"... that we race to find who’s 'really' to blame when a person voluntarily takes their own life. It’s still an act of self-murder, and while Carter undoubtedly played a persuasive role, I can’t imagine where we will draw the line.... [T]he law can’t and shouldn’t try to right every wrong. Michelle Carter should go free."
Writes David French.
I have 5 observations:
1. Where do we draw the line at making arguments that the law can't do something because where would we draw the line?
2. Isn't it odd that in one day we see a young woman convicted for expressing herself in words alone, with no physical actions, and an old man let off the hook* where there was physical action but incompletely understood expression? It shows we care about the mind, and yet, legally, we probably also believe that no one should be punished for their thoughts, even when the thoughts are openly expressed.
3. Why couldn't Michelle Carter's crime be understood as abetting the self-murder committed by Conrad Roy or a conspiracy with Roy to murder Roy? That would make sense to me. But we don't usually want to think about suicide as self-murder, since we feel sorry for the victim. One answer is: There's no statute making suicide a crime. But up until fairly recently, there was statutory law making suicide a felony in the United States.
4. In recent decades, there has been some evolution toward making it legal to assist in a suicide, but in the U.S., this is only for medical professionals helping somebody who's dying. But I've seen cases outside of the United States where physicians have performed euthanasia on individuals who are severely depressed and want to die. That is, they are suicidal. In Belgium, this might be considered enlightened and respectful of individual autonomy. I don't like that, but what if a person is close to a someone who is suicidal and comes to believe that they genuinely want to die and is convinced it's their choice and offers moral support and encouragement? You don't need to agree with the autonomy idea to want to refrain from criminally punishing somebody like Michelle Carter who speaks in accordance with that idea.
5. There's too much danger of selective prosecution, going after the people who seem awful, and too much power put in the hands of suicidal people to wreak harm on others, finally going through with a suicide after someone who's making them angry lets slip with some text daring them to stop talking about it and do it already.
___________________
* [ADDED] I'm seeing the news that prosecutors say they will retry Bill Cosby.
Hunyo 17, 2017
50 years ago today: It was Day 2 of the Monterey Pop Festival.
The performers on the second day were: Canned Heat, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe and the Fish, Al Kooper, The Butterfield Blues Band, The Electric Flag, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Steve Miller Band, Moby Grape, Hugh Masekela, The Byrds, Laura Nyro, Jefferson Airplane, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, The Mar-Keys, Otis Redding.
If I had to pick my favorites at the time from that group, it would probably be the same I'd still pick today: The Byrds, Laura Nyro, and Jefferson Airplane. But I think the best remembered set of the day was Otis Redding. You can watch the whole 19 minutes here:
Otis Redding - Live at Monterey Pop Festival... by cosmo2161
"This performance is noteworthy for many reasons but two in particular":
If I had to pick my favorites at the time from that group, it would probably be the same I'd still pick today: The Byrds, Laura Nyro, and Jefferson Airplane. But I think the best remembered set of the day was Otis Redding. You can watch the whole 19 minutes here:
Otis Redding - Live at Monterey Pop Festival... by cosmo2161
"This performance is noteworthy for many reasons but two in particular":
It was unusual to see Redding backed by the band that he used (and every other Stax artist) in the studio. Booker T & the MG’s were the house band for Stax Records and as such did not get much time outside the studio. The European tour changed that. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it demonstrated how Redding had effectively adapted his performing style while in Europe. He worked on getting the audience to respond without the tease that would be present with a black audience. This is most easily demonstrated by his call-and-response of the cry “Shake!” out to the audience demanding they return the holler. He knew from the get-go that he had them....ADDED: I went back into the archive to check whether the "Otis Redding" tag was on all the old posts that mentioned Redding and to find the old post that showed the memorial to Redding overlooking Lake Monona where Otis Redding died in a plane crash 6 months after the performance at Monterey. I couldn't find the picture of the memorial, but I did find this strange old post (from March 2007):
"It is [blank] that makes us human."
At the Black Eye Café...
... you can talk about whatever you want.
And think about spending some money on Amazon through The Althouse Amazon Portal.
The photo is by Meade from June 2015. I'm doing a bit of a 2-year retrospective. Hope you enjoy looking back on some of the great dog's-eye view photographs we loved so much in the short life of the blog called The Puparazzo.
"... an impromptu chant of 'let Bill go,' punctuated by shouts of 'hey, hey, hey,' in the style of Cosby’s Fat Albert comedy character..."
The scene outside the courthouse as the Cosby jury ends its 5th day of deliberation without a verdict.
UPDATE: The judge declares a mistrial. (NYT)
AND: I'm still not seeing interviews with jurors, but I'll close the poll now (at 2:08 CT). With 671 votes, 39% thought the holdouts were for conviction and 61% thought the holdouts were for acquittal.
UPDATE 2: Prosecutors say they will retry Bill Cosby.
UPDATE: The judge declares a mistrial. (NYT)
The exhausted jurors had been deliberating since Monday, sometimes for as much as 12 hours a day.ADDED: A poll (to be answered before there is actual news from the jurors):
AND: I'm still not seeing interviews with jurors, but I'll close the poll now (at 2:08 CT). With 671 votes, 39% thought the holdouts were for conviction and 61% thought the holdouts were for acquittal.
UPDATE 2: Prosecutors say they will retry Bill Cosby.
Answering concerns about the cost of retrying such a high-profile case in the sleepy burb of Norristown, Steele was adamant. “You can’t put a price tag on justice,” he said. “Nobody is above the law.” There’s no word on how or when a new jury will be selected....
"Carrie Fisher died from sleep apnea..."
"... and a combination of other factors, but investigators haven’t been able to pinpoint an exact cause, coroner’s officials said Friday."
You can die from sleep apnea?! "Sleep Apnea May Boost Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death/Study findings bolster suspected link between sleep disorder and heart-related death."
You can die from sleep apnea?! "Sleep Apnea May Boost Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death/Study findings bolster suspected link between sleep disorder and heart-related death."
"Any future references to this talking point by politicians or political groups will receive Four Pinocchios."
The WaPo Fact Checker lets the NYT off with a warning in "The bogus claim that a map of crosshairs by Sarah Palin’s PAC incited Rep. Gabby Giffords’s shooting."
"In a pair of affluent coastal California counties, the canary in the mineshaft has gotten splayed, spatchcocked and plated over a bed of unintended consequences..."
"... garnished with sprigs of locally sourced economic distortion and non-GMO, 'What the heck were they thinking?'"
ADDED: I don't see how the San Francisco can function, whether there's a $15/hour minimum wage or not. You need so much money to live there, but you want to live there in part because of all the restaurants. But how can there be restaurants without restaurant workers? Where can these restaurant workers live unless they are paid enough to live reasonably nearby? Why would you do an immensely long commute unless you were well paid? Shouldn't the restaurant die-off occur whether there's a minimum wage or not? If you have to pay a very high price to get a place to live in San Francisco, you should also have to pay a very high price to eat in a restaurant.
ADDED: I don't see how the San Francisco can function, whether there's a $15/hour minimum wage or not. You need so much money to live there, but you want to live there in part because of all the restaurants. But how can there be restaurants without restaurant workers? Where can these restaurant workers live unless they are paid enough to live reasonably nearby? Why would you do an immensely long commute unless you were well paid? Shouldn't the restaurant die-off occur whether there's a minimum wage or not? If you have to pay a very high price to get a place to live in San Francisco, you should also have to pay a very high price to eat in a restaurant.
Is it really true, this story about the Cuban boy who played the "Star-Spangled Banner" when the Cuban police forced him to play?
It had an awful whiff of the apocryphal when Trump told it yesterday:
Great story but so sentimental, so seemingly made-to-order for maudlin Americans. Did it really happen like that? I found an article in Newsmax and by Jackie Gingrich Cushman.* It's from last year — when Fidel Castro died — so it doesn't do much if anything to bolster the story. Cushman identifies the violinist, Luis Haza, as her friend. His father, a Cuban police official, was executed after Castro took power.
When I heard Trump telling this story — which I never heard before — I was talking back to the screen as Trump crept up on the big reveal — that the boy played "the Star-Spangled Banner." I was groaning: Oh, no, don't tell me.
___________________
* Yes, she's the daughter of Newt Gingrich. The mother was Jackie Battley, Newt's first wife, whom he met when he was a high school student and she was his geometry teacher. According to Newt's second wife, Marianne Ginther, Newt was only 16 when the relationship began. (We always hear about how cruel Newt was to Battley — divorcing her when she had cancer — but does anyone talk about what she did to him when he was a teenager?)
Great story but so sentimental, so seemingly made-to-order for maudlin Americans. Did it really happen like that? I found an article in Newsmax and by Jackie Gingrich Cushman.* It's from last year — when Fidel Castro died — so it doesn't do much if anything to bolster the story. Cushman identifies the violinist, Luis Haza, as her friend. His father, a Cuban police official, was executed after Castro took power.
"My father thought the revolution was for democracy," Luis Haza told me. "Castro betrayed my father and the entire revolution."Great story. Too great? Make stories great again? Do we want the truth or do we like the fake news that we like?
By 1963 [at age 12], Luis Haza had become an accomplished violinist and was appointed an associate concertmaster of a professional orchestra in Cuba. According to Haza, "the power structure wanted to see if I could be 'integrated' into the system. If they integrate the son of an executed man, it would be a model for all the young people."
But Luis Haza had a different dream: "To come to the United States for freedom. We knew that in Cuba, eventually we would die, just like we had seen neighbors die, and so-and-so disappeared. It was a daily thing, a daily subject: American freedom, to go to the United States."
After Haza refused to play for the elder Castro, a military squad charged into a rehearsal and pointed machine guns at the pianist. "Boy! Play something!" they shouted.
He did. "I played the American national anthem, 'The Star Spangled Banner.' The entire thing! You could hear a pin drop. I finished playing, and nobody knew what to do."
When I heard Trump telling this story — which I never heard before — I was talking back to the screen as Trump crept up on the big reveal — that the boy played "the Star-Spangled Banner." I was groaning: Oh, no, don't tell me.
___________________
* Yes, she's the daughter of Newt Gingrich. The mother was Jackie Battley, Newt's first wife, whom he met when he was a high school student and she was his geometry teacher. According to Newt's second wife, Marianne Ginther, Newt was only 16 when the relationship began. (We always hear about how cruel Newt was to Battley — divorcing her when she had cancer — but does anyone talk about what she did to him when he was a teenager?)
"You are all Goebbels! Goebbels would be proud!" shouts Jack Posobiec at the players and audience at the "Julius Caesar" performance in Central Park last night.
We see him at the end of the video he is making of his partner-in-protest Laura Loomer, who barged up onto the stage yelling about "political violence against the right." "It's unacceptable!" she instructs. She gets 6 seconds before the voice on the loudspeaker takes control, announcing "Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to pause," and after half a minute security has hustled her off the stage.
The "Julius Caesar" performance is the one with a Trump lookalike playing Caesar and getting stabbed to death on stage.
Here's some more information about about Prosobiec and Loomer. They both work at The Rebel. She's been a reporter for Project Veritas. He got a lot of attention in this New Yorker piece, "The Far-Right American Nationalist Who Tweeted #MacronLeaks" (May 7, 2017):
When is it acceptable to disrupt a performance and appropriate an audience that did not assemble to hear your message?
And who, if anyone, was "like Goebbels" last night? (We've seen so much of the left calling the right Nazis, and this shows Nazi-calling goes both ways.)
ADDED: Interrupting the players and even getting on stage with them is traditional:
* "Breaking the 4th wall" normally refers to the actors deviating from the theatrical convention of behaving as if they're in a 4-sided box and the audience isn't there. It's something the playwright or the director chooses to make part of the show. It's presumptuous for someone not connected with the show to take it upon himself (or herself) to break the wall. I've seen plays where it looks like that's happening, where one of the actors is seated in the audience and he starts heckling the play and getting a response from the actors on stage and it takes a little while to realize that's part of the play.
The "Julius Caesar" performance is the one with a Trump lookalike playing Caesar and getting stabbed to death on stage.
Here's some more information about about Prosobiec and Loomer. They both work at The Rebel. She's been a reporter for Project Veritas. He got a lot of attention in this New Yorker piece, "The Far-Right American Nationalist Who Tweeted #MacronLeaks" (May 7, 2017):
Jack Posobiec is the bureau chief and sole employee of the Washington, D.C., office of the Rebel, a Canadian media outlet that specializes in far-right video commentary. Last weekend, I met him at a Peet’s Coffee a few blocks from the White House. He told me, “As a journalist, I use all the tools at my disposal”—mostly YouTube, Periscope, and Twitter—“to seek the truth and disseminate the truth. That’s the purpose of journalism, right? At the same time, I also do what I call 4-D journalism, meaning that I’m willing to break the fourth wall. I’m willing to walk into an anti-Trump march and start chanting anti-Clinton stuff—to make something happen, and then cover what happens. So, activism tactics mixed with traditional journalism tactics.”They broke the 4th wall* last night.
When is it acceptable to disrupt a performance and appropriate an audience that did not assemble to hear your message?
And who, if anyone, was "like Goebbels" last night? (We've seen so much of the left calling the right Nazis, and this shows Nazi-calling goes both ways.)
ADDED: Interrupting the players and even getting on stage with them is traditional:
Since most theatre performances were often three hours long... the behavior of the audience became very rowdy, the audiences did not keep quiet, or arrive on time, or remain for the whole performance they would simply get up and leave whenever they felt like it. They joined in on the action occurring on stage, interrupted the actors, and even sometimes got on the stage. They also talked during dull moments, and threw rotting vegetables, especially tomatoes at the actors...___________________
* "Breaking the 4th wall" normally refers to the actors deviating from the theatrical convention of behaving as if they're in a 4-sided box and the audience isn't there. It's something the playwright or the director chooses to make part of the show. It's presumptuous for someone not connected with the show to take it upon himself (or herself) to break the wall. I've seen plays where it looks like that's happening, where one of the actors is seated in the audience and he starts heckling the play and getting a response from the actors on stage and it takes a little while to realize that's part of the play.
Tearing a man's shirt off? Is that good baseball?
Here's Eric Thames after he hit the walk-off home run in the 10th inning for the Milwaukee Brewers last night. The teams' celebration culminating in the ripping off of the man's shirt:
Is there stripping in baseball? This has more the look of pro-wrestling. The look, not the sound. Thames sounds like a baseball player — modesty, emphasis on teamwork, etc. He didn't tear his own shirt off in triumphant display. He was swarmed, doused in Gatorade, pummelled by his teammates who seemed to be looking for new ways to get at him in a joyous play fight when they ripped off his shirt.
ADDED:
Is there stripping in baseball? This has more the look of pro-wrestling. The look, not the sound. Thames sounds like a baseball player — modesty, emphasis on teamwork, etc. He didn't tear his own shirt off in triumphant display. He was swarmed, doused in Gatorade, pummelled by his teammates who seemed to be looking for new ways to get at him in a joyous play fight when they ripped off his shirt.
ADDED:
This would be disturbing if it wasn't so awesome.
— Steve Palec (@stevepalec) June 17, 2017
Eric Thames walk off homer... pic.twitter.com/CFi49zE32X
Hunyo 16, 2017
"He breaks that chain of self-causation by exiting the vehicle. He takes himself out of that toxic environment that it has become."
"She instructed Mr. Roy to get back into the truck, well knowing his ambiguities, his fears, his concerns. This court finds that instructing Mr. Roy to get back in the truck constituted wanton and reckless conduct, by Ms. Carter creating a situation where there is a high degree of likelihood that substantial harm will result to Mr. Roy."
And so Judge Lawrence Moniz found Michelle Carter guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
ADDED: "Being A Bitch Is Now A Criminal Offense, Apparently/Teen convicted for texting someone to death." That's the headline at Above the Law. Elie Mystal writes:
And so Judge Lawrence Moniz found Michelle Carter guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
ADDED: "Being A Bitch Is Now A Criminal Offense, Apparently/Teen convicted for texting someone to death." That's the headline at Above the Law. Elie Mystal writes:
If “free will” is to mean anything, you cannot “suicide” a person to death. You can murder someone, you can accidentally murder someone, you can pay someone to murder someone for you, you can set up a criminal organization under which murders occur on your behalf, you can even set up conditions so inherently unsafe that you are criminally responsible for anybody who happens to die. But you can’t kill a person who kills themselves. The self-killing breaks the causal chain between your actions, however reprehensible, and the death.
Until today....
50 years ago today: It was Day 1 of The Monterey Pop Festival.
"Music writer Rusty DeSoto argues that pop music history tends to downplay the importance of Monterey in favor of the 'bigger, higher-profile, more decadent' Woodstock Festival, held two years later. But..."
Beautiful!
The other performers on the first day were The Association, The Paupers, Lou Rawls, Beverley, Johnny Rivers, and Eric Burdon and The Animals. I don't remember The Paupers and Beverley.
I'll post on Day 2 and Day 3 separately, so hold off on mentioning Janis, Jimi, etc. etc.
ADDED:
…Monterey Pop was a seminal event... featuring debut performances of bands that would shape the history of rock and affect popular culture from that day forward. The County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California … had been home to folk, jazz and blues festivals for many years. But the weekend of June 16–18, 1967 was the first time it was used to showcase rock music....On the first of the 3 days, the headliner was Simon & Garfunkel. It looked like this:
Beautiful!
The other performers on the first day were The Association, The Paupers, Lou Rawls, Beverley, Johnny Rivers, and Eric Burdon and The Animals. I don't remember The Paupers and Beverley.
I'll post on Day 2 and Day 3 separately, so hold off on mentioning Janis, Jimi, etc. etc.
ADDED:
2 years ago today: "Odd plant rum./Lord Mud Pant./Rad mold punt./Damp old runt./Torn lump dad."
That was absolutely all I had to say — provoking the first commenter to ask "Are you doing acid?" My only tag was: "nothing."
What was happening was this:
What was happening was this:
"I knew instantly it had to be rabid... Imagine the Tasmanian devil... I knew it was going to bite me."
"I didn’t think I could strangle [the raccoon] with my bare hands... With my thumb in its mouth, I just pushed its head down into the muck... It was still struggling and clawing at my arms. It wouldn’t let go of my thumb.... It felt like ‘Pet Sematary’... If there hadn’t been water on the ground, I don’t know what I would have done.... I’ve never killed an animal with my bare hands. I’m a vegetarian. It was self-defense... I always thought of raccoons as this cute, cuddly forest animal...."
Said Rachel Borch, who was jogging through the woods near her home in Hope, Maine.
Said Rachel Borch, who was jogging through the woods near her home in Hope, Maine.
"I mean, try to diagram that. And my point isn't a technical one about writing. It's: What's motivating you to get so contorted right there? It means something."
So I said yesterday, when I ran into this sentence from Camille Paglia:
Click to enlarge. Here's some instruction on diagramming sentences if you want to be ready for the next "sentence of the day."
ADDED: I think when a sentence is long and complicated, diagramming puts it to the test. And this sentence does stand up to diagramming.
But why write (speak?) something so complicated? Is it just to show off or overcompensate, to try to sound erudite? I think she's doing something more than that. She talks about "many secular Western liberals" who stand at a distance from Islam, but, ironically, the form of this sentence represents her distancing herself from the idea she gesticulates around. She is one of the "many secular Western liberals" who don't want to get too close to the subject.
She's also treating other secular Western liberals with the condescension she accuses them of having toward Islam. She says they make "no effort to engage," but what effort is she herself making? To point out that other people don't engage with X is not to engage with X. In fact, saying that other people don't engage is an aggravated form of nonengagement. Why not hold yourself responsible too?
In the end, it all peters out. Islam has "intricate mixed messages." Mmm. Yeah. It's complicated. That's what people who wave vaguely from a benevolent distance would say. There's good and bad, it could go either way — more verbosely, it "can inspire toward good or spur acts of devastating impact." That's really not saying anything more than the nice but lame people who don't want to get too close.
Right now, too many secular Western liberals treat Islam with paternalistic condescension—waving at it vaguely from a benevolent distance but making no effort to engage with its intricate mixed messages, which can inspire toward good or spur acts of devastating impact on the international stage.One reader [Clark] stepped up to the task. He sent me this:
Click to enlarge. Here's some instruction on diagramming sentences if you want to be ready for the next "sentence of the day."
ADDED: I think when a sentence is long and complicated, diagramming puts it to the test. And this sentence does stand up to diagramming.
But why write (speak?) something so complicated? Is it just to show off or overcompensate, to try to sound erudite? I think she's doing something more than that. She talks about "many secular Western liberals" who stand at a distance from Islam, but, ironically, the form of this sentence represents her distancing herself from the idea she gesticulates around. She is one of the "many secular Western liberals" who don't want to get too close to the subject.
She's also treating other secular Western liberals with the condescension she accuses them of having toward Islam. She says they make "no effort to engage," but what effort is she herself making? To point out that other people don't engage with X is not to engage with X. In fact, saying that other people don't engage is an aggravated form of nonengagement. Why not hold yourself responsible too?
In the end, it all peters out. Islam has "intricate mixed messages." Mmm. Yeah. It's complicated. That's what people who wave vaguely from a benevolent distance would say. There's good and bad, it could go either way — more verbosely, it "can inspire toward good or spur acts of devastating impact." That's really not saying anything more than the nice but lame people who don't want to get too close.
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