"Justice Louis Brandeis, who served from 1916-39, is said to have observed that the high court’s members 'are almost the only people in Washington who do their own work.' That’s not true anymore. The Supreme Court decided 160 cases in 1945, when each justice had a single clerk. Nowadays it decides about half as many cases with four clerks per justice. Law clerks were unknown for roughly the first century of the American judiciary, and the courts seemed to do fine. As my law students often comment, the older opinions are shorter and more intelligible than the newer ones."
[A] clerk once pointed out, “You said that the right to privacy must go further than the home.” “No,” [Thurgood] Marshall retorted. He had never said that.
Yes, the clerk insisted.
No, never, Marshall was sure. “Show me.”
The clerk brought the bound opinions.
Marshall read the relevant section.
“That’s not my opinion, that’s the opinion of [a clerk from the prior term],” he declared. Opening the volume flat, he tore the page out. “There. It’s not there now, is it?”
The officials... said that the administration was ending a humanitarian program, known as Temporary Protected Status, for Salvadorans who have been allowed to live and work legally in the United States since a pair of devastating earthquakes struck their country in 2001....
[D]espite its name, the administration says, the Temporary Protected Status program had turned into a quasi-permanent benefit for hundreds of thousands of people.... It provides temporary lawful status and work authorization to people already in the United States, whether they entered legally or not, from countries affected by armed conflict, natural disaster or other strife....
In 2016, the final time [the protections were extended], the government cited several factors, including drought, poverty and widespread gang violence in El Salvador, as reasons to keep the protections in place.
[T]he thief headed for the cash register. He didn't succeed in breaking through the bulletproof glass.... He then headed straight for the ATM.
"I was waiting and waiting and I'm looking at my camera on my phone and the guy was still inside in the store, breaking things and damaging things," the owner said. The owner watched the video in real time as he sat in his vehicle across the street. He said he called MPD several times.
"He just had so much confidence that police weren't going to show up or something, and he was just taking his time and kept working on it," the owner said.
Somehow the police managed to arrive after the guy was gone, and the guy made off with nothing.
Horrible police (but excellent ATM machine and bulletproof glass construction).
I don't know if I'd be choosing this topic for Monday morning if I hadn't essentially promised to write it. Why didn't I write it last night? I fell asleep. I fell asleep, and then I woke up at 2 a.m. and watched the rest of it, including the appearance of Kirk Douglas, who is 101 years old. How did he stay up? Yes, it's Pacific Time, 2 hours earlier, but still... he's 101!
Anyway, quick impressions:
1. Did all the women wear black? The President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (which gives out the awards) appeared on stage in a voluminous, flaming red gown, supposedly because in "her Indian culture, it’s customary to wear a festive color during a celebration." Does that amount to a disagreement with the women in black? Were they resisting the usual festivity of the occasion? Do we see some implicit ethnic critique, that the white women of Hollywood were not sensitive to the meaning of color in other cultures? I look up the meaning of wearing black in India:
Black in India has connotations with lack of desirability, evil, negativity, and inertia. It represents anger and darkness and is associated with the absence of energy, barrenness, and death. Black is used as a representation of evil and is often used to ward off evil.
2. What impression did it make, to see all that black? On the red carpet, the black made the crowd look much less glamorous. There was much less male/female differentiation, much less of a sense that the crowd was popping with especially beautiful people. In the long shots, it looked like a crowd at a boring cocktail party of ordinary-looking people. Harvey Weinstein wasn't there, but half the people in the crowd seemed not much better looking than him. There's a scruffiness to the men's "head styling," and with everyone dressed alike, the men seemed really nondescript. Inside the theater, in the long shots, the crowd looked more like a sea of white faces than usual. Even though great efforts were made to get close-ups of the black stars at the tables, the long view looked overwhelmingly white. Just the predictable effect of contrast. You'd think movie people would have better sensitivity to how component parts appear in long shots. This all-black design concept highlighted white people.
3. How did the men dress? Many of them wore not only black suits but black shirts and black ties. It looked sharp, albeit insectoid.
4. How did the men behave? I jumped over most of the men's speeches, but I think they were following a strategy of keeping it low key and throwing attention over to women whenever possible. I'd have to see a transcript to know if any of them did that old-fashioned thanking of his wife for putting up with him. I see in the news this morning that Ewan McGregor thanked his estranged wife: "I want to take a moment to thank Ev, who always stood beside me for 22 years and my four children, I love you." And then — because we need more love in this world — he also thanked his girlfriend.
5. I didn't hear any Trump-bashing. Aziz Ansari said: "I genuinely didn't think I would win because all the websites said I was going to lose." And: "I'm glad we won this one because it would have really sucked to lose two of these in a row." Wasn't that a shot at Hillary?
6. Oprah won the Cecil B. DeMille Award and gave a speech that has people saying she should run for President? Don't Trump haters realize that pushing Oprah as a presidential candidate undercuts one of the main arguments about Trump — that he didn't work his way up within politics but had the arrogance to think he could jump in and start at the top? Anyway, here's the transcript of Oprah's remarks. See if you think there's anything in there that's special. She had a tough task balancing her big moment with the need to recognize other people and to make her recognition of others about women in general (rather than black women or black people). It's a pretty gauzy text, but she sold it well:
In my career, what I’ve always tried my best to do, whether on television or through film, is to say something about how men and women really behave. To say how we experience shame, how we love and how we rage, how we fail, how we retreat, persevere, and how we overcome. And I’ve interviewed and portrayed people who’ve withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at you, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning, even during our darkest nights. So I want all the girls watching here and now to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say “me too” again.
7. Here's the video of the Oprah speech. Notice the NBC logo — NBC, which played an ignominious role in this past year's sexual harassment journalism:
8. I got the video from the fashion writers Tom and Lorenzo, who say: "Yes, we could talk about how amazing she looks; how her gown is KILLA and the fit is insane; how her hair looks amazing and her makeup is beat to the gods. It doesn’t matter. While these two queens love a diva who turns it out, we love even more when a diva comes into her full power and uses that power to affect others. Nothing but respect for our president."
9. In the comments to this post, rehajm says:
I think she makes a big mistake about the media. They aren't entitled to their own truth. Their own truth is weasel words for lies. She sure got all those powerful women in the room riled up. I wonder if they now feel powerful enough to utilize the justice system, the one with a presumption of innocence, or if they expect to keep using the new one that's ripe for abuse.
Here's the relevant text from the transcript:
I’d like to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, because we all know the press is under siege these days. But we also know that it is the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice... to tyrants and victims and secrets and lies.
I was going to say that's a blatant display of a lack of dedication to the absolute truth — puffery and stroking. It was spoken word, so how it feels at the time is most important, but you can see in the text that she said "the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth," not "its insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth." She never credited the press with having that insatiable dedication. She only held up dedication to truth as an abstract value.
I want to say that I value the press more than ever before as we try to navigate these complicated times, which brings me to this: What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.
This is the part that bothered rehajm. Interesting. Above, I was stressing the difference between putting "the" or "its" in front of truth, and now the issue is putting "your" in front of "truth."
How can there be "your truth" and also "absolute truth"? One way to reconcile the 2 ideas is to say that "your" refers not to the press, but to the women who tell their stories and who are, as individual human beings, entitled to their subjective point of view. The press is separate, and it must "navigate these complicated times."
The press is under siege — a land-based military metaphor — and out on the Ocean of Complication. It should be dedicated to the absolute truth, and part of the truth is the way women experience their own lives and tell their stories. You can give an absolutely true report of the story that Ms. X told, even if Ms. X is only telling her own story, and that story is not the "absolute truth," but an element of a proper news report that will also contain other elements.
The next lines in Oprah's speech suggest that my interpretation of "your truth" is pretty good:
And I’m especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories. Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that we tell, and this year, we became the story.
Ah! How she slipped from TRUTH!!! to stories...
10. "And here are the all-male nominees," said Natalie Portman, before reading the names of the nominees for best director. (Guillermo del Toro won for "The Shape of Water.") That line resonated when, shortly afterward, the award for Best Musical/Comedy Film went to "Lady Bird,"which was directed by a woman, Greta Gerwig.
12. That reminds me. "The Post" got nothing, which means that Meryl Streep did not win for Actress in a Drama, so who won? Frances McDormand! She wore the best dress. It was the most anti-fashion dress I've ever seen. Not just black, but high neckline, long sleeves, long full skirt, and cut way large. It was the absence of a dress, even more so than nakedness. [ADDED: Tom and Lorenzo on McDormand's dress: "We’re not going to rip apart her nun’s habit. It’s fine. It’s who she is.... Granted, we think she could’ve worn a comfy pantsuit and come off a little more chic in the process, but whatevs."]
13. And I can't believe they didn't give Best Actor in a Drama to the guy in "Get Out." Who'd they give it too? A white man, Gary Oldman, who played the white man, Winston Churchill. Oh, no. Wait. "Get Out" got classified as a comedy. The actor, Daniel Kaluuya lost to James Franco. And I see "Get Out fans 'outraged' by Golden Globes snub: 'We're in the sunken place.'" You know what that means, the "sunken place"? (SPOILER: It means your body has been taken over by a white person, and you are just going along for the ride, able to see where your body is going, but only at a distance, and unable to speak or control your own motions, which aren't really yours anymore, but that monstrous white person's.)
14. Didn't Gary Oldman get on some political shit list a few years ago? Oh, yes, here: "Gary Oldman can't stop apologizing for that Playboy interview he did where he kept denouncing political correctness." Those were simpler times. Oldman had said: "I just think political correctness is crap. That’s what I think about it. I think it’s like, take a fucking joke. Get over it.... We all hide and try to be so politically correct. That’s what gets me. It’s just the sheer hypocrisy of everyone, that we all stand on this thing going, 'Isn’t that shocking?'"
Trump tweeted a typo that's amusing people. Yahoo reports:
The screwup appeared in a Sunday night tweet in which Trump praised a supportive column in the New York Post. Writer Michael Goodwin lauded Trump’s “enormous consequential presidency,” but Trump referred to it in his tweet as an “enormous consensual presidency.”
And "covfefe" is comedy. I'm not going to say it was comic genius to type it, but it's pretty interestingly comical not to explain it and to run with it and encourage us to "Enjoy!" like he's serving up a big plate of tasty food....
"Consensual presidency" is funny too. Not that I think he did it on purpose. But tweeting (like blogging) includes the risk of error, and it's the free, rough-draft feeling that makes readers feel they're getting something straight from the writer's mind.
That's why we're interested in "Freudian" slips. We think we're getting a look at what's really in that head. So then what about "enormous consensual presidency." Does that leak some greater truth? If so, "consensual" sheds a kindly light on this man who's often accused of being a sexual molester. In hin secret thoughts, he's into consent.
And then there's democracy. Of course, he's our consensual President. As a country of states, we voted him in.
Now he's put out another one of his very sticky phrases. "Enormous consensual presidency." We're seeing — over and over — that his presidency is "consensual" and "enormous." "Enormous" is an especially good word from his point of view. He loves bigness, and we already associate him with at least 3 bigness words. "Huge," of course. "Big," as in "big league" (often misheard as "bigly") and "big, beautiful wall." And "great," as in "Make America Great Again." Add "enormous."
And now, this tweet is getting even more attention than his tweets usually get, and it's causing me to want to look at Michael Goodwin's column. Did he really write "enormous consequential presidency" (and not "enormously consequential presidency")? Man, it's hard to find the column, because there are so many articles about the typo!
[R]eports of his imminent demise have been near-constant ever since he came down the Trump Tower escalator in June of 2015. Those predictions have been nonstop — and always wrong.
Of course, this time could be different. Or maybe the next time will. Or maybe not.
Meanwhile, his is turning out to be an enormously consequential presidency....
Oh! So it is "enormously." Doesn't it always seem to be that when you go after somebody else's typo, you make one yourself?
ADDED: Obviously, most of the news covfefe of the typo gets the typo "right." It's "enormously consensual presidency." Of all the news sites on the web, I had to walk into the one that typo'd the typo. Yahoo [passing along something by Mary Papenfuss at HuffPo]. So the sticky phrase in question, let's be clear, is "enormously consensual presidency."
So now it's not that the presidency is enormous in addition to being consensual. The thing that huge is not the presidency but the consent. What is enormous consent? Isn't consent just a yes-or-no option? No, there can be very enthusiastic consent — not just yes, but yes, yes, YES!!!
UPDATE: HuffPo and Yahoo have corrected their "enormous" typo.
"We are speaking in a coded language to other women — even young girls — that says: The way I look and what I wear and how I wear it is the standard for women. What is being worn is not an exception. It is the rule. You must dress a certain way and look a certain way if you want to be valued as a woman, no matter what you do for a living or who you are. We never intend for this to be the message we are sending with what we wear, but often it is the perceived one, whether we like it or not."
If is not the message you intend to convey, then you are not speaking.
The writing is by the actress Amber Tamblyn, published in the NYT as the Golden Globes are about to happen this evening. The plan tonight, which Tamblyn supports, is for all the women to wear black. I'm going to watch to see how that works out. I'm not sure that everyone wearing the same color is the best way to send whatever the message is supposed to be, but Tamblyn says:
What we are wearing is not a statement of fashion. It is a statement of action. It is a direct message of resistance. Black because we are powerful when we stand together with all women across industry lines. Black because we’re starting over, resetting the standard. Black because we’re done being silenced and we’re done with the silencers. Tonight is not a mourning. Tonight is an awakening.
So that is the message that Tamblyn intends to convey, but is it the message every woman who feels disciplined into wearing black wants to send? Is it the message that will be received? Tamblyn tries to preempt one meaning of black clothing: mourning. But she just got done saying that unintended messages are "often... perceived... whether we like it or not."
She doesn't want to be controlled, but she aims to control us, the audience, but she knows she can't. Moviemakers show us images, and there is complexity to the meaning. You can't force us to see the images in a particular, controlled way, even in the most carefully made film. So it is clearly impossible to dictate the impact that will be made by giant crowd of actresses in black and by individual actresses within that crowd.
So said Michael Wolff on "Meet the Press" today, after Chuck Todd confronted him about "a lot of little errors" — "One page had three in one. Some of them may be copy edits, small, factual errors. But it adds up. Why shouldn't a reader be concerned about some of these mistakes?"
Wolff's answer was just "I think a reader should read the book. The book speaks for itself" and that quote I put in the post title, which I thought was a very weird answer. Wolff wouldn't defend the book and the method and care he used. He just insisted that people read the book. Questions about whether the book is true should be determined by readers simply feeling whether it's true.
That reminded me of the way Stephen Colbert presented himself years ago on the first episode of "The Colbert Report": "Now I know some of you may not trust your gut...yet. But with my help you will. The 'truthiness' is, anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news... at you."
It felt like a complete concession that the book was fiction. Because that is how fiction works. It isn't reporting, but a different way of getting to the truth. If it feels true, it is true, for the purposes of the mental life of the reader. What's out there in the real world is... oh, what is it? Is that "real world" you speak of anything at all? I'm here in my own head, where whatever is felt is.
Here's Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, also in the above-linked "Meet the Press" transcript:
Where I am is first of all, is it possible to go any higher than number one on Amazon if you're going to write a book? I mean, this is just, it's incredible.
No, it's not incredible. People love a hot pile of salaciousness. They love it even more than whatever hot pile they're cooking up in the pressure cooker they got for Christmas (judging from the Amazon best-seller list, which has Instant Pot recipe books at ##3 & 4).
Back to Leibovich:
I do think... there are very significant journalistic critiques that you can throw at this book. But I also think the "it rings true" truth about this is absolutely valid.
Ah ha ha ha ha. He's buying the feel-the-truth-at-you/fiction-is-truth theory that sounded like bullshit when Wolff said it.
And part of it is what Michael Wolff has said and will say again I'm sure is that this is exactly how people around him, or many people around him at the White House, certainly Republicans on the Hill speak privately. Now, if you were to ask, probably I would say 80% of elected Republicans on the Hill, "What do you think of the president's fitness for office?" The first thing you will hear, I guarantee you, is, "Can we go off the record?"
So he's using the fiction method. Just making up something. Even putting a number on it. 80%! He hasn't asked this question of all the congressional Republicans. He just feels that if he did 80% of them would say let's go off the record. And he's feeling that at you.
ADDED: In the comments, some are puzzling over the phrase "See if you don't feel like you are with me on that couch in the White House" (in the quote in the post title). But it relates to something earlier in the transcript. Chuck Todd asks Wolff how he managed to become — as he claims — "a fly on the wall in the West Wing." Wolff answers:
You know, I literally kind of knocked on the door and said, “Can I come in?” and they said “Okay.” And I came in. I sat on the couch and that’s the point of view that I’ve written this book from. I mean, in the real intention of this book, is to have readers sit with me on the couch and watch what’s going on in the West Wing. I went into this with absolutely no agenda whatsoever. I have no particular politics when it comes to Donald Trump. This is really all about human nature.
Notice how much Wolff sounds like a novelist. Nothing wrong with being a novelist. But there is something wrong with reading a novel and not realizing it's a novel. Remember, recently, the internet went wild talking about the New Yorker short story "Cat Person," and it seemed rather obvious that a lot of people were just talking about it as if it were a blow-by-blow account of a real relationship? Come on, people! That's incompetent reading. Fiction is different.
AND: "Fire and Fury" takes on the burden of being "fake news." Then mainstream news media can report on the book, pass the material along, and claim not to be doing "fake news." Remember the Allcott/Gentzkow definition of fake news I've been talking about (beginning here). The definition (by 2 economists and adopted by at least some political scientists) excludes "rumors that do not originate from a particular news article." I don't accept the definition myself, but I'm seeing the gears turning in the minds of the mainstream media people who want to say things but still worry about their journalistic professionalism.
On "State of the Union" this morning. Watch the whole thing. Both men struggle mightily for the upper hand. The subject is "Fire and Fury," and there's fire and fury galore.
I’ve had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!
Reagan is remembered by millions of Americans as a great and beloved President, and Trump knows that, but I am sure he also knows that the anti-Trumpers will leap at the opportunity to say, but Reagan was senile and that's what we think you are too, ha ha.
I presume Trump not only knows that he is provoking that reaction but knows that reaction will backfire. It will backfire because: 1. Anyone who likes Reagan already rejects the idea that he was impaired by Alzheimer's Disease while he was President, 2. It's offensive to appropriate the misfortune of Alzheimer's Disease for making cheap political points, and 3. Many people have experienced immense pain dealing with Alzheimer's Disease, and that emotion can only be reshaped into a reason to hate Trump if you trample on that pain.
So I wouldn't be so sure I knew "How Actual Smart People Talk About Themselves." That's the title of a piece at The Atlantic by James Fallows, who's implicitly talking about himself, implicitly assuring us that he is a smart man who knows the smart people. That is, he is one of the elite who got snookered in the last election.
But the people Fallows talks about in his article are scientists and computer people. Wilde was a brilliant humorous writer, famous, especially, for short, hilarious sentences. Trump is much more like Wilde than like Bill Gates and that guy who won the Nobel Prize in medicine when he was in his 40s.
Here's Fallows:
Virtually none of them (need to) say it. There are a few prominent exceptions, of talented people who annoyingly go out of their way to announce that fact. Muhammed Ali is the charming extreme exception illustrating the rule: he said he was The Greatest, and was. Most greats don’t need to say so....
Once you admit there's an exception, you've got to say Trump is not like the exception. But Trump is like Muhammad Ali. He's making his reputation in large part by speaking entertainingly to the public. And, like Oscar Wilde's declaration of genius, Ali's proclamation of greatness felt like exuberant, extroverted fun to those who loved him. What Trump is doing feels like that too. If you hate Trump, you'll balk at that, but you need to know that there were many people who reacted negatively to Ali's "I am the greatest." I remember it very well, because I loved "I am the greatest" at the time, and I remember why I loved it. It was liberating. You could throw off your inhibition and proclaim your greatness.
My students seem not to have heard of #StableGenius Mr. Ed. You see, it was a TV show 1961-66. Mr. Ed made more sense than most back then. He still does. Learn and sing the theme: https://t.co/AFWWFHioNm
No, no, no, Larry, singing old TV theme songs is not a way to get the youngsters to see that Baby Boomer 1960s culture is cool right now. The anti-Trump idea is to make Trump seem senile, so leaning into your oldness is not the best move.
And watch out. There are a lot of people who hear "stable" and think of Jesus:
Have any evangelical leaders come out to explain that Jesus was also a #StableGenius ?
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