"I felt enraged. I felt flabbergasted. I felt confused... I can’t say that I’m a loyal customer of Prada. I don’t think I would have gone into the store had I not been assaulted by the images."

Said Chinyere Ezie, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, quoted in "Seriously, Prada, what were you thinking?: Why the fashion industry keeps bumbling into racist imagery" (by Robin Givhan in WaPo).

But she went in. She took pictures. And then she did “a reality check.” She showed the pictures she’d taken to her mother and her co-workers. “Am I missing something?” she asked them. No. They saw racism, too.

Ezie juxtaposed her pictures from the Prada store with historical images of Sambo and shared them on Twitter and her Facebook page. “I didn’t want to have to grieve in silence,” she says. “I didn’t want to have to swallow this bitter pill of racism alone.”

Her post made its way through the social media biosphere, stirring outrage....

Here's Ezie's photo, showing the shop window in NYC with the enlarged display figurine:



And here's Prada's photo of product that's for sale, a small charm in a set of fanciful characters that mostly seem like aliens or robots:



I can think of 3 questions:

1. Did the designer of the charm intend — sneakily and with deniability — to insert a racist depiction of a human being in this collection of characters? or...

2. Is this only a case of imagining something like a monkey from outer space and never noticing that other people could see a resemblance to old-fashioned racist cartoon images intended to demean black people and could feel offended? (That is, no one, anywhere within the company in the entire process of manufacturing this $550 gift item ever said Wait a minute, some people might think....), or...

3. Is this a case where the only racism is in the mind of the beholder who looks at a silly fanciful space monkey and decides that it looks like a black person? (Isn't that a little like Roseanne Barr looking at Valerie Jarrett and getting the idea that she looks like an ape?)

Oddly, all 3 options seem implausible. Yet something happened! I guess #2 is the least implausible, but why would a big company like Prada not be more savvy commercially? I'll break that down into 3 theories:

A. They really are dumb about things that are not strictly in the domain of fashion, or...

B. There is great deference to the designer and a culture of not expressing doubt once a design is conceived. (That is, people within the company noticed but understood their role to be to demonstrate faith in the product and not naysay), or...

C. The problem was noticed but the idea became: Let it go. If anyone — maybe some sensitive constitutional rights lawyer — gets offended, we'll say oops, sorry, and withdraw that one, but we'll get so much press for these charms, and people will look at the whole set and see that they really are delightful and buy the others and anyone who's already bought the controversial and now withdrawn monkey will have an extremely valuable item, perhaps to sell on eBay to a real racist or to one of those black people — like Henry Louis Gates Jr. — who collect racist memorabilia.

If Theory C works for you, rethink the plausibility of Theory 1 — it really was intentional.

"The proper skirt suit is dead, long live the thought-provoking skirt suit."

From a NYT fashion article titled "At Prada, Reinventing the Power Suit."

Was it when women decided that they should stop trying to dress like their male peers, because power did not preclude femininity, and floral dresses invaded the C-suite (see: Michelle Obama)? Was it when Angela Merkel settled on a brightly colored jacket and black trousers as her uniform of choice, and every other female politician seemed to follow up with her version of the same?... It’s unclear, but these days Carly Fiorina is not the only person who wants to bring it back....

The "thought-provoking" skirt suits at Prada look way too silly to be usable by a woman who wants trust and influence. The thoughts provoked would be along the lines of: You can't be serious.

But I think the skirt suit should come back. How perfectly arrayed for the debate Carly Fiorina looked in that blue suit. That's much better than all those awful trousers older women have been relying on. Not to pick on Hillary, but that pantsuit she wore to her granddaughter's birthday is incomprehensibly bad. (Normally, it shouldn't matter what a woman wears to a 1-year-old's birthday party, but the press was given a view, so I'm judging it as a deliberate political photo op.)

"People Get Ready."

A fabulous 1965 recording by The Impressions. Don't confuse it with "Get Ready," by The Temptations, which is a completely different song. Some people even confuse The Impressions and The Temptations. "Get Ready," from 1966, was written by Smokey Robinson. (Here's how Smokey did it in 1979.)

As you may have noticed, I got absorbed with the word "get" earlier today. "Let's get out of here" and "You just don't get it, do you?" are 2 famously recurrent lines in movies. In the comments, I was saying:

"Get" — the word in both cliche lines — is a funny word. I've noticed that professional writers -- e.g. lawyers -- will replace the word "get" whenever they can (with seemingly more proper words like "obtain" and "acquire" and "depart" or "arrive"). It's like it's not a regular word. It's so useful we shouldn't use it.

And:

"You just don't get it" is a fascinating phrase. It was huge during the Clarence Thomas hearings. Do you remember? It's used to exert psychological pressure. You're trying to persuade someone that a particular viewpoint is correct, and you're jumping to this level of disgust and disbelief, essentially telling the person that they are dumb and isolated from all the people who already understand. It's not just that you don't agree with me already, you're some kind of outcast.

St. Croix said avoiding the word "get" is "a class thing," and professionals who avoid it are trying to sound "high class," trying "to impress." That made me do a little search to see whether the Supreme Court suppresses the word "get," and found it in only one third of the cases in the past year. Often it was a quote, like "Have you ever tried to get cow s*** out of a Prada purse?" (which is a cute low/high mix). Justice Scalia began a dissenting opinion with: "Let me get this straight..." (which might be taken as a deliberate working-class affectation). I'm seeing the word used in colloquial phrases like "get around," "get it backwards," and "get it right." Following natural speech patterns, "get" would appear much more frequently, so I say there's active suppression.

I ran across the famous Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. sentence about free speech and the marketplace of ideas:

"But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."

Imagine what the standard present-day legal editor would do to that sentence: the best test of truth is the power of the thought to gain acceptance in the competition of the market. (The editor would also try to purge the passive voice by fiddling around with the subject — maybe it should be "competition" — toying with the notion of making "test" the verb, and fretting over whether "test" and "market" amount to a mixed metaphor.)

Lawyers and judges just don't get that "get" is a fine word that shouldn't be replaced by boring longer words. When it comes up naturally, as you'd use it in speech, that's where it belongs. It feels natural because it's won in the marketplace of people talking to each other over the centuries, carrying out their affairs in real time. "Got" is true.

As I said, I got — got! — absorbed in the word "get" today, and I got — got! — interested in figuring what's the best song with the word "get." A marketplace of "get" songs. "People Get Ready" won. (Look at how many cover versions there are!) Other contenders — in addition to the above-mentioned "Get Ready" — are: "I'll Get You"/"Get Back"/"Getting Better"/"Got to Get You Into My Life" (The Beatles), "Get It While You Can" (Janis Joplin), "Get Off of My Cloud" (The Rolling Stones), "Get on the Floor" (Michael Jackson), "I Get Around" (The Beach Boys); "Can I Get a Witness" (Marvin Gaye), "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" (The Animals).... That's just stuff easily picked from my 1960s-leaning iPod.

My point is: What a hard, sharp word! Use it.

(And: "People Get Ready" = sublime.)

Prof. Stone says it's "depressing" that the Court's "fleeting expletives" opinion repeatedly used "f***" and "s***"...

... instead of "fuck" and "shit."

In 1971, when the Court held in Cohen v. California that a state could not constitutionally make it a crime to use the word fuck in public, it used the word fuck. In 1978, when the Court upheld the FCC's rule banning the use of "indecent" words over the airwaves, it quoted in full George Carlin's monologue, including the words shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Those words, according to Carlin, were the "ones that will curve your spine [and] grow hair on your hands." When the Court of Appeals decided this very case (twice), it had no qualms about using the actual words that were at issue in the case. But Justice Kennedy had to use ***s to avoid saying fuck.

This is not what lawyers and judges do. Lawyers and judges deal with the real world. They deal with murder and greed and rape; they deal with enhanced interrogation and brutality and gruesome wounds; they even deal vaginas (unlike some legislators these days). 

Hey, why did Professor Stone go straight from gruesome wounds to vaginas? Because he's not being careful and sensitive and anticipating all manner of complaints. He's being Carlinesque and confrontational.

... Especially in a First Amendment case, lawyers and judges have to be willing to say the words out loud, even if it makes them uncomfortable. To do otherwise is to deny the realities of the case before them. It is to put their own sensitivities above their obligations to their clients and to the law. It is, in short, unprofessional.

Perhaps the Justices thought that to write out the words made them seem to have an unprofessional favoritism toward the folks who want to be free to (fleetingly) utter expletives.

When Melville Nimmer represented Paul Cohen in the Supreme Court in Cohen v. California, he knew he had to say the word fuck in the Supreme Court for the first time in its history. He also knew that Chief Justice Burger did not want this to happen. Sure enough, when Nimmer approached the lectern to make his argument, Burger leaned over the bench and instructed Nimmer, "Counsel, we are familiar with the facts of this case. You can dispense with them and move directly to your legal argument." To which Nimmer replied, "Of course, Your Honor. Suffice it to say that my client was convicted of disturbing the peace for wearing a jacket in public bearing the words 'Fuck the Draft.'" It was at that moment that he won his case, because lo and behold the walls of the Court did not crumble.

But you see the enthusiasm there. It's not just about willingness to plainly state ugly facts, as in a murder case. Lawyers and judges who must describe brutal murders in plain English are not doing a murder. But to say "Fuck the Draft" in court is to do what Paul Cohen himself did — say "Fuck the Draft" in court. (It wasn't just "in public." He wore his "Fuck the Draft" jacket in a municipal courthouse.)

That Melville Nimmer anecdote thrills us — some of us — because we identify with the expression in those words: Fuck the Draft. The Supreme Court never helped anybody who tried to litigate against the war in Vietnam, so there was emotional fire and resonance to the utterance right there of the words "Fuck the Draft." Professor Stone portrays it as pure, stolid, emotionless professionalism, but I have my doubts.

That said, when I teach Cohen v. California to a law school class, I say "Fuck the Draft," and I say it sincerely believing that not to say it is prissy and unprofessional. And if you said to me Althouse, admit it, you have some fun there with the opportunity to say "Fuck the Draft" with impunity, I would say: The Supreme Court writes "Fuck the Draft," which makes it the affirmative act to avoid saying "fuck," and the default should be passivity.

Which of course means that if I teach the new case — FCC v. Fox Television Stations — I won't be saying "Have you ever tried to get cow shit out of a Prada purse? It’s not so fucking simple,"  which is really what was said on TV by a person whom the Supreme Court amusingly (or professionally) refers to as "a person named Nicole Richie." I'll say "Have you ever tried to get cow s*** out of a Prada purse? It’s not so f ***ing simple."

Actually, I don't know how to say that out loud. I don't know how to be passively professional about asterisks. Anthony Kennedy has left me in a quandry.

As usual.

Another NY/LA comparison.

Here, at the architecturally amazing Prada store in SoHo, I had to sneak a photograph on my way down to the basement level space where you can root around for something you may like and no one puts in an effort to make you believe you could wear those clothes.



Upstairs, you'll find all the handbags, where I think they make all the money, and the salespeople there will massage your credulity. In fact, I did buy a handbag, but never any clothes in this store that I visited many times.

Here's the Giorgio Armani store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, where a lovely saleswoman sees that I admire that jacket trimmed with fur and feathers and says something to me — "It's fox" — that prompts me to ask a question about sizes and the long-nurtured desire for the perfect pantsuit.



Before long, I am trying on a selection of jackets — they do have my size — and I'm buying that suit. Chris peruses a history of Giorgio Armani, and they serve us glasses of water as we complete the expensive transaction.

"Have you ever tried to get cow s--- out of a Prada purse? It's not so f------ simple."

What are we going to do about Nicole Richie? The Supreme Court wants to tell us.

"The Prada Unman was gotten up in humiliating tutu belts, severe high-collar shirts that buttoned up the back..."

"... and odd cummerbunds that disappeared in a chevron down the front of trousers conspicuously lacking a fly.... [W]hen designers stop conceding to biological function, they move away from the realm of fashion and into that of social engineering. It is one thing to nudge men toward exploring their girly sides and quite another to suggest they sit to urinate."

Guy Trebay draws the line.

At the New York Sun... and that scoop about Ahmadinejad's visit to Ground Zero.

Today, I paid a visit to The New York Sun. It's in a great old building on 105 Chambers Street, the Cary Building, which I was told was the oldest cast iron building in the city.



Whether it's actually the oldest or not, I don't know, but it's a landmark, built in 1857. And the look of the place is so distinctive....



... that just as I was trying to ask if the place has been used as a movie set, my host was going on about the movie "The Devil Wears Prada" and working his way toward telling me that this is the desk where Anne Hathaway sits at the end of the movie:



Okay, take a picture of me in the Devil Wears Prada memorial chair (with Joe Goldstein, the Sun's legal reporter):



It was fun sitting in on some newspaper meetings. There was a lot of excitement today over the scoop that Iranian President Ahmadinejad plans to visit Ground Zero -- a visit to be facilitated by Mayor Bloomberg. Here's the story:

President Bush, moving quickly to respond to news that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has asked to visit ground zero, had a spokesman issue a statement aimed at Mayor Bloomberg that said – in so many words -- deal with it.

"This is a matter for the City of New York resolve," a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, Gordon Johndroe, said. He added pointedly: "It seems odd that the president of a country that is a state sponsor of terror would visit ground zero."

The White House comment came as news of the proposed visit was being greeted with astonishment and outrage by New Yorkers on both sides of the political spectrum, and also presidential candidates, including Governor Romney and Senator Thompson.

UPDATE: The linked news story has been updated to show that the city is rejecting the Ahmadinejad visit to Ground Zero.

"Bond is an imperialist and a misogynist who kills people and laughs about it, and drinks Martinis and cracks jokes."

Matt Damon on James Bond. He, of course, thinks Bourne is better, but he's right, isn't he? Bond is mired in the 60s.

I remember a teacher in 1964 who talked about James Bond. Right about when "Goldfinger" came out, that was the high point. I remember going to see "Thunderball" and how everyone felt disappointed and sure that the James Bond fad had ended. We had some fun seeing "Diamonds Are Forever" in 1971. Bond was totally retro. How strange that the Bond movies have come out consistently every few years for almost half a century!

"The Bourne franchise is not about wearing Prada suits and looking at women coming out of the sea with bikinis on. It's about essence and truth, not frippery and surface." So says "Bourne" director Paul Greengrass, incredibly hoity-toitily.

Pravda on Condi and Hillary in '08.

What does Pravda have to say about the female contenders for the U.S. presidency?

IN THE COMMENTS: Everyone's confessing to misreading the title here as "Prada on Condi and Hillary in '08." And amusingly, people seem to want to read about what Prada thinks of Condi and Hillary in '08. It's a good thing -- isn't it? -- that we're more interested in Prada than Pravda.

Camille Paglia has something else to say about Madonna. This is from an article by Dinitia Smith about why "Sex and the City" is "a sociological event," representing "the spirit of the decade."

Ms. Paglia says, the success of "Sex and the City" marks a defeat for the "1980's anti-porn, anti-sex wing of feminists" and a victory for "the huge wing of us pro-sex feminists who came back with a vengeance in 1990, thanks to Madonna."

But even though "Sex and the City" is all about the spirit of the decade, it's full of what Paglia calls "archaic themes," themes found in trashy novels from the 1950s and 1960s, specifically "The Best of Everything," by Rona Jaffe (1958) and "Valley of the Dolls," by Jacqueline Susann (1966).

Too bad the Times article doesn't give us more verbatim Pagliaspeak. But other scholars must be drawn in to support the theory that the TV show is a "sociological event," worthy of scholarly commentary: Prada handbags and Jimmy Choo shoes are "apotropaic," "female sexuality is still punished," and the show is about "the semiotics of masculinity." That last, which the Times translates as "women trying to understand men," comes from a film studies prof who has written "a study of erotic fantasies about ... 'Star Trek.'"