Category: Washington, D.C.

Weekend

Rain on Friday – this is getting a touch crazy, I think – this odd, wet and cool summer, as noticed by NY Times’ Sam Roberts.

I’m a little behind on this – but this a hilarious edition of “Pearls Before Swine” – the comic strip about Rat, Pig, Zebra, Goat, and the stoooopid crocodiles (intentionally misspelled in the style of the crocodiles’ dialect). Cartoonist Stephan Pastis makes his appearances in the (mis)adventures of the crew, and here, he walks in on their “Hands Across the Comics Page,” a desperate attempt to save the newspapers and comics pages – wherein Pig replies to Pastis’ contention that “papers aren’t going anywhere”: “Oh, good, ’cause if you’re wrong and the comics page goes away, you’re gonna have to be a lawyer again.”

This causes Pastis join in the holding hands and singing songs for the cause, ’cause he apparently doesn’t want to practice law again. Ha! The official Pearls Before Swine blog also appears to be funny too. Ah, ex-lawyers who go creative!

There’s also the running series in the Daily News about the comic/lawyer Alex Barnett, the latest being where Barnett talks about contract lawyer work still giving him stress even as he’s trying to move up in the career as a comic. I thought the juxtaposition of the photos of Barnett as a lawyer in front of 60 Centre v. him as a stand up comic was funny.

As noted previously, I’m not a big Paul Krugman reader. It’s not that I’m intimidated by his shiny pretty Nobel Prize in Economics; it’s that me and economics don’t quite get along. But, his latest columns are very clear in talking about health care/health insurance reform. A lot of these issues fly over my head, but Krugman makes some good points here on why free market isn’t the answer (link to the Krugman blog; I guess that’s why he’s a Noble Prize winner; he seems to know what he’s talking about anyway).

Plus, Krugman makes some good points that not enough of us understand health care/health insurance and how much the government is already involved in it. The topic isn’t easy, but are we willing and ready to get ourselves educated on it and make it better?


DiFara’s pizza is now $5 a slice; this better be the best pizza in Brooklyn, or else is it worth it? You could always do what Grimaldi does – sell by the pie, not by the slice. (Disclaimer: I still haven’t been to DiFara’s yet; it’d be cool to eat the pizza there).

Re: Obama’s hosting Henry Louis Gates and the policeman, Jim Crowley – “Sometimes a beer is just a beer” … Well, I thought this whole commentary on what beer will be drunk at the White House went too far, but Slate’s John Dickerson explained it better. Plus, I do think it’s a male thing, but anything that encourages dialog, I’ll applaud.

Plus, Gates – since he has a website and he is a writer – put in his own final comment, before he’ll get to work (and let Obama go back to the many other things on the plate).

Obama’s awarding Justice O’Connor the Medal of Freedom (and others, like Archbishop Tutu, the late Jack Kemp, the late Harvey Milk, and so on).

The passing of Corazon Aquino – see Time magazine and NY Times observances.

Weekend

Summer in the city.

A look at a life of a Chinese immigrant in 1923 – fascinating stuff!

Imagine if it were Yoda dealing with the confirmation hearings; now, you don’t have to, because a law professor does it for you; hilarious posting on the Balkinization blog.

The passing of Walter Cronkite; they really don’t make anchor people like him, the model. Cronkite was well before my time (I still miss Peter Jennings), but he was tv’s way to witness history: especially with the moving way he handled announcing the assassination of Kennedy.

The tributes written are rather eloquent. Slate’s John Dickerson was especially poignant – since he has a personal element to it (his family was a news family, and his mother was one of the early newswomen of tv) and he notes:

By the time I made it upstairs, the kids wanted to know why I’d disappeared. I had been watching the Cronkite tributes when I should have been upstairs for bedtime prayers. I told them why he was important and that he’d worked with their grandmother. They wanted to know how old he was and how he died. They just wanted the facts. It was a little hard to convey to a 5- and 6-year-old what had happened, but there is one way in which Cronkite is a part of their nightly ritual. It’s his voice I try to imitate when I’m reading to them.

NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley and Time’s James Poniewozik make the tv critic’s perspective of the Cronkite career – and in a way, they touch on how the American media was different than it was in Cronkite’s prime. Is he the last of a breed, as this Washington Post appraisal asks; well, I’d say he was one of the first of the breed, of the pioneers who made the national television nightly news become part of a generation, rather than say whether he was the last (Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings took the torch; that the media industry became what it is – well, I’d rather not blame it on Dan/Tom/Peter than on the networks’ managements or the American masses’ own shabby tastes).

This Week

I’m not nearly watching as much of the US Supreme Ct. confirmation hearings as I’d like. The Slate coverage/commentary has been pretty solid (ex., Emily Bazelon’s noting how Sotomayor goes into the context of her speeches – wherein she’s trying to motivate women and minority law students).

But from what I saw, I do wonder if the senators would ask some of these questions of a man (and how much all sides had to restrain themselves – Judge Sotomayor must have much patience not to roll her eyes at some of the patronizing attitude – like Bazelon, I would’ve have liked to have seen her attack right back at some of that attitude; some of the senators seemed patronizing (ok, maybe I shouldn’t be so presumptuous about Sen. Graham, but I do wonder if he’s never met a real bully – and judges can be bullies, just like anyone else, by virtue of they’re being human); maybe Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick‘s right – at least the anti-abortion protesters are consistent and up-front).

So, I guess it’s a good thing that Sotomayor handled herself real well, but I do wonder if these hearings could be less like plays.

I fell behind on this, but Bazelon’s interview with Justice Ginsburg was fascinating.

This Washington Post article about Sotomayor’s career development is fascinating about how mentoring can be very important.


Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson notes good points:

The only real suspense in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is whether the Republican Party will persist in tying its fortunes to an anachronistic claim of white male exceptionalism and privilege.

Republicans’ outrage, both real and feigned, at Sotomayor’s musings about how her identity as a “wise Latina” might affect her judicial decisions is based on a flawed assumption: that whiteness and maleness are not themselves facets of a distinct identity. Being white and male is seen instead as a neutral condition, the natural order of things. Any “identity” — black, brown, female, gay, whatever — has to be judged against this supposedly “objective” standard. [….]

The whole point of Sotomayor’s much-maligned “wise Latina” speech was that everyone has a unique personal history — and that this history has to be acknowledged before it can be overcome. Denying the fact of identity makes us vulnerable to its most pernicious effects. This seems self-evident. I don’t see how a political party that refuses to accept this basic principle of diversity can hope to prosper, given that soon there will be no racial or ethnic majority in this country.

Yet the Republican Party line assumes a white male neutrality against which Sotomayor’s “difference” will be judged. [….]

There is, after all, a context in which these confirmation hearings take place: The nation continues to take major steps toward fulfilling the promise of its noblest ideals. Barack Obama is our first African American president. Sonia Sotomayor would be only the third woman, and the third member of a minority group, to serve on the nation’s highest court. Aside from these exceptions, the White House and the Supreme Court have been exclusively occupied by white men — who, come to think of it, are also members of a minority group, though they certainly haven’t seen themselves that way.

Judging from Monday’s hearing, some Republican senators are beginning to notice this minority status — and seem a bit touchy about it. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was more temperate in his remarks than most of his colleagues, noting that Obama’s election victory ought to have consequences and hinting that he might vote to confirm Sotomayor. But when he brought up the “wise Latina” remark, as the GOP playbook apparently required, Graham said that “if I had said anything remotely like that, my career would have been over.”

That’s true. But if Latinas had run the world for the last millennium, Sotomayor’s career would be over, too. Pretending that the historical context doesn’t exist — pretending that white men haven’t enjoyed a privileged position in this society — doesn’t make that context go away.

Yes, justice is supposed to be blind. But for most of our nation’s history, it hasn’t been — and women and minorities are acutely aware of how our view of justice has evolved, or been forced to evolve. Women and minorities are also key Democratic Party constituencies, and if the Republican Party is going to be competitive, it can’t be seen as the party of white male grievance — especially in what is almost certainly a lost cause. Democrats, after all, have the votes to confirm Sotomayor.

“Unless you have a complete meltdown, you’re going to get confirmed,” Graham told the nominee. He was right — Republicans probably can’t damage her. They can only damage themselves.