"Earlier this summer, HBO quietly removed erotic adult movies and TV shows from its channels and streaming services."

The L.A reports that includes...

... “Taxicab Confessions,” the documentary series “Real Sex” and “Cathouse,” which chronicled life in a Nevada brothel, and specials featuring adult film star Katie Morgan... [and] adult feature films....

"Taxicab Confessions"! That doesn't seem to belong in the set, and not just because I love it and don't care at all about the rest.

“Over the past several years HBO has been winding down its late-night adult fare,” an HBO representative said. “While we’re greatly ramping up our other original program offerings, there hasn’t been a strong demand for this kind of adult programming, perhaps because it’s easily available elsewhere.”...

HBO developed and launched most of its adult programming in the early 1990s when the internet was still nascent and the network was not yet a major producer of prestigious scripted series such as “The Sopranos.”...

“It really is a vestige of a previous era,” said Jones, co-author of “The Essential HBO Reader.” “Especially the more soft-core stuff that gave HBO its mantle of ‘It’s not TV, it’s HBO.’ You weren’t finding those shows unless you subscribed to the Playboy Channel, and most people did not want their wives to know that they watched that stuff.”...

"Trumpism, progressivism triumph in Tuesday's primaries as key November races take shape."

That's the ABC headline.

Gillum’s victory isn’t just a political victory for Bernie Sanders but is a major notch on the belt for progressive policies and the movement nationwide. The 39-year-old Tallahassee mayor’s victory as the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in the nation’s third-largest state is arguably as important as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset over Rep. Joe Crowley in June....

DeSantis’ triumph in Florida is yet another indication that Republicans in the state are ready to embrace Donald Trump’s style of politics. The candidate had his children literally building a wall in a recent campaign ad, and earned the president’s backing very early in the race, a factor that clearly made a difference in his victory over Adam Putnam.

"What Rodríguez remembers of his time living wild is that it was 'glorious.'"

"When he was found by the police and brought down from the mountains, an untroubled, simple adolescence among animals and birds was cruelly cut short. He had always found it hard to relate to humans, who were baffled by his ignorance and infuriated by his inability to communicate.... [Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja] told me he was still a child, only six or seven, the first time he encountered wolves. He was looking for shelter from a storm when he stumbled across a den. Not knowing any better, he entered the cave and fell asleep with the pups. The she-wolf had been out hunting, and when she returned with food, she growled and snarled at the boy. He thought the wolf was going to attack him, he says, but she let him take a piece of the meat instead. Wolves are not the only animals he lived among: he says he made friends with foxes and snakes, and that his enemy was the wild boar. He says he spoke to them all in a mix of grunts, howls and half-remembered words: 'I couldn’t tell you what language it was, but I did speak.'...  'When a person talks, they might say one thing but mean another. Animals don’t do that,' Rodríguez told me.... José España, a biologist and specialist in wolf behaviour, who knows Rodríguez.. says... 'When [Rodríguez] says the fox laughed at him, or that he had to tell off the snake, he gives us a version of the true reality, what he believes happened – or how, at least, he explained the reality to himself,' Janer told me. 'Marcos’s mind was desperate for social acceptance,' he told me, 'so instead of understanding the animals’ presence as incentivised by the food, he thought they were trying to make friends.'"

From "How to be human: the man who was raised by wolves/Abandoned as a child, Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja survived alone in the wild for 15 years. But living with people proved to be even more difficult" in The Guardian.

The question whether Harvey Weinstein's "casting couch" behavior is a "commercial sex act" under the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015.

I see that Judge Robert Sweet is presiding over a civil case in the Southern District of New York, in which a woman named Kadian Noble is suing Weinstein under the federal  Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015.

I remember Judge Sweet from when I clerked for a Southern District judge in 1981-82. How old is he? 95! Amazing to work to such an old age. I've always liked Judge Sweet, not because I've followed him over the years, but because of one case he decided in the year when I worked in the same courthouse.

In United States v. Various Articles of Obscene Merchandise, he had said that since the movie "Deep Throat" was playing all over the Southern District of New York, it must fit "community standards" and therefore could not be obscene within the First Amendment doctrine.* I was no fan of "Deep Throat" (never saw it, never cared to see it), but I've always hated censorship, and I loved the idea — my personal translation of the meaning of the case — that nothing could ever be obscene in New York City.

Anyway, in this new case, Judge Sweet is now being asked to certify an appeal of his decision about what is a "commercial sex act" within the meaning of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015.

In his decision, Sweet acknowledged navigating "unchartered waters"** on this issue and even paused a moment to consider —if quickly reject — Weinstein's hypothetical about an individual who treats a person to a free dinner, promises future gifts, and then attempts to engage in activity which he construes as consensual sexual activity.

Is that sex trafficking? "Notably absent from this hypothetical are the necessary elements of force, fraud, and commerce, all of which have been established here," responded Sweet.

The judge added, "The contention... that Noble was given nothing of value — that the expectation of a film role, of a modeling meeting, of 'his people' being 'in touch with her' had no value — does not reflect modern reality. Even if the prospect of a film role, of a modeling meeting, and of a continued professional relationship with [The Weinstein Co.] were not 'things of value' sufficient to satisfy commercial aspect of the sex act definition, Noble's reasonable expectation of receiving those things in the future, based on Harvey's repeated representations that she would, is sufficient."...

Weinstein's lawyers want a more limited meaning to "commercial sex act." Note that Congress passed the statute using its Commerce Power, and courts will normally interpret a statute to avoid a constitutional problem. But it was a commercial setting, the movie business, not some personal date. Weinstein's lawyers are just stressing that there was "no actual exchange of value," just "a fraudulent 'promise.'"

____________________________

* After the Second Circuit Court of Appeals was boring enough to reverse, Judge Sweet still reached the same result, finding the material not patently offensive under contemporary community standards.  In that later opinion, he wrote this about the value of pornography for old people:

[A]t an Address to the American Psychological Association on August 23, 1982, the behavioral psychologist, B.F. Skinner, cited the theologian Paul Tillich and his defense of "pornography on the ground that it extended sexuality into old age." Meyer, B.F. Skinner on Behaving His Age, The Washington Post, Aug. 24, 1982, at Bl.

Much of what we call aging, he said, is not an inexorable biological process, but a change in the physical and social environment. As vision, hearing and taste fade, and erogenous tissues grow less sensitive, the elderly become bored, discouraged and depressed. They no longer receive powerful reinforcement from the environment, and fewer things seem worth doing. But that can be changed, he said. Foods can be highly flavored, pornography can be used to extend sexuality into old age, those who can't read can listen to book recordings.

N.Y. Times, Aug. 24, 1982, § C, at 2. The remarks of Skinner and Tillich suggest the beneficial utility of pornography and to that extent serve to modify this court's prior conclusion that these materials lack serious literary, artistic, political and scientific value.  

Judge Sweet was 60 when he wrote that, 35 years ago.

** I'm not looking at the original text of the opinion, but I doubt that Sweet wrote "unchartered waters" instead of the correct "uncharted waters."

At the Goldenrod Café...

... you can talk all night.

"Make sure that if blood is going to flow, let it flow all over the city. If gas is going to be used -- let that gas come down all over Chicago..."

"... and not just over us in this park. That if the police are going to run wild let them run wild all over the city of Chicago and not over us in this park. That if we are going to be disrupted, and violated, let this whole stinking city be disrupted and violated, let this whole military machine which is aimed at us... around the city, don't get trapped in some kind of large organized march which can be surrounded. Begin to find your way out of here. I'll see you in the streets."

50 years ago today, Tom Hayden exhorted the crowd.

For context:

"When Is It OK to Blow Off Weddings, Funerals, and Other Major Milestones?"

That's a good etiquette question, answered at Lifehacker in 2017 during "Evil Week," when Lifehacker covered "less-than-seemly methods for getting shit done."

The author of this piece — the delightfully named Lucy Cohen Blatter — says things like "Depending on how far you live from the person who’s invited you, that’s a useful rule of thumb for most of us—closer relationships will almost always take top priority." It's pretty focused on maintaining relationships and not hurting feelings too much. So there's one answer to the question that she never gets anywhere near.

It's totally OK to blow off a funeral when the previously alive person said explicitly and publicly I don't want you at my funeral.

Now, you've get the best excuse ever: You were disinvited. And funerals don't even have invitations. The now-dead person went out of his way to tell you to keep out. You've got a lock on nonattendance. Who can say you blew it off? You're respecting the dead man's wishes.

But here's a thought experiment: What if Donald Trump decided that in fact he should attend John McCain's memorial service in Washington (the one with the eulogies from Barack Obama and George W. Bush)? What if he analyzed it and determined that — despite McCain's pointed effort to absolve him of obligation to attend — it was not OK to blow it off?

This is kind of a 2-part question, because first you have to figure out what plausible analysis could take you there. I see the path to that conclusion, so I'm convinced it's possible. The second part of the question is how would Trump do this strange thing and attend the service when we all know John McCain's expressed preference? What would Trump say, where would he sit, how would he act?

Here's an analogy to help you think about it. A married woman dies, and her husband and children are the dominant figures at the funeral. But she had a lover, X, and the husband knows about X, hates him, and the woman, before she died, told X that he must stay away from the funeral. X might nevertheless decide that he must attend and concentrate on how to do it, maybe slip in quietly and find a place in the back.

IN THE COMMENTS: D 2 Dylan-parodied:

I received your non-invitation yesterday
About the time the flagpole broke
You told me not to come a'mourning
Was that some kind of joke
All these People that you mention
Yes I know them they are quite lame
So I rode an escalator and give them all bad nicknames
Right now I can't read too good
Guess I'll make it all up as I go
And in three days time they'll report another
Horrid Trump No-no.

The comedian Michael Ian Black takes a lot of heat for expressing happiness at the prospect of redemption for Louis C.K.

Will take heat for this, but people have to be allowed to serve their time and move on with their lives. I don't know if it's been long enough, or his career will recover, or if people will have him back, but I'm happy to see him try. https://t.co/QmqdGJnIjy

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) August 28, 2018

I like Michael Ian Black — you may remember him from "The State" and other TV comedy — and I follow him on Twitter, where, as you see above, he posted about the same news story that I blogged earlier this morning. He predicts backlash, and he's getting it. Some screen shots (click to enlarge):

"Shunned at two funerals and one (royal) wedding so far, President Trump may be well on his way to becoming president non grata."

Writes Ashley Parker in The Washington Post:

The latest snub comes in the form of the upcoming funeral for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), which, before his death, the late senator made clear he did not want the sitting president to attend. That the feeling is mutual — Trump nixed issuing a statement that praised McCain as a “hero” — only underscores the myriad ways Trump has rejected the norms of his office and, increasingly, has been rejected in turn.

Rejected by whom? By royalty and the political elite?

Less than two years into first term, Trump has often come to occupy the role of pariah — both unwelcome and unwilling to perform the basic rituals and ceremonies of the presidency, from public displays of mourning to cultural ceremonies.

Be careful, elite Trump haters. You're missing what you missed before. The people who feel shunned — who will never be royals or the American elite — the people your candidate called "deplorables" — they can hear you.

Will North Carolina have to redraw its congressional districts before the 2018 elections?

It's possible, since the new decision from the 3-judge district court can go straight to the Supreme Court but to a set of 8 Justices who've been split 4-4 on political gerrymandering.

Rick Hasen analyzes the possibilities at "BREAKING: Divided Three Judge Court Holds North Carolina Congressional Redistricting an Unconstitutional Partisan Gerrymander, Considers New Districts for 2018 Elections":

The court has opened the possibility of giving the state the chance to draw new maps, or maybe appointing a special master, all in line with the idea of replacing the districts with cured districts in time for the 2018 elections, where primaries have already been held...

A few weeks ago, I thought of writing a piece for Slate arguing that now would be the perfect time for the three-judge court to act in this case, because the Court is divided 4-4 and in that case the lower court ruling would stand. But given that primaries are done, and ballots needing to be printed very soon, I thought it would be too late for a lower court to try it.

And it could be that if [the lawyer for the state legislature Paul] Clement goes to SCOTUS, Justices Breyer and Kagan could agree that it is too late and agree on an order to delay this until the Court can consider the issue as a whole next term and before the 2020 elections....

But if the lower court orders new districts for 2018, and the Supreme Court deadlocks 4-4 on an emergency request to overturn that order, we could have new districts for 2018 only, and that could help Democrats retake control of the U.S. House.

Imagine running for Congress and at this late stage, not knowing where the lines around your district are? Imagine being a voter and not knowing which set of candidates is the one that relates to you? What if you've given money and time to a campaign that you now don't know is even your district? What if you've worked on convincing fellow citizens to vote for your candidate and now you don't know if they were the right ones to talk to — you should have been debating with somebody else... and you're still not sure who? I think even the possibility that the lines will be drawn before the coming election is unfair to the candidates and the citizens who've taken an interest in them. Obviously, the Supreme Court should immediately stay the 3-judge court's order. All 8 Justices should agree.

Louis C.K. reemerges, in classic standup style — showing up on stage at a comedy club.

The NYT reports:

He appeared around 11 p.m., said Noam Dworman, the owner of the Cellar, the Greenwich Village club with a long tradition of surprise appearances by famous comedians. Dressed in a black V-neck T-shirt and gray pants, he did a 15-minute set that touched on what Mr. Dworman called “typical Louis C.K. stuff” — racism, waitresses’ tips, parades. “It sounded just like he was trying to work out some new material, almost like any time of the last 10 years he would come in at the beginning of a new act.”

Just like starting over. Apt. Humble. Good luck, Louis.

One audience member called the club on Monday to object to the surprise set, the owner said. “He wished he had known in advance, so he could’ve decided whether to have been there or not,” Mr. Dworman said. 

As if the show itself is a sexual impingement that requires affirmative consent. But only one person said that. The crowd, en masse, gave Louis a warm reception.

Dworman said he cared about the reaction — "Every complaint goes through me like a knife" — but "there can’t be a permanent life sentence on someone who does something wrong." And, enigmatically, "I think we’ll be better off as a society if we stop looking to the bottlenecks of distribution — Twitter, Netflix, Facebook or comedy clubs — to filter the world for us."

I think that means that he sees his comedy club as a kind of public forum. Presumably, he will discriminate based on what draws and keeps a crowd, but other than that, he's for letting the comedian decide what to say.

At the End-of-Summer Café...

... linger.

And please use the Althouse Portal to shop at Amazon. Here's something I just bought: a Pilates ring. I've been taking Pilates lessons, so I actually know what to do with it.

"Politics has its virtues, all too many of them — it would not rank with baseball as a topic of conversation if it did not satisfy a great many things — but..."

"... one can suspect that its secret appeal is close to nicotine. Smoking cigarettes insulates one from one’s life, one does not feel as much, often happily so, and politics quarantines one from history; most of the people who nourish themselves in the political life are in the game not to make history but to be diverted from the history which is being made."

Wrote Norman Mailer in "Superman Comes to the Supermarket" (1960). I've quoted that before, but it's jumping out at me today as I'm looking at all my old posts about Mailer's 1968 book "Miami and the Siege of Chicago." The 1968 book — about the Republican convention (nominating Nixon in Miami) and the Democratic Convention (nominating Humphrey in Chicago, with rioting in the streets) — is something I read in 2016 to prime myself to write about that year's conventions, which were so much tamer than what happened in 1968.

I'm thinking of the book today because I'm reading a New Yorker article about it, "A Great Writer at the 1968 Democratic Disaster," by David Denby. The crazy 1968 Democratic Convention took place exactly 50 years ago this week (August 26th to 29th). Denby writes:

Please assess the taste level and effectiveness of this ad for Ted Cruz.

Here's the link to the Ted Cruz tweet with the video.

Somehow, I am incapable of getting embed code that includes the video. Maybe it's me, but I checked the "include media" box. Is Twitter making it harder to share or is it me?

Quite the line-up of faces on Drudge right now.

We talked about the Pope's horrible scandal yesterday, so I'm not restarting that.

I refuse to talk about the latest murderer (on the right)... other than to just say he looks mentally ill.

The story about Glenn Greenwald is something I was already in the middle of reading. It's in The New Yorker: "Glenn Greenwald, the Bane of Their Resistance/A leftist journalist’s bruising crusade against establishment Democrats—and their Russia obsession." Excerpt:

Greenwald...has lived largely in Rio for thirteen years. For most of that time, he and Miranda, a city-council member, rented a home on a hillside above the city, surrounded by forest and monkeys. Last year, they moved to a... house... in a baronial-modernist style, and built around a forty-foot-tall boulder that feels like the work of a sculptor tackling Freudian themes: it exists partly indoors and partly out....

He seemed happy. He was wearing shorts and flip-flops; he has a soft handshake and an easy, teasing manner that he knows will likely confound people who expect the sustained contentiousness that he employs online and on TV....  Greenwald, though untroubled about being thought relentless, told me that he was “actually trying to become less acerbic, less gratuitously combative” in public debates. He recently became attached to the idea of mindfulness, and he keeps a Buddha and a metal infinity loop on a shelf behind the sofa; a room upstairs is used only for meditation. He has turned to religious and mystical reading, and has reflected that, in middle age, one’s mood “is more about integrating with the world.”

That all strikes me as hilarious, so I give it to you now, but there's much more to the article, which I haven't read yet, because I was reading it while waiting to have blood drawn and the buzzer went off calling me into the lab. It was just a routine test, but I had to fast for 12 hours, including no coffee, so that threw off my morning routine. If you want to know the difference between Morning Coffee Althouse and No-Coffee Althouse, read this post and then all the posts that preceded it this morning. Anyway, I will finish the Greenwald thing, and I'll have more to say about it. I love when left-wing people go after left-wing people. It's just boring when right-wing people go after left-wing people and left-wing people really do need to be gone after.

If you scroll up at Drudge, you'll see...



... link goes to CNBC: "Dow jumps more than 250 points, Nasdaq hits 8,000 as US and Mexico strike trade deal."

ADDED: Maybe, like me, you wondered, what's an infinity loop. Here:

Do we need another Norman Rockwell?

If we do, this guy's in the running: "Artist Illustrates His Sweet Childhood Memories, And The Results Are Heartwarming" (Bored Panda).