Goodbye to Rocky Rococo.

"The man who played Rocky Rococo, the beloved character behind the namesake Madison, WI-based pie chain with a cult following, died Thursday."

RIP, James Martin Pedersen.

The link goes to my son John's Facebook page, where he says: "When I was a kid, I always loved to go there with my dad, Richard L Cohen."

Which I think says something about what I thought of that pizza. I moved to Madison in from New York in 1984. Rocky Rococo pizza was let's just say incomprehensible compared to New York pizza. As for Rocky Rococo, he always made me think of Leon Redbone....



I love Leon Redbone....

With his wide-brim hats and big sunglasses, Redbone was a man of mystery from the start. He rose to fame in the mid-Seventies after Bob Dylan spotted him at a folk festival and told Rolling Stone how curious Redbone was. "Leon interests me," Dylan said in 1974. "I've heard he's anywhere from 25 to 60, I've been [a foot and a half from him] and I can't tell, but you gotta see him. He does old Jimmie Rodgers, then turns around and does a Robert Johnson."

Leon was at the extreme bottom end of Dylan's 1974 estimation. Today, he's 66.

The man who played Rocky Rococo was 68.

“On Valentine’s Day, he’d go to all (11) of our stores in La Crosse and Madison and entertain everybody at each place by handing out breadsticks and singing out a kind of rap poem that he’d change all the time,” [co-owner Roger] Brown said. “He’d get great applause at every place he visited. People would count on him coming every year.”

And: "He was a comedian with Chicago’s Second City and worked with John Belushi and Bill Murray for two years on stage before he moved to Madison."

Now, you can tour the London bedroom where Jimi Hendrix lived in 1969.

"The house, in Mayfair, has now been painstakingly restored to look exactly as it did in 1969, using picture[s] of him inside and recollections of former girlfriend Kathy Etchingham."

Among the details: a bedside tablescape of "Voodoo Child" lyrics, a shell, and Benson and Hedges cigarettes, a fruitbowl on the floor, a silky bed jacket, the board game Monopoly, and the album "Fifth Dimension" by The Byrds (which The Daily Mail inanely calls a record "from Fifth Dimension").



ADDED: Too bad we never got to see a Super Bowl halftime show with The Byrds and The 5th Dimension playing together, in the manner of last night's Coldplay + Beyonce.

Well, we know the answer to this question.

Oh... I was going to link to something that, on closer look, just isn't good enough for you. Seriously, you'd have more fun speculating about what the question was.

"The 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy."

A pretty good effort from New York Magazine. It's a little obvious that they went through chronologically and zeroed in on important comedians, then selected a best or representative joke — shouldn't Steve Martin be "Let's get small" rather than "Excuuuse Me"? etc. etc. — but I enjoyed this.

"Mexican people, we are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall! And it's going to be completely useless."

"The first loser of such a policy would be the United States... If this guy pretends that closing the borders to anywhere either for trade (or) for people is going to provide prosperity to the United States, he is completely crazy."

Said Felipe Calderon, the President of Mexico, referencing Donald Trump, whom he called a "not very well-informed man."

"The worst thing about Rubio's repeated line isn't that he repeated it, but that he thinks 'dispel' is an intransitive verb..."

"... so he says 'Let's dispel with this fiction...' (intransitive, incorrect) instead of 'Let's dispel this fiction...' (transitive, correct) — or using a different verb, e.g. 'Let's dispense with this fiction...' (intransitive, correct)."

Writes my son, John Althouse Cohen, over on Facebook.

That's exactly what I was thinking. I could accept the repeating of a stock talking point. They all do that. Rubio did it rather ludicrously, conspicuously, with Chris Christie deftly, cheekily pointing it out. But I would get over that.

But it's the use of "dispel with" — more than once — that bothered me. It makes him seem too dumb to be President. It could just be a weird quirk, like the way I didn't notice how to spell "weird" correctly until I was 30. I'm holding the question open: Is Rubio a little dumb?

The idea that the government would forcibly put young women in a foxhole with a 220-pound psychopath trying to kill them doesn’t make any sense at all to Ted Cruz.

"I have to admit, as I was sitting there listening to that conversation, my reaction was, ‘Are you guys nuts?’... Listen, we have had enough with political correctness, especially in the military. Political correctness is dangerous. And the idea that we would draft our daughters to forcibly bring them into the military and put them in close combat, I think is wrong, it is immoral, and if I am president, we ain’t doing it.... But the idea that their government would forcibly put them in a foxhole with a 220-pound psychopath trying to kill them doesn’t make any sense at all."

Said Ted Cruz.

The "conversation" he was listening to was a segment of Saturday night's GOP debate, which I detailed in a post yesterday. I've been surprised how far public opinion has shifted toward the acceptance of drafting women. The poll I took yesterday shows that:



It was nice to see somebody — Ted Cruz — holding down the traditional position. It's one thing, I think, to allow women to volunteer for the military. (My mother volunteered for the Women's Army Corps in World War II, and I owe my existence to that.) But the idea of forcing women into combat is something I have long believed the American people would not accept. (And this is an idea I've been talking about annually in conlaw classes for many years.)

About that police officer who has the temerity to sue the estate of the person he killed.

I've got a problem with this NYT headline: "Chicago Officer, Citing Emotional Trauma, Sues Estate of Teenager He Fatally Shot." And this first paragraph, boldface added:

The Chicago police officer who fatally shot a black 19-year-old and an unarmed bystander in December has filed a lawsuit seeking more than $10 million in damages from the teenager’s estate, an unusual legal approach based on a claim that the young man’s actions leading up to the gunfire were “atrocious” and have caused the officer “extreme emotional trauma.”

Sounds unfathomably cruel, doesn't it?

There are 4 more paragraphs, including a statement from the estate's lawyer — "It’s a new low for the Chicago Police Department.... First you shoot them, then you sue them. It’s outrageous. I can’t believe that this police officer has the temerity to turn around and sue the estate of the person who he killed." —  before you get to the real structure of the lawsuit. Paragraph #6:

Officer Rialmo’s lawsuit, filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court, was a counterclaim to a wrongful death case brought weeks ago by Mr. LeGrier’s estate....

It's a counterclaim! Rialmo didn't file the lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed against him. When someone sues you, you're required to answer, and you are intensely motivated to think through whether you have any counterclaims. In fact, if the defendant has claims against the plaintiff that arise from the same incident, he's forced to assert them now or lose them.

I understand why the estate's lawyer wants to portray this as outrageous, but it's not as if the police officer reached out and dragged this family from its private condition of mourning into the brutality of litigation. The officer — who has his own tragedy (especially having unwittingly killed an innocent bystander) — is (and, in his telling, was) responding defensively.

Gloria Steinem's nonapology doubles down on the sexualization of young women.

Gloria Steinem ran into a bit of criticism when — explaining why some young women support the male instead of the female candidate — she portrayed them as thinking "Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie...”

Now, she has put up a statement on Facebook:

In a case of talk-show Interruptus, I misspoke on the Bill Maher show recently, and apologize for what's been misinterpreted as implying young women aren't serious in their politics. What I had just said on the same show was the opposite: young women are active, mad as hell about what's happening to them, graduating in debt, but averaging a million dollars less over their lifetimes to pay it back. Whether they gravitate to Bernie or Hillary, young women are activist and feminist in greater numbers than ever before.

It's a nonapology — she only purports to regret the way other people have misinterpreted her. And there's nothing to explain how the specific words — "Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie" — did not have the meaning that's been read into them. She only said there were other words too, and those other words are the ones that convey her real attitude toward young women. But those other words were about the way young women care about feminism, not why these women might prefer Bernie to Hillary. On that topic, she needed to grope for an explanation, and what popped out was a dismissive insult: The young women are boy crazy, looking for sexual partners. That still feels like unfiltered Gloria — what she really thinks of these girls today.

In that light, let's look at the striking phrase that begins her statement: talk-show Interruptus.

I can only think of one interpretation of that. Maybe what I'm going to say is a misinterpretation, and I eagerly encourage you to offer any alternatives that escape me. To me, it seems that it must be a play on the only "interruptus" phrase in common parlance: coitus interruptus.

Coitus interruptus, also known as the rejected sexual intercourse, withdrawal or pull-out method, is a method of birth control in which a man, during sexual intercourse, withdraws his penis from a woman's vagina prior to orgasm (and ejaculation), and then directs his ejaculate (semen) away from the vagina in an effort to avoid insemination. 

So... in Gloria's metaphor, she was fucking us, hoping to inseminate us with her idea that women must vote for Hillary — is there an abortion for that? — and she pulled out too soon and her idea-ejaculate spewed fruitlessly.

Look, there's nothing really wrong with this metaphor — ideas as sperm, communication as insemination, other people's brains as wombs. It's just pretty weird and telling, under the circumstances, for the grand old feminist to see herself in the male sexual role as she sets out to reach young women! And this wasn't just what popped out of her when a talk show host put her on the spot. That was "Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie." This was the written word — her thought-out response to the criticism. She was in a position to choose her words carefully and strongly motivated to redeem herself, and once again, she gravitated toward thinking of sexualizing young women!

***

Bonus: Found while Googling "coitus interruptus" — a new AV Club listicle, "Coitus interruptus: 15 reasons to knock first," with 15 clips from movies (e.g., "American Pie") trading on the comic trope of getting interrupted while having sex.

"There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!" said Madeleine Albright.

That came in the context not of discussing the struggles of ordinary women to succeed, but in chewing out younger women for not supporting Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton was there, clapping and laughing and — as the NYT put it — taking "a large sip of her beverage." Gruesome!

This is so wrong on so many levels, but I'm going to isolate one: Don't talk about Hell. Mixing religion and politics is a tricky matter. It can be the best of politics and the best of religion. It can be Martin Luther King Jr. orating about the Promised Land. But mostly it's bad politics and bad religion or just banality that soothes some people and makes others vaguely uneasy. But when you switch from religion as uplift — God bless America, Jesus calls us to love one another, etc. — to religion as condemnation — there’s a special place in hell — you've debased yourself and debased religion.

Do Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton believe in torturing their political enemies? That's what Hell is. Eternal torture. Maybe you think it's just a big joke or no one could take it literally. Well, if you don't believe in the religion that other people cling to, just leave it alone.

Gloria Steinen, disrespecting young women: "And, when you’re young, you’re thinking, where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie...”

Quite the misstep, but she's for Hillary, and when you put politics first, even if you're the biggest feminist in the world, you come out with anti-feminism.

Watch the full interview. Bill Maher lures into other embarrassments, like when she asserts that feminism has no boundaries then characterizes the abuses in Muslim countries as something that needs to be dealt with within those countries, by Muslim women:



ADDED: At 6:36, Maher asks, "Is feminism something that goes beyond our borders?," and Steinem says "Oh, yes, absolutely, it is totally beyond borders." Maher follows up: "Then why aren't [sic] the way women are treated in the Muslim world considered more of a feminist cause?" She says, "It is! Are you kidding me? Of course, it is!" She mentions the women in those countries who see it as a feminist cause, then tries to pivot away from Islam with "All monotheism is a problem." And — wisely — "Islam being attached to the government is the problem." Maher bears down: "40 countries have Sharia law and under Sharia law...." He lists some very burdensome limitations on women. Her response is: "A lot of feminists in the Islamic world are taking Muhammad's words and pointing out that, you know, his first wife was a real estate agent and smarter than him and richer than him." (Maher says: "A real estate agent?! For what? Century 7?) She says that in his day Muhammad was "a reformer on a lot of issues for women." Now, it's "another story." And then: "Only you could get me to defend any monotheism. I can't believe I'm saying this." He says he's not asking her to defend Sharia law, only saying it should be a big cause for the people who fought for civil rights in the 60s and against apartheid in the 80s. She says: "It is, including for the women in those countries."

AND:

"A truly greedy executive would keep a much lower profile than Shkreli: there would be no headline-grabbing exponential price hikes..."

"... just boring but reliable ticks upward; no interviews, no tweeting, and absolutely no hip-hop feuds. A truly greedy executive would stay more or less anonymous. (How many other pharmaceutical C.E.O.s can you name?) But Shkreli seems intent on proving a point about money and medicine, and you don’t have to agree with his assessment in order to appreciate the service he has done us all. By showing what is legal, he has helped us to think about what we might want to change, and what we might need to learn to live with. Most of our Presidential candidates claim to disdain Washington politicians, but, on Thursday, Shkreli put that disdain into practice—and helped illustrate, to anyone paying attention, why it is so richly deserved. He is candid even when candor doesn’t pay... He rolls his eyes at members of Congress, he carries on thoughtful conversations with random Internet commenters.... He is the American Dream, a rude reminder of the spirit that makes this country great...."

From "Everyone Hates Martin Shkreli. Everyone Is Missing the Point," by Kelefa Sanneh in The New Yorker.

At the Mendota Ice Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

The 14-second clip was made yesterday in the early afternoon from the UW Memorial Terrace. It was nice seeing the college kids making the best use of the lake in Winter. Love the pond hockey!

"Gov. Scott Walker on Saturday signed into law a bill that legalizes switchblades..."

"... and expands the ability to carry switchblades, bowie knives and other concealed knives without a permit," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

"Wisconsin citizens have the fundamental right to defend themselves and feel safe and secure in their homes and we remain committed to protecting those rights," the governor said in a prepared statement.

Sample comment: "Oh thank god this was finally passed..now we can all breathe again. Lol. Thanks dopey fool Wanker."

How hard was it, really, to answer the question, asked at last night's debate, whether young women should have to register for the military draft?

Here's the transcript.

Martha Raddatz noted that Army and Marine Corps leaders just said they thought women, like men, should have to register for the draft — the nonexistent draft. Shouldn't we ask why we impose ritual form-filing on anyone?

Raddatz prefaced her question to the candidates with: "Many of you have young daughters." I find that offensive, but maybe you think it properly pokes at the conscience or moral feeling. Why shouldn't the prod be "Many of you have young sons"? Why are sons burdened with something that daughters get to ignore? Do we even remember the traditional answer? Young men's bodies are expendable. Women's bodies are needed to produce the next generation of expendable males and baby-making females.

Raddatz aims first at Rubio. Does he think "young women [should] be required to sign up for Selective Service in case of a national emergency?" Rubio begins with the recognition that woman do now serve in combat and that he supports it "so long as the minimum requirements necessary to do the job are not compromised." Fine, but those are volunteers. What about exposing women to some future draft? He says: "Selective Service should be opened up for both men and women...." Opened up? Isn't that odd? We're talking about imposing a requirement, not creating options. He quickly moves on to a military topic where he's got talking points to dump — rebuilding our too-small Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Raddatz moves on to Jeb Bush, who completely fails to answer the question. He babbles about not imposing a "political agenda" on the military, the right (not the requirement) of women to serve in combat if they can meet "minimum requirements," and how we shouldn't be "weak militarily" and just "talk about red lines, and ISIS being the J.V. team, and reset buttons and all this." Raddatz tries to pull him back to the question, and he responds with the assertion that the draft won't be reinstituted. There's quite a bit more pushing by Raddatz to get him onto the question, and though at one point he reveals he knows what the question is — "You — you asked a question not about the draft, you asked about registering" — he never gives one word of an answer.

At this point, Chris Christie breaks in: "Martha? Can I — can I be really — can I be really clear on this, because I am the father of two daughters?" Demanding to go next? Playing the I-have-2-daughters card? He gets away with this, and he'd better answer the actual question.

What my wife and I have taught our daughters right from the beginning, that their sense of self-worth, their sense of value, their sense of what they want to do with their life comes not from the outside, but comes from within. And if a young woman in this country wants to go and fight to defend their country, she should be permitted to do so.

I get that he wants women to think of him as the one who cares about women, but permission to serve if you want is exactly not what registering for the draft is about. But he moves to the right subject:

Part of that also needs to be part of a greater effort in this country, and so there’s no reason why one — young women should be discriminated against from registering for the selective service. 

Let's just pretend it's the women who are being discriminated against. Do viewers not see that the current discrimination is against men and that the proposal is not to increase but to limit the options open to women?

The fact is, we need to be a party and a people that makes sure that our women in this country understand anything they can dream, anything that they want to aspire to, they can do. That’s the way we raised our daughters and that’s what we should aspire to as president for all of the women in our country.

Back to the old cheerleading for women and the treacle about dreams. They say you can "be all that you can be" in the Army as they encourage you to volunteer, but there is at least one very obvious thing that you cannot be in the Army. You can't be a person who is not in the Army.

So Christie got away with interrupting to take the opportunity to promote himself as a champion of feminine fulfillment, and he only answered the question in the form of pretending it meant close to the opposite of what it means.

Now, Ben Carson decides to butt in:

CARSON: Can I say something...

RADDATZ: We just covered — wait one second, Dr. Carson.

CARSON: Something about the draft. Very quickly.

RADDATZ: Very quickly.

He talks about the decrease in volunteers but not the draft as a solution. He wants to treat veterans better, helping them with health care and "integrating them back into society." And then "we won’t have to ever worry about a draft again." So, like Jeb, his only point is there shouldn't need to be a draft. Not a word about the real subject: whether men alone or men and women or nobody should — in a country with no draft — have to register for the draft.

How incredibly annoying! It's a difficult question, one I've discussed many time in constitutional law classes, and no one engaged on the level that would get any credit at all on a law school exam. That is, they're not even showing that they understand the question. But you understand the question, I trust. So take this poll and discuss it in the comments.

Here's the Supreme Court case that said it's not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause to require men but not women to register for the draft. That's from 1981, but if you think that's wrong, you should be disturbed that we're still following it. Congress is free to end the discrimination either because disagrees with the Court or because it prefers a stricter standard of formal equality. That stricter formal equality is achievable either by ending registration for the draft or by including women along with men. The alternative that we have now can be defended as a substantive — as opposed to formal — equality, in which the physical differences between male and female bodies justify the different treatment.

In times of dire military emergency, when a draft would be needed, government overcomes the individual's freedom, and in that awful situation, it may see males as expendable and females as necessary to rebuild the population. But so what? If everyone is registered, the government will know who's male and who's females, and if the draft comes, it can restrict the draft to males if it wants. I don't expect any political candidate to talk about this on the level that would satisfy me, but I am criticizing them for failing to answer the question Raddatz asked.

While there is no draft, who should be required to register for the draft?

No one, but if anyone, only men.

No one, but if anyone, both men and women.

Only men.

Men and women.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Christie bullied Rubio and Trump bullied the audience.

Did anything else happen at the debate last night? We bailed out of the live broadcast somewhere around halfway through. I'm glancing at the reports this morning. I'm seeing that Christie accomplished a "beatdown of Marco Rubio" (Salon) and Christie "rattled" Rubio (Yahoo Politics and Washington Free Beacon and that Rubio "chokes" (Politico) and "Malfunctions" (Buzzfeed), so I figured I'd flip it and say Christie bullied Rubio. It's just my way of protesting the tiresomely dramatic headlines. Who did what to whom? Any schlonging?

I've got the debate recorded, and I could start watching where I left off, but now here's the transcript, which is so much faster (even as it seems not to matter). The one thing I want to look up is what they said about drafting women — drafting women into combat. I never thought this idea would even be acceptable let alone popular or even — has it come to this? — what you think you're supposed to think. (And this is an idea I delve into on an annual basis, because Conlaw2 must cover the Supreme Court case that said it's not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause to require men but not women to register for the draft.)

I'm going to start a new post to talk about what they said about the draft.

As for Trump bullying the audience:

"That's all of his donors and special interests out there," Trump said of the people booing him. "That's what it is. And by the way, let me just tell you: We needed tickets. You can't get them. You know who has the tickets? … Donors, special interests, the people that are putting up the money. That's who it is.... The reason they're not loving me is I don't want their money. I'm going to do the right thing for the American public"....