What is the law we love so much — this beautiful example of the benefits of federalism? I will tell you soon!
In the comments, Freeman Hunt made the marijuana guess:
One of you is sick, and you think marijuana will help?
That was back before Colorado extended its marijuana tolerance beyond those seeking relief from medical afflictions and on to people in search of a bit of fun and relaxation, but it was not why we came to Colorado. And in fact the first commenter, reader_iam, had already guessed it: "Are you wanting to solemnize your own marriage, as opposed to having an officiant required?" LarsPorsena was right there with the "Colorado legal stuff for AA":
"....Solemnizing a Marriage: Couples themselves may solemnize their own marriage (perform one's own marriage ceremony). According to Colorado Revised Statute 14-2-109, a marriage may be solemnized by a judge of a court; by a court magistrate; by a retired judge of the court; by a public official whose powers include solemnization of marriages; by Indian tribe officials; by clergy; by the parties to the marriage. If you wish to solemnize your own marriage, you will be responsible for acquiring, completing and returning the license to marry to the appropriate county Office of the Clerk and Recorder...."
Commenting from a mountaintop: we are still sitting on the rock where we exchanged rings, and now we are married.
That comment became the title of the next post, which you can read here. And here are the details of the smallest possible wedding on the rock in Colorado, which looked like this:
The smallest possible wedding took place on a small rock 5 years ago, and here we all still, alive in the beautiful world, on the metaphorical rock of marriage...
I also love the book Just Kids by Patti Smith. I love it because it’s a story about how two friends moved to New York and learned to be artists. You know how they learned to be artists? They pretended to be artists. I’ll spoil the book for you and describe my favorite scene, the turning scene in the book: Patti Smith and her friend Robert Maplethorpe dress up in all their gypsy gear and they go to Washington Square, where everybody’s hanging out, and this old couple kind of gawks at them, and the woman says to her husband, “Oh, take their picture. I think they’re artists.” “Oh, go on,” he shrugged. “They’re just kids.”
It's funny, I picked up "Just Kids" just today as the next part-finished book in the house to finish. I'm on a finishing unfinished books kick.
Speaking of books: "Write the book you want to read." That's #3 of the things nobody told Austin Kleon. (Austin Kleon is the guy this post links to.) Hey, I'm writing the blog I want to read.
And A. felt herself released, in another world, she felt she breathed differently. But still she was afraid of how many of her roots, perhaps mortal ones, were tangled with her blog. Yet still, she breathed freer, a new phase was going to begin in her life.
Reader_iam also kept a cherishing eye on A., feeling she must extend to her her female and professional protection. She was always urging her ladyprofessorship to walk out to a cafe, to motor over to Beaver Dam, to be in the air. For A. had got into the habit of sitting still by the laptop, pretending to read, or to make strawberry smoothies feebly, and hardly going out at all.
It was a blowy day, soon after the boys had gone back to Texas and California respectively, that reader_iam tweeted: 'Now why don't you go for a walk through the arb around the lake, and look at the daffs behind that new gardener's cottage? They're the prettiest sight you'd see in a day's march. And you could put some in your room: wild daffs are always so cheerful-looking, aren't they?'
A. took it in good part, even daffs for daffodils. Wild daffodils! After all, one could not stew in one's own juice. The spring came back... 'Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn.'
And the new gardener, his thin, white body, like a lonely pistil of an invisible flower! She had forgotten him in her unspeakable depression. But now something roused... 'Pale beyond porch and portal'... the thing to do was to pass the porches and the portals.
She was stronger, and with the injections in her toe she could walk better, and in the arb the wind would not be so tiring as it was across the lake, flatten against her. She wanted to forget, to forget the world wide web and all the dreadful, carrion-bodied people. 'Ye must be born again! I believe in the resurrection of the body! Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it shall by no means bring forth. When the crocus cometh forth I too will emerge and see the sun!' In the wind of March endless phrases swept through her consciousness.
Little gust of sunshine blew, strangely bright, and lit up the celandines at the arb's edge, under the Sycamores, they spangled out bright and yellow. And the arb was still, stiller, but yet gusty with crossing sun. The first windflowers were out, and all the arb seemed pale with the pallor of endless little anemones, sprinkling the shaken floor. 'The world has grown pale with thy breath.' But it was the breath of Persephone, this time; she was out of hell on a cold morning. Cold breaths of wind came, and overhead there was an anger of entangled wind caught among the twigs. It, too was caught and trying to tear itself free, the wind, like Absalom. How cold the anemones looked, bobbing their naked white shoulders over crinoline skirts of green. But they stood it. A few first bleached little primroses too, by the path, and yellow buds unfolding themselves.
The roaring and swaying was overhead, only cold currents came down below. A. was strangely excited in the wood, and the color flew in her cheeks, and burned blue in her eyes. She walked ploddingly, picking a few primroses and the first violets, that smelled sweet and cold, sweet and cold. And she drifted on without knowing where she was.
Til she came to the clearing, at the end of the arb, and saw the green-stained stone cottage, looking almost rosy, like the flesh underneath a mushroom, its stone warmed in a burst of sun. And there was a sprinkle of yellow jasmine by the door; the closed door. But no sound, no smoke from the chimney, no dog barking.
She went quietly round to the back, where the bank rose up. She had an excuse: to see the daffodils.
And they were there, the short-stemmed flowers, rustling and fluttering and shivering, so bright and alive, but with nowhere to hide their faces, as they turned them away from the wind.
They shook their bright, sunny little rags in bouts of distress. But perhaps they liked it really: perhaps they really liked the tossing.
A. sat down with her back to a young pine tree that swayed against her with curious life, elastic, and powerful, rising up. The erect, alive thing, with it top in the sun! And she watched the daffodils turn golden, in a burst of sun that was warm on her hands and lap. Even she caught the faint, tarry scent of the flowers. And then, being so still and alone, she seemed to get into the current of her own proper destiny. She had been fastened by a rope, and jagging and snarring like a boat at its moorings, now she was loose and adrift.
The sunshine gave way to chill, the daffodils were in shadow, dipping silently. So they would dip through the day and the long cold night. So strong in their frailty!
She rose, a little stiff, took a few daffodils, and went down. She hated breaking the flowers, but she wanted just one or two to go with her. She would have to go back to Bascom and its walls, and now she hated it, especially its thick walls. Walls! Always walls! Yet one needed them in this wind.
When she returned to her office, reader_iam tweeted her: 'Where did you go?'
'Over to the arb for a walk! Here, here I shall post a photo I took of the little daffodils, aren't they adorable? To think they should come out of the earth!'
'Just as much out of air and sunshine,' garage mahal commented, peevishly.
'But modeled in the earth,' she retorted, with a prompt contradiction that surprised her a little.
The next afternoon she went to the arb again....
So that was going on back then, and it was manifested on the blog — the slightest hint — like this.
Alison Byrne Fields was a high school student when she started writing to John Hughes. We were talking about Hughes's death, and Reader_Iam pointed us to Fields's blog post.
My comment, at 3:59 today, Central Time (though we are on Mountain Time), in the post "We're here in Colorado not just for the scenery, but for the law," which read: "What is the law we love so much — this beautiful example of the benefits of federalism? I will tell you soon!"
The first commenter there, reader_Iam, instantly got the answer:
Are you wanting to solemnize your own marriage, as opposed to having an officiant required?
Couples themselves may solemnize their own marriage (perform one's own marriage ceremony). According to Colorado Revised Statute 14-2-109, a marriage may be solemnized by a judge of a court; by a court magistrate; by a retired judge of the court; by a public official whose powers include solemnization of marriages; by Indian tribe officials; by clergy; by the parties to the marriage. If you wish to solemnize your own marriage, you will be responsible for acquiring, completing and returning the license to marry to the appropriate county Office of the Clerk and Recorder.
And that's just what we did. This afternoon, we drove from our hotel in Bachelor Gulch to the Office of the Clerk and Recorder in Eagle County, where we showed our driver's licenses, answered a few questions, paid $30 cash, and got a license that empowered us to marry each other. We drove up Bellyache Ridge — just the 2 of us — where we did things our way and solemnized the marriage on our own. Then, we did the additional red tape — filling out the bottom of the Certificate of Marriage and handing it back to the county official who'd asked us the questions earlier. And now, we're here at Yeti's Grind on Broadway, in Eagle, eating our first food (sandwiches) and drinking our first drink (mango smoothies) as husband and wife. And we're both on the WiFi.
One thing I love about American federalism is that — subject to the limitations of national law — individual states can do things their own way, and we can move around finding the law we like. We decided against marrying in Madison, because under Wisconsin law, not only do you need to pay $125 or so for the license and then go get a minister or a judge to perform the wedding — you have to wait 6 days between getting the license and doing the wedding. What's that all about? It's insulting, not to mention avaricious. We went west, out of the grip of a paternalistic state, for greater freedom and individuality.
And, yes, we think same-sex couples should also have the right to marry. You'll have to travel somewhere other than Colorado if that's the freedom you want. We traveled and got what we wanted, and obviously, we have the additional benefit of getting a marriage that will be recognized everywhere. I hope the day will come when the Coloradan attitude that favored us will smile on gay people too. But for now, I'm just really happy to be married in Colorado, on Bellyache Ridge, with just me and Meade on the scene. Aptly, it turned out that there was a big old cell phone tower on top of the ridge, so we texted and emailed and telephoned.
And I made a blog comment — a comment, not a post, because that's where I found my dear husband, in the comments.
Keep reading from that second link and you'll see that Titus throws down the gauntlet about gay men in Madison, Wisconsin. And then Chip Ahoy gets going on the subject of ticks, politicks, and — why not? — dung beetles, culminating in this:
i do love the backwards elements of the cockroach nature
as don't we all
or at least should
if not ought
Blogging cockroach responds in kind:
that should be tuo
which proves i ve had too much
spilled cheap merlot tonight
to be hopping around backwards
lookout when the champaign flows
tomorrow night wheee
which i hope doesn t turn into
eeehw
anyway here is tick tock gone bad
and too long
but you can stop it when it
ceases being funny about 40 seconds in
hey they can t all be gems
and i promise never to trip
trippingly to reader s ear
a cockroach doing that would
freak some people out
but just don t sleep on the kitchen floor
and we ll all be fine
ah but cockroach
your trips are tweets to the ear
like birds in dawn of spring s own dawn
here here see here they sing
back again as always are we
so wake up
if only, and to ...
The cockroach skitters on across the keyboard again:
not having the vers libre poet in me
i fear my prosaic nature sometimes
misses the subtleties of
dear reader s lovely lines
which is not to say
reader should not write
a lot more of them
because you always want more
when someone doesn t quite
write enough rather than when
they write too much
which is also true about food
but i m not as appreciative when
the cook has cleaned up
too well afterwards
Then, when everyone is nestled all snug in their beds, I am awake. It's 2:23 a.m.:
And where is everyone? Last night, you guys were talking all night, and now here I am with insomnia and no one is around.
Were you afraid of the tick?
Thanks for all the poetry, but it was all before midnight. If you can't stay up until midnight tonight, how do you expect to celebrate New Year's Eve tomorrow night?
I think I'll try to draw a picture of the New Year's Tick. Or see if I can get people to send pictures of the New Year's Tick. And I'm going to push for the adoption of the New Year's Tick as the new New Year's mascot, replacing that stupid — and frankly depressing — Old Man and Baby mascot. Or the Ball. What the hell kind of symbol is a Ball?
I hope that doesn't offend blogging cockroach. You must understand that we can't have a cockroach as a holiday symbol. Not for New Year's anyway.
This insomnia is giving me grandiose thoughts, but I really think this New Year's Tick thing can catch on. Perhaps if we draw it the right way. I think Santa Claus wasn't such a big deal until those Coca Cola ads got the character drawn just the right way. People loved him once his attributes became appealing and standardized.
Help me do that with the Tick.
Also, that "Night Before Christmas" poem helped with the popularization of Santa Claus, so maybe some of you poets can write something similarly beguiling about the annual arachnid.
Inside the kitty cat wall clock he hid/Our eagerly awaited arachnid.
See? I can't do it!
An arthropod/From God/Trod...
No... I need help with the poem. And with the drawing. And with the sleeping.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds/Not knowing the Tick crept so close to their heads....
(Links added.)
In the cold light of morning — and it's 0° — I can see these are not mere insomniac ravings. I really do want drawings — or photoshoppings — of the New Year's Tick. I will reward you with frontpagings and tags. More poems too. I love the poems and the depictions of ticks — detickshuns, if you will.
We went out in the icy snow and celebrated last night. Tonight we stay in. I'll be live-blogging New Year's Eve, so please join me. I will reward you profusely with frontpagings and tags... and ticks.
Yesterday, the day I saw "The Curious Life of Benjamin Button" and wrote that post, I conked out early.
Oh, I don't know if it was from the movie or from the pizza and one glass of wine I had afterward or just from being somewhat old. Most of the people in the movie audience were old, so old, that when Cate Blanchett reassured the getting-younger Benjamin by saying that we all wear diapers in the end, and the chuckle from the audience was unnervingly warm, I had to speculate that there was a high Depends-to-butt ratio in the theater at that very moment. And who knows? Perhaps young soda-swillers wear Depends to the movies, especially to 3-hour extravaganzas like "Benjamin Button." Especially with all that water imagery:
[W]ater is often seen as a symbol for birth/re-birth, and [I] thought they used it well. Spoilers: The dad nearly throws Pitt in the water in the beginning, Pitt takes the dad to sit by the water, Tilda Swinton swims the English Channel, all of the work Pitt does on the boat and the sailing, Daisy takes up swimming after her injury, Hurricane Katrina...anything else?)
And Benjamin fighting the Nazis at sea. Or should I say Ben or Ben-yah-meen?
Here's a weird-ass quirk of mine: For years now, anywhere and everywhere I see the name "Benjamin" used in a narrative (especially a grand, old one) I substitute plain old "Ben." Amazing, how well that works and the perspective it brings.
I studied Arabic one summer during college, and there was a white guy in the program named Benjamin who insisted we all call him Ben-yah-meen. That experience, I think, has much the same effect on Benjamin perspective.
The quote in that first block is from Zachary Paul Sire in the comments. The 2 in the second block are from reader_iam and Freeman Hunt.
See? This post is a tribute to all the commenters who kept an interesting conversation going all night on that thread that I conked out after writing. In the morning, it's my habit to reach for my iPhone before so much as sitting up in bed. Supine, I check the news, mostly to assure myself that nothing terrible happened during the hours when I wasn't paying attention. (The Yellowstone caldera has not exploded, despite the recent, strange swarm of earthquakes.) Then, I read blog comments for a while. Last night's post had accumulated 73 comments. The second one was from me, right before I fell asleep. I was responding to the first comment, from Zachary Paul Sire, who wanted to know if I liked the movie, a matter I'd considered beside the point of the post. I answered:
It was okay. It would have been much better if it were tightened up... and livened up. Like many high-budget, high-aspiration movies of today, it was embalmed. Its "I have always loved you" theme was very conventional, and I never felt much real passion between the 2 lead actors. And neither of them ever said anything clever. But there were some excellent special effects in aging and youthening Pitt and Blanchett, and there were some nice moments. Where to cut? You can cut all whole old dying woman and her daughter scenes, as far as I'm concerned. Reminded me of "Titanic," bringing in an old, old woman to tell the story of her big love to her daughter.
71 comments ensued. I can't reprint them all. But I intend to frontpage much more than usual this morning.
Chuck b. said:
I always enjoy the Althousian disdain for sentimentality (or is it a midwesterner's disdain? or maybe it's just very lawyerly), although I myself enjoy many sentimental films.
Actually, I'm not very good at recognizing sentimentality when I see it. I just let myself get played.
... although I don't cry as much during commercials and sentimental television things as much as Althouse does. Actually, that's interesting. A'house report tearage not infrequently. Does that have something to do with her negative reactions toward...ineffective sentimentality?
Am I midwestern? The most midwestern thing about me is that my mother grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Second is: I went to college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Third: I've taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, Wisconsin since 1984 (since I was 33 years old). So: 1. My formative years were not spent in the midwest, and 2. My time in the midwest has entirely been in these 2 university towns that don't really represent the region.
As for crying and sentimentality... 1. I might cry about something sentimental the way I might sneeze in the presence of dusty black pepper. It doesn't mean I admire the cause of the reflex. Quite the opposite. 2. I am cold to some emotional manipulations and susceptible to others. I might get judgmental and resist everything, but I might indulge and enjoy the easily won emotions of sentimentality. There is some good sentimentality. "The Bill Cosby Show" always made me cry. (And I do mean "The Bill Cosby Show," not "The Cosby Show," which I never watched.) 3. There are some things I regard as real art. I keep these separate, whether they provoke crying or not. The Kubrick movie "Lolita" caused me to cry profusely, but only after it was over, when I was trying to talk about it. That meant something.
Palladian said:
["Ben Button" s]ounds like a miserable Oscar-bait remake of "Big".
"Big" was much more fun, but like "Big," it gave us a chance to see an adult woman in love with a little boy — without all that nasty guilt that comes from awareness that we are witnessing pedophilia. Unlike "Big," it gave us a chance to see an old man in love with a little girl. Ah, but he's only 7! He's her age. And when an old woman tells him he should be ashamed of himself, we sympathize with the old man. I mean the little boy. And I bet pedophiliac old men believe that at heart they too are little boys.
And Brad Pit and Cate Blanchett? Can there be two more overexposed, boring actors on the planet?
Zachary Paul Sire said:
I love Cate Blanchett (anyone seen "Notes On A Scandal"? Now that's a good movie)...but Brad Pitt has never, ever been interesting to me. I can't think of one movie he's been in that I've enjoyed. Maybe "12 Monkeys," but that's because he was a supporting character. He and Cate, like Althouse said, had absolutely no passion or believability. Lifeless. Boring.
I love Brad in "12 Monkeys." Also in "Fight Club." In fact, I have a lot of respect for Brad Pitt. He picks some artistic projects, and he doesn't just rely on his pretty face — though perhaps he uglifies himself in part for the purpose of sending the message that he is so gorgeous that even uglified he's divine. In "Ben Button," he puts on that old age makeup, but then he emerges from it, so that Brad Pittifulness seems astoundingly new again. He then gets to progress to his "Thelma and Louise" level of insane male beauty. There's a scene in "Button" where he returns to the (old) Cate Blanchett in this form and she exclaims "You're perfect!" and I wanted her to say "Oh my God! You're Brad Pitt!"
Titus said:
For the most part I hate almost every movie that comes out because I find them too boring and too much made for "normal America". I also hate sitting in a movie theater for two hours with other people....
On a seperate [sic] note I have a fear of the dentist. I am only able to go once a year because I literally freak out 24 hours before I go. I have to be sedated, gased and anything else to go. I go every year in January but I now have a toothache so I have to go tomorrow and I am freaking out....
The only good news about going to the dentist tomorrow is he gives me good drugs.
He is a big liberal. His wife works at the front desk and his dog runs around the office.
My dentist is a straight queen. Every time I go in there he shows me one of his new Yoga poses that he has just conquered.
Chuck b. said...
"My dentist is a straight queen."
I loathe heterosexual gay men. What's the phobicity for that?
My dentist is a feisty latina and I am devoted to her. As a regular flosser and non-drinker of sugary beverages, my teeth are always clean and my gums are "tight". I love it when she tells me my gums are tight. Noone else tells me that.
Beth — who lives in New Orleans, the city featured in the movie but not the Fitzgerald story — said:
The more days I am from having seen ["Ben Button"], the more little "hey, that didn't add up" moments I think of. I too could have done without the entire mother/daughter hospital plot. I kept dreading possible outcomes, and that was a distraction.
And no, there's no real chemistry between the leads. There were much more appealing relationships -- b/w Benjamin and the folks in the home, mainly. And the tugboat captain was a favorite of mine.
But I am a partisan for it still; there are lots of movies shot in New Orleans, and this one made such wonderful use of places I love. The bandstand where Daisy does her nighttime dance is one where my friends and I would perform late at night, running wild in the park as teens. Lanaux House, the setting for the Button household, was also the setting for the nasty Gallier sibling household in the 1982 version of Cat People. Overall, I just loved our streets and houses and streetcars and greenery. It all looked so good.
Chuck b. said:
I was in N'awlins once for a week, drunk the whole time. I ate every meal at Paul Prudhomme's place (spelling?!) and marvelled at the cockroaches on the sidewalk that came out when the sun went down. I walked all the way back to my hotel stepping on one cockroach after another, like stepping stones. God, what a great town.
Palladian said:
I cry at the end of "It's A Wonderful Life"....
"It's A Wonderful Life" is a perfect movie. I know that some people think it's commie propaganda and that some douchebag at the New York Times (natch) trashed it this year, but still. Brilliantly detailed, perfect performances. Sob, sob.
Zachary Paul Sire said:
I've actually never watched the entire "It's A Wonderful Life" from beginning to end. I've also never watched an entire episode of "The Simpsons" from beginning to end. Some things just don't appeal to me.
Chuck b. said...
I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life, even a little bit of it.
LoafingOaf said:
I'm also sorry I don't find life so wonderful. Will the movie change my mind? I still smile through most days, though. Life is depressing but you may as well life at it.
Sometimes I come to Althouse blog and the prof's life seems so perfect, and I've never been able to detect any terrible, or even messy, things going on beneath the surface. She's even chummy with her ex, and her sons seem way too well-adjusted. Does she keep it hidden, or is she for real? She seems so "together" I feel if I browse her blog enough it will rub off on me a little. But I do wanna determine whether she just keeps it hidden or if her having her shit so "together" is for real.
You should read what they say about me on those other blogs — where I'm a decrepit, crazy drunk. Obviously, I control the message here. But, in fact, I don't lie about myself. Even though some of my antagonists think I'm outrageously self-absorbed, I rarely reveal anything about my real-world life. Haven't you noticed? My topic selection and various opinions and attitudes may seem idiosyncratic and distinctive enough to give the impression of a window into my life. And my photographs, by physical necessity, show my point of view. But I'm not telling you about any sorrows and struggles that may afflict me. Yes, I have a job that immensely benefits me, but it is exceedingly rare for me to write about my colleagues or students. If they were giving me trouble, you wouldn't know. I'm very lucky to have 2 sons — but I'm not going to say anything bad about them, and I mostly don't write about them. And you see my occasional chumminess with my ex-husband, but we separated more than 20 years ago. You have no evidence at all of any post-1987 love affairs that I may have had and how I may have suffered.
LoafingOaf said:
Oh, well, at least Sarah Palin's life and family turned out to be a mess.
Beth said:
LoafingOaf, I'm just making a guess here, so cut me some slack if I'm offbase.
You might find life a little less depressing if you cut back on the hating, just a bit. Take Palin, for example. She's not running for anything right now. She lost. Why bother looking for a Palin thread anywhere? I know, I know; there are scores of conservatives who can't get through a day without hating on Algore or blaming Bill Clinton for today's crappy economy or holding out for Obama's super-secret African birth certificate -- but they're not good examples for you to follow.
I'm not saying you should be Mary Sunshine, but a small adjustments might be in order. If you just keep your targets of anger current, you'll cut back on a lot of unnecessary bile. And that will increase the room for a bit of wonder in your life.
See how we help each other here?
Chickenlittle said:
She's even chummy with her ex, and her sons seem way too well-adjusted. Does she keep it hidden, or is she for real?
My ex-girlfriend is chummy with my wife. She's coming to visit next weekend--with her husband. We all laugh and joke about the past.
My point is that you can choose to get past horrible hurts in the past--or not. It all depends on the parties involved (and their will to party)
Palladian said:
"Oh, well, at least Sarah Palin's life and family turned out to be a mess."
A mess? She was nominee for vice-president. She has a beautiful family. If you want a mess you should look to yourself and figure out why this woman drove you crazy, why this woman turned you from an interesting commenter to a bitter, twisted loser. Take Beth's advice, Mr Sullivan, and chill out.
Reader_iam, quoting me in the original "Ben Button" post, said:
the old story is crisp and unsentimental
Indeed.
Finally, some love for Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald.
And that's the end of the line in this paean to commenters.
Happy New Year, everybody. Let's sing "Auld Lang Syne":
1. Tell him about our 2 Italian-American Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
2. Call attention to our Italian-American Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and joke -- in Nancy's presence -- that "Speaker of the House" is English for "prima donna."
3. Have some Four Seasons impersonators sing "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like a Man," etc.
4. Jump onto the stage, with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in tow, and say "Frankie, come on up," have Frankie Valli, who's been in the audience enjoying his own tunes, come on up and give the Prez a big hug.
5. Make assurances that the world financial crisis will be solved.
[T]he stallion is drunk on his own rhetoric. Why not? It's great rhetoric.
We need beavers and we need stallions. Beavers get the work done. Stallions inspire us. And they both have limitations. Stallions have fragile legs (think Barbaro). And beavers are nothing without their teeth....
So let's stop talking about race and gender and let the beaver and the stallion both serve our country — in their own inimitable ways.
Fabulous metaphors, Erica. I understood right away about talking horse that gets drunk and breaks its leg. I couldn't find that episode of "Mr. Ed," but here he is in his home state of Hawaii:
(Thanks to reader_iam for pointing me to this goofy HuffPo rant.)
In this segment of a Bloggingheads episode. [NOTE: You have to click on the segment titled "The dark side of libertarianism."] I don't think he gets it quite right, and I don't know why they talk about me by name but don't include anything I wrote in the sidebar list of links. But they're talking about Ron Paul's racist newsletter, and they refer back to the dispute I had with Reason Magazine libertarians. Drezner characterizes me as saying that if you believe in something — like libertarianism — that in the past was associated with something repugnant — like racism — you remain tainted by it.
I think my point is finer: If you believe in something that was once associated with something repugnant, you ought to care about demonstrating to people that your profession of belief in the idea is not a cover for something repugnant. A Reason Magazine editor subjected me to a haughty show of indignation because I wanted to see that demonstration: How dare I demand that anyone prove he's not a racist! But I'm saying that the fact that you don't care about disaggregating your philosophy from racism says something that matters.
By the way, Dan Drezner was quite disrespectful to me in the past about this, so I'm surprised to see that he remembers. Frankly, I'm surprised he even credits me with the capacity to have something he would call an "idea."
ADDED: Actually, I think he calls it the "the Ann Althouse question" — not idea. And, as reader_iam points out in the comments, Drezner isn't the one who brings up my name, his diavlog partner Henry Farrell does (at about 5:04). I should add that there is an old Bloggingheads — which I'm not going to dig up now — where Farrell and Drezner talk about me and Farrell is insulting — saying that he doesn't like my blog and doesn't get any ideas from it. That insult was over a year ago, I think, as was his encounter with the idea of mine that he still remembers!
AND: Here's the thing I wasn't able to dig up before. The exact clip of Henry Farrel saying he doesn't like my blog.
ADDED: Here is the transcript of the show. There's plenty in it to chew over. Let me highlight the last question, which has emotional impact — I think — even though she absolutely walls us out of her private world:
MR. RUSSERT: Doris Kearns Goodwin said, "What's the biggest public adversity a person has ever faced?" What's yours?
SEN. CLINTON: Well, I think we all know that, we lived through it, didn't we, and it's something that was very painful and very hurtful.
MR. RUSSERT: What did you learn from it?
SEN. CLINTON: Well, you know, first of all, it is who I am as a person. I believe that you have to withstand whatever problems come your way. You have to make the decisions that are best for you. You're going to get a lot of advice coming from many different quarters to do things that don't feel right to you, that don't reflect who you are and what your values are. So you have to be grounded in who you are and what you believe. And you're not always going to make the right decisions, but you have to be guided by what you think is important, and that's what I've done.
She couldn't say "I have always deeply loved my husband" or "I believe marriage is 'til death do us part."
IN THE COMMENTS: Reader_Iam says:
She couldn't say "I have always deeply loved my husband" or "I believe marriage is 'til death do us part."
I don't think she should have to.
The former is none of our business, and as for the latter--well, so far her choices are demonstrating what she believes with regard to her own marriage; of course, only time will tell if that turns out to be the case in the long run. As is, of course, true of all marriages.
I don't think she owes us that look into her private feelings. I'm just saying she's the kind of person who chooses not to see that question as an opportunity to show warmth and intimacy or to pontificate about family values. It wasn't meant as a criticism.
What did you learn from it?
Frankly, I have to hand it to Hillary, because I'm not sure I could have bitten back my gut response to that question, which is, "Oh, f*** you."
That would have been one of the all-time great TV moments. #1 on some VH-1 "100 most outrageous TV moments" list. It'd be better than this:
"... inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of heaven. May he stimulate and illuminate our minds. Lead us from the unreal to real, from darkness to light, and from death to immortality. May we be protected together. May we be nourished together. May we work together with great vigor. May our study be enlightening."
Beautiful Hindu prayer, spoken as the invocation in the Senate yesterday. The Hindu priest was Rajan Zed of Reno, Nevada. Unfortunately, the reason I'm reading about this -- in the Times of India (via Memeorandum) -- is because some idiots -- from the anti-abortion group Operation Save America -- interrupted him:
"Lord Jesus, forgive us father for allowing a prayer of the wicked, which is an abomination in your sight," the first protester shouted. "This is an abomination. We shall have no other gods before You."
Democratic Senator Bob Casey, who was serving as the presiding officer for the morning, immediately asked the sergeant-at-arms to restore order. But they continued to protest as they were headed out the door by the marshals, shouting, "No Lord but Jesus Christ!" and "There's only one true God!"
What a shame to insult the priest that way!
There are invocations in the Senate, and the way to handle that properly is to give representatives of different groups the chance to offer a prayer. Look how well the priest did at choosing a prayer that would enhance mutual respect among religious groups and between the religious and the irreligious.
Zed showed the best side of religion -- a prayer of manifest literary value that invokes the presence of the diety and pulls the human beings who hear it to a higher plane.
Why doesn't the invocation violate the Establishment Clause? Here is the Supreme Court case on the subject, Marsh v. Chambers:
The opening of sessions of legislative and other deliberative public bodies with prayer is deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country. From colonial times through the founding of the Republic and ever since, the practice of legislative prayer has coexisted with the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom....
Although prayers were not offered during the Constitutional Convention, [n6] the First Congress, as one of its early items of business, adopted the policy of selecting a chaplain to open each session with prayer....
On September 25, 1789, three days after Congress authorized the appointment of paid chaplains, final agreement was reached on the language of the Bill of Rights, S.Jour., supra, at 88; H.R.Jour., supra, at 121. Clearly the men who wrote the First Amendment Religion Clauses did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that Amendment, for the practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress. ...
...John Jay and John Rutledge opposed the motion to begin the first session of the Continental Congress with prayer.... [But that only demonstrates] that the subject was considered carefully and the action not taken thoughtlessly, by force of long tradition and without regard to the problems posed by a pluralistic society. Jay and Rutledge specifically grounded their objection on the fact that the delegates to the Congress "were so divided in religious sentiments . . . that [they] could not join in the same act of worship." Their objection was met by Samuel Adams, who stated that
he was no bigot, and could hear a prayer from a gentleman of piety and virtue, who was at the same time a friend to his country.
C. Adams, Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife, Abigail Adams, during the Revolution 37-38, reprinted in Stokes, at 449.
This interchange emphasizes that the delegates did not consider opening prayers as a proselytizing activity or as symbolically placing the government's "official seal of approval on one religious view." Rather, the Founding Fathers looked at invocations as "conduct whose . . . effect . . . harmonize[d] with the tenets of some or all religions." McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 442 (1961). The Establishment Clause does not always bar a state from regulating conduct simply because it "harmonizes with religious canons." Id. at 462 (Frankfurter, J., concurring)....
In light of the unambiguous and unbroken history of more than 200 years, there can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. To invoke Divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws is not, in these circumstances, an "establishment" of religion or a step toward establishment; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country. As Justice Douglas observed, "[w]e are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 313 (1952).
The Operation Save America protesters were thus not only rude and intolerant, they were demonstrating an attitude toward the invocations that, if it were accepted, would render the practice unconstititional. Government cannot elevate one religion over another. One of the primary values of the Establishment Clause is preventing divisiveness. These benighted characters would like to foment religious strife.
Operation Save America issued a statement saying the Senate chamber "was violated by a false Hindu god":
"The Senate was opened with a Hindu prayer placing the false god of Hinduism on a level playing field with the One True God, Jesus Christ," the statement said, adding, "This would never have been allowed by our Founding Fathers."
That is precisely at odds with constitutional law (and good moral sense).
The Hindu prayer was also questioned by a Christian historian who maintained that since Hindus worship multiple gods, the prayer will be completely outside the American paradigm, flying in the face of the American motto "One Nation Under God."...
"In Hindu (sic), you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods," the Christian historian David Barton maintained. "And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration [of Independence] when they talked about Creator -- that's not one that fits here because we don't know which creator we're talking about within the Hindu religion."
More exactly-backwards constitutional law. The motto isn't in the Constitution, and if you want to interpret it to authorize discriminating against groups that are not monotheistic, you are asking for the motto to be declared unconstitutional, not providing the basis for discrimination you (foolishly) want.
I hope when people read this news story, in this country and around the world, especially in India, that they focus not on the three protesters, but on our traditional benign approach to religion. Sometimes we exclude religion from government activities -- and we argue about how far we must go with that exclusion -- but when we include it, we don't favor one sect over another and we certainly don't identify one religion as true and another as false.
We do declare true and false constitutional doctrine, however, and these fundamentalist Christians have a false interpretation of the Constitution... and a very bad idea of how to make the world a better place.
I don't think much of their idea of Christianity either. Since when do Christians go around yelling "No Lord but Jesus Christ!"?
And here's an interesting post from Reader_Iam (who frequently comments on this blog):
Perhaps these protestors fancied themselves as Jesus in the temple, scattering the money-changers desecrating a holy space. But the Senate chamber is not a temple....
I'm irked when bloggers surrender their precious independence, but others are tsking that the candidate has besmirched herself with the ugliness associated the blog. WaPo's Sleuth takes Hillary to task for "guestblogging" on Firedoglake, where Jane Hamsher usually blogs, because of that time Hamsher blogged on Huffington Post and published a photoshopped image of Joe Lieberman in blackface. The Sleuth digs up the obviously not unbiased opinion of a former Lieberman spokesman (Dan Gerstein):
Gerstein said he understands the Clinton camp wanting to reach out to lots of potential voters, especially women. But given that Clinton, "under the microscope to a much higher degree of scrutiny," Gerstein said, "I don't think this was necessarily a good idea for her."
He suggested that Clinton's decision was particularly politically dangerous in light of the senator's vocal criticism of Don Imus after the shock jock's racially demeaning comments about the Rutgers women's basketball players.
Clinton could have chosen a blogger with "less baggage," Gerstein said. "Just as pure strategy, why would you want to take a risk and invite scorn and controversy and an accusation of hypocrisy when you don't have to?"
Oh, good lord. Imus again. That's a hilariously attenuated connection between Hillary and "nappy headed hos."
Bloggers -- and shock jocks -- need to be free to swing wildly. But candidates need to be careful. We know the Clinton campaign is working on taming and coopting the bloggers. I hate that. I mock that. But I wouldn't pin that blackface nonsense on Hillary.
Still, Firedoglake is a hardcore place, and Clinton doesn't belong there. To illustrate, let's look at a couple things published on Firedoglake the day after Clinton "posted."
Oh, Michelle, you moron. Granted, dressing yourself up in what appears to be the anime version of a cheerleader costume may make all the fat, sweaty, unibrow-ed armchair warriors who read your blog squirt in their pants, but if you're going to jump around and cheer, you should at least make an effort to remove the stick from up your ass. It would make your jumps a far sight less stiff and spastic-looking....
To your Rightard masters, you are essentially a talking dog, a novelty act, an amusing freak. You are their Token Asian. (Although, I'm sure they don't have any compunctions about calling you "Oriental" behind your back, like you're some kind of rug or something.) You are a minority woman who sees absolutely no conflict of interest in making a mint out of (to use your own charming phrase) "stoking racial demogoguery"....
If there is any justice at all in the world, God will see to it that you will spend your declining years eating dirty hospital linens for a living.
Then there's a post titled "What All Those Little Beat-Offs At Red State Really Hate When They Say They Hate Abortion" -- with a video of Pink singing "U & Ur Hand." We see the singer in a sports bra, jumping rope bouncily, posing sexily, and singing about rejecting a man. The punchline in the lyrics is that the only sex he'll have tonight is masturbation. (I don't get the connection to abortion. Wouldn't women be more likely to reject sex and consign men to masturbation if abortion were illegal?) Does Hillary want to be associated with this? I mean, I think it's funny to picture her rejecting Bill by singing "U & Ur Hand," but it's just not quite right for the campaign.
So I can see why Firedoglake is popular (with about 80,000 visits a day -- not 100,000 as WaPo says). It's sexy and wild and viciously political. That's fun for the people who agree with the politics and who enjoy brutal, sexual humor, but it should be poison for a mainstream candidate. Let the blog be the blog and the candidate be the candidate.
Separation of blog and campaign forever.
IN THE COMMENTS: Reader_iam says:
I must say, that Malkin video is truly stupid and badly done. Embarrassing, really--but Malkin's playing to the more puerile, simplistic part of her base. (The fact that she does this so often is one of the big reasons that I have little use for her.)
TRex is doing the same thing, only he includes the sexist, racist nonsense. What really grates is the "sneaky" (I'd call it transparent, myself) way he goes about it:
To your Rightard masters, you are essentially a talking dog, a novelty act, an amusing freak. You are their Token Asian. (Although, I'm sure they don't have any compunctions about calling you "Oriental" behind your back, like you're some kind of rug or something.)
In this way, he gets to say this shit hiding behind, in essence, the " I'M not thinking these things, I'M not saying these things, I'm saying THEY'RE thinking and saying these things" excuse.
What complete and utter bullshit. He's exactly the person saying and thinking those things. To describe this as "projection" is to imply a level of subtlety and unconsciousness that we shouldn't let the TRex's of the world hide behind.
Slightly shorter version: He's a pretentious jerk, precisely the sort of sexist, racist lefty that unjustly smears all liberalism and provides ammo to his mirror images on the right.
UPDATE: Firedoglake -- via the guy who named himself after a big dinosaur, TRex -- attempts a response to this post.
Go over there and read it. (I can tell you their links bring few people over here to actually see what he's talking about first hand.)
It's a rambling, incoherent mess that either fails to grasp or misrepresents what I've said. TRex seems think no one will notice that he doesn't get my point. What can I say? He mainly drifts into a lot of blabber about how much he hates Michelle Malkin and rightwingers and me. It's all one big mush in the commodious dinosaur head. He's a nasty guy taking wild shots at a woman, a professional woman close to Hillary's age. He's cursing at me, raving about "boobs" (i.e., breasts). Sigh. He's only making it clearer that Hillary Clinton should not want to appear to be guestblogging for Firedoglake.
When asked by CQ National Security Editor Jeff Stein whether al Qaeda is one or the other of the two major branches of Islam -- Sunni or Shiite -- Reyes answered "they are probably both," then ventured "Predominantly -- probably Shiite."
Here's the whole harrowing interview. Remember how the Democrats ran on the competence issue?
IN THE COMMENTS: Our dear Reader_Iam says:
When I first heard this story, it instantly struck me that the only thing absolutely shocking about it, to me, was how profoundly unsurprising it is.
Even though it's written to coax a specialized audience off its safe shore of stodginess, timidity and pomposity and into the fast-moving waters of blogging, it's one of the best all-round blogging manifesti yet, especially for any blogger who does other kinds of writing for a living and/or calling.
Read the whole thing. Hers, I mean. Which will perhaps send you over to mine.
And read the other conference papers too. Here's a tribute to the other papers, received via email, from one of our regular commenters (not Amba):
OK, I'm a nerd. I ended up spending quite a chunk of this afternoon and evening reading the papers, and I'm very glad I did. It has literally shifted my thinking about the way I should be, well, thinking about certain things. I'm very open to learning to new information and do that all the time, but it's not so often anymore that I feel this sort of "stop and think" (in a good way), outside of encounters with art and other non-info-oriented things.
I'm very much hoping that your commenters--in particular those who are also bloggers, but small, and not lawyers, and perhaps without other sorts of useful backgrounds--go over and read some of those papers and think about them.
I love the free-ness (more potential on my part, but I'm working on that) of blogging and of the blogosphere. But like any morphing and maturing media, there are certain caveats -- and most especially as/if people start thinking of themselves as citizen journalists. I'm not sure that those caveats come under consideration as much as they should, at last not by bloggers not in the "higher ranks", or not lawyers, or whatever. Some day, that may come home to roost for some poor blogger who's ill-equipped to deal with it.
ADDED: The commenter who wrote the email is Reader_Iam, who actually wrote a post on here about it.
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