Palin Resigns

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Sarah Palin is resigning as Alaska governor. Here’s her resignation speech, apparently without a prepared text. WTF — is any of this even English? (Update: this video is apparently just the second half of her speech.)

What hidden skeletons are prompting this? She’s been in the news a lot in the last few days — from this in-depth Vanity Fair piece to the cheesecake photos of her in Runner’s World magazine.

May this woman never get anywhere near the Oval Office. By choosing this joke of a politician as his running mate, John McCain demonstrated that he didn’t deserve to be anywhere near it, either.

Judicial Liberalism Not Happening

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If you believe in judicial liberalism — which I sometimes do and, to be honest, sometimes don’t — the current direction of the Court is a little depressing. Tom Goldstein, Supreme Court analyst extraordinaire, points out that the conservatives on the Court are free to move at a measured pace in overturning liberal precedents, at least for a while:

For the moment, there is no reason to rush. Time permits a jurisprudence of not just originalism, or textualism, but actuarialism. The sand running through this hourglass will not expire for eight years.

Later in his term, President Obama will likely replace Justice Stevens with someone else on the left. If he is reelected in 2012, he will replace Justice Ginsburg with someone on the left. Nothing changes.

It isn’t until the election of 2016 at the earliest that there is a real prospect for a significant shift to the left in the Court’s ideology. Actuarially, that election is likely to decide which President appoints the successors to Justices Scalia and Kennedy (both on the right, and both 73 now) and Justice Breyer (on the left, and 70 now). Absent an unfortunate turn of health, between now and the summer of 2017 there is no realistic prospect that the Court will turn back to the left. Over the course of that eight years, it is possible to take enough measured steps to the right to walk a marathon. Again, no need to rush.

Unless something happens to Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, or Kennedy in the next few years, the Court is on a slow rightward trajectory.

On the issue dearest to my heart — gay rights — it probably doesn’t mean much. Kennedy has been pretty pro-gay (Romer, Lawrence), but I don’t expect the Court to take up same-sex marriage for a while. It didn’t overturn the nation’s sodomy laws until only 13 states were left with such laws; the Court is too cautious to constitutionalize same-sex marriage rights at this point, when only six states allow such marriage.

What else could the Court tackle? Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell will be history in the next few years — I’m pretty sure Obama will get around to it after health care and energy are taken care of. DOMA (full faith and credit clause) is a possibility — which would be a sidelong way to rule on same-sex marriage. But I don’t think the Court will touch that right now. Again, the issue is just too volatile, and the Court generally knows when to stay out of things. (It has learned from abortion; would Roe v. Wade come out the same way today? Who knows; the opinion would at least be less intrusive if it were written today.)

Of course, I could be wrong. Issues have a way of showing up on the Court’s docket unexpectedly, especially since it only takes four Justices to vote to hear a case.

But for now, things seem to be in stasis, at least where gay rights are concerned. As for everything else — drifting right.

Very Old Famous People

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People I am always amazed are still alive:

  • Walter Cronkite
  • Mickey Rooney
  • Robert McNamara
  • Sid Caesar
  • Karl Malden
  • Doris Day
  • Tippi Hedren
  • Eva Marie Saint
  • Phyllis Diller
  • Miep Gies
  • Kirk Douglas

More very old famous people here.

Michael Jackson

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I was buying a book at the Strand on 12th and Broadway yesterday afternoon at around 6:00. A couple of cashiers were talking about rumors that someone in addition to Farrah Fawcett had died, but I didn’t hear who they were talking about and I didn’t give it another thought.

Then I walked down to Astor Place to get a haircut, and as the guy started cutting my hair, he asked an employee passing by if it was true that so-and-so had died. The place is filled with barbers cutting hair and using blowdryers, so it was too noisy for me to hear who they were talking about. But I was pretty sure I heard “Jackson.”

I swear to God the first name that popped into my head was Andrew Jackson, former U.S. president, but as that thought was rising, a neuron from the opposite side of my brain rose up and shot it down like a heat-seeking missile, since Andrew Jackson has been dead for more than 150 years.

So the first serious thought I had was that Jesse Jackson had died. Then the guy cutting my hair told me that no, the rumors were that Michael Jackson had died.

I’m a news junkie, especially when it comes to dead celebrities, so I pulled out my phone to check the news, but since the barber shop is in a basement, I didn’t get any reception.

But a radio was playing, and over the sound of the blowdryers and electric razors I strained to listen to the deejay. He confirmed in somber tones that Michael Jackson was, in fact, dead. Then “Man in the Mirror” began playing. I hadn’t heard that song in years.

After my haircut I walked up Broadway and turned onto 10th Street, reading the news on my phone as I walked. The streets were crowded with young people out and about on the first summery afternoon of the year, and Michael Jackson was dead.

I was eight or nine years old when the Thriller album was big. My family had it on cassette tape — it’s weird to think that my parents bought it, but they did; didn’t everyone? — and I remember us listening to it in our big early-80s portable boombox. I have memories of listening to it at Jones Beach, or on a drive to Jones Beach, or maybe during a summer vacation on Long Beach Island.

There was little red-haired white kid in my elementary school who liked to dress up as Michael Jackson and wear a single white glove. It was 1984 or 1985.

I will never understand why Michael Jackson did what he did to his face. The plastic surgeon or surgeons who turned him into a monster according to his wishes should be ashamed of themselves. How do you develop dysmorphia so extreme that you turn yourself into Skeletor? How could he ever look in the mirror? How could he find himself attractive? I look at photos and videos of him and I feel revulsion. He became an alien. I woke up in the middle of the night last night because it was too humid, and at 3:00 in the morning I had disturbing visions of him, this person who hated himself so much that he turned himself into a monster.

The odd thing is that despite all the self-erasure, he kept his given name. There was Prince and Cher and Madonna, but through everything, he kept the rather ordinary name Michael Jackson.

I don’t think I know any of his songs after the 1987 Bad album. His music on that album is catchy but hard for me to listen to, because I can’t hear the high-pitched voice without seeing the horrible face.

I feel sorry for what he became.

Thomas and Schoolkids

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Once again, Clarence Thomas proves that he is a man of the 19th century. In a bad way.

Case in point is this morning’s decision in Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding. The court ruled 8-1 that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment when they made a girl lift her underwear in order to search for illegal drugs:

Romero and Schwallier directed Savana to remove her clothes down to her underwear, and then “pull out” her bra and the elastic band on her underpants…. The very fact of Savana’s pulling her underwear away from her body in the presence of the two officials who were able to see her necessarily exposed her breasts and pelvic area to some degree.

The majority split over the actual remedy, but everyone in the majority agreed it was a constitutional violation.

The lone dissenter? Justice Thomas. He argued that the school administrators should have been left alone to treat the kids however they wanted:

This deep intrusion into the administration of public schools exemplifies why the Court should return to the common-law doctrine of in loco parentis under which “the judiciary was reluctant to interfere in the routine business of school administration, allowing schools and teachers to set and enforce rules and to maintain order.”

The phrase inside quotation marks comes from his concurring opinion a few years ago in the famous “BONG HITS 4 JESUS” case, where he argued that students have zero constitutional rights, including the right to free speech.

Later, he quotes from that concurring opinion again:

If parents do not like the rules imposed by those schools, they can seek redress in school boards or legislatures; they can send their children to private schools or home school them; or they can simply move.

Yes, of course! A couple of working-class parents can somehow scrounge up the tuition for private school; or one of them can quit working, thereby reducing the family’s income, and stay home and teach the kids all day, because I’m sure the parent knows how to teach history or math or science; or better yet, the family can just move somewhere else — I’m sure they can get a fabulous price for their house these days — and the parents can both look for new jobs. Brilliant!

Thomas argues elsewhere in the opinion that because parents can do whatever they want to their children, that control passes to school administrators during the school day — the school acts in loco parentis, “in place of the parents.” But what about the situation where the parents disagree with the way the school adminstrators have treated their kids? For instance, you may think it’s okay to spank your kid but that it’s wrong for someone else to spank your kid.

I tend to see some merit in most judicial opinions, and I can sort of see where Thomas is coming from. He’s right, in theory, that not every bad thing rises to a constitutional violation. But it’s one thing to say that something does not violate a constitutional right, and it’s another to say that a particular class of people simply lacks constitutional rights. Public school is a necessity for most kids — they just don’t have another viable option for education — and it’s unconscionable to argue that kids give up all their rights when they go to these places.

Parents can simply turn to the school board or the legislature? What if a minority is involved? What if, for instance, school administrators decide they’re going to strip-search only Muslim students, because they believe all Muslim teenagers are potential terrorists? What if most of the community agrees? How do you elect a more favorable school board then? What if most of the state agrees? How do you elect a more favorable legislature?

One of the purposes of constitutional rights is to protect the minority from the majority. Thomas is blind to this concern. He’s really in a world of his own here. Not even the other conservatives on the Court agree with him.

(Oddly, he sided with the four liberals today in another case, involving the issue of punitive damages.)

Bipartisan

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I’m so tired of all the talk about “bipartisanship.”

“If there is any chance we can do a bipartisan bill, it has to be in the Finance Committee,” Harry Reid said yesterday about health care reform.

Currently the Senate has 59 Democrats, 40 Republicans, and a vacancy in Minnesota.

If the Senate had 51 Democrats and 48 Republicans, and 8 Republicans joined 51 Democrats to pass a bill by a vote of 59-40, everyone would gush about how wonderful it was that a bipartisan bill passed.

But the Senate has 59 Democrats and 40 Republicans. If all Democrats vote for a bill today and all Republicans vote against it, it still passes, 59-40. But in that situation, it’s not “bipartisan.” So it’s a very bad thing.

Why is the same vote acceptable in one context but not in another?

If there were 90 Democrats and 10 Republicans, Harry Reid and others would still be fretting about winning over one or two of those Republicans in the name of “bipartisanship.”

Enough with the fetishizing of bipartisanship. If spineless centrists are going to worry about winning over members of the opposition no matter how small that opposition is, then what is the point of having a 59- or 60-member Democratic Senate caucus instead of a 51-member caucus or 54-member caucus? Yes, it’s nice to be able to break filibusters. But Congress recently decided that health reform could pass by a simple majority vote if necessary. So why are Reid and others being so obsessive about “bipartisanship”?

The Senate is an exclusive club divided into two teams. There’s a Democratic caucus and a Republican caucus, a Democratic leader and a Republican leader. Members of each party have their own retreats. Party controls everything. Most Americans aren’t loyal to one party or another — they vote for whoever seems like the better choice in any given year — but senators are obsessed with party. That’s especially true today, when party loyalty is much stronger than it used to be. Only three Republicans broke ranks to vote for Obama’s stimulus bill — and one of them switched parties soon after.

The bipartisanship fetishists in the Senate and the media are making an important mistake: they’re confusing bipartisanship with consensus.

We emerged from the 2008 elections with a Senate containing 59 — and it really should be 60 — Democrats. The Republican Party currently has a 25 percent approval rating. So the consensus of the American people is that the Republicans suck.

The consensus is that the Democrats should use their 60-member caucus to pass health care reform. Nearly three-quarters of Americans think there should be a public health care plan; this is a consensus. But “Democrats in the Senate have considered nixing the proposal in order to win Republican support for the bill,” according to that link.

Politicians do not have to listen blindly to what majorities want — people can be ill-informed and majorities can be wrong — but if they’re going to buck the public, they should do so for substantive reasons, not because they’re worried about upsetting the guy who jogs next to them in the Senate gym or sits next to them in the Senate dining room.

Bipartisanship is meaningless. It’s as antidemocratic as the Senate itself. In the Senate, every state gets two seats, no matter how big the state’s population; likewise, each of the two major parties apparently gets a voice, even if the American people think one of those parties is intellectually bankrupt.

Exactly how big a majority do we need before we can start using it?

Commas and Salt

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“This is a comma…. Learn what it does. You can’t just sprinkle them on your prose like salt.”

A-fucking-men. As an editor, I love that.

Of course, the other offenders are those who don’t use any commas at all.

(From here.)

Dissertation

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I’ve been thinking lately that I would really enjoy writing a dissertation. Several times in the last few years I’ve considered going to grad school for a history Ph.D. I really love American history, and I wish I could do something with that interest. I don’t know that grad school will ever happen, because, what would I do with the degree? Even if I wanted to teach, which I’m not sure I would, the job market for academics is horrible. And going back to school would cost money — as it is, I’m still paying off law school loans — and I would give up the yearly salary I get from having a job.

I suppose writing a dissertation without going to grad school is really just writing a book. And I would love to write a book about some topic in American history or politics. But I have no idea how to do this sort of thing — how to do research, how to structure it, what sources to use. I get the impression that in grad school, you learn how to do historical research and how to evaluate sources, and you have an adviser and a peer community to help you structure your work.

What’s triggering this in me right now is that I’m reading Nixon’s Shadow, by David Greenberg. It’s an examination of how Richard Nixon has been perceived by various groups over the years: as a populist (by California conservatives), as a criminal (by the New Left), as a victim (by 70s conservatives), as a statesman (by the foreign policy establishment), as a nutcase (by psychohistorians), and so on. The book was originally published as Greenberg’s dissertation for his Ph.D. at Columbia a few years ago, and as I’ve been reading it, I’ve been thinking, I would love to write a book like this.

It just seems like it would be easier to do it if I knew how the hell to go about it. And it seems like you learn how to do that in grad school, with the education and the support system you get. Maybe I’m wrong?

Sometimes I think about the roads not taken. I’m not necessarily too old for a Ph.D. — if I started in the next couple of years, I’d finish in my 40s — but I don’t know if a university would want to hire a new professor in his 40s — but maybe I’m wrong — and again, I don’t really know if I would want to teach.

I need to find someone to talk to about all this…

Every Little Step

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We saw an absolutely wonderful documentary yesterday: Every Little Step, about the recent Broadway revival of A Chorus Line. If A Chorus Line is a musical about people auditioning for a musical, then Every Little Step is a documentary about people auditioning for a revival of a musical about people auditioning for a musical.

Yeah, pretty meta.

I saw the original production of A Chorus Line when I was a kid, and I don’t remember much about it. After watching this documentary, I could kick myself for not seeing the recent Broadway revival. I really, really wish I’d seen a production of the show when I was old enough to appreciate it.

A Chorus Line was a groundbreaking musical when it opened at the Public Theater in 1975 — it transferred to Broadway later that year — but by the time I was a kid growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s, it was an institution. It had always been around and always would be, ensconced forever at the top of the ABCs, the New York Times’s daily alphabetical listing of current Broadway shows.

My parents took me to see A Chorus Line on my 10th birthday, in December 1983. I’d started acting in school plays a couple of years earlier; they’d seen A Chorus Line back when it was new, and I guess they thought I, a budding performer, might like it. But they must have forgotten how much of an “adult” show it was. I can’t tell you how embarrassed I was as a 10-year-old boy to be sitting with my parents, listening to a woman sing about “tits and ass.” I was mortified.

That’s the only thing I remember about seeing the show.

I looked at my Chorus Line Playbill this morning — I have the Playbills for almost every Broadway show I’ve ever seen — and according to the cast list, when I was 10 years old I saw the original “Paul,” Sammy Williams. He was apparently still in the show in 1983, eight years into its run. I wonder if he left and came back or if he’d been in it the whole time? Anyway — his performance was wasted on me. I saw the original Paul and I don’t even remember!

Which brings me to one of the most amazing moments in the documentary, which is when Jason Tam, during his audition, performs Paul’s monologue. The performance is so moving that the panel is fighting back sobs. Once the audition is over and he leaves the room, Bob Avian — the original co-choreographer and the revival’s director — lets go and breaks down in tears. I was choking back tears myself, as were other people in the audience.

It wasn’t until watching the documentary yesterday that I really thought about A Chorus Line in the context of its time and place: New York City, 1975. Post-Watergate, pre-disco; post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS. (About halfway through that 12-year gay golden era, in fact.) A few years ago I wrote a piece for the New York Blade about my impressions of a documentary called Gay Sex in the 70s. I linked to it on my blog and wound up getting schooled for my naivete by a few people who had been around during that decade. I admit that I used to feel uncomfortable about gay life in the 1970s. The era just seemed so distant, so foreign, so weird — right down to the mustaches. (A few people made fun of me for remarking on the mustaches.) But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve wished I could go back 35 years in a time machine and just walk around the Village and take everything in. I realize that may sound silly to someone who actually lived through the 70s. But I didn’t live through the 70s.

And I wish I could go back in time, turn invisible, and visit the Public Theater in the spring of 1975, where people were discovering A Chorus Line for the first time.

I can’t recommend Every Little Step highly enough. If it’s playing in your area and you love theater, go see it.

Spring Awakening on Strike

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Last night on YouTube I came across these videos of the Broadway cast of Spring Awakening singing songs from the show outside the theater during the November 2007 stagehand strike. I guess one night they gathered on the street and just jammed out their songs to a ukulele played mostly by John Gallagher, Jr. They just seem like this random group gathering on the street, and I marvel at how good they are — until I remember that these are the people who perform the actual Broadway production of this show eight times a week and therefore know all their notes down cold. Of course they’re good! And yet just unpolished enough to sound, well, cool.

Mama Who Bore Me:

I Believe:

Bitch of Living:

My Junk:

Touch Me:

Repubs Take NY Senate

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Fucking fucking fuck. Two Democratic state senators have defected to the Republicans, giving Republicans control of the New York State Senate. So much for marriage equality in New York in the next year and a half.

The two who defected are a real couple of winners:

Why Mr. Espada and Mr. Monserrate suddenly defected on Monday afternoon was not immediately clear. Both men are under investigation by the authorities. The state attorney general’s office is investigating a health care agency, Soundview HealthCare Network, that Mr. Espada ran until recently. And Mr. Monserrate, who was indicted on felony assault charges in March stemming from an attack on his companion, would automatically be thrown out of office if convicted.

What the fuck is wrong with this state? Why is it so hard to get marriage equality in New York, of all places? First the state supreme court screws us, and now this. It’s not just upstate that’s the problem — these anti-gay Democrats are from New York City: the Bronx and Queens.

I am so pissed off right now.

Obama Clinched a Year Ago

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One year ago today, Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination for president, ending his epic five-month contest with Hillary Clinton. (That article is dated June 4, but the news happened the previous day.)

How long was that race? Think back to January 3 of this year, before Obama was even inaugurated. That was five months ago. That’s the same length of time that elapsed between last year’s Iowa caucuses and the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana.

Who knew that today, Hillary Clinton would be President Obama’s secretary of state?

Epstein II

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Another update to the previous post about Marcus Epstein: maybe the situation is murky after all. It’s not necessarily that the Internet is wrong but that UVa Law’s admissions office is using murky language. TPM reports that “Jason Wu Trujillo, UVA’s Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, now says Epstein will not enroll this fall, or ever.”

I emailed the admissions office yesterday and got back a similar response: “Marcus Epstein is not an enrolled student at the University of Virginia School of Law, nor do we expect him anytime in the future.”

His Facebook page still says he’s a “UVA Grad Student ’12.” So maybe he got in and then the admissions offer was revoked.

Epstein

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This shitstain on humanity is apparently supposed to matriculate at UVa Law, my alma mater, this fall. I hope they revoke his admission. I don’t see how this guy can even get admitted to the bar with such an ethics record.

(Update: according to the UVa Law School admissions office, he isn’t enrolled and they don’t expect him to be, so it’s possible that… the Internet is wrong!?!?!)