"You have said before that you haven’t seen any of the 'Star Wars' films. Do you feel that affected your performance in any way?"

Variety asks Werner Herzog in "Werner Herzog on Why He Didn’t Need to See ‘Star Wars’ Films for ‘The Mandalorian’ Role" (The "The Mandalorian" is Disney’s live-action “Star Wars” series.)

Answer:

No, it doesn’t really matter. You see, it was a very lively exchange, man-to-man so to speak, between Jon Favreau and myself. I was not tossed into unknown territory. I was very well briefed. I knew what was expected of me — I knew the interior landscape of the character and I knew the exterior landscape. You shouldn’t feel upset that I haven’t seen the “Star Wars” films; I hardly see any films. I read. I see two, three, maybe four films per year.

Asked if he watches television, he says:

I do, I watch the news from different sources. Sometimes I see things that are completely against my cultural nature. I was raised with Latin and Ancient Greek and poetry from Greek antiquity, but sometimes, just to see the world I live in, I watch “WrestleMania.”... You have to know what a good amount of the population is watching. Do not underestimate the Kardashians. As vulgar as they may be, it doesn’t matter that much, but you have to find some sort of orientation. As I always say, the poet must not close his eyes, must not avert them.

I like that — "The poet must not close his eyes, must not avert them." It's an idea I associate with another film director, Akira Kurosawa. Perhaps Herzog read the same obituary I read in 1998. I blogged about it in February 2004:

"To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes." On this topic of disgust and shock... let me share a passage from the obituary, written by Rick Lyman, for Akira Kurosawa, which is one of the most influential things I've read in my life....

"Does this dress make me look guilty?"

Anna Sorokin, the fake heiress accused of being a society scammer, was found guilty. There is an Instagram account devoted to her style in court. Our chief fashion critic @VVFriedman explains why courtroom fashion actually matters.

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 2, 2019

The linked article isn't just about Sorokin but about various celebrities making questionable courtroom fashion choices. Excerpt:

And in 2011, during her trial for felony grand theft in Los Angeles, Lindsay Lohan garnered more attention for what she wore on her way to court — very short, clingy dresses, often in white or beige — than for the reasons she was in court, which may not have helped with her legal troubles, but made a different kind of case for her own fame in the public eye. “She walks into court like a movie star,” the lawyer Gloria Allred told The Times during the trial. “Apparently she hopes to be one.”

Ms. Allred also said then that her own general approach was to advise clients to dress for court as though they were dressing for church.

Some people get attention, some grab attention, and some — these are the ones you need to look out for — garner attention. It's not enough for them to have the attention right there in the moment. They need to amass it — to pile it up as if in a storehouse or granary.

ADDED: My all-time favorite celebrity courtroom look was Anna Nicole:



She won — in the Supreme Court, on a jurisdiction issue — and then she died and then she lost.

AND: To my eye, the look Anna Sorokin conjures up is the persecuted innocent:

Billy Ray Cyrus speaks a paragraph of strangeness and sadness.

"One more thing about Kurt—Kurt was one of those guys. That's why I'm concerned about Miley. I think that his world was just spinning so fast and he had so many people around him that didn't help him. Like Anna Nicole Smith—you could see that train wreck coming. I was actually trying to reach out to Anna Nicole Smith, because I kept telling Tish and everybody around me, going, 'This is a disaster.' Michael Jackson—I was trying to reach out to Michael Jackson. I knew he had kids, and I was going to invite his kids down to a taping of Hannah—I just felt it would be good for Michael. I don't know why. I met Michael one time at the Grammys. He sat in front of me, in the front row, and a dime rolled out from under and hit my boot—this very boot I've got on—and I reached down and picked up this dime, and looked, he was going through his pockets, and I said, 'Are you looking for this?' 'Thank you.' And he took that dime and put it back in his pocket. I looked at my manager, I just said, 'Why did Michael Jackson have a dime?...' Nobody could tell me."

(Link. "Kurt" is Kurt Cobain.)

When John McCain met Anna Nicole Smith...

... and told her he liked her TV show:



(Via Ben Smith.)

"What Not to Wear" is not the kind of reality show I would normally watch.

It's a "how-to" reality show, to use the Television Without Pity categories. The reality shows I enjoy are nearly all in the "competitive" category: "Survivor," "America's Next Top Model," "Project Runway," and — though "enjoy" isn't really the right word — "American Idol." I used to like "The Apprentice" and "Top Chef," too, but I don't want to watch any more seasons of the thing. I've had enough. The other category of reality show is "candid," and I love this category when it's at its best, like the first season of "The Osbournes" or the third season of "The Real World." The first season of "The Newlyweds" was good, and I don't mind stooping to some really trashy things sometimes, like "Wife Swap" and, in its day, the Anna Nicole Smith show — was it called "The Anna Nicole Smith Show"? But how-to? I don't want anybody telling me what to do, so why would it entertain me to see some purported experts telling somebody else what to do?

But I watched the new episode of "What Not to Wear" because part of it was filmed at a cool Brooklyn shop called Lee Lee's Valise:

This place is run by the wife of one of our very best commenters here on the Althouse blog, Trooper York. And he tipped me off that they were filming the episode, so I came down to the shop that evening after my class. The filming was over, but the stars of the show were there along with their how-to victim, and I wanted to photograph the store.

I wasn't trying to photograph the characters from the show or even act like I noticed them. I talked to the guy a little at one point, but just in the way that a shopper would chat with another customer. I didn't want to bother them, and I certainly wasn't going to act like a fan of the show, which I'm not. In fact, I still don't know the man's name. I'd have to look it up even now. Trooper York showed me a lot of merchandise and explained his theory of the place, which was very well worked out to appeal to young women who need large sizes but don't want to be hit in the face with the fact they they are shopping in a large-sizes store. The place is at the intersection of Court and President streets, which is easy for law types to remember — 2 out of the 3 branches of government.

Anyway, I just watched the show, which made over a 29-year-old woman who is a student at my old law school NYU. They converged on her at some law lecture and, horrifyingly informed her that they'd been secretly filming her to get footage of her wearing terrible clothes. They must get some kind of advance approval before they start the filming, right? If someone did that to me without my prior approval, I'd want to sue them. It's stalking!

So then they have to tell her everything she thinks is wrong, even when it isn't. She wears black skirts. Yes, most of them are too large, but the woman has lost a 100 pounds and is still in the process of losing weight. But the basic idea of wearing black skirts is obviously a good one, and the experts insist that it's not, and then they have to backtrack and say that actually it is. They are shocked that she wears black knee-high hosiery instead of full tights under a long skirt, but why? It's comfortable and invisible unless you yank up her skirt — which the fashion experts did, for the amusement of TV viewers.

She had a nice, neat black jacket that was just way too large, but instead of talking about how she needed new clothes because she's lost so much weight, the experts showed her a completely different style of jacket, a gray plaid thing that they insisted was "young" and "professional" because it had wide, high lapels and buttoned up tightly under the breasts. There was no acknowledgment at all that the jacket won't look right or feel right buttoned up like that when she's sitting down, which she will be nearly all of the time working as a lawyer.

They showed her a gaudy dress and contended that a loud print camouflages the shape of your body. This seemed insane, and it was also inconsistent with another one of their theories — that you should love your body as it is and show off the shape you have.

They spent some time doing the young woman's hair and makeup. Since she really needed a good haircut and wasn't wearing any makeup, this made a big improvement, but it had nothing to do with "what not to wear." Nor did it teach us anything useful. You already know you need to get a good haircut, don't you? And what woman doesn't realize she'd look better with some foundation and a little eye and lip makeup? That's not hard.

The show ends with everyone celebrating the amazing changes in the woman's appearance. You have scenes where everyone claps and cheers and the makeover target twirls around in her new clothes — which look ugly to me — and professes to be transformed. We're assured — typical woman's TV pap — that the young woman was always a wonderful person and now her exterior matches her wonderful interior.

Blah! I'd rather see a show where philosophers descend on a woman with a perfect exterior and rip into her for her intellectual and spiritual failings, put her on some kind of internally transformative regime, and turn her into a human being of substance. Can we get that?

Exiting through the door marked 2007.

The NYT Magazine has its annual "Lives They Lived" issue, with short essays on a wide range of individuals who died in the past year. A blogger gets a farewell essay this year. Steve Gilliard:

Though Gilliard, unlike many bloggers, always used his real name, few readers knew much about him. They didn’t know, for instance, that at age 39 he had open-heart surgery to repair an infected valve. They didn’t know he lived alone in a small apartment in East Harlem. And, although Gilliard often wrote about race and alluded to his own perspective, a lot of readers never realized he was black.... The paradox of Gilliard’s existence is a familiar story on the blogs, where people often adapt avatars that are more like the selves they imagine being. Online, he was vicious and uncompromising. In person, Gilly, as his close friends called him, was reserved and enigmatic.... He lamented that he didn’t know what it was to “wake up naked in a strange bed,” but, he wrote, “at 35, I’ve figured out that this is it, at least for now. Anything I do, any life I make, is going to revolve around words and computers and strange, bright people.” [T]he few dozen mostly white bloggers who came to Harlem for the funeral saw for the first time the stark urban setting of Gilliard’s childhood, while his parents and relatives groped to understand what kind of work he had been doing at that computer and why scores of people had come so far to see him off.

There was Brett Somers, one of "The Match Game" celebrities:

She wasn’t Mae West, 80 trying to act 20, or an embalmed Gabor, but rather, with her Elton John glasses and Toni Tennille hairdo and saucy answers, an average-looking menopausal woman with a healthy regard for sex. In one of the most memorable broadcasts, Somers’s husband, Jack Klugman, was on the panel and seemed to be rushing the host, Gene Rayburn, along, as if to say that he and Somers had something better to do.

There was Mary Crisp:

Crisp testified before a Congressional committee on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1973 without really thinking about it much supporting the E.R.A. had been a Republican Party position for nearly 35 years. (The Democrats had been more split, some worrying that the amendment would wipe out hard-won but ultimately counterproductive laws protecting women from things like working overtime or lifting heavy objects.) But in 1978, Crisp ran head-on into the new insurgent right, which had built its grass-roots strength on issues like opposition to the E.R.A. and abortion. Once it became clear that Reagan was going to be the party nominee, she knew her time was just about up... The Republican Party made Crisp nonexistent at the convention she had helped organize. Her name vanished from the program. She left her Detroit hotel clutching a big pink stuffed elephant inscribed, “Go Mary!” which, alas, she could not fit into the airport taxi.

There was Robert Adler, the guy who invented the object some people hold in their hand more than any other object. Two animals got recognized — a parrot and a chimpanzee — because they almost, maybe, cared about talking to us. And here's a list of the famous people who died in 2007. As usual, it's a diverse group of people thrown together by the happenstance of death occurring around the same time. It excludes those who died too close to the publication date — but Benazir Bhutto made it — and those — it could be you or I — who die in the last few days of the year. We do have 3 days left. The new list starts with January, so, the spiffy look of the list is more important than acknowledging those who slipped into eternity through the closing door of the previous year.

Denny Doherty, 66, Mamas and Papas singer.... Frankie Laine, 93, hit-making crooner.... Anna Nicole Smith, 39, famous for being famous.... Kurt Vonnegut, 84, novelist who caught the imagination of his age..... Don Herbert, 89, "Mr. Wizard" to science buffs.... Tammy Faye Bakker, 65, emotive evangelist.... Michelangelo Antonioni, 94, Italian movie auteur. Ingmar Bergman, 89, master filmmaker.... Luciano Pavarotti, 71, tenor of his generation.... Joey Bishop, 89, last of the Rat Pack.... Norman Mailer, 84, towering writer with matching ego... Evel Knievel, 69, legendary daredevil... Ike Turner, 76, R&B singer and former husband of Tina Turner.

Don't you picture them traveling together into the afterlife? Didn't I see a movie with a diverse group of recently dead persons making the passage? I remember them in black and white, on a small boat, and arguing. Let's check this list:

1. Between Two Worlds (1944)... passengers on a shrouded luxury liner visit with The Examiner, who hears their cases and tickets them for their next destination, depending on who they were and how they died....

Close. It's a boat, but it sounds too large.

2. A Matter Of Life And Death... (1946).... the differences between Brits and Yanks—when the latter arrive in heaven, they stampede straight to the Coke machine....

I'm sure I never saw that, judging from the clip at the link, with David Niven sitting on the escalator to heaven.

3. Black Orpheus (1959)... following the rhythm of Carnival and the belief that the barrier between life and death can be easily, almost playfully circumnavigated, for those with the right attitude and the right paperwork.

This is one of those classics I always felt I should see back in the days when I was fulfilling the obligation of seeing all the classics. But I've never seen it.

4. Defending Your Life (1991)... After dying, mortals go to a big, bland city full of big, bland courtrooms, where their lives are examined to see whether they've conquered fear enough to be ready for the next stage of existence....

This is a pretty good Albert Brooks movie with Meryl Streep that got many viewings chez Althouse in the 1990s. It always irritated me that getting into heaven was an entirely 1990s American idea of self-actualization. "Self-actualization" isn't the right word, though, is it? People stopped saying "self-actualization" more than 15 years ago, I think. It sounds self-indulgent, but nevertheless more challenging than "self-fulfillment," which is what we'd say now. Imagine access to heaven depending on whether you'd fulfilled yourself on earth.

5. Afterlife (1998)... government workers... operate out of a run-down rural facility where the newly dead spend a week among peeling paint and bargain-basement furniture, selecting the memory from life that means the most to them. Then the facility staff recreates those memories on film for the dearly departed, who take nothing but that memory when they move on to whatever comes next.

This is an elegant movie, focusing on what is being left behind and not the arrival in the next world. We see a strange little place of transition.

6. Corpse Bride (2005)... the dead seem to hang out in skeletal or zombie form in a big Burtony goth-tinged paradise full of aggressively animated "inanimate" objects and spontaneous song-and-dance routines.

Not what I'm trying to think of, but it sounds cool.

7. Beetlejuice (1988)... recently dead couple Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis wind up haunting their old house... Davis and Baldwin have to acclimate via a handbook titled Handbook For The Recently Deceased, and because they’re held in place by an apathetic, overworked, hostile bureaucracy full of people whose bodies clearly and comically display the marks of their ugly deaths.

Excellent. I've seen this one many times. But it's not the one I'm trying to remember. Perhaps I'm thinking of an old "Twilight Zone."

8. The Rapture (1991)... Michael Tolkin’s oddball meditation on apocalypticism. After Mimi Rogers, suffering in the desert waiting for the second coming, performs a mercy killing on her daughter, she winds up on a featureless, vaguely otherworldly plain.

I remember Siskel and Ebert raving over this one back then.

9. Carousel (1956)... starts off with Gordon MacRae already dead and reaping his eternal reward, as part of a crew hanging up glittering stars in a space that might represent the sky, but which more resembles the auditorium in a particularly well-funded high school during a “Starlight Express”-themed prom.

That's not it.

10. Flatliners (1990).... the afterlife is a terrific place, full of Elysian fields or giant naked boobs, depending on the proclivities of the people who go there.

Fine-tune your fantasies, people, before it's too late. Make sure it's something you won't find tedious after a billion years.

11. What Dreams May Come (1998)... heaven ... has kindly guides to help newcomers adapt and understand the next phase of their existences, and it even adapts itself to its inhabitants' personal interests and tastes....

This was an early CGI film that was enough to make me never want to see another CGI film. And I only saw the trailer for it.

12. Don't Tempt Me (2001)... Heaven is a deserted, black-and-white version of vintage Paris where everyone speaks French, and a deserving soul like Victoria Abril gets her own private ’30s nightclub where hundreds of illusory patrons hang on every note she sings and beg for more...

In the audience, perhaps, Denny Doherty, Frankie Lane, Ike Turner, and Luciano Pavarotti.

On the radio.

I'm on "Week In Review" on Wisconsin Public Radio this morning. If you go here, you can find the button at the top left to stream on line from 8 to 9 Central Time or look for the word "archive" to listen to the recorded version later. If you listen live, consider calling in. You can get me and my co-guest Professor Georgia Duerst-Lahti to address some issue that was in the news in the last 7 days.

I've done the show with Georgia before. It was back on February 9th, and you can listen to streaming audio here. We began with the big story of the week: the death of Anna Nicole Smith. It's a point-counterpoint style of presentation, and Georgia gets to be the Left, while I'm supposed to be the Right. And I'll come across as a right-winger of course, because the subject of the war will come up, and nothing else will affect perceptions enough to move the political sensor dial.

What, you're actually in Wisconsin and want to listen on a real radio radio? We're on all the "Ideas Network" stations, like WHA in Madison and WHAD in Milwaukee.

UPDATE: I'm on now. Able to blog while broadcasting.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Well, so much for blogging during the show! I could have done it, but I forgot to. Now, I'm listening to the recorded show. I think it was pretty lively, with some callers quite hostile to me.

MORE: At around 7 minutes, a caller asserts that 50% of Americans see their country as the equivalent of the Third Reich.

"Clowns in dreadlocks escorting the casket draped in rhinestone-studded satin."

Losers in gaudy, ragamuffin clothes, camera hogs and hangers-on.

Poor Anna Nicole, a trashy life, and a sleazy death, and in the end a horrible, tasteless funeral. All of it awful, but somehow fitting.

Is the commentary on bad taste in bad taste?

The casket remained closed - draped with a satin, feather-fringed quilt.

Rhinestones spelled out her signature and the trademark smiley face she used when giving autographs.

Even though the coffin was closed, no one was left in any doubt what Anna Nicole was wearing - what would have been an eye-catching, Oscar-worthy gown: pink and white, embroidered with a heart across the bodice - and revealed in all its glory on "Entertainment Tonight." And a tiara.

Are they just making stuff up?

"Every Case Gets the Judge That It Deserves."

David Lat says that about the Anna Nicole Smith case. Wouldn't it be weird if that were a general principle.

ADDED: Judge Larry Seidlin's wife doesn't quite say he was auditioning for his own reality show.

"People who know him, and people who meet him on the street all say the same thing, 'You should have your own television show,'" Seidlin's wife, Belinda, said Thursday night....

As he read his ruling Thursday — giving custody of Smith's body to a court-appointed guardian for her 5-month-old daughter Dannielynn — he wept.

Earlier in the week-long hearing, Seidlin told one high-strung blonde lawyer that she was beautiful, and took cell phone calls from his wife. He shared his morning exercise routine with the courtroom and the cameras....

At one point, referring to a dress being made for Smith's burial, Seidlin's face soured as he expressed his general discomfort over funeral details.

"This is the one area I always ran away from — the death," Seidlin said.

It prompted amused attorney Stephen Tunstall to note wryly, "But you're a probate judge," referring to the type of judge whose job is to deal with wills.

"I don't think him to be crazy at all,'' said Belinda Seidlin. "I find him to be brilliant, and that's tough to say when you're married to someone for a long time."

Absurd.

The crying, melodramatic judge in the Anna Nicole case.

I find him quite bizarre. Too much self-expression!

It's me and Jim Pinkerton on Bloggingheads.TV!

Enough with the Eric Alterman on Bloggingheads. My diavlog is up now. I'm gabbing with the estimable Jim Pinkerton. Topics (with times):

Iraq inspires Arab romanticism (as Isaiah Berlin predicted and Doug Feith didn't) (07:13) McCain is yesterday, Hagel is today. Giuliani tomorrow? (07:57) Romney's ecumenical appeal (02:18) Justice Kennedy begs for love and money (09:33) Britney shaves head, Anna Nicole completes career (09:22) Why Edmund Burke would like "American Idol" (04:56) What do women want? Not Bloggingheads.tv? (13:07)

"Anna Nicole Smith embodied America... its overabundance; its exploitability, and its propensity to exploit."

Tunku Varadarajan writes:

And to many foreigners--particularly foreign men--she embodied America in a literal way, too: in a brassy blondeness that people in repressed cultures marvel at. It is no coincidence that the places in the world where women such as Ms. Smith are the most popular are typically those with which the U.S. has the worst diplomatic relations.

For all her gaudy excesses, there is in some of us--or there ought to be--the urge to treat Ms. Smith gently. Hers is a pathetic story, of ersatz celebrity, dead children and the pursuit of money, sex, drugs, weight loss and validation-through-litigation. That this pursuit was so thoroughly unembarrassed is a comment not so much on Ms. Smith's personal aesthetics as it is on human folly, U.S.-style, taken to its logical extreme.

She is us?

Too sad to watch?

We talk about Anna Nicole at the beginning of today's radio show -- listen here -- and I say I watched her reality show. I recommend it.

"With Anna Nicole, she was pathetic but at the same time you thought, 'Gosh, if I could just scoop you up and fix things, it would be OK...."

"You wouldn't want to scoop up Paris Hilton.'"

Ah, yes. The classic two types of hyper-sexualized women -- the kind you think you can help, who just really need you, and the ones who seem ready to crush you if you came anywhere near. Anna Nicole is to Paris Hilton as Marilyn Monroe is to Madonna.

"Just a moment's pleasure."

UPDATE: YouTube has deleted this video, which was Bryan Ferry singing the song "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" (The song was written by Carole King and made popular in the early 60s by the great "girl group" The Shirelles.) In the Ferry video, Anna Nicole Smith appears.

Anna.

R.I.P.

ADDED: I was just checking my archives to see if I'd ever written about Anna Nicole Smith. I'm sure I wrote about her Supreme Court case a couple times. (You can see at the link that she was involved in many legal controversies.) But a search for "Anna Nicole" only led me to one post, less than three months ago, titled "6,666,666":

Some people wanted to know who was the 6,666,666th visitor to this blog. Here's some info from Site Meter:

Zekstra-Informacione Tehnologije
Country : Serbia and Montenegro
City : Beograd
Referring URL http://www.google.co...n&q=ann nicole smith
Search Engine google.com
Search Words ann nicole smith
Visit Entry Page http://althouse.blog...cole-smith-case.html
Visit Exit Page http://althouse.blog...cole-smith-case.html

It does seem a little evil... just a little.

A search for just "Nicole" gets me to this post about her 20-year-old son's death and four posts about her Supreme Court case (1, 2, 3, 4). I always liked Anna Nicole. I used to watch her TV show. She was a little odd, but not evil, and really beautiful:



Goodbye, Anna.

MORE: How long do you think before the biopic goes into production? And what are the chances that the role will be played by Jessica Simpson?

The Anna Nicole Smith case.

One of the perils of lawprof blogging is that when the Supreme Court issues a decision in your field, posting about it seems compulsory. And this one even has a big hulking celebrity who would ordinarily be fun to write about for almost no reason at all. But I don't wanna to write about the Anna Nicole Smith case.

It's a unanimous opinion about a fine point of a doctrine about which I've never made any class read a single case in over 20 years of teaching Federal Jurisdiction. Suffice it to say: The jurisdiction of the federal courts is defined by statutes. Old case law contains a judge-made exception for probate cases. In the face of a statute that contains no exception and old case law making an exception, what are you going to do? Read the exception narrowly.

The argument in the Anna Nicole Smith case.

Dahlia Lithwick tells us about the oral argument in the Anna Nicole Smith case. The legal issue in the case is awfully boring, and Smith, for her part, never does anything interesting in the courtroom, but Litwick does what she can to liven it up, making it seem as though the Justices, in pursuing the lawyers with questions, are rushing to the aid of the beautiful lady. It's still boring. The most amusing thing is something Scalia said that probably could be said somewhere in just about any oral argument: "Do you want to stand on that position or do you have a lesser position? One that might cause you to win?"

Anna Nicole Smith goes to the Supreme Court.

First, the great picture:



Now, for the substance of the WaPo's report:

The justices are dealing with a technical question: When may federal courts hear claims that involve state probate proceedings? Smith lost in Texas state courts, which found that E. Pierce Marshall was the sole heir to his father's estate....

"Most people will do a double take," said Edward Morrison, a former Supreme Court clerk who specializes in bankruptcy law at Columbia University. "It raises the novelty level and makes a technical issue somewhat more entertaining."

What, you aren't entertained by diversity jurisdiction? Hey, I teach this subject, and, much as I would inject enthusiasm into the topic in class, I admit it's pretty technical. Law aside, I just can't help wanting Anna Nicole to get the money.

UPDATE: Here's a report on the oral argument:

A U.S. bankruptcy judge in California initially awarded Smith $474 million, but that was later reduced to about $90 million. A federal appeals court eventually tossed out the entire award, saying the bankruptcy judge should never have heard the case.

Several justices expressed sharp skepticism that only the Texas state court could settle the dispute over the estate.

"That's not the way our system works," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "I've never heard a state probate court say you cannot bring a claim in another court."

The justices Tuesday seemed especially interested in several details of the dispute: whether documents were tampered with, whether Smith was kept from her husband's bedside as he was dying, and the amount of money she would receive if she were to win the case.

"'I just want some money from this guy.' That's all she's saying," Justice David Souter said. "Just give me the money I would have had."

I love when the justices paraphrase the argument in blunt terms! Anyway, they're only deciding the jurisdiction question, so these intimations about the substantive merits of the case don't mean much. It sounds as though she's going to win on the jurisdiction point, which is about whether a limitation that the Court has read into the diversity jurisdiction statute applies ought also to apply in a bankruptcy jurisdiction case.

Podcast time!

Time for the big podcast! Podcast #7, full of talk about bras and Right Wing Bob Dylan... and all my trials as I am dogged by lefty bloggers and commenters who think I've misdefined "right wing" and outrageously accused lefties of being irresponsible. The squid is there too and the sandcastles and John Roberts and the meat slurry and Anna Nicole Smith and, yeah, even Justice Scalia. You don't want to miss this podcast. This is by far the longest one -- over 53 minutes of rich podcasty goodness!