Thursday, October 07, 2010
Whirling
Whirleyball caps off a whirley day! Possible news to report soon (I know, I know -- I'm such a tease).
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
20 Years
When one hears of a theory that posits that judicial decisions are caused by nothing more sophisticated than "what the judge had for breakfast", one assumes that it is the creation of some academic too long ensconced within the ivory tower. The phrase is attributed to the legal realist movement through Jerome Frank, and while it is a slight exaggeration of Frank's views (and thus a considerable exaggeration of the realist position, as Frank was well on their fringe), it does at least cast some illumination.
Frank believed that legal decisions are the product, not of legal doctrine, but of the fact-situation presented to the judge. Legal reasoning is just dressing to make it sound good. Moreover, Frank believed that how judges react to various fact-situations is nearly entirely idiosyncratic -- in that sense, it might as well go back to what the judge ate that day, for all the prediction one might do.
But Frank was not actually an academic at all. He was a trial attorney for 20 years, then chair of the SEC, and then a judge on the 2nd Circuit. Which I think makes his legal realist philosophy sound less ivory-towerish -- and more like a depressed drunk:
Or maybe not.
Frank believed that legal decisions are the product, not of legal doctrine, but of the fact-situation presented to the judge. Legal reasoning is just dressing to make it sound good. Moreover, Frank believed that how judges react to various fact-situations is nearly entirely idiosyncratic -- in that sense, it might as well go back to what the judge ate that day, for all the prediction one might do.
But Frank was not actually an academic at all. He was a trial attorney for 20 years, then chair of the SEC, and then a judge on the 2nd Circuit. Which I think makes his legal realist philosophy sound less ivory-towerish -- and more like a depressed drunk:
Let me tell y'somethin'. *hic* I've been, been practisin' law for 20 years. And it's all random. All of it. It's just whatever, whatever the judge thinks is right that day. Law -- you can find law for anything. Judges don't care. They just do whatever they think is right, and who knows what that is. 20 years of practice and it's, it's all random.
Or maybe not.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Monday, October 04, 2010
The Social Script of Objectifying Men
I find the story of the Duke "fuck list" to be very interesting, in a perverse sort of way. I admit my first reaction was very similar to the one I had after the Larry Craig scandal broke -- that is, how many women are looking at the list and saying "been there!" I feel like this list shows up in every other issue of Maxim, no?
These things seem to only become "problems" when the victims are men. What makes this list so shocking is that it makes men into women -- that is, casts them in the social script typically reserved for women. They stand passive and naked, judged solely on the amount of sexual pleasure they gave to this woman, and (horrors upon horrors!) some of them didn't make the grade. At the risk of hyperbole, that never happens in the American public sphere. And while I certainly understand why it would be disconcerting to be cast into that spotlight, once we get past the gender-inversion, it's hardly uncommon.
My second thought was that there is simply no winning position for women in this sort of scenario, whereas for guys there's at least something of a mixed bag. There are basically three roles one can play: the list writer, at the top of list, or at the bottom. If you're the guy whose at the bottom, well, yeah, that sucks pretty unambiguously. If you're a guy at the top, though, that's a little awkward, but also kind of a badge of pride. And if you're the guy who wrote the list -- well, you'll probably be seen as a cad. But you're also a stud who banged 13 ladies (hells to the yeah!). Again, at least a mixed blessing. By contrast, a female writer of this list is a slut, a woman who tops this list is a slut, and a woman who is at the nadir is either a frigid bitch or an untalented slut. Yeah, that's no-win.
Finally, I'm curious about the social meaning of this designation for the guys involved. As a society we have basically no experience with this sort of naked sexual objectification of the male body. It just doesn't happen. So if this list becomes a top 10 google hit for these guys in the future, what's the likely result? We don't know if we're supposed to be sympathetic, or high-five them, or shun them, or mock them, or what (for women in analogous situations of course, the answer is shame and shun). I think our collective confusion will result in it being effectively ignored.
This, I think, goes back to my old post, Second Thing We Do, Objectify All The Men. Because men aren't in a situation where, as a class, their moral subjectivity is unrecognized, recognition of their objectivity is considerably less threatening.
This doesn't mean that this list didn't cause a lot of pain and embarrassment, or that we shouldn't be attentive to it. But it does illuminate some deeper issues of sexual inequality that are clearly, I think, more intense (and more ignored) when the victims are women.
One of the things I've noticed about dominant social views on sexuality is that men really believe that a zone of sexual inviolability surrounds them and get really angry when it's penetrated. They want, at all times, to be in complete control of any sexual event or happenstance that involves them--but they don't seem to believe that women deserve the same courtesy. So when there is even the slightest risk of breaching a man's sexual perimeters (e.g., a gay man coming on to you in the bathroom), we erect all sorts of social and legal barriers to block it. Some jurisdictions seem to allow or at least condone violent assaults by heterosexual men being hit on by a gay man at a bar. And as Senator Craig's case shows, even something as tenuous as possibly signaling a sexual proposition of another man in a public place can get you arrested. Stacking that sort of treatment up against the yawning silence we give to the massive amount of street harassment women (especially urban women) face is mind-blowing.
These things seem to only become "problems" when the victims are men. What makes this list so shocking is that it makes men into women -- that is, casts them in the social script typically reserved for women. They stand passive and naked, judged solely on the amount of sexual pleasure they gave to this woman, and (horrors upon horrors!) some of them didn't make the grade. At the risk of hyperbole, that never happens in the American public sphere. And while I certainly understand why it would be disconcerting to be cast into that spotlight, once we get past the gender-inversion, it's hardly uncommon.
My second thought was that there is simply no winning position for women in this sort of scenario, whereas for guys there's at least something of a mixed bag. There are basically three roles one can play: the list writer, at the top of list, or at the bottom. If you're the guy whose at the bottom, well, yeah, that sucks pretty unambiguously. If you're a guy at the top, though, that's a little awkward, but also kind of a badge of pride. And if you're the guy who wrote the list -- well, you'll probably be seen as a cad. But you're also a stud who banged 13 ladies (hells to the yeah!). Again, at least a mixed blessing. By contrast, a female writer of this list is a slut, a woman who tops this list is a slut, and a woman who is at the nadir is either a frigid bitch or an untalented slut. Yeah, that's no-win.
Finally, I'm curious about the social meaning of this designation for the guys involved. As a society we have basically no experience with this sort of naked sexual objectification of the male body. It just doesn't happen. So if this list becomes a top 10 google hit for these guys in the future, what's the likely result? We don't know if we're supposed to be sympathetic, or high-five them, or shun them, or mock them, or what (for women in analogous situations of course, the answer is shame and shun). I think our collective confusion will result in it being effectively ignored.
This, I think, goes back to my old post, Second Thing We Do, Objectify All The Men. Because men aren't in a situation where, as a class, their moral subjectivity is unrecognized, recognition of their objectivity is considerably less threatening.
This doesn't mean that this list didn't cause a lot of pain and embarrassment, or that we shouldn't be attentive to it. But it does illuminate some deeper issues of sexual inequality that are clearly, I think, more intense (and more ignored) when the victims are women.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Two IDF Soldiers Convicted of Crimes During Cast Lead
They were charged with ordering a 9-year old boy to open packages they thought might have been booby-trapped. The punishment has not been announced.
Saturday, October 02, 2010
Sarah Palin Invented the Internet Change
Sarah Palin apparently has a beef with new Obama chief of staff Pete Rouse.
As Kevin Drum put it:
It's unreal, the world that woman inhabits.
Palin appears to have been no fan of Rouse for a long time. In her 2009 memoir, she accuses him of being among those in the Obama presidential campaign who allegedly tried to smear her when she was named McCain's vice presidential nominee.
She also accuses him of lifting Obama's "change" slogan from her own gubernatorial campaign in 2006.
"Every part of our campaign shouted 'Change!'" she wrote. "We were amused a couple of years later when Barack Obama, one of whose senior advisers (come to think of it) had roots in Alaska– adopted the same theme," she wrote in reference to Rouse.
As Kevin Drum put it:
I don't know whether Rouse tried to smear Palin or not. Given Palin's expansive understanding of the word "smear," I wouldn't be surprised. But does she really think that she's the first politician to ever run on the theme of "change"? And that Obama via Rouse stole it from her? Holy cow.
It's unreal, the world that woman inhabits.
Friday, October 01, 2010
Shadowy Financiers, and, J Street as Israel
When the story first broke that J Street had, in fact, taken substantial amounts of money from George Soros (after previously heavily implying that they had no such funds), I left a comment over at the Z-Word that captured my views rather succinctly:
One should not have to agree with Mr. Soros or J Street on everything -- indeed, on anything -- to find the position Mr. Soros has been cast into in our society to be profoundly disconcerting. I don't begrudge J Street's opponents for seizing on this misstep to try and score points against it. That's how politics works. But they do, I think, have an obligation not to contribute to what is by all lights classic anti-Semitic imagery of Mr. Soros' role in society. I find the "shadowy Jewish financier" narrative considerably more creepy than I do J Street's financial misstatements.
That being said, let's be clear: J Street misled us here, and that's a problem. And I'm not convinced that the statement Mr. Ben-Ami put out shows that he gets it. While purporting to "take responsibility" for misleading the public, Ben-Ami rapidly pivots to allege that the folks attacking J Street are "not good government watchdogs concerned about the state of non-profit financing in the United States," but simply opposing partisans seizing the opportunity for a some cheap points.
To which I say, so what? Yes, J Street has some powerful enemies, who will take non-existent crimes (much less real mistakes, as here) and blow them up into epic crimes against humanity. In this, J Street is reminiscent of another rather prominent Jewish institution that also complains, not without justification, of unfair treatment from the surrounding community. But guess what -- they knew they lived in that world, and I expected them to behave accordingly. You can either cry about the refs being biased, or you can raise your game. Just because the rules aren't fair doesn't give you an excuse to make it amateur hour. Obvious errors like this betray a fundamental lack of seriousness ill-befitting of the gravity of the problems J Street is trying to solve.
I still support J Street because I still think they fundamentally have the right idea for what will make Israel and Palestine safe and secure now and in the future. But today, they've embarrassed all of those -- myself included (and I don't have a problem associated with Mr. Soros) -- who stood up for them and have worked to make them a viable player in the American pro-Israel community.
The Forward's excellent editorial on the matter is also worth reading.
NOTE: Folks whose comments I've previously identified as choking off the oxygen of my comments section will refrain from posting in this thread.
I have to say, there is something definitively creepy about how keen folks are to echo the “shadowy Jewish financier” trope when it comes to Mr. Soros. It is obviously disconcerting that J Street has not been entirely forthcoming about its relationship with Mr. Soros. But I remain deeply distressed at the all-too-common anti-Semitism that is directed at Mr. Soros for daring to be a Jew with money who backs causes. It’s very “J Street, backed by the Jewish money it didn’t tell you about ….”
One should not have to agree with Mr. Soros or J Street on everything -- indeed, on anything -- to find the position Mr. Soros has been cast into in our society to be profoundly disconcerting. I don't begrudge J Street's opponents for seizing on this misstep to try and score points against it. That's how politics works. But they do, I think, have an obligation not to contribute to what is by all lights classic anti-Semitic imagery of Mr. Soros' role in society. I find the "shadowy Jewish financier" narrative considerably more creepy than I do J Street's financial misstatements.
That being said, let's be clear: J Street misled us here, and that's a problem. And I'm not convinced that the statement Mr. Ben-Ami put out shows that he gets it. While purporting to "take responsibility" for misleading the public, Ben-Ami rapidly pivots to allege that the folks attacking J Street are "not good government watchdogs concerned about the state of non-profit financing in the United States," but simply opposing partisans seizing the opportunity for a some cheap points.
To which I say, so what? Yes, J Street has some powerful enemies, who will take non-existent crimes (much less real mistakes, as here) and blow them up into epic crimes against humanity. In this, J Street is reminiscent of another rather prominent Jewish institution that also complains, not without justification, of unfair treatment from the surrounding community. But guess what -- they knew they lived in that world, and I expected them to behave accordingly. You can either cry about the refs being biased, or you can raise your game. Just because the rules aren't fair doesn't give you an excuse to make it amateur hour. Obvious errors like this betray a fundamental lack of seriousness ill-befitting of the gravity of the problems J Street is trying to solve.
I still support J Street because I still think they fundamentally have the right idea for what will make Israel and Palestine safe and secure now and in the future. But today, they've embarrassed all of those -- myself included (and I don't have a problem associated with Mr. Soros) -- who stood up for them and have worked to make them a viable player in the American pro-Israel community.
The Forward's excellent editorial on the matter is also worth reading.
NOTE: Folks whose comments I've previously identified as choking off the oxygen of my comments section will refrain from posting in this thread.
Freebie
It looks like the bank bailout will end up paying for itself. The cost of saving the economy apparently really is priceless.
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