Open thread in the comments.
September 17, 2022
"But the Graham bill — like Democratic proposals for federal laws protecting abortion against state restrictions — is a reminder that key elements of both parties' bases..."
"... would be happy to enact a federal takeover of abortion law, if given the chance. If either party manages to get strong majorities in both houses plus control of the presidency, it could potentially happen. At that point, the courts would have to consider whether the Constitution really gives Washington such sweeping authority. The reasoning needed to uphold a federal abortion law would also allow Congress to forbid virtually any other medical procedure, and a vast range of other activities, as well."
Writes Ilya Somin in "Lindsey Graham's Proposed Federal Abortion Ban is an Unconstitutional Assault on Federalism - But it Might Fly Under Current Supreme Court Precedent/The problem is the Court's ultra-broad interpretation of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce. But the justices might cut that back" (Volokh Conspiracy).
Click over there to see the discussion of the case law, which I think clearly establishes that the Commerce Clause supports legislation restricting abortion or creating a right of access to it. Graham's bill — if it advanced — would tempt liberals to argue for the conservative position on commerce power and conservatives to argue for the liberal position.
For Saturday, take a journey through 12 TikToks, arranged meaningfully... or so some people think.
1. Maybe you'll say "I remember the old pole."
2. London women who don't like American women are not too likable themselves.
3. How you would love it if your candidate were this loved.
7. The meaning of life in eating your toast.
8. The butter board?!
10. When Anne Bancroft met Mel Brooks.
11. Saving a seal.
12. A dog carps about the stuck traffic.
Deleted tweet preserved.
After realizing this tweet made their political allies look horrific, NBC News deleted it. pic.twitter.com/nfB1JekQ19
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 16, 2022
"He buckled his seatbelt and rested his left hand on his knee, exposing between his knuckles and wrist a tattoo of the words 'want nothing' over the outline of a desert island."
I quoted that because it's my favorite sentence in "Will Welch Leads GQ to ‘the New Masculinity’/When he got the job as top editor, a friend told him, 'Yikes.' Now, with an assist from Brad Pitt, he has remade the men’s magazine for the post-#MeToo age" (NYT).
What more do you want? Well, he has to want you to want his magazine. And he seems to want you to buy into masculinity, but doubts you'll buy that (or doubts you need him to inform you on the subject), so he came up with "new masculinity," so he must want you to believe that GQ is in the know about what is new.
"A writer friend shared with me the bound galley of his latest book-to-be, and I pointed out to him that his passing reference to barbecued chicken ribs at a picnic..."
"... was surely meant to be barbecued chicken wings. Not (entirely) displeased with my catch, he introduced me to his production editor — the person in a publishing house in charge of hiring copy editors and proofreaders.... In my early days, I would sulk in my office with the door closed if I found out that one of my books included a typo. A sentence referring to 'geneology' once sent me into a blue funk for hours.... I’m occasionally asked whether I can make my way through the world without shivering under the constant bombardment of typos.... [O]nce, watching the movie 'My Week With Marilyn,' I elbowed my husband sharply in the ribs over a prescription bottle, visible on a night table for approximately a second and a half, whose label read 'Tunial' instead of 'Tuinal.'
'I think it must hurt sometimes to live in your brain,' my husband has said on occasion, not unkindly. But, as he also notes, in a kind of nursery rhyme mantra, 'Your strengths are your weaknesses, your weaknesses are your strengths.'"
From "My Life in Error/A copy editor recounts his obsession with perfection" by Benjamin Dreyer, the copy chief of Random House (NYT).
I don't want to send Dreyer into a blue funk, but if I were writing an essay that had the line "passing reference to barbecued chicken ribs," I would not also have "elbowed my husband sharply in the ribs." It's a repetition of a distinctive image — ribs — for no recognizable reason. That's a language mistake. Make it your husband's arm. You're in a movie theater. It was more likely his arm that you elbowed anyway, wasn't it? You just liked "ribs," but your feeling of liking it came, I'll bet, from having seen it so recently.
And here's the Wikipedia entry for Tuinal, a Eli Lilly sleeping pill introduced in the late 1940s and now discontinued:
"Yeshiva University abruptly announced on Friday that it had placed all undergraduate club activities on hold... to keep from recognizing an L.G.B.T.Q. student group."
"The move came two days after the U.S. Supreme Court... [i]n a 5 to 4 vote... said the university would first have to make its arguments in New York State courts before returning to the Supreme Court.... A lawyer for the students, Katherine Rosenfeld, said in an email Friday that the move by the university... 'is a throwback to 50 years ago when the city of Jackson, Mississippi, closed all public swimming pools rather than comply with court orders to desegregate'.... [S]tudents seeking formal recognition for a club called Y.U. Pride Alliance.... [sued] under laws barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation."
Is it like closing the swimming pools? Students can have clubs whether the school has some club-recognition process or not, but you can't go swimming if there is no pool.
Perhaps the loftiest position for a school to take is to disaggregate itself from student expression. But the question whether it must do this remains, and I'll be interested to see what happens when (if?) this case gets back to the Supreme Court. The argument is that the law against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation contains various exceptions, so it's not the kind of "neutral, generally applicable" law that, under current doctrine, the federal Free Exercise Clause permits. I'm also seeing an argument that the current doctrine should be overruled, so that even "neutral, generally applicable" laws would be subjected to heightened scrutiny if they substantially burden religion.
"He had been a high school dropout whose early higher education consisted of correspondence courses, and when he took his first teaching job.... His entree into the world of Orwell..."
"... was similarly implausible. He demonstrated his ability to accurately transcribe a barely-legible original manuscript of Orwell’s dystopian novel '1984' by disporting his skills in paleography, the study of ancient and antiquated writing systems. Earlier in his career he deciphered Elizabethan manuscripts.... As a result of his dogged research, publishers had to withdraw incomplete, incorrect or obsolete earlier editions of Orwell’s works.
In 'Animal Farm,' Orwell... had originally written that pigeons bombarded Mr. Jones and his men with their 'dung' when they attacked the farm, but the text was amended to say more gracefully that the pigeons 'muted on them.'"
Muted on them? I checked the OED, and was delighted to find the bird-specific verb "mute":
"Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say."
Wrote Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, "which is known to be conservative," quoted in "A federal court clears the way for a Texas social media law/The law, which had been blocked by a lower court, makes it possible to sue large social media platforms for taking down political viewpoints" (NYT).
The law makes it possible for individuals or the Texas attorney general’s office to sue social media platforms with more than 50 million monthly users in the United States for taking down political viewpoints. The legislation is the product of conservative anger over posts that were taken down largely because they had violated the social media platforms’ rules....
"The understanding is that the fourth plinth is being reserved for Queen Elizabeth II."
Said Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, back in 2013, quoted in "Queen Elizabeth II statue may ascend fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square" (London Times).
We're told that the 4th plinth "has been deliberately kept vacant without a permanent memorial for the past 20 years." "Vacant," but filled with "a succession of temporary artwork installations."
Here's a London Times column by Jawad Iqbal — from last year — complaining about the quality of the temporary art that has occupied the plinth.
"Kurt Vonnegut and Nicholson Baker embraced good television. Vonnegut said he’d rather have written 'Cheers'..."
"... than any of his books. In Baker’s novel 'The Anthologist' (2009), the poet-narrator comments, tongue only partially in cheek, that 'any random episode of "Friends" is probably better, more uplifting for the human spirit, than 99 percent of the poetry or drama or fiction or history ever published.'"
Writes Dwight Garner in "David Milch Made Remarkable TV. His Own Life Was a Drama, Too. 'Life’s Work' is a memoir of outrageous youth, creative obsessions and ruinous habits" (NYT).
Writes Dwight Garner in "David Milch Made Remarkable TV. His Own Life Was a Drama, Too. 'Life’s Work' is a memoir of outrageous youth, creative obsessions and ruinous habits" (NYT).
Milch's shows include “N.Y.P.D. Blue” and “Deadwood.”
September 16, 2022
3 sunrise photographs.
This first one is by Meade — that's me in the foreground — taken at 6:44:
And this one, also by me, came at 6:54:
But you don't have to talk about the sunrise in the comments. It's an open thread.
This one, by me, happened at 6:51:
And this one, also by me, came at 6:54:
But you don't have to talk about the sunrise in the comments. It's an open thread.Here are 7 TikToks for you this evening. Some people love them!
1. Overused phrases in books.
3. Maybe pursue a smaller dream.
4. The top 3 tones for voice-over actors.
5. When Rosie O'Donnell visited Martha Stewart in prison.
6. Maybe when the lady seems insecure, it's not what you think.
7. It's the same old song, but with a different melody (and I'm accepting these men in shorts).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
