"Cinema belongs to the whoring and slaughterhouse trade."

Ingmar Bergman, who is retiring after the production of his last play, had this to say for the inspiration of all those of us who intensely admire his films:

"Theater is the beginning and end and actually everything, while cinema belongs to the whoring and slaughterhouse trade."

First Lady hair.

What's the most amazing thing about Teresa Heinz Kerry? It's that she's getting away with wearing her hair like that. Consider this passage from a NYT report about Heinz Kerry:

Noelia Rodriguez, who was until seven months ago Mrs. Bush's press secretary, said Mrs. Heinz Kerry's outspokenness was refreshing.

"Teresa is comfortable saying things that are off the script, and Mrs. Bush would never do that, or rarely do that," Ms. Rodriguez said. The two could have an intriguing dinner conversation - or, perhaps, a summit meeting on "Oprah!" - Ms. Rodriguez observed, adding that Mrs. Heinz Kerry "definitely needs to see Mrs. Bush's hairstylist" to tame the unruly mane that often hides her eyes.

Has anyone with hair that moves around ever gotten to be First Lady? Classic First Lady hair--sculpted and lacquered--symbolizes the steely self-control we've come to expect in a First Lady.

Hitchens on Bush in Vanity Fair.

Hey, why doesn't Vanity Fair make its articles available online? I wanted to link to Christopher Hitchens' article about Bush and drinking: "The Teetotal Effect." It's the August issue, the one with Ronnie and Nancy on the cover. Nice article on Sasha Baron Cohen, whose new season of "Da Ali G Show" is about to begin on HBO (I've been catching all the old season episodes this week on HBO on Demand).

I'll just give you my favorite line from the Hitchens article (which rips armchair psychologists who label Bush a "dry drunk," calls AA a "quasi-cult," and thinks he can figure out that Bush was never much of a drunk):

Winston Churchill was half in the bag for the whole of the Finest Hour, if not longer.

His conclusion is that Bush should drink now and then! Hitchens doesn't like teetotaling, because why should you trust someone who can't trust himself? And: "Nobody likes a quitter."

Always in Wisconsin, never in Madison.

The NYT begins its article on Bush's trip to Wisconsin this way: "President Bush campaigned today in a politically hospitable area of Wisconsin ..."

No matter how close the race is and how important Wisconsin turns out to be, he's never going to come to Madison.

Deplane.

Jeremy detests the word "deplane" so much he's starting a sidebar list of words he detests. The list that only has one other word: "linkage." Now that you mention it, I like "deplane." First, you're always happy to be told to deplane. Second, and this is tied to what people who don't like this word don't like, it doesn't fit properly with other constructions of its type: nouns that have become verbs with the help of the prefix "de." To "debone" is to remove the bones from inside of a chicken. To "delouse" is to rid a body of lice. But that's what I like about it: it seems like the person is removing the plane from himself, as if the plane were an undesirable attachment to the passengers. That expresses something about the way I feel about planes.

"Let's Get Frank."

Stephen Holden reviews the film "Let's Get Frank," about Rep. Barney Frank. Holden notes:

Mr. Frank is no smoothie. His bullish tenacity is matched by a gruff, tough-gay attitude, and he talks too fast.

(Wasn't that supposed to be "tough-guy"??)

But he has a sharp sense of humor. And for a politician so outspokenly liberal, he is a blunt political realist who knows how to play the game.

Discussing Senator Trent Lott's comparison of homosexuality with alcoholism, sex addiction and kleptomania, he surmises that Mr. Lott doesn't really care one way or the other about the issue, that he is only attacking homosexuality to keep his right-wing constituents happy. ...

The film awkwardly sandwiches the drama of the [Clinton impeachment] hearings (many of the clips are taken from C-Span) with recycled tidbits of right-wing homophobia: the Rev. Jerry Falwell's condemnation of the Teletubbies for alleged gay advocacy, and former Representative Dick Armey's public slip of the tongue in referring to Mr. Frank as "Barney Fag."

All the sturm und drang hasn't destroyed Mr. Frank's faith in the people's tolerance and common sense. "Most Americans aren't nearly as homophobic as they were brought up to think they were supposed to be," he says. And the relative lack of public hysteria around the issue of gay marriage suggests he may be right.

I think that Frank's point about ordinary Americans is true, and what a shame Republicans can't bring themselves to resist pandering to the small minority of people who really want to hear this sort of thing.

John Edwards' legal career.

The NYT has a good piece today about John Edwards' legal career:

"He would pick the cases that had the largest verdict potential," said Dewey W. Wells, a former state court judge who litigated against Mr. Edwards as a defense lawyer. "He had a good eye for those cases. He said he was the champion of the little guy, and it's true that many of the people who are injured are poor and downtrodden. He can say he was championing their interest, but it was only by coincidence. He was picking the cases with the biggest payoffs."

Another former adversary, James P. Cooney III, who defended a dozen medical malpractice cases brought by Mr. Edwards, agreed that "he was very selective about his cases."

"He only took the best cases, and by that I don't mean the ones with the highest damages,'' Mr. Cooney said. "I mean the ones where somebody had done something really bad." ...

But Mr. Edwards handled no notable pro bono cases, the typical vehicle for lawyers who want to have a larger impact.Mr. Edwards elevated the selection of clients to a science, rejecting scores for every one he accepted. He looked for grave harm, clear culpability - and plaintiffs, often poor ones, whose stories would appeal to a jury.

Of course, former adversaries have reason to slant their portrayal of matters. (They'd like to say that they only lost their cases because Edwards had selected cases that were sure winners.) But this is the portrayal of plaintiffs' medical malpractice lawyers that most disturbs me. There are many people who are grievously injured by bad medical practices who are unable to get legal representation because it would be too difficult to prove liability. The best lawyers, like Edwards, are able to be the most selective. If these lawyers choose to exercise that power, as Edwards is said to have done, then the people whose cases most demand sophisticated legal skills are least likely to obtain the best lawyer.

The half year mark.

This blog is celebrating its half birthday today.

UPDATE: Jeremy has done some relevant calculations, including Blog Words Per Waking Minute (BWPWM), which he lists as 1.333 for me and a paltry .54 for himself. He appears to be assuming that we're all getting 8 hours of sleep, yet he's on record as a terrible insomniac.
This is a big topic with me lately, because my early class (which ended today) has been making me get up earlier and earlier. I mean 3 a.m. today! And it's not just the class. Regular readers know my house is on a "wooded lot," and the birds in the summer make it hard to sleep as late as the earliest light of dawn. I'm not getting 8 hours of sleep these days.

The end of the highly concentrated summer semester.

You may have noticed that my Monday through Thursday blogging has been a little slow these last five weeks. I've been teaching Constitutional Law I compressed into five weeks of classes, as compared to the fourteen weeks of a Spring or Fall semester. It's one thing to say, yeah, I can do that, but the view from this side of the experience is quite different. It's exhausting! I don't feel tired during class, but I just can't find much energy outside of class. Tomorrow is the last class, and the exam is Thursday. I got the exam written yesterday, then I woke up this morning, and immediately thought, no, that exam is too hard. It was hard in a way that made me think a person might get nervous trying to get a foothold, then panic and lose the ability to think of anything. That's not what you want. Exams grades are curved here at the Law School, so the grade distribution is going to be the same whether the exam is easy or hard. But if an exam is extremely hard (or extremely easy), the exam doesn't produce accurate grades. A very easy exam is actually the sort of exam a student who prepares well and studies hard is most harmed by, because students who did very little have an equal opportunity to figure out the answers, and might win the best grades on the curve simply by writing somewhat better or even by chance. An excessively hard exam should be less worrisome for the prepared student, but there is an obvious problem if you can't think of how to get started, especially if that leads to the kind of anxiety that blocks your thoughts altogether. That's something that occurred to me once in law school, and fortunately, I was able to calm down and get to an answer. I don't want to write an exam like that, and I woke up this morning thinking that I had. So it was back to square one, and I've just now managed to finish writing up the exam. I very much wanted to have it done before tomorrow's class so I can reveal a few things about the exam--e.g., the number of questions--which, I think, relieves some anxiety.

A nice political satire.

This animation takes a long time to load, but it's pretty amusing, and I like the way it's not mean-spirited and it makes about equal fun of Kerry and Bush. (Link via Blogdex.)

Pete Townshend vs. Michael Moore.

I learned about Pete Townshend's website through Gawker, which succinctly notes that Pete doesn't like Michael Moore. Here's what Pete writes:

Michael Moore ... says – among other things – that I refused to allow him to use my song WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN in his latest film, because I support the war, and that at the last minute I recanted, but he turned me down. ... I had not really been convinced by BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, and had been worried about its accuracy; it felt to me like a bullying film. ...

I pointed out that WGFA is not an unconditionally anti-war song, or a song for or against revolution. It actually questions the heart of democracy: we vote heartily for leaders who we subsequently always seem to find wanting. (WGFA is a song sung by a fictional character from my 1971 script called LIFEHOUSE. The character is someone who is frightened by the slick way in which truth can be twisted by clever politicians and revolutionaries alike). ...

I have nothing against Michael Moore personally, and I know Roger Daltrey is a friend and fan of his, but I greatly resent being bullied and slurred by him in interviews just because he didn’t get what he wanted from me. It seems to me that this aspect of his nature is not unlike that of the powerful and wilful man at the centre of his new documentary. I wish him all the best with the movie, which I know is popular, and which I still haven’t seen. But he’ll have to work very, very hard to convince me that a man with a camera is going to change the world more effectively than a man with a guitar.

A classic artist's statement that reminds me why I like art more than politics. One of the reasons "We Won't Get Fooled Again" is a great song is because of the complicated ambivalence expressed by the character who sings it. A hardcore politico cannot use those words, even though a hardcore politico is likely to hear that song and mistakenly believe it expresses what he believes.

Finding art.

There was this leaden discovery, an attempt at political commentary in a window on Madison's east side:



Political art is almost surely going to be bad art. I don't think this is political, though:



That's a bit horrendous, but I'll bet it makes kids happy, so I'm going to approve. What gave me pleasure were some things that came in the form of paint that were not meant as art:







And I deplore graffiti, but I couldn't help admiring the color and juiciness of this painterly calligraphy:



And I loved the images created outside the humanities building where art students overshot their spray painting:





I guess the art students found it amusing too:

The Nader-Dean debate.

I'm working at home and overhearing the TV playing back the Nader-Dean debate from last Friday. Here's a write up of the debate from the Washington Times, with this catchy-sounding quote from Nader:

"You were an insurgent," Nader said of Dean's momentum before the Democratic primaries. "Now (you're) a detergent for the dirty linen of the Democratic Party."

I just overheard this exchange:

NADER [responding to criticism of him for taking contributions from a Republican]: Republicans are human beings too.

DEAN: The right-wingers may not be.

When did Prince start speaking in aphorisms?

The NYT quotes Prince:

"I always knew I had a relationship with God. But I wasn't sure God had a relationship with me."

This is in the format of any number of old quotes:

[Asked: do you believe in God?] The question is: Does God believe in me?

And:

[When asked if you've made your peace with God.] I did not know that we had ever quarreled.

The first quote appears in the movie (and the book?) "Lolita." The second was supposedly said by Henry David Thoreau (who also said "One world at a time" when asked if he'd thought about the afterlife).

Aphorisms rule. Here's a nice and incredibly cheap book of aphorisms I like. An ideal book in which to scribble marginalia.

Worrying about blogging.

Yesterday, I was on the WHA radio program "Here on Earth," talking about blogging. Though most of the show was about how blogging was affecting journalism, what I ended up talking about was how blogging was affecting life. One caller expressed the concern that more and more of life was taking place staring at a computer screen: should we not be alarmed at the loss of face-to-face human relations? There are a number of answers to this question. One is that you actually do form some connections that lead to face-to-face interaction, such as when bloggers meet for dinner. Another is to focus on what the use of computers is replacing. Using the computer has more potential for connecting to other people than watching television--that other lit-up screen. But what interested me the most was how the caller's concern is the concern raised about every advance in technology.

Weren't people worried that the telephone would prevent anyone from ever bothering to go out and visit someone else? And what about central heating? Maybe people won't snuggle up in bed anymore. And what about writing? If people write things down, they won't talk to each other anymore. If books are published and people learn to read, everyone will choose to engage with the thoughts of the very best minds from all of human history, and who then will bother to speak with the person he happens to meet on the street in his home town? Put down that book, young lady, and go outside and play with your friends!

It occurred to me, after the show, that a similar objection would have been made, had it been possible, to the invention of language itself. Once people can transform real life into these noisy abstractions, how will we ever love and cavort in the real, physical world in that intense, beautiful way that we always did in the past?

Antiques of the 1960s.

Antiques from the 1960s make me uneasy. Here's an anthropromorphic bottle ("Mr. Bottle") embracing a shiny rocket, a large sculpture that served as a window display for a liquor store.



I suppose what I don't like is to see the things that once so cleanly threw off the past situated among things that seem only to say the past, the past, the past.