When Bill Cosby voted: "Well, I took my father's picture, I took my mother's picture and I took my brother James, he died when he was 7, I was 8..."

"And I took the three of them into the voting booth in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, and I pulled the curtain and I took their pictures out and I said, 'And now we're going to vote.' And I — we only, I only voted once. But — and I did that and their pictures were out, and then I put them back into my pocket and I opened the curtain. And it, and it was wonderful."

IN THE COMMENTS: Chip Ahoy said:

When I voted I stepped into the booth and closed the curtain. Then I took out of my overcoat photos of my mother and father and my four brothers and sisters and my dog that I have in little frames and taped them to the voting machine. I came prepared with Scotch tape because I remembered last time they didn't have any shelves in that voting booth. Then I took out a couple of candles and taped them to the sides of the voting booth. Then, from another pocket of my overcoat, I took out a bento box that I stuffed with sushi and sashimi and mixed the soy sauce into the wasabi, and using chopsticks, had a little snack. Then I took out a flask of saki and took a few long swigs. Then I gazed at the pictures for a long time. I thought heavily about each member of my family as I went down the row of election choices and made my selection. Then when I was finished with my little ritual I looked at the pictures again, individually, and said to them as if they were in there with me, "You're wrong about nearly everything and although I have only an idea how you all voted I have but one vote to counteract yours, so here goes." Then I pulled the lever. Put the pictures back into my pocket, snuffed the candles, put those away too, then the flask. Then closed the bento box and left.

Bissage said:

When I voted I brought my menagerie of Star Wars figurines and wrote in Jedi Master Mace Windu.

And it, and it was wonderful.

Last night's SNL opening was funny and it could have been funnier.

It's not very good at all until Governor Blagojevich shows up 2 minutes in. Then, it's hilarious, because the guy — who is he? — playing Blago is so good. There's a political correctness issue with the material though, and it would have been much funnier if the actress — who is she? — playing Rachel Maddow had not lacked the skill or the nerve to lay it on thick:

A big affirmative action case looms.

The Supreme Court took cert. in Ricci v. DeStafano — causing excitement at National Review, Volokh and Power Line.

"Who would have thought it? Prince Harry is just a normal bloke in spite of the weird circumstances of his upbringing."

"Sure, I am all for abominating racism like any other form of odious collectivism... but this hypersensitivity to any politically incorrect use of language is really annoying."

***

I loved the part where Harry's spoofing a phone conversation with the Queen:

"Granny I've got to go, send my love to the Corgis and Grandpa.... I've got to go, got to go, bye. God Save You ... yeah, that's great."

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt says:

A royal Kowalski!

Walt Kowalski is the Clint Eastwood character in "Gran Torino," the movie we've been talking about over here. I'd written:

Does the movie legitimatize racial epithets? We have our snarling but lovable geezer spitting a hundred racist slurs — especially to refer to Asians — over the course of the movie. And, in trying to teach his young mentee how to man up — and not be a pussy — he encourages him to banter playfully using words like "wop," "mick," and so forth. You might want to say it's a hilarious slap in the face of political correctness. But I think the movie is pretty effective in selling plain old-fashioned racial talk.

Freeman now says:

I think you're right about Gran Torino making a case for racial language in general. Having the character talk like that to everyone, people he liked and didn't like, people of his own race and not, sort of popped the bubble that these words should have special, almost magical, powers to offend. Especially with the juxtaposition of the racial insults against the real insults. The times you felt he was really cutting were the times when he called young men "pussies" because they deserved it.

Macho Jesus for men.

"God called [Mark] Driscoll to preach to men — particularly young men — to save them from an American Protestantism that has emasculated Christ and driven men from church pews with praise music that sounds more like boy-band ballads crooned to Jesus than 'Onward Christian Soldiers.' What bothers Driscoll — and the growing number of evangelical pastors who agree with him — is not the trope of Jesus-as-lover. After all, St. Paul tells us that the Church is the bride of Christ. What really grates is the portrayal of Jesus as a wimp, or worse. Paintings depict a gentle man embracing children and cuddling lambs. Hymns celebrate his patience and tenderness. The mainstream church, Driscoll has written, has transformed Jesus into 'a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,' a 'neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that . . . would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.'"

"Google are very efficient but their primary concern is to make searches fast and that means they have a lot of extra capacity that burns energy."

And I are sick of your greenhouse gasbaggery.

UPDATE: Google responds.

"Google are very efficient but their primary concern is to make searches fast and that means they have a lot of extra capacity that burns energy."

And I are sick of your greenhouse gasbaggery.

Bono is "struck by the one quality [Frank Sinatra's] voice lacks: Sentimentality."

Quaff a pint glass of the velvety blackness of the rock star's prose.

***

Things Frank said to Bono:

“I don’t usually hang with men who wear earrings.”

“Miles Davis never wasted a note, kid — or a word on a fool.”

“Jazz is about the moment you’re in. Being modern’s not about the future, it’s about the present.”

IN THE COMMENTS: Bill White says:

Sinatra's voice was the most selfish I've heard, which makes his Christmas songs hilarious or unlistenable depending on your mood.

And Original George links to this movie clip of Sinatra singing "Someone to Watch Over Me" — which has that line "I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood," which is surprisingly unmasculine, and in fact, the song was written for a woman:

Wedding photographs of the "Bride and Groom" are being taken, and Kay, still disguised as a maid, tries to convince Jimmy she would be a better wife than fussy Constance. She tells her rag doll that she needs "Someone to Watch Over Me."

Now, I think the song is sentimental when a woman sings it, so how can a man sing it — especially with that "lamb" line? Yet, the song is better sung by Sinatra. It's a mystery. Does it have to do with selfishness?

We're also talking about lambs this morning over on the "Macho Jesus for men" post: "Paintings depict a gentle man embracing children and cuddling lambs." We're exploring masculinity today, and I propose reconciling the macho with the lamb.

"I can’t look at this movie and be proud of what I’ve done."

Nicole Kidman thinks she was bad in "Australia." She "squirmed in her seat" at the premiere in Sydney, then fled the country for fear of the bad press.

***

Don't bother to click on that tag "charming frankness." It's a new one, there's no practicable way to go back and add it to old posts, and I'm only hoping to get the chance to use it again.

"Mr. Obama has nominated as his main executive branch lawyer someone who believes in diminishing the powers of the executive branch."

"This is akin to naming a conscientious objector as the head of the armed forces, or hiring your wife's divorce lawyer to handle your side of the settlement too."

From an interesting — if exaggerated — Wall Street Journal attack on Dawn Johnsen, who will head the Office of Legal Counsel.

"Five of the pirates who hijacked a Saudi supertanker drowned with their share of a $3 million ransom...."

How terribly not sad.

The Oscar recall voting.

Entertainment Weekly set up recall votes for 30 Oscar contests — the 6 major categories from 5 past years at 5 year intervals (2003, 1998, 1993, 1988, and 1983). I'm sure the voting — by Hollywood insiders — was strongly influenced by the fact of the past win, so I'm not surprised that only 7 old winners lost the recall vote. One Best Picture Oscar was revoked: "Shakespeare in Love" lost to "Saving Private Ryan." The actor losers are James Coburn (to Geoffrey Rush), Tommy Lee Jones (to Ralph Fiennes), Geena Davis (to Frances McDormand), Gwyneth Paltrow (to Cate Blanchett) Renee Zellweger (to Shohreh Aghdashloo), and, naturally, Roberto Benigni (to Edward Norton).

By the way, I was a big Shohreh Aghdashloo supporter for the 2003 Oscar. Her movie, "The House of Sand and Fog," was the first movie I ever blogged, on the second day in the life of this blog, and I remember feeling that I was inventing a way to blog a movie — which is decidedly not the same as reviewing a movie — first here:

... The movie we'd come to see, though, was "House of Sand and Fog," which had a good script, the kind of story that works so well in a movie, where some little thing happens in the beginning, then one thing leads to another, with all sorts of extravagant consequences. At some point you have to just let go of the thought "Jennifer Connelly should have opened her mail" and follow the characters.

... and then, the next day, in a post about candy:

“House of Sand and Fog” introduces a character by having him take a bite out of a Snickers bar and then subtract its cost in his account book. That movie may be the melodrama equivalent of “The Odd Couple”: One keeps account of a candy bar, the other never opens the mail. Both are trying to live in the same place. Hijinks/tragedy ensues.

Sorry to go off on a wave of nostalgia about the early days of this blog, but next Wednesday is its 5th anniversary. It will be 5 years straight — not one day missed. But back to the present: The Golden Globes are handed out tomorrow. And I mean to live-blog the big show.

The "glum and strained and limited phrases" of the Emancipation Proclamation remind us that Lincoln "was a lifelong martyr to constipation."

Says Christopher Hitchens.

The new Solicitor General -- Elena Kagan -- is female, so the question is: What will she wear?

The Solicitor General — up to now, invariably a male — has always worn a "morning coat" — that is to say, tails. So it's a puzzle. Lawprof Patricia J. Williams writes:

The persistence of this sartorial custom beyond its natural lifespan—and in the American justice system of all places—is not merely a quirk of history but testament to the deep and tenaciously clubbish culture that still afflicts the highest levels and most intransigently closed circles of power.

Tradition, it's an affliction.

Williams tells the story — "perhaps apocryphal" — of a female deputy solicitor who wore a "'dove-brown' or 'doe-beige' business suit" when she argued a case in the Supreme Court:

According to a friend who, to this day, fears being identified, Chief Justice Rehnquist "went berserk." He chastised her for inappropriate attire, and followed it up with a scathing letter to the Solicitor General himself, requesting that this not occur again. Brown textiles! The scandal!...

In response, the Solicitor General’s office thenceforth recommended that women wear what is popularly known as a "feminized" version of morning attire, and/or a plain black suit.

So, then, the answer is easy: Kagan will wear a nice black skirted suit. Yes, it might have tails, but in my view that would seem oddly costume-y in the absence of an established tradition. Dressing like a man is not a tradition. It's sort of kinky.



IN THE COMMENTS: Sean writes:

There hasn't been a female solicitor general before, but women from the solicitor general's office have argued before the Supreme Court, and they wore business suits.

In fact, my [Appellate Advocacy]professor told us that there was some discussion, when there first started being women in the solicitor general's office, of what was the female analogue of a morning coat. Several answers suggest themselves, based on the situations where morning coats are encountered: bridesmaids' dresses (men still wear morning coats if they are in a wedding party); women's church clothes of the 1950s, featuring knee length dresses and white gloves (men used to wear morning coats at upper class churches into the 1950s); or upper class female street clothes of the Edwardian era, perhaps featuring a bustle (this was the last time that men wore morning coats on a regular basis). None of these female attires seems quite suitable for a lawyer.

Theo Boehm says: "Forget Dietrich. If that era is any guide to style, the new Solicitor General should try the Louise Brooks look":

Why did the prosecutor strike the only black person from the jury? Because she was so fat.

That's the reason he gave, anyway:

"I do not select overweight people on the jury panel for reasons that, based on my reading and past experience, that heavy-set people tend to be very sympathetic toward any defendant."

When asked whether he was saying that race had nothing to do with it, the prosecutor said "that’s correct." And the trial court ruled: "I’m satisfied that is a race neutral explanation, so the strike stands."

Is that a good enough inquiry into whether there was race discrimination? The Second Circuit said no:

[S]uch a conclusory statement does not necessarily indicate — even by inference — that the trial court credited the prosecution’s explanation, especially since (i) the judge’s words suggested that the proffer of a race-neutral explanation was itself enough, and (ii) the explanation given here lends itself to pretext. (Which side is favored by skinny jurors?) Defense counsel later pointed out that several overweight jurors had been seated without objection, but the trial court rejected that further attack on the prosecutor’s motives after visually assessing the jurors’
relative obesity.

Visually assessing the jurors’ relative obesity — discreetly put by the Second Circuit. I checked the case to see what the trial judge actually said: Some people are "a little overweight," but the excluded juror was "grossly overweight."

So now, there needs to be a hearing "to reconstruct the prosecutor’s state of mind at the time of jury selection," or if that is "impossible or unsatisfactory," a new trial. The Second Circuit signaled its disbelief, saying the decision "rested precariously on an intuited correlation between body fat and sympathy for persons accused of crimes."

Is there some research on the sympathies of fat people? One might think that they are self-indulgent and will therefore indulge others. As long as there are going to be peremptory challenges, can't the prosecution maintain folk beliefs about what fat people are like?

Too bad there was no picture of the excluded juror and the Second Circuit had to rely on the cold paper record — especially when the trial judge and the prosecutor were under social pressure to be polite. No one described in detail just how fat the excluded juror was. But the point is the judge should have asked more questions before letting the prosecutor exclude the only black juror.

(Technical law point: This was a habeas case, and 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) only denies habeas relief “with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” The Second Circuit said that there was no adjudication of the claim at all, and therefore § 2254(d) did not apply.)

"Get the sex you deserve."

That's a line in an ad that Sociological Images interprets as "the idea of the entitlement to good sex." Yes, of course, it must mean good sex. What ad would insinuate that you deserve rotten sex (though surely it must prompt such thoughts in the minds of some insecure readers)? But does the line reflect the belief that one is entitled to good sex? It's part of an ad that advises men to use a time-consuming, considerate sexual technique that inherently deserves reward. Whether you generally deserve good sex or not, you probably do if you go to all that trouble.

Be that as it may, Sociological Images examines the sense of entitlement to good — nay, awesome — sex:

I wonder when, in American history, we decided we were entitled to awesome sex. I can’t imagine that pioneer husbands and wives, after spending all day trying to not to die (whether it be that day or that winter), and laying on a straw mattress next to their six children in their freezing/sweaty one-room home, felt pouty if their sex wasn’t mindblowing. The entitlement to great sex, then, must have come later (at least to the regular folk). I would bet it had something to do with capitalism and the commodification of pleasure, generally, and sex, specifically. After all, how do you get the sex you deserve? Well, you buy the right products: whether that be, for example, diet- and exercise-related products, cosmetic surgery, or sex toys.

So capitalism is what makes people feel entitled? I thought the opposite of capitalism — the welfare state — was what made people feel entitled. If people really think they need to work so hard — dieting, exercising, submitting to surgery, using tools* — to get sex, wouldn't that be the opposite of entitlement?
________

* Why are they called "toys"? Is it because "tool" is commonly used to refer to the body part? It would make more sense to call that a "toy," and the supplemental implement a "tool." So, with this post, I'm recommending that the term "sex toy" be changed to "sex tool."