The Indictment

Anytime a legal issue significantly enters the non-legal eye -- whether we're talking about the health care law or the decision whether to indict Michael Brown -- most lawyers I know wince at least a little bit. When did 25 million people suddenly earn their J.D.s? There is a decided tension between three premises that seem to be somewhat widely shared amongst non-lawyers but are not universally compatible:

(1) Law is not simply an extension of our political or moral preferences; indeed, it is bad for legal decisionmakers to make decisions based on what they feel is "right" rather than what the law demands;

(2) Law is a technical subject requiring at least some specialized knowledge; while everyday citizens may be able to reason morally or politically as well as anyone else, one needs to know law specifically to reliably come to correct legal outcomes; and

(3) Non-lawyers can validly critique legal decisions as legal decisions (more than "if this is the law, then the law is unjust")

Yet even as I feel this twinge a little bit in the wake of the Michael Brown non-indictment, I feel it less than I do normally. In part, perhaps, this is because it was a grand jury decision -- grand jurors aren't lawyers either, after all. And moreover, it is correct that this case is a serious aberration from the norm whereby Grand Juries will "indict a ham sandwich." And even adjusting for the special case of police shootings -- which are almost never challenged in a criminal context at all -- there are some special reasons to be concerned here. I don't know if I'll go so far as to say the prosecutor threw the case, but from a lawyer's perspective let's just say that there were some tactical choices he made that were not exactly consistent with a zealous desire to have this case go to trial. There is a lingering suspicion that the prosecutor here really didn't want to prosecute but wanted to foist the blame off on someone else, so he presented his case before the grand jury in a way that made it far, far less likely to result in an indictment than the normal case.

What makes the non-indictment so upsetting -- even more so than, say, the George Zimmerman verdict -- is the message it seems to send about what is and isn't a plausible narrative in our society. Technically speaking, an non-indictment is not a finding an innocence -- a guilty person could nonetheless (validly) be non-indicted simply because the evidence we're able to access is insufficient to justify moving the case forward. Functionally speaking, a non-indictment decision suggests that the grand jury thought it was implausible that Darren Wilson was guilty. In a stylized but very real sense, what an indictment is is a decision about whether to continue a conversation forward -- whether or not the proposition "Darren Wilson is culpable in the murder of Michael Brown" is sufficiently plausible such that it is worth spending our time on. To answer that question "no" is revealing and worrying, and it should be. Whether or not we are sure to a "moral certainty" that Wilson is guilty, it seems difficult to be so confident at this stage that he is not guilty that we can justly neglect to look into it further.

But even as there is very justifiable and warranted outrage over the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, in some sense, there has been a very successful indictment in the sense I am talking about above. The belief in communities of color that the police are just another local gang, that they are not there to and cannot be relied upon to protect their children but actually are another source of threat to their children, is nothing new. And it is interesting to me that, as old as this sentiment is, right now we really do seem to be seeing some genuine national recognition of it -- recognition of the real and genuine vulnerability people of color feel; that they can be killed with impunity and that the people tasked with protecting them are instead too often pulling the trigger.

This is such a difficult concept to grasp for White people, for whom it is not even a luxury but bedrock that if something scary happens to you, you call the police and they'll protect you. The idea of "overpolicing" is almost impossible to grasp -- who wouldn't want more cops on the beat? Who wouldn't want to feel safer? I have myself an idiosyncratic fear of authority figures (people who can "get me in trouble"), which probably stems from some traumatic event that occurred in my childhood, and that includes police officers. But even for me, having this fear -- when I saw something scary in Hyde Park (what looked like a violent street abduction a half-block ahead of me at midnight), I called the cops without any hesitation and felt better -- safer -- when they arrived. It is virtually inconceivable to many Whites this idea of not having access to that sense of security; indeed, to experience its opposite.

But at this moment, that message is starting to get through as at least plausible. At least something worth talking about. We have, maybe, successfully indicted the practices of policing that have oppressed communities of color for so long. I don't want to overstate things -- there are plenty of people for whom the Darren Wilson decision is proof that the thug kid got what he deserved -- but I think even for some Whites out there ambivalent about this precise legal question, there is recognition that the broader issue is a live one worth talking about. The conversation is finally being seen as a valid one in ways that even a few years ago it wasn't. Maybe that's not a lot. But it is something.

Dominating Anti-Semitism

This past weekend, I attended the "Dominating Speech" workshop at the University of Connecticut. It was, in many respects, my first conference of this type -- I had presented as the sole guest at a weekly workshop, and at massive conferences where I was on one panel of a thousand, but this was the first where everyone was there for all the invited papers both presenting and giving feedback. It was an amazing experience (and not just because it was hosted by -- I am not making this up -- a group calling itself "the Injustice League"). Moreover, as (with the exception of one keynoter) the only non-philosopher in attendance, I felt welcomed and valued in the perspective that I brought to the table. Obviously, standing outside the main discipline, there were some papers that spoke to me more than others. But I felt like I learned a lot, and when I asked questions it at least seemed like people found them to be useful and helpful (hopefully!). I felt fantastic, even giddy, as I left Hartford Sunday night.

What follows is not a "but". In many ways it is more of a "because". My experiences with regard to my talk (which I'll get into in a second) instantiated and clarified a lot of what I have long found problematic about how people in academic circles think and talk about anti-Semitism. But (okay, there is a but), it did so in a way that surprised -- even shocked -- me in its sense of affirmation and engagement. The conversation we had on this subject was one that, in many ways, I had lost faith in our capacity to have. And that was precisely because it was with people who really did seem to buy into what I consider to be the problem.

My talk was titled Playing with Cards: Discrimination Claims and the Charge of Bad Faith. The prototypical example I give of this "bad faith" retort is "you're just playing the race card!" That response, to a person claiming some form of racial discrimination or injustice, is an assertion that the charge is so patently ridiculous, so obviously incredible, that the claimant either knows or should have known that it is groundless. The "card" language is evocative, suggesting a "game" one is playing for tactical advantage, rather than any honest effort to explore an issue. The main function of the bad faith response, I argue, is to enable such claims to be dismissed prior to any substantive inquiry (and I explain in more detail how this works and why it's wrong) .

Other than the "race card", I give a variety of examples of this phenomenon in the contexts of racism, sexism, and (crucially) anti-Semitism. This is an advised decision on my part -- it matters to me a great deal that anti-Semitism not be viewed as a fundamentally separate enterprise from other forms of oppression. And generally, it is: The type of robust theorizing and incredible work one sees in feminist and ethnic studies literature on sexism and racism as systems of oppression is almost entirely absent in the context of anti-Semitism. Judaic Studies has largely been excluded from the pantheon of "area studies", and the experience of Jews is not generally studied as an ongoing case of systematic oppression of others. The Holocaust gets in, of course, but in this narrative it comes off as an inexplicable, almost random fit of violence that fades almost as suddenly as it emerged. Context and continuity are both absent. And while I am forever grateful to the Critical Race Theory literature for finally giving me a language to express these feelings I was having about my own experience as a Jew, it is by all rights incredible that there was nothing more directly on-point. When one thinks about who is doing work on anti-Semitism at the level of sophistication, insight, and seriousness that one finds regularly in other -isms literature, who do you have? David Hirsh, Stephen Feldman, Yours in Struggle, the parts of Albert Memmi nobody reads ... it starts to get thin very quickly.

And this is a very big problem. One of the more important contributions the authors working specifically in feminism or critical race theory or queer studies have made is showing that it isn't enough to have a general notion of oppression as a bad thing. Anti-oppression analysis must be historically-grounded and situated with respect to specific histories and instantiations of particular oppressions. Oppression manifests differently for different groups; if we only have in our mind (for example) Blacks in America as a our model, we may find it difficult to see how another group is oppressed when it seems to lack the familiar markers. With respect to Jews, it can be very difficult to understand a Jewish narrative of oppression if one doesn't know about the "buffer" theory of anti-Semitism (Jews are given relatively prominent places in public life so they will be targeted for public ire in the event of unpopular policies). Part of being Jewish in America is that there are, relatively speaking, a lot of Jewish Senators. Another part of being Jewish in America is that I've yet to attend a synagogue on holiday services that wasn't surrounded by armed guards -- and they weren't there to direct traffic. And things are even worse than that if you're a Jew in Paris, and even worse than that if you're one of the very, very few remaining Jews in Yemen (~60,000 Jews lived there in 1948, less than 100 today).

Jewish accounts of diaspora and dispersal, and at the same time unity and nationhood across an incredibly long period of time, matter. Recognizing the specific histories of Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews (those descended proximately from persons in Spain, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia) matters (and the Ashkenazi Jewish community shoulders much of the blame here). Knowing that, for all our "integration" into mainstream American life, Jews face the second highest rate, per capita, of hate crimes of any group in the country (behind only gays and lesbians), matters. When we talk about Jews and lack this attunement, we will make mistakes. When we talk about Jews and deny that we even need to be so attuned, we will commit a wrong.

So I include examples of anti-Semitism to emphasize that this is a form of domination that needs to be taken seriously on par with other forms of oppression: Anti-Semitism is dominating. And I know when I include it in my presentation I am poking the bear -- though which bear I'm poking depends on my audience. There are groups I could speak to that would nod along whole-heartedly when I talk about anti-Semitism, but think it silly or ridiculous that racism is treated similarly. But in this forum and in this context, I had a pretty good idea about the nature of the beast.

I have to say, though, that as the conference proceeded (my presentation was towards the end) I was pleasantly surprised at how much anti-Semitism was discussed. Nazi propaganda was used as an example of dehumanizationn. When "slurs" were discussed, "kike" was a regular example. When people were grasping for another example of an oppressed groups, Jews regularly made an appearance -- particularly if two were need for illustration ("suppose a Black man starts screaming at a Jew on the subway ...."). I thought that maybe, maybe, it wouldn't be seen as weird or provocative to talk about anti-Semitism as if it was just like other forms of oppression. And so I gave my presentation, with its examples of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism, and called for questions.

The entire Q&A focused on (and challenged) my inclusion of anti-Semitism as an example of the phenomenon.

Now I want to make a few things clear here. Right now I'm talking almost exclusively about anti-Semitism. But my presentation, and my paper, is not so lop-sided. I don't actually think, on a pure content basis, I spent any more time talking about anti-Semitism than I did about racism or sexism. But it was clear that my talk was received and experienced as an anti-Semitism talk. As a theme, Anti-Semitism dominated, or was seen as dominating, my presentation. That's partially on me -- as I said, part of my goal is to emphasize anti-Semitism's parity with other forms of oppression -- but I don't think it's entirely so.

One of the other presenters had a paper that I've been liking more and more as I've been turning it over in my head about "talking loudly." After her presentation, I said to her (and I'm putting these words in my mouth only because I'm not 100% sure she agrees with my spin, and I don't want to misrepresent her own view) that what counts as "loud" will be defined against a norm of the dominant group -- they define normal volume, and styles or content that deviates from that norm will come off as jarring and discordant. Domination often causes people "to mistake the sound of their own voice for silence."

In the context of progressive conversations about injustice, anti-Semitism is loud. It is jarring, it is dissonant. It stands out. Some time after my presentation concluded, the subject of Jews came up as an example again and someone remarked that "well we already had a lot of Jew-stuff in the last talk." It wasn't said with any malice or sneer whatsoever, and I didn't take it that way. But it just emphasizes that my talk -- which wasn't actually predominantly about Jews and anti-Semitism -- became dominated by that concept. And that's a function of the strangeness of having any substantial focus on anti-Semitism in these contexts. There were talks that were entirely about sexist slurs, but nobody would have said at their conclusion "that was a lot of gender-stuff!"

Indeed, I think this gets to another quality of how we misperceive the role and prevalence of discrimination talk in our society generally. One of the examples I used in my paper was the A.J. Delgado/Matthew Hale line that "[Rape] is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent." Part of this is about supposed false claims. But another part is about supposedly easy claims, this idea that any true instance of rape will undoubtedly be reported. Why wouldn't it -- it's so easy! This denial that underreporting could even be a thing is also wrong; there are many, many reasons why people will be reticent to claim they've been raped, or abused, or discriminated against. People believe that the problem is we talk about rape constantly, too much. In reality, the problem is that we talk about it too infrequently -- it just feels like a lot because of what we take to be the "neutral" backdrop.

Many of the people who asked questions were absolutely convinced that anti-Semitism discourse is a ubiquitous feature of public debate -- it is this constant deafening drone that drowns out everything else. Anti-Semitism, they feel, dominates other important conversations. And this presumption is so ingrained that we see it even when it obviously isn't there. One questioner asked me about how "AIPAC uses anti-Semitism" (folks at the conference will remember this moment because I actually started bouncing up and down in anticipation). But go to AIPAC's webpage -- they almost never talk about anti-Semitism. It's not part of their playbook. And yet -- and apologies for generalizing here -- my guess is that everyone in the room thought that was a perfectly sensible question -- "what about the AIPAC case?" As a society, it is so deeply ingrained in our heads that Jews of that type are constantly yammering about anti-Semitism that even when they don't it still is part of what we collectively "know" about them. When it comes to oppressed groups, what we think we know about them -- what we are very confident we know about them -- often diverges quite significantly from what is actually true about them.

A similar theme can be seen in the Steven Salaita case. I've made my position on that matter generally clear -- yes his tweets were anti-Semitic, no he shouldn't have been unhired -- so I don't want to delve into those details. But there is a very good reason that I decided to check to see what the major American Jewish institutions were saying about that controversy. And the answer was: nothing. They weren't talking about it at all. This fact, of course, did nothing to dampen the sense amongst Salaita's supporters that his un-hiring was yet another case of the organized Jewish community maliciously deploying anti-Semitism in unjust ways. And on similar grounds, it's notable to me just how hesitant the University was to associate what Salaita tweeted with anti-Semitism -- instead relying on (what to me felt like) mealy-mouthed murmurings about "civility" and "respect." And I have to agree with Salaita's backers here: that's bullshit. If Salaita had been tweeting this stuff about the Los Angeles Dodgers, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Yet the University did not, and there was no way that it would, justify its decision by saying "Steven Salaita's tweets were anti-Semitic, and there is no space for that on our campus." They rely on the "civility" rationale because they know that openly claiming anti-Semitism is immediately discrediting in academic circles.

The folks questioning me seemed to think that the debate we were having was whether anti-Semitism is raised too often or just the right amount. But I don't think anti-Semitism is talked about the right amount; I think we talk about far too infrequently, including in discussions over Israel. I'll throw a bone here and say that one area that's badly missing significant anti-Semitism talk is in the role right-wing Christian organizations play in constructing what it means to be pro-Israel -- if there ever was a time to dust off Churchill's warning about riding a hungry tiger, this is it -- but that's not the only case. I think anti-Semitism should be frontloaded anytime we're talking about Jewish institutions, and most of the time it isn't. For all we have convinced ourselves that it is easy to cry anti-Semitism, that Jews don't have qualms about doing so when it's false let alone when it's real, the reality is far different. Pretty much all the Jews I know, especially those left-of-center (which is to say, most Jews), are keenly aware of the costs of anti-Semitism talk -- that each time they try to raise the subject (no matter the context or validity), they are feeding into this narrative of "there they go again."

I promise get into the content of these questions in a moment, but I also want to emphasize something else. All three of the questions I received were from Jews, and I believe all anti-Zionist Jews. All were respectful and constructive (though certainly pointed). And after Q&A, all three them made a point to come up to me and very effusively praise my talk and say how much they enjoyed it. I don't know whether they did so because I was a Philosophy-outsider and they thought perhaps not accustomed to this style of questioning (I attended the University of Chicago Law School, I have plenty of experience with academia-as-blood-sport), or if I came off as particularly flustered (I wasn't, but I do have a sort of manic energy that often reads that way). But regardless, I absolutely believe in their sincerity and the gesture was not unappreciated. And our further conversations at the pub and on the train ride out from Hartford -- which were very illuminating and constructive -- gave me a ton of material to work with in terms of strengthening my thesis and argument. These suggestions, I want to stress, were not "this would be a great paper were it not for the Jew-stuff" -- they were actually quite keyed to making the Jew-stuff better.

When I said at the top that this experience restored my faith in the possibility of a conversation that I had begun to worry was impossible, this is what I meant. It is no revelation to say that conversations between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews about the nature of anti-Semitism often do not end well. But this one went very well from start to finish. I don't know if I changed anyone's minds -- when the first question opened with "I've actually written about how anti-Semitism is inappropriately used to silence criticism of Israel", I didn't expect him to close with "but you've made me see the error of my ways, accept my humble apologies." But the way the conversation proceeded made believe that maybe, at the edges, these thoughts really could be admitted into the realm of valid discourse. That the conversation could at least begin.

As stated above, the main pushback on my presentation was on the inclusion of anti-Semitism, and specifically a challenge to whether it was validly analogized to other extant oppressions. In a sense, I found this darkly amusing -- we had after all been using Jews as an example of a dominated group throughout the conference, albeit in a very abstract way, and nobody had batted an eyelash. It wasn't until the concept was deployed with some serious practical bite -- challenging actual practices people might actually want to engage in (nobody in the room, I'm sure, wanted to call Jews' "kikes" again) -- that suddenly it became problematic to acknowledge Jews' dominated status.

This resistance seemed to stem from a sense that "anti-Semitism" was dominating in yet another way -- that it really does get used to distract or shunt aside other more important conversations and thus preserves unjust domination. One questioner suggested that anti-Semitism was, comparatively speaking, not that important when "bombs were falling on Gaza" (what about when Gaza is "merely" occupied? Under blockade? Or when there are settlements in the West Bank?). Complaining about anti-Semitism is akin to crying "what about the menz!" Another spoke passionately about her experience being called a "self-hating" Jew and how alienated she was from counter-anti-Semitism discourse which she felt specifically targeted and demeaned her.

I don't want to give the short shrift to the real problem being raised here. The upshot of my argument with respect to the "bad faith" retort is basically that one shouldn't do it; that one should always take the claim seriously and give it serious analysis. One particularly cogent objection to this is that it doesn't account for the guy who says "men are the real oppressed group today!" Technically, that's a claim of structural oppression and under my theory we have to seriously engage with it, even though all we really want to do is roll our eyes and walk away. The suggestion, then, was that this should be restricted to claims by groups which really are oppressed. Then the debate over Jews becomes an empirical one -- are they more like Blacks or more like men? -- which can be separated out from the issue I'm describing. My problem with that suggestion, though, is that oppressive ideologies and prejudices also play powerful roles in constructing who we consider oppressed. This stands out with particular clarity for Jews, whose oppression has regularly taken the form precisely of allegations that they are an all-powerful world-dominating cabal. As my friend Phoebe Maltz Bovy put it, "Anti-Semites weren't - aren't - just people who think they're better than Jews. They're people who think they're being oppressed by Jews." Within this narrative of anti-Semitism, the idea of Jews as oppressed will be seen as patently, obviously ludicrous -- they are if anything the paradigmatic oppressor. Trusting people's pre-discussion intuitions on whether Jews are oppressed is not, I think, going to go all that well. And this empirical debate over "are Jews oppressed" will never kick off if the claim can legitimately be brushed aside as clearly absurd -- if the "bad faith" response is accepted as a response when the group "obviously" isn't oppressed.

One possible solution is simply to swallow it -- yes, we need to take even the "men are oppressed" claim seriously, because at least as a threshold issue it's just that important to make sure we're duly attentive to all possible oppressions and we shouldn't have any real confidence in our pre-figured notions about who is oppressed and who isn't. I might actually be less unhappy with this result than most of my peers seem to be. In part, this is because I really am skeptical of our ability to ex ante identify oppressed groups with confidence; I think we're far more likely to have false negatives than false positives. And in part I suspect this stems from my legal background, where to some extent we really do have to just accept our duty to investigate whatever claim walks in the courthouse door. As much as I recognize that we have limited discursive resources, at the same time any remotely useful practice of moral deliberation is going to require us to have to walk and chew gum at the same time. When people act as if thinking two thoughts at once is one to many, that begins to sound less like preserving scarce deliberative resources and more like there are certain thoughts they'd rather not risk thinking.

A second solution, which in some ways might be better but perhaps does not completely solve the problem, is to limit the obligation to claims by historically oppressed groups. I actually switched to this language at one point in my Q&A and was later congratulated for my savvy "rhetorical move" -- "historical oppression" instead of "present oppression." But I think this actually could work as a limiting principle. On the one hand, the verifiable and accepted existence of historical oppression at the very least demonstrates that such oppression is a live possibility that is worth looking into. And on the other hand, a lot of the bad faith response in this context accepts the reality of the historical oppression, it just denies its continuation ("racism was bad, but now it's over"). The empirical debate over the status of Jews, after all, is less "are they oppressed" and more "are they still oppressed", and that seems to be qualitatively different from the case of men.

I concluded my talk by explaining why I believed the "bad faith" charge is "dominating speech" in a very literal sense: it takes an important claim, one which should occupy our attention as citizens concerned about fairness and equality, and removes it from the realm of legitimate conversation. The bad faith response dominates speech about discrimination. In some sense, this effort to squeeze in anti-Semitism talk as a valid entrant into this larger discourse is about whether anti-Semitism, specifically, can be so dominated. The historical exclusion of Judaic Studies from the broader currents of oppression-discourse -- work that has been so powerful and so influential and done so much good in the world -- is the norm, and efforts to resist this domination remain at the margins. The people I was in conversation with perhaps didn't agree that this was a problem or that it should change. But they did engage with me honestly, substantively, and productively on this question. They were at least willing to discuss whether they should be willing to discuss anti-Semitism. Put that way it seems like a very small victory. But I was, as I said, quite giddy about it. It meant quite a lot.

One common theme the philosophers at the conference kept remarking on was how outsiders often misinterpret how philosophers speak about one another. Spending pages upon pages detailing all the areas where one thinks your partner is wrong or false is high praise. And I hope this missive is read in that light, because that is the light that I mean it. The best conferences and the best academic events cause us to have a clearer idea about the thoughts and problems that motivate us. And this conference -- every aspect of it -- made more cogent and choate thoughts I have been exploring for quite some time. That is something I value very deeply, and I am exceedingly grateful to have had this opportunity. As much as I've already gone on there's even more that I'd like to say -- about, for example, the status of dissident Jews (like my interlocutors) who disagree with the general Jewish perspective on the state of Jews in the world and who often feel mistreated or abused as a result. This is another area I've been thinking a lot about and plan to pursue in more detail in the future. What it boils down to is this: Every person I met with and every person I spoke with is someone whom I hope to remain in conversation with in the years to come. These are the types of conversations that need to be had, and I am exceptionally thankful to have had this one.

VGHS: A Review

The series finale of Video Game High School came out this week. I've watched every episode of all three seasons, and enjoyed them all. But with the series' conclusion, I've been thinking about it as a comprehensive whole. Would I recommend it? If you're a fan of video games, absolutely. If you're not ... maybe. It is an interesting show in a lot of ways, in that it is considerably better than its constituent elements.

Let's start with something quite obvious, though. VGHS is a web series, and viewing it as vehicle primarily distributed through YouTube, it is incredible. The production values are TV-quality -- low-grade, camp TV, but still. I could write a review of VGHS taking all of that into account, and it would be gushing. But I don't get the sense that VGHS wants to be judged as King of the Little League. I'm treating it as a television show because I think that's the league it wants to play in. In a sense, the highest compliment I can pay VGHS is that I never felt the need to grade it on a curve.

Okay, that being said, let's start with the plot. It's nothing special -- indeed, in some ways it is entirely unoriginal. Other than the arc I just completed, and the overarching "boy meets girl" thing across the entire series, I don't know if I remember any of the specific happenstances in any of the episodes. With the semi-exception of one late-Season 3 entry, none of them had any serious ambition or tried to break new ground (and that one episode, incidentally, was a rare instance where one of the weaker cast members really managed to shine).

The acting is much the same. Of the core main cast, only Johanna Braddy (Jenny Matrix) could be characterized as a good actress. This makes sense, as she's the only one who has a serious acting career (I nearly flipped out when she made an appearance on Shameless). Ellary Porterfield (Ki Swan) is decent, but Josh Blaylock (BrianD), Jimmy Wong (Ted Wong), and Brian Firenzi (The Law) are mediocre at best. Blaylock plays leading man Brian as every sad-sack semi-unpopular-but-not-dweebish high school kid that starred in a 90s teen movie (he even kind of looks like Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Ten Things I Hate About You), and adds nothing to the archetype. Jimmy Wong is awkward and wooden as Ted, and only the former is arguably part of his character. And Firenzi plays an maniacal jerk who lacks any of the qualities which make maniacal jerks interesting.

The supporting cast often was better. Sometimes that's because they were able to get a bunch of high-profile actors to make appearances, ranging from brief (Joel McHale as the President) to substantial (Cynthia Watros got main cast billing as Jenny Matrix's mother/coach). But even some of the more obscure names shone -- the breakout character of the series, for me, was Harley Morenstein as VGHS Dean Ernie Calhoun. Morenstein's prior claim to fame was the YouTube series Epic Meal Time, but every one of his appearances was a thing of beauty.

The excellent supporting cast also points to one of VGHS' greatest strengths and missed opportunities. It does a very good job of building its world. One caught glimpses of a whole bunch of characters and cliques and back stories attending the high school, all of which held great promise as vehicles for storytelling. The best shows that have this element -- think Parks and Rec or Community -- do a great job of exploring their environs: one understands that their main cast truly inhabits a larger world whose denizens themselves are rounded individuals with their own interests, talents, and personal desires. VGHS had the superstructure to pull something like that off, but it never quite got there -- when we did venture out and meet some of the other students, too often they felt like 2-D cardboard cutouts who existed to serve the main plot. Indeed, my desire to explore more of VGHS' internal workings was part of the reason why the Napalm High story arc fell somewhat flat for me -- it drew the focus away from the core of the show and instead cast the lens on an external player whose place in the overall ecosystem was never fully made clear.

All of this sounds pretty negative, and I said at the top that I really did enjoy the show. Why? VGHS -- a good but not great show -- reminds me a lot of a good but not great video game. The best video games are serious enterprises -- they believe that there is deeper meaning to their work and invite their players to explore that meaning in a robust, even literary, fashion. But there are plenty of perfectly decent games that abjure that type of seriousness in favor of just placing you in an interesting environment and letting you have fun. And that's what VGHS does. It presents an interesting world-concept -- where video games are serious business of the kind that could support an entire network of academies -- and just lets its characters play around inside. As serious as the characters take video games, the show doesn't take itself seriously at all. And for all of the cliched teen-angst romance that drives much of the plot, this is fundamentally a happy show. People do cool things! They play games! They get live inside those games! We can see that they're getting to have fun, and so we have fun with them.

I wrote a review of a restaurant the other day, a hole-in-the-wall place in Oakland that we stopped in for breakfast when the place we were actually trying to eat at had a 1 hour wait. The food was good but nothing special -- objectively, a 3/5. But the place was infused with an incredible happy energy. The owner -- a 55 year old Korean woman -- greeted every customer with a fist bump (not optional) and everybody there just seemed to be cheerfully munching on classic greasy diner fare. We loved it. We loved the feeling. So I gave it four stars instead of three, because isn't just getting to feel happy worth a star?

VGHS doesn't have the best acting, or the most innovative plot. It doesn't do everything it could have with the world it created. But is a happy show, and it makes you happy watching it. That's worth quite a bit, in my book.

6.5/10.

The Suppression of All ... Assent?

The Israeli Knesset is moving forward with a bill that would ban the free distribution of the daily Israel Hayom newspaper (the paper wouldn't be outlawed, it would just have to charge money).

Oh, I'm sure the folks talking about Israeli society suppressing all dissent will have a field day about this. Except ... they seem oddly quiet. Why is that?

Ah yes: Because the paper is owned by prominent right-wing mega-billionaire Sheldon Adelson and is seen as basically a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. That doesn't really fit the narrative, now does it? The narrative it does fit is a broader fracturing of Bibi's coalition -- from both right-ward and left-ward challengers.

Now, a few caveats. Needless to say, I'm no Bibi fan, and as for Sheldon Adelson, well, I basically saw him as a toxin in the Jewish community even before his outrageous dismissal of Israel's democratic character. And there is something weird about talking about "censorship" when the putative target is a prominent supporter of the incumbent administration. I also don't know how this law fits into broader free speech norms in Israel or other important elements of legal or cultural context that factor into the law.

Even still, I do admit some sense of discomfort at the prospect of limiting media distribution -- even when it's from a repulsive figure like Adelson. And more to the point -- since when has "not knowing important elements of legal or cultural context" ever stopped anyone from hopping aboard the "Israel is fascism defined" train? I think it's fair to say that's not what's causing this yawning silence.

In Praise of the Grinch

The Montgomery County Public School system -- of which I am a proud graduate -- recently decided to stop including religious labels for days off from school. So instead of Christmas Break, we have Winter Break; instead of getting Yom Kippur off, it's just "no school." The decision was made following requests from Muslim students and parents who wanted one of their holidays to be recognized equivalent to how Christmas, Easter, Rosh Hashanah, etc., were. Originally, the plan was apparently just to strip the Jewish holidays of their identification, an amendment instead removed all such religious designations.

I must be the only person outside the school board itself who agrees with this decision. Everybody is unhappy. Conservatives are blaring with their usual war on Christmas schtick. Jezebel blares out a headline "School District Removes Christmas From Calendar to Spite Muslims."

I've long been dismissive of people whose faiths requires government-sponsored training wheels to remain viable. It is one thing when we're talking about genuine religious accommodations -- something I still support even as Hobby Lobby did terrible damage to the concept -- that take away material barriers to one's religious observance. It's another thing entirely to act as if your faith will wilt away unless some official government body gives it appropriate symbolic representation.

Hence, I take a very different conclusion from what Eugene Kontorovich calls "the Menorah Principle" -- that once one minority religious group gets equal religious recognition on par with that enjoyed by the majority faith, all will want it. It is alienating for some religious groups -- but not one's own -- to be given public and official recognition. And I agree that this demonstrates the unworkability of this form of pluralism; it would be impossible to provide actual "equal" recognition to every single faith group in the immensely diverse United States. Kontorovich says that therefore "the only obvious place to draw [the line] is at Christianity." I say that this demonstrates that government is a body particularly ill-suited to "recognizing" religion, and should get out of the game.

The Board justified its decision on the grounds that the days it gives off aren't meant to affirm any particular religious observance, but rather are reflective of days where lots of students and staff are absent anyway. Montgomery County has a disproportionate number of Jewish students who miss school on the high holidays. Perhaps more importantly, they have a high number of Jewish teachers who also miss school, such that the district couldn't effectively staff its classrooms if it didn't declare a holiday that day. That's an entirely reasonable basis for deciding when to close schools. It also in no way requires that the district officially declare that it is closing for "Yom Kippur" (or "Christmas", or whatever).

MCPS isn't "intensifying the contradictions" of religious pluralism, it's resolving them. They made the right call here, and I genuinely fail to see the basis for the backlash they're experiencing.

Moral Credentialing and Supreme Court Decisions

Noah Feldman has a Bloomberg column up provcatively titled "Obamacare May Die So Gay Marriage Survives". The idea behind it is that conservatives on the Supreme Court will -- unconsciously -- trade a "liberal" result in the seemingly-inevitable gay marriage appeal for a "conservative" vote in the latest Obamacare case. The basic idea is that by producing a high-profile liberal decision (in the gay marriage context), the conservatives can safely deliver a major conservative ruling without sacrificing its legitimacy, or the Justices' own conceptions of themselves as neutral arbiters whose decisions are governed by law rather than politics.

Dale Carpenter is not amused by this line of inquiry.

One can fully accept that political allegiances and the Supreme Court’s own desire to preserve the perception of its legitimacy, which is itself a form of politics, can influence its decisions. But Feldman’s approach calls on us to examine the deep and hidden psychological motivations of the Justices–which he agrees they would deny publicly and privately–without even considering whether there are perfectly reasonable and defensible legal grounds for the way they may rule in a particular case.

I am sympathetic to Carpenter's concerns. But I think some of them may be, if not dispelled, at least allayed if we look into the psychological literature which seems to underlie Feldman's argument (Feldman does not cite this literature, which probably doesn't help matters).

The phenomenon Feldman describes, to my eyes, seems most similar to the idea of "moral credentialing." I discuss this concept a bit in Sticky Slopes, but the basic idea is pretty simple: People have a strong self-conception of themselves as fair-minded and egalitarian; values which genuinely matter to them. But they also are motivated, often subconsciously, to act in unequal and unfair manners (e.g., racial or sexual favoritism). The first element often acts to check the second; when evaluating job applicants, for example, favoring a man over a woman would threaten the egalitarian self-concept. However, if a person has had the opportunity to demonstrate their egalitarian bona fides, that act provides a "credit" which allows them to engage in discrimination without threatening their self-image. Call it the "how can I be racist, I donate to inner-city charities!" effect. Having a salient egalitarian act one can point to makes it harder for observers (or the self) to infer that one makes biased decisions; paradoxically, this makes people more likely to indulge in precisely that sort of bias.

One can easily apply this same logic to judges, who have private "political" motivations regarding case outcomes that exist alongside a genuine commitment to fair and neutral arbitration that rejects the validity of relying on such preferences. For this reason, judges are undoubtedly quite sensitive when their legal rulings "just happen" to match their policy preferences -- it raises the specter that their decisions are actually motivated by politics rather than law. An easy way to dispel those fears is to point to another case which doesn't fit that mold. "If I were the sort of judge who voted on political grounds, how do you explain my vote in X v. Y?" Having this credit, the judge can effectively discount the possibility that he or she is influenced by such political concerns -- and accordingly will be less like to check against the subtle impact such desires have on his or her reasoning. I'll admit to having a similar suspicion regarding the latest health care case, albeit linked not to a gay marriage ruling but to Chief Justice Roberts' vote in the original Obamacare decision. That vote provides the Chief with a "credit" demonstrating that his votes on this subject are law-based rather than motivated by any antipathy to the Affordable Care Act or Obama administration. Consequently, it would be much harder to assert that a subsequent vote against the federal subsidies is motivated by bias -- after all; if he was the sort of judge that would be swayed by such concerns, why wouldn't he have simply struck down the law tout court?

Returning to Carpenter's objections, he complains that Feldman does not account for entirely legitimate, law-based reasons one might vote "conservative" in the health care case and "liberal" in the gay marriage cases. But moral credentialing, like all forms of motivated cognition, operates in the space of ambiguity -- it wouldn't work unless there were credible neutral reasons supporting one's (politically) preferred outcome. No moral credit of racial egalitarianism will enable one to justify hiring a drunk White high school dropout over a Black valedictorian. Rather, moral credentialing comes into play when there are facially legitimate reasons for a variety of different actions: a job opening sought by both a qualified White and Black candidate, for instance, where one could legitimately make a case for either. And so it is with law: whatever credit one receives for crossing "party lines" on a high-profile case -- demonstrating one's neutrality as a judge -- can conceptually only be redeemed in a case where reasonable minds might differ.

It is for this reason that Carpenter is partially correct regarding another one of his arguments -- that the psychological motivation forwarded here is "non-falsifiable." He's right, at least at the level of explaining individual cases. If the male and female candidates for a job are both equally qualified -- if there is a solid, credible case for either party -- non-prejudiced decisionmakers should still hire the man roughly half of the time. Any individual decision to hire a man may be entirely neutral and unaffected by the existence of a prior "credit." Where the effects of moral credentialing start to emerge is when we aggregate cases and see that the percentage of women hired plummets amongst actors who have in their possession a salient anti-sexism credential.

And this hypothesis probably could be put to the test with respect to judicial behavior. Are judges who break with their "side" in a high-profile case more likely to indulge in seemingly partisan or political voting in the aftermath? It seems that, measured across a large number of judicial decisions, this is a hypothesis that could be confirmed or falsified. Someone should get on that.

BorkBorkBorkBorkBork

Poor Loretta Lynch. Of course Republicans are going to try and sink her. Or people who share her name. Whatever. It's nothing personal. Does anyone think there is anyone Obama could nominate for his first open cabinet position under this Senate and have it go through smoothly? He could have put up the vengeful ghost of Robert Bork and Republicans would still be baying for a scalp.

Poor Loretta Lynch. I hope she realized that she's the bait to be devoured in the hope that the monster is satiated.

Judge Kopf Calls It

Though put in the words of a character, I think we can fairly ascribe this as Judge Kopf's prediction regarding how the Supreme Court will handle the gay marriage cases:

Scalia, your former boss, will go ape shit, Kennedy will write something inane, and the liberals will join him and reverse you.

The real question is what cases that line wouldn't describe?

Thick as Thieves

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has an interview with Michael Quinn, the retired police offier who was the main source for Pointergate. It's ... not as awful as it could have been. That isn't to say it's good, by any means. He remains adamant that this was a gang sign, which is just transparently ludicrous at this point, and completely dismisses any racial overtones to the story. That said, his discussion about the role of racism in the criminal justice system is definitely above median. Anytime I hear a cop state that racial divides in arrest rates is both "evidence of racism individually and certainly of racist policies" I have to give a little nod of my head. Ditto with "There is something really wrong with law enforcement policies and criminal justice polices that puts that many people at risk." This is an unusual combination, to be honest -- acknowledging systematic racism in the abstract but denying it in what seems to be a really clear cut case (normally, one acknowledges the obvious case but dismisses it as an aberration). So, I dunno -- 3.5/10? Maybe 4/10 if I'm feeling generous.

But the best part of the interview -- and this is on the transcriber -- was when Quinn was asked whether this would have been a story if Hodge's photo-mate had been White:

"This isn't about the race of the gang. We've got white gangs within the state of Minnesota that are every bit as viscous as any black gang on the street."

While I'm sure Quinn actually said "vicious", I do like to think that the primary problem with gangs in Minnesota is that they're so damn sticky.

SCOTUS Grants Cert. in Obamacare Case

Well I was half-right -- the D.C. Circuit did grant en banc review in Halbig (whether or not health care subsidies are available for federal-established exchanges. But I was wrong that the Supreme Court wouldn't see the need to touch it -- they've granted cert. in a parallel case arising out of the Fourth Circuit.

In theory, this is not an opportunity to relitigate Obamacare. The proper meaning of the text of the Affordable Care Act, in context, is a very separate question from whether the law as a whole is constitutional. Functionally? It will be very difficult for the conservative justices -- outraged that the law was implemented at all -- to resist an interpretation of it that renders it absurd and dysfunctional. But we'll see.

Pointing Fingers

This is literally the sort of thing I joke about. "Haha, some people are so clueless they would think a Black guy pointing his finger is a gang sign." Alas, now it's all over Minneapolis news. They shouldn't have actually needed the photographer (full disclosure: my college buddy) to have to tell them how "pointing" works, but it's journalistic malpractice to continue running with this lunacy.

And yet somehow, even though 3 hours ago this would have been the parody example of "paranoid racism", odds are that I'm going to be the one accused of "playing the race card."

Two Thoughts on the Sixth Circuit Gay Marriage Decision

As you may have noticed, the Sixth Circuit snapped the streak of gay marriage appellate court victories by a 2-1 vote in DeBoer v. Snyder. Reading Judge Sutton's I felt like he was doing his best John Marshall impersonation, but my descriptor was immediately upstaged by Judge Daughtrey's dissent: "The author of the majority opinion has drafted what would make an engrossing make an engrossing TED Talk or, possibly, an introductory lecture in Political Philosophy." In any event, given the direction the modern GOP is heading I don't think the Party will view this opinion as adequate penance for the Obamacare apostasy.

Others will have more substantive commentary I this opinion and its implications (the most obvious one being the creation of a circuit split, which means the Supreme Court likely will be forced to step in). I did have two thoughts I felt worth sharing:

* Probably the primary arrow in the conservative judicial quiver regarding gay marriage bans is the appeal to let the democratic process take its course. Judge Sutton leans into this theme hard -- his opinion comes close to treating gay marriage as a democratic inevitability. And maybe he's right, though I'm skeptical -- at least as a nationwide matter. But I've yet to see a conservative opinion on this subject address the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic at work here. In the early 1970s, Baker v. Nelson era, gay rights claims could be brushed aside because the LGBT movement was barely a blip on the political radar. Nowadays, they start doing much better in the political game, and suddenly that new-found political clout is the reason for continued judicial restraint. Now one could argue that its the older, dismiss-the-marginal court that's the real villain here. But the fact remains that, under this line of argument, equal protection doctrine is making a promise it cannot keep. It is distressing how easily these opinions slide between older precedents which justified themselves on the marginal status of gays and lesbians (nobody supports gay marriage! Sodomy can be criminalized!) and newer ones which rely on their (sort of) successful integration.

* I've become more intrigued about the expressive meanings communicated by rational basis versus heightened scrutiny review, and how they impact judicial willingness to invalidate legislation. We often think of tiered-scrutiny equal protection doctrine as expressing a continuum of social concern and condemnation: problems we think are relatively minor and unimportant get rational basis review, while those that are more severe and threatening deviations from our collective national charter get strict scrutiny. This, in any event, characterizes a lot of the rhetoric that goes into how we decide whether a given classification will receive heightened scrutiny. Yet there is a sense in which the opposite is true. A law which fails strict scrutiny may be a perfectly good law, all things considered. By definition, it may well be "substantially related" to an "important governmental interest" -- and hey, that probably puts it above median as legislation goes. So there's no shame in failing strict scrutiny. Rational basis invalidation, by contrast, seems to involve a much harsher moral judgment -- anybody who supports this law is irrational, a loony, a nutjob. So in that sense, losing on rational basis represents a much more significant judicial benchslap than strict scrutiny review could ever deliver. Of course, the problem is that courts will be quite reticent to actually make such declarations if doing so means contending that large swaths of Americans hold irrationally prejudiced political beliefs. Going back to Judge Sutton: "A dose of humility makes us hesitant to condemn as unconstitutionally irrational a view of marriage shared not long ago by every society in the world, shared by most, if not all, of our ancestors, and shared still today by a significant number of the States." And ultimately, this results in a similar paradox as above: the courts are reluctant to elevate all that many classifications to the ranks of "suspect"; they argue that such a decision must be restricted to only the most extreme instances of wrong. And courts are reluctant to strike laws down under rational basis for the same reason, as Judge Sutton alludes to. Together, the real principle here is simply that equality breaches by definition must be rare.

No News is Jews News

I have to say, of all the storylines flowing out of this past election, I think Jews can't be argued to have been more than trivial players. That hasn't stopped people from trying, of course. J Street is staking a claim to be the premier Israel advocacy organization in America because it spent more than any other Israeli PAC. This is relatively meaningless, as most political advocacy (dollars and otherwise) doesn't go through PACs. Meanwhile, right-wing groups are crowing that J Street got "massacred" because many of its endorsees lost -- even though that's almost wholly attributable to the general conservative wave washing out J Street's liberal endorsees. I know of no one who thinks that Mark Udall lost because of J Street's support.

In reality, there's nothing new under the sun. Jews continue to vote Democratic overwhelmingly, though the Republican Jewish Committee is certainly welcome to brag about nearly breaking 30% in a historic Republican wave.

But perhaps the most abjectly pathetic attempt to see-no-evil comes in this "We Are For Israel" attempted fisking of a J Street poll on American Jewish attitudes. Reading the poll, it seems to give pretty straight-forward, unsurprising results. Jews want America to take an active role in the peace process, including criticizing and/or pressuring both Israel and Palestine where appropriate. That position commands overwhelming support -- 73-74% of Jews approve. Jews are also generally supportive of Israel's conduct in the latest Gaza War, strongly oppose the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, generally support the Iran deal that's currently being negotiated, and generally support the two-state solution. Oh, and they loathe the Republican Party. WAFI does an impressive sit of pirouettes and contortions, most of which involve markedly inconsistent interpretations on what a "somewhat support" answer means, to deny everything -- even though all of this is conventional wisdom.

Listen up, everyone: Jewish voting behavior isn't a mystery. They hold conventional liberal views on most issues -- Israel included -- and so they vote for conventional liberal candidates. That's pretty much a constant. It gets washed out sometimes because, as many seem to forget, Jews represent a tiny proportion of the American population and thus have only a limited ability to drive electoral outcomes (or even the contours of the public conversation regarding what Jews think). But to folks in the know, there's nothing to be seen here that is at all novel or even all that interesting.

Election 2014 Post-Mortem

Yesterday felt much more like a gut-punch than did the last GOP midterm wave in 2010. I wondered if that was just because present pain is more salient than that of four years ago, but looking over my 2010 recap posts, it really does seem like I was at least putting on a braver face than I'm feeling now.

In some ways, this is very strange. Objectively, 2010 was a far greater disaster for team blue than 2014. 2010 was a redistricting year, meaning that the GOP wave hurt the Democratic Party for upwards of a decade. And the 2010 election actually blocked substantive Democratic progress -- we could pass legislation with control over the House and Senate. Flipping the Senate just means we go from doing nothing to doing more nothing (I will mail $20 to the Denver Post for every piece of substantive legislation that gets passed and signed by the President if they agree to set one of themselves on fire each month that doesn't happen. That may seem harsh, but the punditry-biz suffers from a severe lack of accountability and theirs was an obviously ludicrous prediction ex ante).

I think what's bothering me is more psychological. 2010 was the wave of the unknowns. Yes, many of those elected were lunatics, but they weren't known lunatics. They had been out of power. They were unproven quantities. It was nothing more than voting for "the other guy."

By contrast, some of the big winners this cycle -- Sam Brownback, Paul LePage, Rick Scott, Thom Willis, to name four that spring immediately to mind -- have spent the last few years affirmatively making their communities worse. Far, far worse. They're very known quantities. They planted a flag on pursuing and implementing policies that run the gamut from disastrous (Kansas tax cuts) to abjectly immoral (rejecting Medicaid expansion; voter ID rules). And they were rewarded for it. The expressive message of this election -- fairly or not -- was to affirm those choices. Maybe that's why my sentiments feel much more akin to how I felt in 2004. There too, what hurt wasn't that the wrong choice was made, it was that the wrong choice was ratified. "An error", as the saying goes, "doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it."

2014 Election Liveblog!

Some traditions can't be let go so easily. Even if this isn't looking to be the cheeriest electoral cycle in recent memory. I will say, though, that I'm optimistic about the governor races.

All times Pacific. Let's go!

* * *

4:55 PM: We begin by noting that the Kentucky Senate race has already been called for McConnell -- no surprise there. The Virginia Senate race has not been called for Warner, which is a little more surprising and disheartening. But if you're looking for good news, Charlie Crist appears to be doing great in Florida. Down with Skelator Rick Scott!

5:40 PM: Just got home with a large cheese pizza -- that and Masterchef Junior will be my only joys tonight. What did I miss? Oh hey, Republicans picked up both West Virginia and Arkansas Senate seats. Neither is a shock, though -- bonus fact -- soon-to-be-ex Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor went to my high school.

5:43 PM: Man, if Ed Gillispie takes out Mark Warner in Virginia, this will really be a bad night. The challenger is up 51/46 with 60% reporting

5:45 PM: Twitter chatter is that Jeannie Shaheen will comfortably beat former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown to hold her New Hampshire Senate seat. But I can't tell if this is "projecting based on early returns" chatter or "we're comfortable making a call chatter." CNN has only 19% in.

5:48 PM: I was a bit annoyed to not be voting in Maryland this year, since for the first time in my electoral life there was actually a semi-contested race there. That feeling was in equipoise with my annoyance that the gubernatorial race was, in fact, competitive, since by all rights Anthony Brown should have had to strangle a toddler to lose here. Anyway, with 10% in Brown is up 10.

5:53 PM: Apparently folks are calling New Hampshire for Shaheen. And they've also called the Pennsylvania Governor race for the Dems, which was possibly our most obvious slam-dunk flip this cycle.

5:56 PM: Crist is fading late in Florida. He's down three, but it's mostly South Florida left.

6:03 PM: Some states the road to a Democratic victory is generic: "Do better than expected." In others, there are more specific benchmarks. In Colorado, for example, it's about the fabled Democratic ground game. In Iowa, it's about voters finally recognizing that Joni Ernst is a goddamn lunatic.

6:06 PM: 66% in and Warner is still down by 5. Remaining votes might lean a little Dem, but don't seem to be overwhelmingly blue.

6:09 PM: Abby Huntsman: "Scott Brown is now the first person in American history to have lost Senate races to two diff women. Scott Brown=feminist hero."

6:13 PM: I was optimistic about Kansas, but so far Pat Roberts appears to be squeaking through. Dems carry a slight advantage on the governor's side. Dethroning Sam Brownback would be a solid consolation prize.

6:17 PM: 77% in and Warner is back within three. I do not like that I consider this to be good news.

6:24 PM: Making fun of Scott Brown is, like, the only thing keeping Democrats going right now. Every third tweet. Meanwhile, with 81% in Warner has closed the gap to one point.

6:25 PM: It's still a three point Scott lead in Florida with 97% in. The only solace is that it still looks to be mostly South Florida out (Broward County is the real laggard -- it's only 22% in and Crist is up 69/28 there).

6:29 PM: ... aaand as I saw that, Broward jumps to 71% reporting, and Scott's lead drops to a single point. Miami-Dade also still is only 74% in.

6:34 PM: Another possible notch on my "cheer-up" list would be the defeat of Maine Governor Paul LePage. Right now he's down six points to Mike Michaud. On the other hand, if LePage does pull out the win, I can equally look forward to the ritual murder and devouring of Eliot Cutler.

6:38 PM: Seth Moutan wins in the MA-06, meaning that the Bay State's congressional delegation will remain true-blue. On the Governor's side, Martha Coakley trails by one with 40% in.

6:42 PM: Democrats pick up a Florida House seat (FL-02, in the panhandle). It must be really embarrassing to lose as a Republican incumbent in a conservative region. What did you do Steve Southerland? (Lest Democrats get too excited, they're losing in the FL-26 by four points, which would negate the pick-up).

6:54 PM: John Barrow is getting obliterated in the GA-12. It had to happen one of these years, I guess.

6:57 PM: I think Mark Warner is going to squeeze through, but this is a very disappointing performance on his part.

7:11 PM: So Michelle Nunn can start closing her 16 point gap in the Georgia Senate race anytime now ....

7:16 PM: The story of the NC-Sen all night has been "Kay Hagan is trailing, but wait until Charlotte comes in."

7:18 PM: Did I speak too soon about John Barrow? He's pulled to within 6 in the GA-12 (but 91% are in and CNN's called it).

7:21 PM: Colorado Senate called for Cory Gardner. I look forward to the Denver Post being vindicated in its prediction that a GOP-controlled Senate will suddenly decide that what it wants most in the whole wide world is to cooperate with Barack Obama.

7:28 PM: Florida called for Rick Scott. Wisconsin called for Scott Walker. Gross.

7:33 PM: Let's take a look at Maryland! John Delaney is ... losing with half the vote counted in the MD-06. And Republican Larry Hogan is up six on Anthony Brown in the governor's race. In both races, Montgomery County may well save the day. You're welcome, rest of Maryland.

7:42 PM: Who knew the "unskew" movement was just two years too early? Republicans are, if anything, overperforming expectations. For example, David Perdue is throttling Michelle Nunn in Georgia -- up by 16 points in a race that all the polls said was going to a run-off.

7:59 PM: Hagan is not closing in North Carolina. And all of the sudden I'm seeing "un-calling" of New Hampshire. If that race flips, Democrats will really start rending their garments -- mostly because they've spent most of this evening consoling themselves by making fun of Scott Brown (see my 6:24 PM post).

8:03 PM: Oh thank goodness. MasterChef is starting. I need the break.

8:22 PM: You're a vengeful Democratic God. You can choose to smite either (a) Eliot Cutler, (b) the Denver Post editorial board, or (c) the entire Iowa electorate. Who do you choose? I pick "b" -- that endorsement represents everything I loathe about the media, wrapped up in a hellish bow.

8:31 PM: Thank God Baltimore County has mostly finished reporting -- it's going 61/37 for Hogan. Now, even though Hogan has a 53/45 lead over Brown, most of the outstanding votes are in Montgomery County (where Brown is up 63/36).

8:45 PM: Listen, I know it's been a rough night, but chill out about Chris Van Hollen. The only county that hasn't reported is MoCo (32% in), and Van Hollen is pulling in three-quarters of the vote there.

8:48 PM: I wanted Pat Roberts to lose so we might hang onto the Senate, but since that's out of reach anyway I can't even be mad bro. And as for Sam Brownback (who's managing to cling to a two point lead), well, if Kansas wants to self-destruct that's their problem.

9:42 PM: Anthony Brown concedes to Larry Hogan. Somewhere there's a dead toddler who's been avenged.

10:09 PM: David Roberts on Twitter: "1351 is losing in WA? Tonight can blow me." I don't even know what 1351 is, and that still encapsulates my attitude perfectly. I'm out for the night.

Does Human Rights Law Do Anything?

An interesting conference at The University of Chicago Law School. As a decided skeptic regarding the capacity (and beneficence) of international law, this sounds right up my alley.

There's the Word I Was Looking For

My general view, and problem, with Bibi Netanyahu is that I think he's a giant political coward whose only interest is in short-term political self-preservation. Jeffrey Goldberg's account of ongoing tensions between Bibi and the Obama administration is interesting in its own right, but particularly valuable in summing up my views of the Israeli Prime Minister in one evocative word: "chickenshit".

Yeah, that sounds about right.

The Strangest President

Israeli President Reuben Rivlin (long-time member of the right-wing Likud Party) has visited the site of a 1956 Israeli massacre of Arab civilians, apologizing in stark terms:

“I have come here today as a member of the Jewish people and the president of the state of Israel to stand before you, the families of the slain and injured, to mourn and remember,” Rivlin said. “The brutal killing in Kafr Qasim is an anomalous and sorrowful chapter in the history of relations between Arabs and Jews living here,” said the president.

“The state of Israel has recognized the crime committed here. And rightly, and justly, has apologized for it,” said the president. “I too am here today to say a terrible crime was done here … the murder of innocents,” said Rivlin, who said future generations must be educated about the tragic events and the lessons that must be learned.

He isn't the first -- Shimon Peres delivered a similar apology in 2007 -- but Rivlin and Peres are two very different people.

Or maybe not. I've commented before on Rivlin's peculiar status as an unabashed right-wing defender of minority rights, particular Israel's Arab minority. I don't agree with him on every issue (one-statism being the obvious example), but I will say this: There is a very, very interesting biography to be written about him.

A Night of Disappointments

Last night, Jill and I saw the finale of Project Runway Season 13. That was not the disappointment -- this was a good season and all four of the finalists were very likeable. I felt bad for Kini, who I thought was a little underappreciated by the judges all season, but based on the final collections I agreed that Amanda and Sean were the clear top two. And I also agreed with how the judges described the choice between them. Sean was more editorial, creative, novel, and high-fashion. Amanda, by contrast, has a very clear and authentic brand that she is creating. One thing I love about Amanda is how genuine she seems to be -- as a person and as a designer. A lot of times when a designer presents a clear point of view, it can feel concocted or performative rather than organic. With Amanda, it is very clear that she designs this way because this is who she is, which is part of the reason why I enjoy her designs (and respect the hell out of her) even though it isn't actually really my aesthetic.

So either one would have made a deserving winner. As I said, this was not the disappointment.

Following Project Runway, the natural thing to do was to watch Project Runway: Threads. I was genuinely excited for this show -- Project Runway! With adorable kids! Hell, we'd already seen this exact formula work great with Masterchef Junior! What could possibly go wrong?

Well, for starters, the show doesn't follow the Project Runway model. It's not one season-long competition, it's a series of self-contained episodes featuring three new kids each week. Which means I don't have time to get to know any of them, or care about any of them. The presence of their parents as "assistants" adds a lovely dimension of additional awkwardness (and giving the winner of the first challenge the right to use her opponents' mom as a helper couldn't possibly backfire). But all of that perhaps could have been forgiven were it not for the host: Vanessa Simmons. I don't know if I've ever grown to hate a television personality as quickly as her. Seriously -- it took about a sentence, two at the most. Even Zanna Roberts Rassi lasted longer. She's infantalizing and patronizing and just generally horrible. And the real victim here is Christian Siriano, who I think really could excel at hosting a show like this were it not just an all-around catastrophe.

So we turned off Threads after about 20 minutes and went on the prowl for something else to watch. How about the remake of As You Like It Much Ado About Nothing*? This is a clash of the titans, pitting something I love (Joss Whedon) versus something I hate (Shakespeare). And Whedon was backed up by a few more of my favorite people in the world (Amy Acker! Fran Kranz! Nathan Fillion! Reed Diamond! Sean Maher!). So I came in optimistic. But once again, I didn't last long. I don't mind modern adaptations of Shakespeare plays (Ten Things I Hate About You is a favorite), but when they actually use the vernacular it drives me bananas -- especially when it is set in the modern day. It's jarring and confusing and makes me work to understand what's going on even on the most superficial level. We lost patience about 15 minutes in.

Next came Call the Midwife. A few folks had recommended this to us, and since all British shows are interchangeable to me I'm like "1950s Downton Abbey! Sure, sign me up!" Now, Call the Midwife gets some credit in that we made it through the entire episode. And Jill actually liked the show on its merits, so there's that too. But for me, none of the characters left any imprint whatsoever. There's the main nurse, whose entire personality and emotional range can be summed up as "somewhat shocked middle class". There's, um, the crazy nun. And some other nuns. And some other nurses. I did love the bilingual family in the first episode, but I can't imagine they'll be too recurrent. Other than that, I could not tell you anything about anyone, including the main character.

So finally, I decided to play some Shadow of Mordor. I had beaten the main quest before leaving for DC, but I figured I could still clean-up on some side quests. And I'd now like to supplement my flash review. Nothing I said there is false, per se, but this is a very short game. It can be beaten quickly, and without much effort, and after that there is not all that much to do. By the time you win the game, your ranger is ludicrously overpowered -- there really weren't any opportunities to engage in the back and forth rivalries with orc captain and warchiefs that made the middle of the game so fun. So basically, I'm left with an Xbox One and nothing to do on it, at least until Assassin's Creed comes out.

* While this mistake is itself illustrative, I will point out that As You Like It was one of the few plays I recall semi-enjoying during the death march through the Shakespeare canon that characterized my middle and high school English education. So if anything, I was spotting them a few extra points.

Liberals (Mis)Theorize the Rural

A few years ago, Lisa Pruitt published an important article in the Utah Law Review entitled Toward a Feminist Theory of the Rural. The paper argued that feminists, typically situated in urban centers or university towns, had constructed women's experience in a way that generally did not encompass or encounter women who lived in rural areas. For example, "spatial isolation, lack of anonymity, and a depressed socioeconomic landscape" all are characteristic aspects of rural living that alter the efficacy of particular strategies for women's liberation. Moreover, the (sub)urban bias of dominant feminist theory generally does not engage substantively with cultural aspects of the rural that may be important to many women's identity.

Pruitt's article is in many ways a simple extension of similar criticisms and extensions other outsider-groups had leveled at feminist scholarship for decades. Early feminist constructions of women's experience resonated with a particular type of woman who shared a social strata with the authors -- generally white, middle-class suburban women. These women could relate to the barriers facing women who wished to work rather than stay at home as housewife, or who experienced the "cage" of puritanical sexual norms. But poorer women scoffed at the notion that there was anything radical about women working -- they had been doing so for years. Likewise, Black women whose bodies were considered property of White men and whose sexuality -- far from an image of pure White maidenhood -- was constructed as hyperactive and unconstrained related very differently to the movement toward sexual "liberation".

I was thinking about this when reading the reports of a rural Nebraska school district which is allowing its seniors to pose with guns in their senior yearbook photos. There is a lot of liberal snickering over this policy -- Jezebel is typical -- that I think deserves a prized spot in the dictionary for urban elitism. Jezebel's stock photo, which looks like the poster for a femme fatale action movie, fails utterly in its portrayal of how gun ownership and usage is situated within the community in question. The locals who support this policy note, accurately, that hunting and sport-shooting are important parts of the local culture, and for many of the students these activities are as central to their identities as being a soccer player or trombonist. The school board guidelines block photographic poses which are threatening or sexualize violence (more than one can say for Jezebel's photo -- though incredibly, they turn around and accuse the district of being backwards precisely because it is guarding against the toxic combination of sex and violence). And there's little evidence that the students in question have any interest in incorporating guns into their photos except as an expression of their heritage and cultural practices.

In short, the image of guns is very different where I grew up than in many rural communities. In Broken Bow, a teenager holding a gun is not culturally associated with an imminent school shooting. Citing to the threat of such atrocities suppresses the particularities of rural experience into a "general" (really, specifically urban/suburban) outlook on guns that would be quite foreign to their experience. Importing our own cultural meanings onto rural communities is no different than any sort of hegemony. I don't want folks from Broken Bow dictating how urban-dwellers in DC relate to guns, and I have no intention in doing it back to them.

I'm not personally an enthusiast of guns. I certainly didn't grow up in a gun family; I've shot a gun once in my life (at a range, and not very accurately -- I think I nicked the paper once). My dad swears that in Coast Guard Basic Training he never passed riflery. I support a variety of regulations to ensure guns are kept out of the hands of criminals and to minimize the risk they pose to the American populace. I've co-authored briefs on this score while in private practice, and I even at one point contemplated working for the Brady Center. Yet I've never considered myself "anti-gun" per se. Guns are dangerous and that justifies careful regulation and control, but they're also an important and legitimate part of many people's culture and heritage. Communities, particularly rural communities, have themselves often developed norms of healthy gun ownership and usage which are worthy of respect. Put simply, guns have a different cultural valence in Broken Bow, Nebraska than they do in San Francisco, California or Chicago, Illinois. And that's okay! There's space for pluralism in firearms culture. This doesn't mean there will never be policy disputes over guns, and I think plenty of common-sense gun regulations impose minimal burdens on reputable gun buyers and sellers. But the point is that these debates should not ignore cultural context, regardless of whether that context is Chicago or Broken Bow. This whole discourse risks of making fun of the bumpkins, and it should sit very uncomfortable.