"Why and when did you decide, f*ck that, I'm coming out swinging?"

Amba asks why, so soon after putting an asterisk in "f*ck," I did a post that consisted of calling someone a dick. Good question, and my first answer to it is inadequate, as I noticed this morning. So I reanswered, and I'm elevating the answer to a post, partly so Amba will see it but also to set up a new conversation about how we should be speaking to each other.

I make a special case out of the word "f*ck" because of filters. They can't filter "dick." It's a name. My own father's name was Dick. I have yet to meet anyone named F*ck.

But there's the question, why did I do a post like this, just calling the guy a dick? I don't usually post like that or talk like that about someone. It's like the old "nerd wants love" post. I do it occasionally, when linking to someone who's being rotten to me. (I normally just don't link to such thing[s].) A short post requires you to go over and read it. He gets traffic. He's not particularly hurt by it, actually. He has his point and you have to read it. You might think he's right. Personally, I think he's so clearly wrong that just reading his post will get you where I would otherwise have to persuade you to go.

Plus, I operate on whim and intuition here. And the guy's name is Quick. It rhymes with dick and calling him a dick is quick.

And I did just approve of John McCain saying "f*ck you" and "chickenshit." Maybe McCain emboldened me. Which might be a reason to disapprove of him. He's setting an example and, being a leader, he gets followers.

Now, I was criticized for saying "I want a President who says 'f*ck you' and calls things that are chickenshit 'chickenshit.'" Notably, Beldar wrote: 'I do not want an American president who cannot restrain himself from shouting 'F*** you!' at his peers." But I don't know that McCain couldn't restrain himself. I wasn't there. I didn't hear the context. I assume Senators say harsh things to each other behind closed doors, but I don't have a feeling for what the norm is. My approval is at the abstract level. I am not expressing an opinion about whether the things McCain called "chickenshit" really were chickenshit. And Senator Cornyn possibly didn't deserve a "f*ck you" on that occasion.

What I didn't like was that people who oppose McCain on the immigration bill chose to quote him to the press and that the press reported it. They were trying to use American sensitivity to language to shape opinion about the immigration bill. But your view of the immigration bill shouldn't depend on whether one of its supporters expresses himself in ruder language than you like. I'm sure you know that, but it was an attempt to manipulate you subliminally, and I meant to call them on it. It was also an attempt to wreck McCain's presidential candidacy, something plenty of people have a motivation to do.

I wrote my post saying "it's nothing" not because I tolerate uncontrolled anger -- though I probably accept (and engage in) more passionate expression than most people do. I wrote it because I thought I detected an underhanded political move. Who decided on this occasion to tattle on a few of the words that were spoken at a closed-door meeting? Why did they do it? You can't be naïve enough to think that it was someone who just loves a mutually respectful deliberative environment.

ADDED: And here's Amba's response to this post:

I wondered if it was McCain's influence, or just the toughening effect of the gratuitous vileness Ann's been subjected to, or even, on some level, an angry swiping-away of the stereotype of the delicate-sensibilitied female or feminist blogger. Tearing down the goddamned lace curtains....

[The blogosphere] is what we make it, and there's an interesting tension between the desire for courtesy and the dislike of bullshit. Real civilized discourse holds that tension instead of collapsing it one way or the other -- into potty-mouthed ranting or prissy political correctness of either persuasion -- and it strikes me that it has a lot to do with gender, and the homage paid each to the traditional sensibilities of the other by tough women and courteous men.

"I wanted cute but got Cujo."

"I have an identical [twin] sister and I don't look like her anymore."

The revival of "traditional play" for children.

Check it out. Some people think kids ought to be encouraged to go outside and play tag and that sort of thing.

Conn Iggulden [author of "The Dangerous Book for Boys"] said in an e-mail message that he routinely received correspondence from parents who yearn for a “return to simple pleasures,” which seems to stem from “potent forces, like the realisation that keeping your kids locked up in the house on PlayStations isn’t actually that good for them; or the appalled reaction of many parents to a health-and-safety culture that prevents half the activities they took for granted as kids — and that they know were important to their growth and confidence.”...

For many parents and educators, the burgeoning interest in old-fashioned games is an outgrowth of a broader campaign... to restore unstructured play in children’s lives....

Dr. Geoffrey Godbey, a professor of recreation at Penn State University, said the idea that parents can revive old-fashioned play is contrary to the spirit of play. He blamed “boomers who want to do it themselves again because they never grew up.”

His advice? “Let the kids go.”

But Sara Boettrich doesn’t want to. The Rochester, N.Y., mother has tried to exhume the old playground games of her own childhood, like seven up — which involves bouncing a red rubber ball against a wall. “I used to love that game!” Ms. Boettrich said. “My friends and I would play that for weeks.”

Oh, that completely gave me a flashback to throwing a ball against the wall to the sequence: plainsies, clapsies, overhand, backsies, high, low, and under we go. It had advancing levels that would necessarily ultimately defeat you. I also remember spending a whole summer where we were obsessed with trying to walk across a ledge that got narrower and narrower at one end. No one could ever do it. I had fantasies -- and I knew they were absurd -- of becoming famous doing these things.

I agree with the people who say that the kids need to have their own motivation. But parents can at least insist that the kids go outside the way parents did years ago. And don't think we didn't complain about it. We all said "There's nothing to do outside." But the idea that we were supposed to go outside had some effect. Nowadays, I think parents accept indoor activities better for some reason. Maybe they like knowing where the kids and that nothing will physically hurt them... nothing sudden, at least... probably.

Here are some of the thing we found to do outside (none of it taught by an adult): octopus, swinging statues, tag, freeze tag, two-square, four-square, "Mother may I," red-light-green-light, Chinese school, monkey in the middle, leap frog, jump rope, Chinese jump rope, hopscotch, hide and seek, crack the whip. We also invented our games that we played at recess. I remember one called "jail." There was one called "Horsemasters," based on the Disney show. And I somehow got a lot of people to play a game I came up with based on a book I liked called "The Little Witch."

And you don't have to tell me that I should be outside... Why aren't you outside?

AND: I just noticed I'd written "swinging statutes" instead of "swinging statues." You might think both seem ridiculous....

I meet people all day long who say to me, 'I’m an artist because of you,' really cool-looking young people."

"I just want to burst into tears."

Roberts Rules of Order and 60s radicals.

From an essay by Rachel Donadio (which has much more about Roberts Rules of Order):

Todd Gitlin, a former president of Students for a Democratic Society who teaches journalism at Columbia, recalled using Robert’s Rules for early S.D.S. meetings, “sometimes with amusement,” as if these young radicals had “borrowed Mom and Dad’s decks of cards to play our game.” But by the mid-’60s its guidelines seemed restrictive. In his history “SDS,” Kirkpatrick Sale recounts a 1964 meeting at which the organization’s co-founder Tom Hayden began to question the value of procedural niceties. “Suppose parliamentary democracy were a contrivance of 19th-century imperialism and merely a tool of enslavement?” Sale quotes Hayden as saying. “Suppose we rush through the debate and ‘decide’ to do something by a vote of 36 to 33. Will we really have decided anything?” Hayden, Sale writes, “saw that S.D.S. was caught in the bind of trying to create a new world with the tools of the old.”

Today, Hayden, a professor and activist, is still skeptical of parliamentary procedure. “Robert’s Rules might suit a representative institution, but it doesn’t suit a fledgling social movement,” he said in a telephone conversation. “It institutionalizes a win-lose mentality, when often there are close decisions in which both sides need representation.” Hayden cites the example of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which in the mid-’60s voted to expel white members. “It was a one-vote margin that changed ’60s history fundamentally,” Hayden said. “I view it as an unfortunate way to try to settle a serious problem.”

I can't stand SDS... Did I ever tell you that SDS folk used to meet in the dorm room next to mine at the University of Michigan, circa 1969? They were really annoying when overheard through a wall. I don't know if it's the best way to form political opinions, but overheard through a wall, I couldn't stand them. It's the middle of the night, you're trying to get some sleep and they can't seem to agree about The Revolution. Must you yell about it 5 inches away from my bed?

Anyway, much as I can't stand SDS, I've got to give Tom Hayden credit for saying a lot of smart things there. (Though I don't agree with that new world/old tools part.) You know, I've chaired committee meetings, and I've never proceeded by taking votes and letting a narrow majority win. We've always talked to the point of consensus or until those in the minority position accepted the outcome. I accept that elections and elected legislatures ought to proceed by majority vote, but there are a lot of situations where the majority vote and Rules of Order games are best avoided.

Hey, the guy who named the blogosphere...

... is kind of a dick.

Yeah, I still have a lot of car pictures to go.

But I thought I'd break the monotony with a photo post that was completely the opposite.

Garden with lady's slippers/tablescape with a tree peony.

The garden looks wild, but it's actually amazingly carefully tended.



Those are yellow lady's slippers

Inside, the table is carefully set. "Is that real?"



"Yes. It's a tree peony."

About that suggestion of mine that reading classes should use nonfiction books.

This post has really stirred people up.

Look, my main point is efficiency. Kids need to learn to read, and they should also be learning science and history too, so why not combine the two tasks? Reading would still be taught and, in the early years, would be the central focus of the lesson, but the texts would have an added benefit of getting started learning other academic subjects.

I'm not saying fiction isn't worth reading. I'm saying that it can be held for after hours pleasure reading. Frankly, I think this would increase the love of fiction. Here's this shelf of books that you can read when you finish your other work. You can take them home if you like. I think this would give them an aura of excitement. There are lots of people who have fiction forced on them and avoid it once they're out of school. My father would get passionate about his hatred of "The Return of the Native," which he was forced to read. Me, I read "The Return of the Native" and all of Thomas Hardy's novels on my own and loved them. Look at how kids read the Harry Potter books on their own. Put them outside of the classroom and let kids see them as a leisure treat.

In saying that, I don't mean to say they are just for fun and that there's nothing deep. I'm saying that reading fiction books is or should be intrinsically rewarding and that intrinsic reward is best felt when you are exercising free choice. And I also think that the depths in fiction are best absorbed in a free environment without an authority figure trying to lead you or tell you how to think. Much good fiction is about challenging authority, and I worry that authority figures will choose fiction that they approve of because it teaches the values they like. That's not my idea of how good fiction works.

Another thing I'm not saying is that we shouldn't have literature classes. I've been talking about reading classes, those learn-to-read sessions very young students have. Those students aren't delving into the subtleties of themes and language and so forth. I have no problem with literature classes that teach students how to analyze texts in some fairly deep way, as long as they don't destroy the pleasure and love of art. So perhaps literature classes should be elective.

I'm also not opposed to teaching history and science through the kinds of novels and storybooks that present the information accurately. And I think a history class could very well have students read novels that had an effect on history or how people think about history, like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or "1984." I've taught a couple "Women in Law and Literature" seminars myself. (We'd read a court case and a novel that dealt with the same subject as the case.)

Finally, I'm not saying that young kids should be given badly written, boring text books as their early readers any more than my critics think they should be given badly written, boring storybooks. That assumption, at the core of many of the criticisms I've read, is so perverse that it makes your whole argument seem to be in bad faith. Or perhaps you have only read nonfiction when it was imposed on you by a teacher and you have never discovered its intrinsic rewards by reading it on your own free choice. I'll bet if you had a shelf of books for kids to choose for their free time and it had some nonfiction books like this one, lots of kids would pick them over fiction. And I think a lot of boys would be grateful and some girls might be inspired to go into careers that are more common for boys.

Writing this post, I discovered that I'd written on this topic before, inspired by a WaPo article called "Educators Differ on Why Boys Lag in Reading":

"A lot of teachers think of reading as reading stories," said Lee Galda, professor of children's literature at the University of Minnesota. "And in fact, a lot of boys, and not just boys, like nonfiction. But we keep concentrating on novels or short stories and sometimes don't think of reading nonfiction as reading. But in fact it is, and it is extremely important."

Teachers and parents have said boys generally prefer stories with adventure, suspense and fantasy and tend toward reading nonfiction stories and non-narrative informational books, as well as magazines and newspapers.

I wrote:

Maybe it would be easier to say that everyone wants to read what interests them and quite properly rebels at being told what to read. (Maybe boys just rebel more conspicuously than girls.)

It's one thing for the biology teacher to insist that you read a biology book, but if teachers are just trying to get kids to read, why shouldn't they provide a broad selection and give kids a chance to discover what they find interesting? It looks as though the biggest problem is that teachers are pushing too much literary fiction on kids. English teachers tend to be people who enjoy that sort of thing, but most people don't read it on their own. Why should we have an appetite for stories? And why should our appetite for stories be about elegantly described characters and their relationships (as opposed to adventure and fantasy)?

I used to take my sons to the bookstore and let them find whatever they were interested in. We used to hang out at Borders nearly every day, and I usually ended up buying a book or two. What did they want? Humor, especially in comic form (like "Life in Hell"). Collections of amazing science facts and other things that did not have to be read in linear fashion. (This was a big favorite.) Books about movies and music and other subjects they were interested in.

And here's another old post of mine, describing a group of 3 boys I saw at Borders, getting more excited about a book than I've ever seen kids get. But good luck getting your local teachers to include this one on their pleasure-reading shelf:



ADDED: Some email:

As a very young boy (7-11) I never bothered reading one book of fiction (Lord of the Rings changed that for me at the age of 16). All I read as a child were books on dinosaurs and books on the middle ages.

When I entered 7th grade and we began studying the 13th century, I knew more about early feudal crop rotation and the politics of southern France than my 8th grade teacher....honestly. I also knew the difference between the paleozoic and cretaceous periods. I also read books about lasers...college level books that I had no business reading (and despite not understanding any of it I enjoyed the reading.)

I had the pleasure of teaching English in South Korea for 3 odd years. I ditched the "learn English" type books in favor of beginning science and history books early on. I tell you, the boys AND girls had a fantastic time learning English while reading about how the early Greeks figured out the Earth was round, or how photosynthesis works.

I also made the poor kids memorize poetry, but that's neither here nor
there.

UPDATE: Among my many critics, I want to give the prize to this guy for writing "Althouse correctly notes that reading comprehension skills among high-school students are on the decline" -- not because he gave me credit for something but because I never said anything about reading comprehension skills among high school students! I hope he does an update, something like: Althouse correctly notes that reading comprehension skills among bloggers are on the decline.

Poll shows 2 Republicans Iowans want in the race even more than Fred Thompson.

Condoleezza Rice and Newt Gingrich.

ADDED: In the comments, I make what you might think is an amazing assertion: I have never seen Fred Thompson in any movie or TV show. So there! I think that makes me a good judge of his substance, because I bring no extraneous fondness to the matter. Surprised that I've never watched "Law & Order"?

"Kraft singles on white bread was one of this President's most requested lunch items."

Writes Walter Scheib, former White House Executive Chef, fired by Laura Bush in 2005. Don't mess with the chef. He knows those embarrassing facts about you, like the way you like processed cheese and white bread, and is not afraid to tell the world.

Scheib, a professionally trained cook with an outstanding CV even before he started work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, tells me flatly that making lunch for Bush was "not very challenging and didn't really require any of my professional training".

But according to Scheib, this is not a making a partisan or political statement. During our conversation over coffee in a swish New York bar, he does refer to the burgers and 'dogs to which his first Presidential employer, Bill Clinton, was partial. Yet Scheib's book, White House Chef, part memoir, part cookbook, clearly shows who he preferred working for, and why, during his 11 years in the basement kitchen, even if his professionalism - and presumably his desire to work for the big guns again - rule out any the dishing of any serious dirt....

"The White House is a private home," says Scheib. "And the important thing is to achieve what residents want - whether that's a bowl of chicken soup when they're not well or a state dinner for 900 people. Each is important and I submit that the chicken soup may even be more critical to your long-term success."

Scheib, or "Cookie" as President Bush liked to call him, is frustratingly discreet when it comes to talking about his tête-à-têtes over toast with his employers.

Aw, Cookie. I guess he's not a rat. But now the book's no fun at all! Weren't you ready to go to the bookstore and check the index for all the Hillary stuff? Check out the acknowlegements:

"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, for taking a chance on me - you literally changed my life and I'll be in your debt forever - and President William Jefferson Clinton, for your good humour and social grace - I actually believe it when you say you are happy to see me. President George W Bush and First Lady Laura Bush - it was my pleasure to serve you."

Miaow. But when I mention this to Scheib he mumbles and says only, "Well, the temperament of the two families is substantially different."

"Both first ladies had eclectic palates," Scheib reveals. "Both presidents on the other hand, if you'd opened a barbeque or rib joint in the basement, would have been happy as clams...."

And if you'd opened up a clam joint in the basement, they'd've been...

When Bill Clinton swept into the White House with his forceful wife at his side, it was Hillary who decided to bring a new type of cuisine to the White House and it's never ending stream of guests. Less than two years after moving in, she began searching for an experienced chef. "There was this idea that great cuisine should be driven not by complicated techniques but by tremendous, fresh, ripe, spectacular, seasonal ingredients. It should be a flavour-driven concept. She wanted someone who could modernise the White House menu by moving away from the traditional French style and towards modern American cuisine." Scheib says.

In other words, Hillary was up on what had been the most well-known food trend of the previous 20 years. She's so amazing!

Surprisingly neither Bill nor Hillary ever asked for any cooking tips.

So Hillary didn't want to make cookies, Cookie?

Bill liked smoked mozzarella and pepperoni calzones with spicy tomato sauce, Southern fried chicken and Porterhouse steak (24 ounces, no less) with béarnaise sauce, while Hillary requested dishes such as curried Cornish hen, tuna melt with no-fat cheese, and cabbage rolls with shredded turkey and mixed vegetables.

Which food preference suggests better aptitude for the Presidency?

While the Clintons had been an inclusive group, who made staff a part of their extended family, the situation was distinctly different with the Bushes - from day one.

"With Laura it was simply, You're in a domestic position. We respect your professionalism, we like what you've done, everything is fine, but you're not our friend,'" says Scheib. "And a lot of my classic training was suddenly no longer necessary."...

The new President was into simpler food than his predecessor. "He didn't like soup or salad, or anything green," says Scheib. "He really just wanted beef and anything that could be prepared in Tex-Mex style. There was little challenge in preparing the President's lunch."

He really just wanted beef and anything that could be prepared in Tex-Mex style. Actually, that food preference seems really presidential to me. I mean if you were a PR person and it was your job to make up a lie about what your candidate eats, wouldn't that be the best lie?

President Bush was also reluctant to dine with his wife if she had friends over for lunch or if she was having anything fancy'. "He wanted one of his go-to items such as a cheese sandwich or a peanut butter and honey sandwich on white toast with potato chips," says Scheib.

Sounds right to me. I remember reading that Jackie Kennedy liked to have just a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. Suddenly, it seems completely elegant, doesn't it?

The book is "White House Chef."

"The phrase Memory Almost Full came into mind, then I realised I'd seen it on a phone - you know, you must delete something."

The Guardian has a nice piece on Paul McCartney, who is about to release a record called "Memory Almost Full," with songs covering his life story and his anticipation of death:

At times, he appears to argue with himself about how autobiographical the songs are. Take Mr Bellamy, which is about a man in a desperate situation - refusing to come down from the roof of his house because he's happier up there with "nobody here to spoil the view, interfere with my plans ... I like it up here without you" - newspapers have suggested this is about his state of mind. But that's too easy, he says - for starters, he began writing this album when he and Mills were happily married, and anyway, this is a character-led vignette, a Beatles-esque short story.

Hmm... well, I think writers start writing things about a marriage going bad before it actually does, either because somewhere in their head they realize where things will go or because in the process of writing they are analyzing a situation and become persuaded that what looks good on the surface is not actually good. But quite apart from that, outsiders don't know whether people who now appear happily married are still or ever were happily married. Happily married is the sort of thing you pretend to be. Happy is the sort of thing you pretend to be. Now, when people look unhappy, you can believe it -- though not always. These songwriter types -- and other sorts of poets and artists -- have reason to play the forlorn, angsty role. But, surely, some of them are sincere.

Anyway, this Mr. Bellamy character sounds like the same guy as "The Fool on the Hill," which was a Paul song.

"The common denominator is me. Even if I try and write, 'Desmond and Molly had a barrow in the market place', inevitably I come through the song."

Yes, as a lightweight nitwit, Paul detractors would say. No, that's not me saying that. I'm imagining other people. I'd give a lot of credit to Paul for choosing "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" as his example, because he must know that it was conspicuously voted the Worst Song Ever. Personally, I think it's a cool song. For one thing, they repeatedly sing the word "bra" completely out of context just for fun (like "tit" in "Girl"). For another, the sex roles get reversed in the end. ("Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face.") But the main thing I like about it is that it is where it is in a sequence of songs on a great album that can't be thought of without all of its parts exactly how and where they are. (A feeling people won't have anymore in the future because of digitized music, and maybe you've already lost it.)

Speaking of The White Album:

Nowadays, when he tours, he feels at ease with his audience. "It's funny, a couple of American tours ago, I was singing Blackbird and I started to chat to the audience much more. I'm very confident like that now. I remembered stuff that I'd forgotten for 30 years in explaining it. I get a therapy session with the audience, and I go, 'Hold on, I remember what that came from, it was a Bach thing that George and I used to play'."

He gets up to fetch a guitar from beside the Wurlitzer and starts playing the Bach. "Is this in tune? Yes. So that's the Bach. See, that's the bastardisation of it, and then this is how it evolves into Blackbird." He plays beautifully to demonstrate the transition.

They really should identify the Bach piece! Hey, I got the answer in 2 seconds from Wikipedia:

McCartney revealed on PBS's Great Performances (Paul McCartney: Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road), aired in 2006, that the guitar accompaniment for Blackbird was inspired by Bach's Bouree, a well known classical guitar piece. As kids, he and George Harrison tried to learn Bouree as a "show off" piece. Bouree is distinguished by melody and bass notes played simultaneously on the upper and lower strings. McCartney adapted a segment of Bouree as the opening of "Blackbird," and carried the musical idea throughout the song.

Back to the Guardian:

[T]here are things he doesn't want to revisit. His divorce from Mills has not only been horribly public and extended, it has also involved a series of leaked allegations about McCartney's behaviour. The model family man has been portrayed by Mills as selfish, self-obsessed and violent - she has alleged that he refused to allow her to use a bedpan to save her crawling to the lavatory on her one leg, that he discouraged her from breastfeeding their daughter, Beatrice, because he wanted her breasts to himself, that he was a drunken pot addict who had hit her in an alcoholic rage.

Think about how everything you're doing now in your marriage could be restated in divorce allegations. Aren't you a monster?

You know what people want to do to you at the moment, I say. No, he replies. And I reach over and give him a big hug. McCartney smiles. "People actually do that. I get a lorra that off people. I get people I don't even know saying, 'Look, mate'," and he gives himself a sympathetic pat on the arm. "A lot of people come up to you and offer their support. A lot of people have been through similar circumstances and feel they have to communicate it to you."

"A lorra that"... if it means "a lot of," why did they write "a lot of" all those other times? The English!

"[T]here is a tunnel and there is a light and I will get there, and meantime I really enjoy my work and my family. I see people worse off than me, so I can put it in perspective. There's a thing we always used to quote in the 60s when things were rough: 'I walked down a street and I cried because I had no shoes, then I saw a man with no feet.' " It was an Indian parable, and that is one of the lines I live by."

See, I told you! People used to always say that in the 60s! It's just a way to say "It could be worse," but "It could be worse" lacks the gruesome imagery.

"Is it possible to extract the Summer of Love from the distorting filter of narcissism?"

Or is narcissism the essence of the Summer of Love? Anyway, take note. This year is a milestone. It was exactly 40 years ago.

“Much about that summer, looking back, seems incredibly foolish and narcissistic and grandiose,” said Oskar Eustis, 48, the artistic director of the Public Theater who was 9 in 1967 and whose parents took him to a demonstration at which protesters tried to levitate the Pentagon. “But it’s not crazy to remember that we stopped the war, and we did.”...

Mr. Eustis of the Public Theater said he hoped to invoke the utopianism of 1967 without simply playing to nostalgia that runs on the desire to forget, not to remember. “Nostalgia is a corrupting emotion,” he said. “You’re imagining a lack of contradiction in the past. You’re imagining something that wasn’t true. It’s a longing to be a child again, to have magical thinking about the world.”

But he added that nostalgia could also have a “progressive aspect” that pushes people to think forward rather than back, to “remember that you can imagine a world that is different, where money didn’t determine value, where competition wasn’t the nature of human relations.

“That imagination can be powerful,” he continued. “The dream is real. The negative aspect of nostalgia is when we want that feeling that everything is possible, but we don’t want to do anything about it. That’s just narcissistic. That’s longing to feel important again. Baby boomers are very good at that.”

ADDED: I was a high school kid during the Summer of Love, and I was deeply affected by the hippie zeitgeist. But I never liked the people who wanted to appropriate the creativity and energy for political purposes, and I'm irked even now by those who say that the political activism was the good part and everything else was childish or narcissistic. I think what I thought then: They have no feeling for art and philosophy. The hippie thing was: Tune in, turn on, drop out. "Drop out" meant, among other things, leaving politics to the squares. Have you ever taken LSD? Did you think about politics at all when you were there? No, the political types like the Yippies were appropriating what they didn't create every bit as much as the advertising agency that made a Windex commercial out of "Let the Sun Shine In."

Oskar Eustis is 48. That means he was 8 years old in the Summer of Love. He's not talking about feeling what it was like first hand. I think Amba was saying a while back that what really imprints on you is what was happening when you were 17. That puts Eustis in 1976, the year of the Bicentennial, Jimmy Carter, Patty Hearst, "The Gong Show," the Son of Sam, and the unification of North and South Vietnam into a communist country. For music, well, there was "Frampton Comes Alive," all that disco, KISS, and maybe you noticed the Sex Pistols. I can see how, stuck with that, you would look back on the previous decade as a source for ideas that fit you political preferences. But that wouldn't be nostalgic, would it? Because it's progressive, and progressive means looking forward.

If you've been waiting around for me to finally get a post up this morning...

I hope you're not horribly disappointed if it's something you can't read because you're blocked by the spoiler alert or because you don't follow "The Sopranos." I didn't really mean to spend 5 hours writing it, but I can't deny the time stamp. I obviously did. That is, I know I did. Maybe you'd think I'd take a lot of breaks. But, in fact, I've scarcely moved.

Last Sunday's "Sopranos" episode: "Kennedy and Heidi."

I'm a little late to this, but I want to talk about the most recent episode of "The Sopranos." Of course, there are major spoilers below.

I watched this episode once, thought about it, slept on it, and then I woke up this morning -- as they say -- and had so many ideas about it that I came downstairs at 5 a.m. so I could watch it again on the "on demand" channel. I felt pretty sure that Tony had died in the episode, because of the way it ended with him standing in a landscape, staring at the sun and screaming "I get it!" But at what point does he die? When do we shift from life to afterlife? I'm drafting this post as I re-watch with lots of pausing and rewinding, but this isn't pure simulblogging. I go back and rewrite, as this sentence shows.

The episode is titled "Kennedy and Heidi." Heidi and Kennedy are, most conspicuously, the two girls in the car that Christopher swerves around as he loses control of his SUV. Kennedy, the passenger, asks if they should go back and help, but Heidi refuses because she's driving after dark on a learner's permit. Why do their names belong in the title to this episode where the central occurrence is Tony's murdering Christopher after the car crash?

Kennedy is an evocative name, and in earlier episodes Tony has shown an interest in President Kennedy. (He owns the dead President's hat.) Later in the episode, at Christopher's viewing in the funeral home, someone comments that his widow has adopted the Jackie Kennedy look. But why Heidi? If it's the character Heidi from the novel "Heidi," the reference is to a young girl who is so optimistic and good-hearted that she brings an isolated, mean old man back into the community. Our car-driving Heidi is all cold-hearted selfishness, so maybe it means that absolutely nobody is good in this damned world anymore, and nobody can ever save the horrible, nihilistic Tony.

Before the crash, Christopher is driving his SUV -- he's the driver, thus corresponding to Heidi -- and he's having a conversation with Tony -- who as the passenger, could be said to be the Kennedy. (Maybe he'll get shot in the head in the end.) They're having a conversation about a deal with Phil over the disposal of asbestos. This episode began -- and it will (almost) end with a garbage truck dumping asbestos waste. The conversation has a philosophical dimension. Tony doesn't want to cave to Phil's demand because life isn't worth living if you have to bend over for people. Chris thinks that in life you need to "smell the roses," and this moves Tony to concede that some battles aren't worth fighting. Then Chris mentions his daughter, and Tony reverts to bitterness and says that Phil would take those roses and stick them up your ass.

Chris puts the soundtrack from "The Departed" into the player, and the song is "Comfortably Numb" -- a song about using drugs as an escape. Tony glances over at Chris a few times as though he's trying to see if he may be using drugs again. He lets his suspicion show when he asks Chris how that party was the other day. The crash follows.

After the long, sickening roll downhill, Chris, pinned behind the steering wheel, confesses that he won't pass the drug test, so Tony now knows Chris is back to his drug problem. Tony gets out of the car and comes around and breaks the window to reach Christopher. He starts to call 911, then changes his mind and holds Chris's nose until he drowns in the blood that had been flowing out of his mouth. In the middle of the grim, silent killing -- couldn't Tony at least have said I'm sorry I have to do this? -- Tony looks up at the highway as a car goes by and its headlights pulse in the same mysteriously symbolic way that a light kept pulsing in the long coma-dream sequence in the second episode of Season 6. I think the pulse of light is the instant of Christopher's death.

Once Chris is dead, we get water imagery: It starts to rain, and Tony, calling 911, gives the locations as "Old Pumping Station Road, next to the Resevoir." Later in the episode, there will be more light and more water.

At the hospital, Tony's lying on a gurney in the hall, near Christopher's body bag -- we see the "Cleaver" hat next to it -- so this may suggest that Tony himself is dead. But I don't think so, because we also see Carmela at home, getting the phone call from him.

Now, there is a visit with Dr. Melfi and Tony is expressing happiness about Chris's death. "He was a tremendous drag on my future." But this turns out to be a dream. After checking with Carmela that he wasn't talking in his sleep, Tony goes downstairs, finds the "Cleaver" mug and hurls it across the swimming pool -- the central water symbol of the whole "Sopranos" series. The mug -- which represented Chris's hatred of Tony -- lands in the underbrush. We understand Tony's motivation for the murder fully at this point. Had Christopher lived, the drug test would caused the FBI to swoop in on him, and he would have betrayed Tony.

There is some question about whether and at what point Christopher wanted to die. Did he crash the car intentionally because he realized that Tony knew he was back on drugs and that Tony would want to kill him? Did he confess openly after the crash to offer himself up for the killing he knew Tony had in store for him? Why suffer the pain of his injuries and try to live only to die soon enough? His final words were "Call me a taxi." Is a taxi a symbol of death? There's "Death Cab for Cutie."

Bad girl Cutie, what have you done?
Baby, don't do it
Slipping, sliding down on Highway 31.
Baby, don't do it
The traffic lights change from green to red.
They tried to stop but they both wound up dead.
Death cab for Cutie
Death cab for Cutie

And there's Joni Mitchell:

Late last night
I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi
Took away my old man
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you’ve got
‘Til it’s gone?
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Presumably, that's Long Term Parking.

Carmela makes Tony a cup of coffee with that expensive expresso machine Paulie gave her in the April 22 episode. Tony says "It's good." At least something is good. They have a conversation that brings out the mother theme. (I note that Paulie's aunt/mother Nucci also dies in this episode, and there's a fair amount of childish whining by Paulie on the subject.) Carmela, crying over Christopher's death, says that when Tony was in the hospital -- back during that coma-dream -- "It was Christopher who held me." This mother-son image prompts Tony to bring up the baby seat in the SUV after the crash. It had a tree limb in it, so if the baby had been in the car, it would have been "mangled beyond recognition." Carmela stomps off, and Tony is left holding out his empty arms toward her in a way that says this boy has no mother.

The following scene is Tony's real session with Melfi, and he's talking about mothering. He's disgusted that Christopher's mother is showing up now and soaking up all the sympathy, when she didn't mother him well during his life. He says, "I hand carried him through the worse crisis he ever had." "Hand carried" is an odd expression, but it conveys the image of a mother carrying a baby. Of course, it's completely ridiculous for Tony to think he ought to be getting the sympathy when he's the murderer. Tony thinks Chris was ungrateful, that his hand carrying only inspired hate. Well, yeah. It consisted of offing Adriana.

This sequence of mother-themed scenes culminates in a gathering of various mothers in the Soprano living room. Tony wanders out of his bedroom and looks down on them from the upstairs railing. Christopher's baby is there. Christopher's mother says: "She doesn't know. Isn't God wonderful that way?" Christopher's wife pulls out her large breast and as the baby takes it, Tony snaps open the cell phone. He's calling some guy in Las Vegas. "I need a suite." The guy offers a plane too. Enough of the female. Bring on the phallic symbol. Escape from the family sphere into the realm of sin.

On the phallic plane, he looks out on the clouds. Is he dead now? I wonder. There's a quick but surreal-looking drive through a tunnel, which also gets me speculating. He arrives at Caesar's Palace. He plays roulette once, loses, gets up, and we see him eating in restaurant alone. It's all very quiet. Deathlike?

Cut to AJ's classroom. The lovely teacher's lesson is about Wordsworth. "'The world is too much with us.' Later, he invokes nature again. Why such strong words against the material world?" Cut to Tony in a lounge chair by the glitzy Roman-themed pool at Casear's. Water again. Water is death. The camera wheels around him, and we notice the incline of his head, propped up on a folded up towel. It mirrors Christopher's head angled up on the casket pillow. So is Tony dying now? Or is he still in the material world?

We see Tony driving past a sign for the Tropicana and the Folies Bergere. Then, he's in a hallway, where he transfers a wad of cash to his back pocket. He's going to see a woman who is never named -- except in the credits (as Sonya Aragon) -- and that money is the tip that she's a prostitute. But she did know Chris, and she's somewhat sad to hear he's dead. She asks how long Tony's going to be in town, and he says -- seeming to speak more generally of life itself -- that he doesn't know. He's playing it as it goes.

After a scene with Anthony and his friends beating up a young man, mainly because he's black, we see Tony driving through a tunnel again and then having sex with the woman who is never called Sonya. She offers him "paranoid free" marijuana. He takes it. She says, "Chris loved to party." Tony's all, "What's your point?" And she's says: "So much for paranoid free." Why is she comparing him to Chris? He wants to know. She tells him that Chris said sad things, but Tony seems really sad. He asks about peyote. Chris had talked about taking peyote with her. When he says "Why the f*ck am I here?" she thinks he means he wants to take peyote to get at the meaning of life, but he says "I mean Vegas."

AJ goes to his psychiatrist twice in this episode. The first time, he's doing well, even interested in school. That goes with the Wordsworth scene. In the second visit, after the attack on the black man, he's become completely nihilistic: "Everything is so f*cked up." Absurdly invoking Rodney King, he adds "Why can't we all just get along?"

Now, we see Tony taking the peyote with Sonya. Of course, he's got to vomit. Not only is peyote famous for causing vomiting, but "The Sopranos" is famous for vomiting scenes. Tony vomited in this one, and, in this one, Adriana performs "the best projectile vomiting scene in the history of television." After the peyote vomit, Tony collapses against an ugly patterned towel that clashes nauseatingly with his jagged patterned shirt. He stares up at the light fixture. There's the light! Is it death now?

Tony and Sonya are walking in the hotel lobby, across the shiny patterned floor. There's a slot machine with the word "Pompeii" on it to remind us of death and destruction. Then Tony is staring at a cartoon devil face on one of the machines. But, really, is he in hell finally? Now, he's staring at the roulette wheel and observing: "It's the same principle as the solar system." Does that make this the afterlife? He keeps winning. That's not the way real life goes. The croupier looks somewhat like Christopher. There's a strange white chip held in a vertical position on a glass cube. Are there really chips like this or is this more proof we are not looking at the real world? The chip seems to signify a communion wafer. Tony starts laughing a lot and says, "He's dead." He falls on the floor laughing. We're look down on him. Is he dead now?

Perhaps symbolizing the disposal of his evil body, the garbage truck full of asbestos waste backs up to the edge of the Jersey swampland and dumps. More water.

And now Tony and Sonya are hanging out peacefully, tripping on the sunrise in a beautiful -- unearthly? -- landscape. It was filmed in Red Rock Canyon, I see in the credits, so the place is really there, outside Las Vegas. Sonya is in a motionless trance. Tony is squinting toward the sun. As it rises above the canyon edge, it pulses in a burst of light that chimes with the headlight on the highway and all those lights in the coma-dream.

"I get it" he says quietly, standing, then once again, he stretches out his arms out. He yells -- and the canyon echoes -- "I get it." Surely, at this point, he is dead.

I see that over on Television Without Pity, there's talk that the entire episode was a dream. The episode begins and (almost) ends with a big truck dumping powdery contents, ostensibly asbestos, but also symbolizing the cocaine that caused Christopher's downfall, and perhaps representing the sleep of a dream.

The only part of the episode that is outside of the garbage truck brackets is Tony, at the canyon edge, getting it. Conceivably, Tony was asleep and dreaming throughout the episode, and the final dump of the toxic waste into the swamp was the point where he died in his bed like a good old godfather. The waste went down as the sun came up. He gets it as he passes into the infinite. The dream -- if that's what it was -- contained many indications of his death, but he was still alive and merely approaching his death. It is only when the sun bursts in the end and he shouts "I get it" that he dies.

We shall see this Sunday, if Carmela discovers his dead body in the bed.

ADDED: That powdery asbestos drifting off the garbage truck in the beginning and at the end represent the funereal line: "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

"Justice Clarence Thomas sat through 68 hours of oral arguments in the Supreme Court’s current term without uttering a word."

Even for Thomas, that's impressive.

In nearly 16 years on the court, Thomas typically has asked questions a couple of times a term.

He memorably spoke up four years ago in cases involving cross burning and affirmative action, the court’s only black justice in the unusual role of putting his race on display through questions to lawyers.

But the last time Thomas asked a question in court was Feb. 22, 2006, in a death penalty case out of South Carolina. A unanimous court eventually broadened the ability of death-penalty defendants to blame someone else for the crime.

Thomas has said in the past that he will ask a pertinent question if his colleagues don’t but sees no need to engage in the back-and-forth just to hear his own voice.

As the old song lyric goes: When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.