't exactly highbrow entertainments, yet it's clear that Trump can not only appreciate them but appreciate those who appreciate them.
Can you imagine Queen Hillary presiding over a WWF wresting event without telegraphing her vast disgust at the audience for such things? Let alone former Pres. Obama's vast distaste for such people?
It's the core secret of Trump's success: billionaire he may be, and POTUS too: yet he seems to retain a geniune appreciation of an affection for those that certain others would consign to that "basket of deplorables."
Of course, this aspect of Trump hardly makes him appear dignified (just the opposite). But it does go a long way to explain his appeal among those we might call (for lack of a better term) "commoners": those who are not elite, and who know full well that they and theirs are not and never will be considered for even the lowest rungs of "elite."
My lawyer hero, besides all the lawyers here, is Brad Bannon of the Law School at Campbell University, he of the Duke Lacrosse case. What reputation does his school have?
The worst oral argument before the Supreme Court I have ever witnessed was an argument by a Harvard Professor who was an expert in very area of the law that he was arguing.
Wait a secoond, I thought those numbers were Deep State Fake News????? I knowed this becaws Dronald told me to think that during the election.
Somebody please let Howard know it's no longer 2016.
Blumenthal has always reminded me of the character of Senator Jim Pine in Mel Gibson's 2010 movie "Edge of Darkness".
So apparently the only evidence of his contempt is the Woodward book, which is of dubious veracity. Furthermore, it's based on criticism of only one specific lawyer, not a whole class of lawyers. If you look at who Trump has hired, his actions suggest that he doesn't really have a problem with non-Ivy League lawyers. Now has Trump denigrated country lawyers in private while talking about Sessions? Maybe. He tends to use any tool at hand to criticize, but it seems to be part of an act to get his way, and not an indication of any deeply held beliefs.
NYT doubles down on stupid, fake news. Or is it triples down. First, we have to believe that Woodward’s informant exists. Second, we have to believe that the alleged “dumb southerner” quote is accurate. Third, we have to believe that Trump is contemptuous of non-Ivy lawyers despite his employing a bevy of them in important capacities.
Let’s see. We have a gossip mongering journalist quoting his phantasmic source claiming to quote the President. Then we have contrary evidence in the form of the President’s actual behavior. Who you goin’ to believe, the NYT or your lyin’ eyes.
Give them credit though for finding a law professor silly enough to publicly pursue an NYT straw man. Although silly law professors seem to be in plentiful supply.
"Goodbye, Mr.Rosenstein"
I knowed this becaws Dronald told me to think that during the election.
We already have a mouthbreather act on the blog, Howie, yours is more credible but I do think he was here first, so, ah, you can tell that to the, er, to the OTHER Marines.
What would be interesting w/b for you to do the strac Marine bit awhile instead of the joker Marine bit. It's like any spice, shit; if overused, how soon one sickens of it. You seem to lack direction. What are you hiding from?
The way they string these shows out, like the X-Files, is because the source it target always plays hard to get, teases it out, then gets dead. Tell us what you're really thinking, Howard, before it's too late.
Trump's contempt for Sessions has nothing to do with Sessions' southern roots. It has to do with Sessions lack of backbone. The organization for which Sessions is responsible is a slow moving train wreck and in two years we have sen nothing from Sessions that shows any willingness to stop it.
If I may make a stab at a metaphor, Sessions takes charge and acts consequentially, only in those areas in which he is allowed to act. IOW in part he is being led around by the nose like in Yes, Minister.... In which areas is he somehow barred from acting? On Mueller's machine. On what else?
Sessions is getting bad advice. Someone on the inside of him is bad juju and advising for ill and not for good. He's literally not this dumb. The alternative is it's all an act, like wrestling. People who watch, or watched, that "sport," and they persist even unto the youth of today, will have an excellent advantage in comprehending the circus we are seeing.
I think everyone who fought this hard this long to so little good effect, ought to be sorry when they finally lose. Some people can never be sorry for what they've done, it's just not in 'em.
Hi, this is Donald from Queens on the line.”
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