"Although he directed a few films in the decades after 'Heaven’s Gate,' Cimino kept a low profile, and plastic surgery made him almost unrecognizable...."

"Cimino circled many projects that never came to fruition, including a life of Dostoevsky developed with Raymond Carver; adaptations of 'Crime and Punishment,' Truman Capote’s 'Handcarved Coffins,' Ayn Rand’s 'The Fountainhead' and Andre Malraux’s 'Man’s Fate'; and bios of Janis Joplin, Legs Diamond and Mafia boss Frank Costello. He also circled many projects eventually directed by others, including 'The Bounty,' 'Footloose,' 'The Pope of Greenwich Village' and 'Born on the Fourth of July.'"

Good-bye to Michael Cimino, who has died at the age of 77. He made a great film, "The Deer Hunter," which won 5 Oscars, including Best Picture and Director, and then, he made a colossal disaster, "Heaven's Gate," and it ruined United Artists and it ruined him.

"In the aftermath of the Germans’ systematic massacre of Jews, no voice had emerged to drive home the enormity of what had happened and how it had changed mankind’s conception of itself and of God."

"For almost two decades, the traumatized survivors — and American Jews, guilt-ridden that they had not done more to rescue their brethren — seemed frozen in silence. But by the sheer force of his personality and his gift for the haunting phrase, Mr. Wiesel, who had been liberated from Buchenwald as a 16-year-old with the indelible tattoo A-7713 on his arm, gradually exhumed the Holocaust from the burial ground of the history books...."

RIP, Elie Wiesel. He was 87.

"'Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed,' Mr. Wiesel wrote. 'Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself. Never."

More email from Linda Greenhouse: "Ann, I guess it's fair to say that each of us was right and each of us was wrong."

So, you may remember yesterday's post, "What Linda Greenhouse emailed me about what I blogged about what she wrote in The NYT about Justice Kennedy," in which I challenged Linda Greenhouse — who'd said "I would caution you against challenging my facts." The fact in question was whether Justice Kennedy should be given sole credit for writing "Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt," the first sentence of the main opinion in the 1992 abortion case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which was published by the Supreme Court as a joint opinion of Justices O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, with no one person identified as having written that opinion.

Greenhouse had emailed me about an earlier post, where I'd said "Greenhouse misstates the authorship of Casey," and she took the position that she knew Kennedy wrote it, because she was there in the courtroom when the opinion was announced, and Kennedy led off and read that "no refuge" line. I didn't think one person reading part of the opinion was complete proof he'd written it, but what was devastating to Greenhouse's assertion was that the Court's announcement of the opinion was recorded, and the audio and transcription are available on line, and Justice Kennedy did not go first — O'Connor did — and the line "Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt" was never spoken at all.

Somehow, Linda Greenhouse — a journalist with great confidence in her facts ("I would caution you against challenging my facts") — had constructed a false memory!

How did Linda Greenhouse respond? Here, with her permission, is the new email:

Ann, I guess it's fair to say that each of us was right and each of us was wrong. I'll leave it at that, confident that your charming commenters will carry the torch. I have to say I'm really surprised at my mis-memory of the Casey hand-down -- I would have sworn it on a stack of U.S. Reports. And I take it that you agree there's not another person on the planet who could have written what Kennedy wrote -- neither your favorite passage nor mine. Linda

I responded:

Thanks. But I won't agree that no one else but Kennedy could have written that. What's the evidence? It seems to be the assumption that he did write that. I'd love to know the true story of how passages like the "jurisprudence of doubt" and the "heart of liberty" ones came to exist and to find their way into a case, but I would want real research into the subject. It's one thing to think up such lines, another to decide they belong in a case, and lines are drafted and tweaked. I wouldn't look at those lines and say obviously that part was a one-man job and Kennedy's that man.

Whatever happened to all the speculation that O'Connor brought a woman's insight onto the Court? What about the role of clerks? They're people on the planet too. And I'm curious -- as my original post showed -- about the mystery of the lack of mystery that you flagged when you said: "The dry, almost clinical tone could scarcely be more different from the meditative mood the Supreme Court struck the last time it stood up for abortion rights." It's a mystery I felt motivated to explore, not to make assumptions about. 

Confronted with proof that she'd made a mistake and after cautioning me about challenging her facts, Greenhouse took the position that she and I were both wrong and right, that somehow we'd come out even. I'm not agreeing to that. I didn't say anything that was wrong. I have a way of blogging that keeps me out of trouble like that. I don't make assertions about things I don't know.

Over to you, charming commenters.

That view from the boathouse.

This morning, on Lake Mendota.

"As a psychoanalyst, a blanket rejection of the possibility of demonic attacks seems less logical, and often wishful in nature, than a careful appraisal of the facts."

"As I see it, the evidence for possession is like the evidence for George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware. In both cases, written historical accounts with numerous sound witnesses testify to their accuracy. In the end, however, it was not an academic or dogmatic view that propelled me into this line of work. I was asked to consult about people in pain. I have always thought that, if requested to help a tortured person, a physician should not arbitrarily refuse to get involved. Those who dismiss these cases unwittingly prevent patients from receiving the help they desperately require, either by failing to recommend them for psychiatric treatment (which most clearly need) or by not informing their spiritual ministers that something beyond a mental or other illness seems to be the issue. For any person of science or faith, it should be impossible to turn one’s back on a tormented soul."

Writes Richard Gallagher, a psychiatrist and a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College who is writing a book about demonic possession in the United States. Watch out, it's a WaPo link.

ADDED: The question of what is true is often superseded by what will help. In a sense, what helps is what's true. It's true that it helps (if it helps).

"Nobody knew this was coming... There was no planned meeting. It was just chance contact. The fact is, [Bill Clinton] just started walking over."

"I don’t think it was pre-arranged. He just started walking over and [even {Loretta Lynch's} security] can’t tell him, 'you can’t do that.' He walked in her plane for at least 20 to 25 minutes and the FBI is standing face to face with the Secret Service and just chatting on the hot tarmac like, 'what the hell.'... Then her detail finally got her off the plane, now much delayed, and departed for her day’s events. She had a series of visits planned for Tuesday.... I don’t agree with her politics and all that, but I knew from the beginning that she got caught off guard and her staff was already talking about it that it’s going to be a political problem for her. Her staff was flipping out. We didn’t think about the political part until we saw her staff flipping out. For the security guys, it was more of a 'I’ve got armed guys coming into my perimeter' problem. But the staff guys saw right away that it was a political problem. After Clinton got off, they were like, 'that wasn’t good.' And I know from others who were in the actual car with her that her people knew immediately the political ramifications of it and were very upset."

That's the inside picture as portrayed by an unnamed security person quoted in The New York Observer. (The principal owner of the Observer is Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law.)

"There Are Conservative Professors. Just Not in These States."

That's the headline to a NYT op-ed by Samuel J. Abrams, a politics professor at Sarah Lawrence College, where colleagues joked that he must have been a diversity hire because he "didn’t express uniformly left-wing political views."

The op-ed is mostly about the strong leftward tilt of academia, and how very strongly left the tilt is in New England:

In 1989, the number of liberals compared with conservatives on college campuses was about 2 to 1 nationwide; that figure was almost 5 to 1 for New England schools. By 2014, the national figure was 6 to 1; for those teaching in New England, the figure was 28 to 1.

28 to 1! Then there's the west — the “left coast” — where it was 3 to 1 and now is  6 to 1. Elsewhere, it was 1 to 1 and now it's 3 to 1.

But if you get specific enough — select Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming — you get  1.5 to 1, an actual uptick for conservatism, from 2 to 1 in 1989.

This WaPo article reads like PR from the Sanders campaign.

"The latest draft of the Democratic Party platform, which is set to be released as early as this afternoon, will show that Bernie Sanders won far more victories on his signature issues than has been previously thought, according to details provided by a senior Sanders adviser... Sanders did far better out of this process thus far than has been previously thought.... To be sure, Sanders will continue to fight for more in coming weeks... And we can’t be certain whether Sanders will endorse Clinton before the convention or if he is unsatisfied with the final platform product. But it looks as if this process is going better for progressives and Bernie supporters than previously suggested. And this perhaps makes it more likely that, in the end, Sanders could end up backing the nominee and helping to unify the party with less discord than expected."

That's from Greg Sargent in WaPo.

So Sanders lost his quest for the nomination, but he sort of winning because he's had "far more victories on his signature issues than has been previously thought," he's done "better out of this process thus far than has been previously thought," and it's going "better than previously suggested... with less discord than expected."

Posit a baseline — some claim of what some unspecified crowd must have been thinking — and you can always claim to actually be doing rather well compared to that. 

“The gunmen were doing a background check on religion by asking everyone to recite from the Quran."

"Those who could recite a verse or two were spared. The others were tortured.”

At the Gulshan restaurant attack, where hostages were held for more than 11 hours.

ADDED: How many people read that and think I should memorize a couple verses from the Quran? It's way easier than trying to carry a gun everywhere. 

AND: I would have said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God."

Olivia de Havilland is 100 years old today.

She played Melanie in "Gone with the Wind" and won Oscars for "To Each His Own" in 1947 and "The Heiress" in 1950, and she famously feuded with her sister, the actress Joan Fontaine.

"If Dragon Lady were alive today (for my birthday), out of self-protection I would maintain my silence!" she declared, revealing perhaps that not everything has been forgiven.

For her years, de Havilland is in surprisingly good health, and has a keen sense of humor - even calling her interviewer a "rascal" for one too probing question. Though age-related macular degeneration has damaged her vision, the centenarian is still able to read black and white printed text clearly and answer written interview questions.

She climbs stairs regularly every day in her luxurious Paris residence, and linked the secret to her longevity to three L's: "love, laughter, and learning."...

Not only can she still speak, she's wily enough to wield the verb "garner":

"By 1951, television had already made such inroads on the income garnered by motion picture companies that the Golden Era which had prevailed until then was beginning to disintegrate. And by 1953, it had come to an end. Hollywood was a dismal, tragic place....  All the artists I had known during the Golden Era (live) elsewhere... including the after world."

The day the NYT crossword gave "Teases, in older usage" as a clue for "LOLITAS"...

... and Rex Parker limited his usual write-up of the puzzle to:

Lolita was 12 years old.

She was extensively sexually abused by her stepfather.

I guess she shouldn't have "teased" him?

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. if you want something more to read, try this.

And "this" goes to "Why Is the New York Times Crossword So Clueless About Race and Gender?," a Slate article from June 28th, provoked by Tuesday's puzzle that had the clue "Decidedly non-feminist women’s group" for "HAREM" (which was "was unnecessary and awful while also managing to be demeaning to both sex workers and women in sex slavery").

The bee of the day...

What Linda Greenhouse emailed me about what I blogged about what she wrote in The NYT about Justice Kennedy.

On Tuesday, I wrote a post titled "Linda Greenhouse notes the 'dry, almost clinical tone' and lack of 'poetry' in the Supreme Court's pro-abortion-rights opinion."

I quoted her writing:

The dry, almost clinical tone could scarcely be more different from the meditative mood the Supreme Court struck the last time it stood up for abortion rights, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 24 years ago this week. “Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt” was Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s mysterious opening line in that opinion.

And, among other things, I said:

And Greenhouse misstates the authorship of Casey. She wasn't quoting an opinion for a majority of the Court that was written by Justice Kennedy, but an opinion announcing the judgment of the Court that was joined by only 3 Justices and that was written not by Kennedy alone, but by Kennedy along with Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter. However that "poetry" was created, only 1/3 of the "poets" remain on the Court.

It's indisputably true that the opinion Greenhouse quoted was published under those 3 names with no one Justice identified as the author. But I received an email from Linda Greenhouse that said:

Ann, fyi, Kennedy wrote the line in Casey that I attributed to him.  Yours, LG

I wrote back:

Is there a citation for that? 

And:

Shouldn't the article state your reason for attributing that line to him, as opposed to saying that it's how the opinion begins, as if he isn't one of 3 authors? Are you relying on extraneous knowledge? If so, shouldn't you say that in the article as oppose[d] to citing the opinion?

Here's Greenhouse's reply:

Jeffrey Toobin, "The Nine," p. 65. But Ann, I'm afraid you confuse the practice of journalism with writing for a law review. There is no convention that requires me to annotate my factual assertions. In any event, when Casey was handed down on June 29, 1992, each of the triumvirs read from the part of the joint opinion that he/she had written. Kennedy led off and started his oral announcement with "Liberty finds no refuge..." (causing a good deal of confusion in the courtroom, as you may imagine, since no one yet knew the bottom line of the case.) Souter read from his stare decisis portion, and O'Connor from her undue burden analysis. The authorship of each portion was clear from that public performance. Perhaps you were not in the courtroom.  I was.  Consequently it would have been completely superfluous for me to write: "As Jeffrey Toobin later reported..." Of course you are completely free to trash my opinions and my writing style.  I would caution you against challenging my facts. Yours, Linda

I responded:

I'm not saying you need a law review style citation, only that when you refer to the opinion — "the Supreme Court ..., in Planned Parenthood v. Casey" — and then say only "'Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt' was Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s mysterious opening line in that opinion," you appear to be referring to the opinion, which has three authors, and crediting only one of them.

I don't mind that you might choose to make an additional factual assertion without specifying how you know, but the text doesn't make an assertion that we know Kennedy alone wrote a particular sentence in the joint opinion. It just refers to the opinion and gives Kennedy sole credit for it, erasing the presence of O'Connor and Souter.

I'd like to add your explanation in an update, with your permission.

And she said:

Sure.

So there you are. What do you think? I've been cautioned against challenging Linda Greenhouse's facts — I thought we weren't entitled to our own facts — but I've got to say I don't think she's actually afraid that I confuse the practice of journalism with writing for a law review. I think it would be comforting, not fearsome, for me to have merely bumbled into a state of confusion about the difference between journalism and law reviews. Oddly, I'm not writing a law review article at all. Indeed, I eschew the practice. I'm blogging, and blogging is not a place to feel warned off challenging what people write in The New York Times. Nor is it a place for reining in criticism because there happens to be a "convention" within the journalism profession.

And I will be picky. To say "There is no convention that requires me to annotate my factual assertions" is not to say that there is a convention that requires her to refrain from annotating her factual assertions, and I continue to think that the problem was not so much the failure to support the assertion (to say how she knows Kennedy wrote that particular line) but the failure to make the assertion, to say that something is known about Kennedy and that she is not merely making a reference to the published opinion.

Sidenote: The word "triumvirs" is interesting in light of my concern about erasing O'Connor. "Triumvirs" means 3 men sharing an official position. (Toobin, by the way, used the word "troika" in the same context. "Triumvirs" harks back to ancient Roman leaders, the triumvirate. "Troika" gestures at Russian carriages with 3 horses.)

Anyway, whether one is in the courtroom when the Justices read from the writings they release to the public, it's a matter of opinion to say "The authorship of each portion was clear from that public performance." A joint opinion was released, and any reading needed to be done by one individual and not a chorus of 3.

No one said I'm reading the part that I wrote. I know that, even though Greenhouse guessed right and I was not there that day in 1992, but like everyone else on the internet, I can listen to the recording of the public performance at Oyez.com. Whatever feels clear within Greenhouse's memory, the fact is, it wasn't Justice Kennedy who "led off," it was Justice O'Connor. And when Kennedy got his turn, he did not — as Greenhouse put it — "start[] his oral announcement with 'Liberty finds no refuge....'"

I'm listening to the announcement recording and reading and searching the transcript, and it doesn't begin with or even contain the sentence "Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt." That's how the written opinion begins, but Greenhouse seems to have constructed a false memory of what she experienced in her privileged position in that courtroom a quarter century ago.

I know! I've been cautioned against challenging her facts. But I've got to do it. I've got the transcript.

The Justices don't read the written opinion when they do the announcement live. They've got a different text, and the drama of "Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt" is confined to the written opinion. Justice O'Connor — who went first, not last — did not indulge in any mystifying phraseology. If the audience felt confused at first, I suspect it was only because O'Connor stated that the court below was (mostly) affirmed, which meant that Planned Parenthood had lost, before she got to the straightforward "we conclude that the central holding of Roe should be reaffirmed."

O'Connor said that "Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter will have -- also have something to say about the judgment in these cases," and not that Kennedy and Souter will be talking about the part of the opinion they wrote. Kennedy's speaking begins with the workmanlike sentence: "The -- the essential holding of Roe versus Wade, the holding that we today retain and reaffirm has three parts." Further in, he's more high flown. And he does read the line from the opinion that I said, in my blog post, was the most poetic line in the case: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." Perhaps that line was special to him, something he wanted to say out loud, but I don't, from that, feel that he's claiming personal authorship.

Greenhouse says "The authorship of each portion was clear from that public performance," and Greenhouse thinks O'Connor wrote the undue burden analysis, but Kennedy's recitation covered that material. So much for being there. I'm going to believe the transcript and listening to the recording, as any sensible person, including Greenhouse, will.

Now, what about Toobin? Toobin did talk to some of the Justices for his book "The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court" — though, as David Margolick wrote in his review, readers are left "to ponder which of those justices talked to him for this book, and which did not."

And talk to him some of them clearly did. Without their off-the-record whispers, there would be no “inside” story of any “secret” world to tell in “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court.”

Margolick guesses who talked:

Reading Toobin’s smart and entertaining book, these hunches quickly solidify. Sprinkled throughout are quotes, facts, anecdotes, insights and interior monologues that could only have come from particular justices — most conspicuously, O’Connor, Breyer and Kennedy — along with flattering adjectives about each. Toobin, of course, never names names.

Here's the relevant bit about Casey, which does trace the "Liberty finds no refuge" quote to Kennedy. (Click to enlarge.)



So Toobin, based on his secret sources, refers to "Kennedy's section of the joint opinion" as containing the quote "Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt." Maybe somebody who really knows told Toobin the truth and Toobin accurately reported it. But the Court released a joint opinion, and there's something deeply disturbing about letting Toobin and his secret sources supersede the Court's public, written presentation. At least let us know that's what you're doing. If you just say you're talking about Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that's a 3-Justice opinion in my book, which is volume 505 of the United States Reports.

Eat Pray Love... pick 2.

"I am separating from the man whom many of you know as 'Felipe' — the man whom I fell in love with at the end of the EAT PRAY LOVE journey," says Elizabeth Gilbert.

Oh, I'm sure the new story is good for another memoir. There'll probably be new love in it too. If you fell for the first one, I'm sure you'll fall for the next one. Your love affair with bullshit memoirs will go on.

Madison police officer fatally shoots a man who was coming at him with a pitchfork.

"Police Chief Mike Koval said.... a neighbor... called 911 around 9 p.m. to report that a man was about chest-deep in the water [of Lake Monona] and acting oddly..."

... seemingly talking to himself and slapping the water. The man then reportedly threw a rock into the window of the residence, Koval said....

Koval said the first officer on the scene was waiting for backup when the intruder approached the doorway from inside the house with a four-pronged pitchfork....

The officer gave numerous orders to the man to stop, which he ignored, Koval said. “The person was aggressing, and the officer was compelled to shoot him,” he said.

UPDATE: "Man fatally shot by Madison police officer struggled with mental illness."

"Jen and I are utterly horrified to announce the arrival of our son, Jasper Heusen-­Gravenstein, born May 21st at 4:56 a.m."

"For nine long months, we’ve wondered who this little creature would be. Well, now we know: he’s the living embodiment of our darkest imaginings, with a nefarious agenda and Grandpa Jim’s nose. At seven pounds four ounces, Jasper may be small, but he’s large enough to have triggered our most primal fears...."

Anti-baby humor in The New Yorker. But babies can't read.