Ma Vector Roundup

I'm on the job hunt this fall, and "Ma Vector" is my official unofficial callsign (it's a long story).

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Iranian judoka Saeid Mollaei apparently flees to Germany from Japan in an asylum bid. He had been under intense pressure to throw matches in order to avoid facing an Israeli competitor, Sagi Muki, in international tournaments (Muki just became the first Israeli to win a world championship). Mollaei will apparently be eligible to compete in the 2020 Olympics on the "refugee" team.

New York Republicans remove antisemitic video; replace it with antisemitic text.

Contra The Young Turks, and with all due respect to John Delaney, the reason John Delaney "peaked at 2%" starts and ends with "who on earth is John Delaney?"

Several Chinese undergraduate students at Arizona State were denied entry to the United States and deported back to China. This follows on the heels of a Palestinian student at Harvard also being denied entry, reportedly due to political comments by some of his Facebook friends.

Antisemitic beliefs are taking hold in the Evangelical Christian community.

Trump's efforts to gain the support of Jewish voters don't seem to be working -- probably because he doesn't understand what motivates Jewish voters.

Boris Johnson's net approvals as PM are at -6%. Jeremy Corbyn's net approvals are -59%.

Trump Administration Targets US Troops in New Anti-Citizenship Rule

The Trump administration has issued new rules denying automatic citizenship to the children of U.S. servicemembers and government employees born while their parents are serving abroad. Until now, such persons were deemed to be "residing" in the U.S. and so therefore were automatically citizens at birth. Under the new rules, while the children remain entitled to citizenship, their parents will have to proactively apply on their behalf before they turn 18 -- new bureaucratic hoops that undoubtedly will cause some children to unwittingly never actually attain citizenship. The legal justification strikes me as quite thin -- under U.S. law, it already is the case that servicemembers and their spouses are legally deemed to be "residing" in the U.S. when deployed overseas, but the Trump administration says that the statute doesn't specifically say their children are so residing. I'd say that if you're born to someone deemed to be legally residing in the U.S., it'd be fair to infer to you were born residing in the U.S. as well. And until now, that was law.

There's no real point to this. It appears to be motivated by nothing more than the Trump administration's indiscriminate obsession with tightening immigration laws. Hell, here the primary victims are going to American citizen parents who are already sacrificing to represent their country. This is a gratuitous slap in the face to them. Who out there is thinking "it's just so unfair that the children of Americans serving their country abroad get citizenship automatically, just as they would if their parents were stationed stateside?" Who is the constituency that wants to target this population?

The only thing I can think of is that Stephen Miller and company are hoping that, in twenty-five years or so, they'll be able to snag a few more cases like this one: deporting people who grew up American, assumed they were American, lived as Americans, and yet will be banished from America if they at all run afoul of the criminal justice system. Most of us read that story and had our hearts wrenched. The Trump administration reads it and smells opportunity.

All of which is to say, and say again, the cruelty is the point.

The Winnowing Begins

The Democratic primary field is finally starting to winnow down a bit. Some candidates, like John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, and Seth Moulton, have formally dropped out. But the bigger crunch on more marginal candidates might be the failure to qualify for the next debate. Currently on the chopping block, due to low polling figures, donor numbers, or both, are:

• Rep. Tulsi Gabbard
• Marianne Williamson
• Tom Steyer
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
• Mayor Bill de Blasio
• Gov. Steve Bullock
• Ex-Rep. John Delaney
• Rep. Tim Ryan

Will anyone miss any of these people once they're gone? I wouldn't have minded a little more Kirsten Gillibrand, but the fact is her campaign never really seemed to get off the ground and I've come to accept that. I might have said the same for Steve Bullock, except he falls in the "should be running for Senate" category. 

Beyond that, this is a list people who were always going to be also-rans (Ryan, Delaney, de Blasio) and people who were always going to be also-rans and also are deeply terrible (Gabbard, Williamson). Tom Steyer's decision to pump millions into a vanity campaign that had zero chance of winning instead of investing in things like voter access or state legislative races is also pretty hard to swallow.

Technically, these candidates still could soldier on, but one has to think the writing is on the wall. The remaining candidates who've qualified for the next debate are:

• Former Vice President Joe Biden
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren
• Sen. Bernie Sanders
• Sen. Cory Booker
• Mayor Pete Buttigieg
• Former Housing Secretary Julián Castro
• Sen. Kamala Harris
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar
• Ex-Rep. Beto O'Rourke
• Andrew Yang

That, to me, is a far more manageable field. Yang's the oddball, Buttigieg I think has already peaked, and I'm pretty well over O'Rourke at this point, but I think a field of this size offers some of the more middle players like Castro or Booker at least the potential space to grow -- and if they can't make a move now, that's a good sign that they never will.

Partial Expression and Anti-Discrimination Law

Today, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote (Judges Stras and Shepherd in the majority, with Judge Kelly dissenting), held that it was unconstitutional to apply Minnesota's anti-discrimination statute (which covers sexual orientation discrimination) to a videography company that wanted to get into the wedding video business but objected to filming gay weddings. Insofar as the statute required the videography company to treat same-sex and opposite-sex marriages alike (i.e., film both of them), it violated the videographer's free speech rights, since it effectively compelled them to express favorable attitudes towards same-sex marriages (which they in fact object to on religious grounds).

In the context of anti-BDS law debates and others, I've been writing a fair bit about how cases like this well-illustrate why liberals should be wary about endorsing sweeping interpretations of the First Amendment as conflicting with (and trumping) anti-discrimination claims. As "First Amendment Lochnerism" swells in influence, there is more and more of a risk of huge swaths of anti-discrimination law being struck down as unlawful discrimination. After all, anti-discrimination law inherently asks that people associate with those they'd rather not associate with, and implicitly register their approval of social relations they might not approve of. If this is interpreted as an affront to their free speech rights, then anti-discrimination law as a whole is in mortal peril.

That said, it is clearly the case that there are genuine and nettlesome free speech problems that can emerge in cases like this. And I do not think they can be ignored just because the plaintiff is engaged in for-profit work. Movie-making is, after all, often a for-profit business, yet it would be catastrophic if the government could say therefore there is no free speech rights available to directors or screen-writers in the content of their creations.

So -- are wedding videographers or photographers different? And if so, how?

The core distinction the majority seems to rely upon is that between "expressive" and "non-expressive" activity. Something like making a movie is an expressive act. It is artistic, it requires editorial judgment, it is the creation of art. Movies are thought of as a reflection of a creator's expressive vision; a medium for them to transmit a particular thought or view about a slice of the world. Contrast that to serving food at a restaurant: this is not typically thought of as a means of sending a message. Compelling someone to make a movie they don't want to make would do violence to their First Amendment rights. Compelling someone to serve food to someone they don't want to feed would not.

To be sure, all activity can be "expressive" in some sense -- for example, a bigot might say that requiring him to serve a black customer at his restaurant implicitly expresses the view that the customer is his equal and worthy of service. But the idea behind the distinction is that most people do not typically view the act of serving food at a restaurant to be expressive, and so requiring restaurants to serve customers in a non-discriminatory fashion doesn't burden speech even if it "incidentally" has certain expressive feature (like "I'm willing to serve this customer").

The court concluded that making a wedding video is an expressive activity. The videographers, in their words, use their "unique skill[s] to identify and tell compelling stories through video." "They exercise creative control over the videos they produce and make 'editorial judgments' about 'what events to take on, what video content to use, what audio content to use, what text to use . . . , the order in which to present content, [and] whether to use voiceovers.'" This is all quintessentially expressive in nature, and so compelling a business to effectively "editorialize" in favor of a wedding they disapprove of is a First Amendment violation -- it forces them to directly, not incidentally, express thoughts they disavow.

There's some force to this. But something about it kept nagging at me, and I was trying to nail down what it was. Here's my best stab at it:

Nobody hires a wedding photographer or videographer for the purpose of expressing their genuine views about the wedding. Their job is to make the bride and groom, and their special day, look and feel great. For all I know, our photographer showed up to our wedding and thought that the decor was tacky and that Jill and I were a disaster for each other and that the Jewishness of it all was an offense to God. But of course, he didn't express any of those views, even in his "expressive" photographs. That's not his job, and he knows it, and everyone who sees his photographs knows it too. The flip side is that, when people look at our (lovely) wedding photographs, nobody says "wow -- your wedding photographer must have really thought your wedding was beautiful" (let alone "he must have really approved of your wedding").

A wedding photographer does engage in expression -- but only partially. There are expressive elements to what our wedding photographer did, that can be directly imputed to him: the virtuosity of a shot, or the way he used lighting, for instance. But note the contrast: if I look at my wedding photos, I do impute to the photographer artistic decisions about the staging of the shot, but I don't impute to him views about the merits of the wedding itself. Photography is expressive, but in this case not comprehensively so. It is, we might say, "partially" expressive, and it seems reasonable to say that First Amendment protections only extend to the part of the expression that reasonably, not incidentally, is imputable to the author of the speech.

Compare this to the words spoken by a wedding officiant. When she delivers remarks at the altar, most listeners would reasonably take them to be an expression of her own views -- if she says "you two make a great couple", that is (with perhaps some latitude for puffery) her own expressive view on the matter. And so if she was uncomfortable speaking positive words about any particular marriage (for religious reasons or otherwise), it would be wrong to compel her to do so.

But the distinction isn't between visual and verbal or textual mediums. On the one hand, a movie (as in one shown at the theater), is fairly thought to represent the vision and expression of the directors (and actors and screenwriters, perhaps collectively) "all the way down" -- not just in terms of technical attributes like how to frame a given scene, but also in terms of the message being communicated. If a documentary filmmaker presents a given subject in a positive light, that's generally imputed to the filmmaker -- they think positively of the subject -- in a way that doesn't track for a wedding videographer.

And on the other hand, if a restaurant serves a dessert that says "happy birthday!" on it (i.e., writes a text), nobody thinks that the chef is actually doing so to express his or her substantive views on the merits of your birthday (I hate to burst anyone's bubble here). That's true even though there may well be expressive elements to the dessert that I do attribute directly to the chef. If I see a beautifully designed cake that says "happy birthday" on it, I view the chef-qua-chef as expressing his or her own message in the design far more than I do in the "happy birthday".

So it's not enough to draw an expressive versus non-expressive distinction. I agree that making a wedding video is expressive, but I disagree that (under normal circumstances) it is expressive as to the merits of the wedding. Along that dimension, the videographer's implicit "endorsement" of the same-sex wedding they film stands on identical footing to the restaurateur's implicit "endorsement" of racial equality with regard to the Black customer they serve. In both cases, it is incidental, and so in neither case should it significant weight.

Indeed, it cannot be the case that any expressive component in a business transaction sufficed to render it entirely expressive and therefore wholly insulated from regulation under the First Amendment. Even in the food service example -- which we've relied upon as our easy case -- very much can incorporate an expressive dimension, for example, in decisions on plating, interpretations of dishes, and so on. A restaurant can say, accurately, that it exercises "editorial discretion" on these matters, and so could potentially have a First Amendment difference if the state tried to regulate its "editorializing" in these domains (I say "potentially" because while a state law which seeks to declare how a veal marsala must be plated would assuredly fail under the First Amendment, one which insists that a "veal marsala" must contain veal -- "interpretation" notwithstanding -- could at least feasibly survive). But surely the expression here is confined to that domain, and it does not mean that the choice in who the restaurant serves is now expressive as well.

Put (sort of) simply, the question is not whether the conduct has any expressive character. It's whether the expressive character of the conduct is what generates the allegedly compelled speech. If it doesn't, then the fact that a given piece of expressive conduct also comes attached to an implicit endorsement of a view that speaker disapproves of is incidental, in the same way that it is incidental where the conduct is not expressive at all.

I don't pretend that I've just offered a simple, knockdown solution to one of constitutional law's thorniest dilemmas. But I do think we live in an era where wildly expansive understandings of the First Amendment are being wielded as a weapon against huge swaths of the regulatory state, and anti-discrimination law is one of the most inviting targets. We need to start thinking more carefully about limiting principles, lest virtually all discrimination become enshrined with constitutional protection.

How Trump and Bibi Have Changed the American-Israel Relationship Forever

There's change in the air.

The decision by the Israeli government to bar two Democratic congresswomen from Israel -- Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar -- has led to unprecedented pushback against Israel by Democratic Party politicians. Even representatives thought of as pro-Israel stalwarts are furious, and they're not making any effort to hide their ire.

Some people are attributing this change to fear, or more accurately, the removal of fear. Democrats aren't "afraid" to criticize Israel anymore. They're no longer "cowering" before the all-powerful Israel Lobby.

But this misunderstands what's happening, because it misunderstands how the Israel lobby has operated in Washington.

Contrary to popular belief, the Israel lobby does not generally rely on fear and intimidation. It secured its power through many years of relationship-building, gaining trust, and establishing channels of communication. It was very rare that AIPAC or anyone else had to play "bad cop" (and in fact, AIPAC is very ineffective when it tries to take on that role). Democrats were not "silenced" on Israel -- yearning to speak out, but cowed by threat and menace. Rather, Democrats were enmeshed in a dialogic relationship with the pro-Israel community that relied upon mutuality and reciprocity; the sense that each side would listen and by listened to in turn.

And that -- decades of hard, arduous work -- has been almost entirely torpedoed over the past few years.

“There’s concern with regard to the U.S. government official involved here for politicizing his role and using his diplomatic platform to behave in a way that for the past 2 1/2  years that has been very undiplomatic,” said Halie Soifer, the director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, who served in the Obama State Department and as a Senate foreign relations staffer.

Dermer is especially despised among Jewish Democrats and pro-Israel Democrats for what they regard as partisan disrespect for their office and their pro-Israel bona fides. Jewish Democrats in Congress, who once looked forward to attending Israeli Embassy events, now are less likely to make an appearance.

Until the 2015 Iran speech by Netanyahu, Dermer maintained civil ties with Democrats. Especially galling for Democrats was that Dermer and Netanyahu agreed to a condition of then-Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that the planning be kept a secret. (Planning for the speech started in late 2014, and Boehner surprised Democrats and the pro-Israel community with his announcement of Netanyahu’s speech the day after Obama delivered the State of the Union on Jan. 20, 2015.) 

Once Dermer worked with Republicans to ambush Democrats, he was seen as partisan.

[...] 

[Rep. Steny] Hoyer is especially infuriated because he extracted the commitment from Dermer to allow in Tlaib and Omar so that he could talk other lawmakers into joining a trip to Israel sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, an affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Hoyer got 41 Democrats to go, which is believed to be the highest number ever. Hoyer has led the trip for decades. 

Hoyer took the group to Israel, talked up the alliance and declared it a success before he was blindsided by the decision on Tlaib and Omar. While conservative Jewish groups hailed the decision, saying Israel was in its rights to keep out two lawmakers who support the movement to boycott Israel, pro-Israel critics said it gave ammunition to those who accuse Israel of being anti-democratic and an unreliable ally. 

Aaron Keyak, a longtime Democratic Hill staffer who is now a consultant to Jewish and liberal groups, said the anger ran deep precisely because of the trust that Jewish and pro-Israel Democrats had long placed in Israel and its governments. 

“These are friends going back decades pleading with their friends in Jerusalem and at the embassy not to let this happen,” Keyak said in an interview. “What helps sustain the U.S.-Israel friendships are the person-to-person friendships between our two governments. It was not just the overall relationship that was damaged, it was those personal relationships that were also betrayed.” 

This is the big change. It's not newfound "courage", it's not the removal of "fear". There's nothing new now that would make Democrats less "fearful"; it's not like Mossad Hit Squads went on vacation this summer. What's new is a failure of trust; the knowledge that this relationship of mutuality and reciprocity now clearly flows entirely one way. Democrats have learned, in a very real and visceral way, that all those years of dialogue, all that time invested in building a relationship, counts for absolutely nothing. The Israeli government is happy to sell them all out for .5% boost in the Knesset poll and a pat on the back from Donald Trump.

This relationship took decades to develop. The damage that's been done just this week (to say nothing of the past few years) will take at least as long to undo -- if it ever can be.

Collected Thoughts on Excluding Omar and Tlaib

I've got another kidney stone. It struck on Monday, and then I felt pain Tuesday, Wednesday, and today. Thursday was my only pain-free day this week, and I have to assume that was the universe balancing the scales and recognizing that the Israeli government's truly terrible decision to exclude Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) from the country was plenty enough aggravation on its own.

I went on a pretty vigorous tweet storm all through yesterday. Below I bullet point most of what I expressed on that site (which, as you may know, I've taken "private"), but my main takeaway is this:

There's no serious case that either Rep. Omar or Rep. Tlaib presents a security threat to Israel (I've seen some people insinuate that they might incite a riot at the Temple Mount which -- I'm not sure I can physically roll my eyes hard enough). In practice, the "risk" Omar and Tlaib present is simply that they will hear  mean things about Israel and then say their own mean things about Israel. That's the locus of the complaint about the "balance" of the trip; that's the locus of the accusation that they merely want to rabble-rouse. What people are concerned about is they will go to the West Bank, hear people saying mean things about Israel, and repeat those mean things back to American audiences.

But -- and I mean this in all earnestness -- so what? So what if that's what happens? To be clear: I don't think Omar and Tlaib were coming just to say mean things about Israel. But even if they were -- there's no security threat. The state will survive (how pathetic would it be if it crumbled?). It'd be speech. It'd be discourse. That's the price of living in a liberal, free society. Sometimes people say mean things about you. Sometimes those mean things are unfair. Sometimes those mean things are entirely fair. Whatever. It comes with the territory (pun initially not intended, but I'll own it now). It's not a valid basis for a travel ban.

It used to be that Israel was emphatic that "come see us and you'll think better of us". Now Israel is terrified that if people come see them--at least, see them unchaperoned, without a constant guiding hand ensuring they see only the choice parts--they'll think of worse of them. That's the sign of a society in decay. To be sure, I think Omar and Tlaib probably would come away from their visit with a rather grim appraisal of Israel's treatment of Palestinians. But then, there's ample basis to appraise that treatment grimly--there's no inherent foul there. People can come to the West Bank and be honestly appalled by what they see.

Only police states confuse "people saying mean things" with security threats. A free society can survive--and perhaps even learn from--critics giving it grim appraisals. People talk a huge game about how Omar and Tlaib could "learn" from their trip to Israel and Palestine -- and no doubt they could. But the flip side is that Israel, too, can learn from the testimony of Palestinians laboring under occupation, and from efforts to bring that testimony to the fore. It is wrong -- not to mention insulting -- to treat discourse about Israel/Palestine as if it were a one-way street, where wise, omniscient Israeli/Jewish teachers dribble knowledge onto benighted, ignorant Muslims and Arabs.

Below is a recap of my other collected thoughts on the matter (many but not all of which were on Twitter):

• This was a terrible and unjustified decision. Let's lead off with that and give it its own bullet point all to itself.
• There is no reason to think that this decision was "what Omar and Tlaib wanted" since it made Israel look authoritarian and repressive. That is projection, to avoid speaking the more uncomfortable conclusion that "Omar and Tlaib might have had a point" in suggesting Israel acts in an authoritarian and repressive fashion.
• I neither think this decision was solely Trump's doing -- Israel "caving" to his pressure -- nor do I think he played no role in the decision. I think he successfully convinced Netanyahu to do something that he already kind of wanted to do in the first place, even knowing it probably was a bad idea. Trump was like the frat boy friend egging his buddy into doing another shot flight. That Bibi was probably dimly aware it wasn't the wisest decision in the world doesn't mean that he wasn't ultimately fulfilling his own desires. Ultimately, this was a decision of Israel's right-wing government and they deserve to take the full brunt of punishment for it.
• I understand why everyone is calling this "counterproductive" from Israel, since it will undoubtedly give a huge boost to the BDS movement. But, as I wrote in the Lara Alqasem case, that really depends on what Israel is trying to "produce". In many ways, Bibi benefits from an ascendant BDS movement, just as they benefit from him; and he likewise benefits from a world divided between conservatives who love everything he does and liberals who loathe him. So the fact that this decision puts wind in the sails of BDS, while further lashing Israel to a purely right-wing mast and alienating it from erstwhile progressive allies, is not necessarily a miscalculation -- it's the intended and desired effect.
• On that note, remember the other day when 21 Israeli MKs wrote to Congress and said that a two-state solution was "more dangerous" than BDS? Well, if you ever wanted an example of what it looks like to trade "increased BDS support" for "kneecapping two-state solution support", this was it (even though Tlaib isn't a two-stater -- Omar is -- this act was aimed like a laser at the most prominent base of support for two-stateism in America: that is, Democrats).
• On the other hand, shouldn't these right-wing Israelis be more excited to welcome Tlaib than most other Congresspeople? After all, she opposes the "dangerous" two-state solution! Oh wait, I forgot: in her one-state world, everyone gets to vote. That won't do at all, will it?
• I love Emma Goldberg's description of how Israel will slide away from liberal democracy via Hemingway's description of how he went bankrupt: "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." And by love, I mean it gives me a sick feeling of recognition in my stomach.
• Justifying the ban on the grounds that Omar and Tlaib's visit wasn't "balanced" because they weren't meeting with Israeli or Palestinian government figures, only NGOs, and these are bad NGOs -- spare me. To tell visiting U.S. politicians "you can come, but only if you speak with the 'right' people/visit the 'right' sites/speak the 'correct' words" sounds like something you'd hear from the North Korean embassy. Omar and Tlaib should be entitled to visit with whomever they want to visit, and come to whatever conclusions they end up coming to. If those conclusions are unfair, we should trust the ability to defeat them with more speech, not enforced silence. But again: we can't conflate "unfair" with "critical". It's entirely feasible that a fair-minded individual hearing testimony from West Bank Palestinians will come to a sharply critical conclusion.
• Some of the attacks on the NGOs Omar and Tlaib were scheduled to meet with are the usual chad gadya (has a leader who's linked to a group which kicked the dog ....) nonsense, but there are some groups with some genuinely bad history. I've consequently seen people suggest that we need to also hold Omar and Tlaib accountable for their part in this fiasco for meeting with members of those groups. Fair enough: I'm happy to hold them accountable, weighted and prioritized in proportion to their relative culpability. In keeping with that metric, I might get around to returning to criticizing their draft itinerary sometime in 2035.
• Fine, one more thing on the itinerary: Am I correct in reading it as taking Omar and  Tlaib either solely or primarily to the West Bank and East Jerusalem? If so, it's entirely understandable why they'd refer to those locales as "Palestine".
• Rep. Tlaib initially applied for a humanitarian waiver to visit her family, which was approved, but then she backed out given the conditions the Israeli government was going to impose on the visit (basically, not engaging in "boycott activities"). The usual suspects are crowing: she cares less about her family than she does about boycotting! I say (a) Rep. Tlaib is well within her rights to not prostrate herself to the dictates of a foreign government seeking to humiliate her, and (b) what about the past few days gives anyone the confidence in the Israeli government's ability to fairly adjudge what qualifies as a "boycott activity"?
• The argument that Israel, as a sovereign state, has a "right" to exclude whomever it wants substitutes a juridical argument for an ethical (and practical) one. Sovereign states are formally empowered to do all sorts of terrible and/or stupid things. This was one of them. Hearing nominal anti-BDS folks make this claim -- which could as easily be applied to "universities and academics have the right to collaborate (or not) with whomever they want to" is probably causing another kidney stone to develop as we speak.
• The other thing is that Israel is proving itself completely incapable of exercising this "right" in a reasonable manner that distinguishes between genuine threats to national security and unhappiness that people sometimes come to Israel and then say mean things. One of the reasons we liberals seek to limit unchecked government power is precisely because of the suspicion that it won't be exercised responsibly or non-arbitrarily.
• Of course, the fact that Israel also exercises the practical authority to exclude people not just from Israel-proper, but the West Bank as well, gives lie to the notion that Palestinians even conceptually could have their right to self-determination vindicated solely by voting in PA elections.
• Silver lining: pretty much the entirety of the American Jewish establishment -- AIPAC, AJC, ADL, J Street, Simon Wiesenthal Center -- came out against this decision. Huzzah for that.
• Tarnish on even that silver lining: the Conference of President's weak-sauce statement on the matter. "Many of the organizations expressed disagreement with the government’s decision", but "Ultimately, the government of Israel made its assessment of the countervailing arguments and acted upon their conclusion." Really, that's what you're giving us? It's amazing how the Conference doesn't care about the "consensus" of the Jewish community when that consensus is a progressive one.
• When a prominent member of or institution associated with an outgroup does something awful, it is natural for members of that outgroup to feel acutely vulnerable. In part, that's because they know that this awfulness will be wielded against them; in part, that's because frequently they have feelings for or connections to the target person and institution, and it is painful to see them act in such a terrible fashion. Of course, that feeling of vulnerability needn't and shouldn't be the primary story as compared to those directly victimized by the awful behavior. But it is not per se wrong, or "centering", to acknowledge and validate the existence of the sentiment; nor is such an acknowledgment necessarily one that stands in competition with recognizing the direct damage of the instigating act.
• The next time a Democrat occupies the Oval Office, I have to wonder what sort of penance is going to be demanded from the Israeli government for years upon years of insult and humiliation. It's not going to be back to as it was before. It's not even going to back as it was in the Obama administration. Democrats will -- rightfully -- insist that Israel pay a price for what it's been doing these past four (if not twelve) years. The flipside of recognizing the importance of preserving Israel as a bipartisan issue is that Israel aligning itself fully and completely with the Republican Party is going to come at a cost. It will be interesting to consider what that cost will be.

How Much Destruction Has Pearson v. Callahan Wrought?

Today, the Eighth Circuit ruled en banc, in Kelsay v. Ernst, that a police officer violently tackling a non-violent, non-threatening, non-resistant 5'0 130 lbs woman suspected of a misdemeanor, breaking her collarbone, did not violate anyone's clearly established right to be free from the use excessive force. To add insult to injury, the woman the police assaulted was the nominal victim that brought them to the scene -- a friend of hers had tried to toss her into a public swimming pool, someone thought he was assaulting her and called the cops, she tried to tell the police that it was just horseplay and they shouldn't arrest him, and so they naturally responded to this innocent misunderstanding by breaking her bones and arresting her too (for obstruction of justice).

The vote was 8-4, Judge Colloton writing for the majority, with Chief Judge Smith and Judges Kelly, Grasz, and Erickson dissenting.

Sadly, "Eighth Circuit is fine with police officers violently assaulting unarmed, non-violent individuals" is scarcely even news at this point. But Judge Grasz -- dissenting separately (he also joined the main dissent from Chief Judge Smith) -- also made a point to call out the majority for declining to decide whether, going forward, it is indeed unconstitutional to violently tackle a non-violent, non-threatening, non-resistant suspected misdemeanant. This refusal is permissible thanks to a 2009 case called Pearson v. Callahan -- where the Supreme Court said that lower courts could toss civil rights lawsuits solely upon finding that the alleged constitutional violation's unlawfulness was not "clearly established" at the time of the injury, without ever deciding whether the violation actually was unconstitutional. The paradox is that, by refusing to make the latter decision, the law remains not "clearly established", and the government conduct -- even, it must be stressed, conduct that actually is unconstitutional -- is permitted without consequence indefinitely into the future. Even if (and I know this sounds crazy) it is true that violently tackling non-resistant, non-threatening suspects is unconstitutional, the effect of Pearson is that courts never will be compelled to declare it so, and so this unconstitutional abuse can go on in perpetuity.

I'm honestly not sure if any case has a worse ratio of destructiveness-to-public-profile than Pearson. Qualified immunity jurisprudence -- and in particular, the incredible stinginess through which the courts assess whether a given right is "clearly established" -- would still be a disaster without it, but Pearson has turned it into a farce. As Judge Grasz (and several others, including other right-wing stalwarts like Judge Don Willett on the 5th Circuit) have observed, Pearson has locked victims of excessive force into a prison of the court's own jurisprudence, and then allows judges to toss away the key.

If there's anything positive to say here, it's the continued good work from Judge Grasz, who is rapidly becoming one of the great surprises on the Eighth Circuit since his confirmation in 2017 (he had been rated "not qualified" by the ABA after his nomination by President Trump, but was confirmed anyway by a 50-48 vote).

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LIII: The Suicide of Jeffrey Epstein

Accused pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has died in prison of an apparent suicide.

Given how connected Epstein was to a huge array of powerful political, economic, and cultural figures, this obviously was going to raise eyebrows. And since Epstein was Jewish, well ... let's let the Nation of Islam kick us off:




Meanwhile, a "satire" account that supposedly is imitating "SJW" leftists posted and then eventually deleted a tweet about how the Epstein's suicide was orchestrated by "other '-steins' and '-bergs' dispensing justice." Ironic antisemitism is still antisemitism. And of course, the neo-Nazi right is having a field day (this thread is sickening).

Indeed, almost immediately on Epstein's arrest one already was seeing folks salivating at the chance to tie him to the Jews. Steven Salaita, for example, rushed to get on the train:


I bet it does seem like a good time, Steven.

He was joined by journalist Sarah Abdallah ...

Guess what world leader used to frequently stay at the apartment of Jeffrey #Epstein’s brother where underage European girls were trafficked?

No, not Vladimir Putin or any other Russian official.

But rather... Israel’s Ehud Barak.

Let that sink in.

— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) August 10, 2019

 ... and of course the cranks at MintPressNews:

Epstein appears to have ties to Israeli intelligence and has well-documented ties to influential Israeli politicians and the Mega Group. Yet, those entities are not isolated in and of themselves, as many also connect to the organized crime network and powerful alleged pedophiles.

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) August 10, 2019 

Fortunately, President Trump -- ever the friend of the Jews -- has not endorsed this conspiracy theory, favoring instead the other conspiracy theory that the Clintons took him out.

A Galaxy FAR, FAR Away Roundup

In my last roundup, I noted that I was going on the law school job market this year -- a process that commences with the charmingly named "meat market" in Washington this fall. The first thing that law schools receive from potential candidates, however, is the "FAR form" -- a one page document that's basically the back of your law professor baseball card: all your key stats, from degrees to teaching interests to publications. The FAR form gets distributed to law schools tomorrow, and once it's out the hiring season has officially kicked off.

Though if you like, this roundup also can be sponsored by this video about Star Wars.

* * *

Lyft is going to buy carbon-offsets for its rides. Nice.

Famed Holocaust and antisemitism expert Deborah Lipstadt: Trump didn't go far enough in condemning White nationalism.

What happened when a Labour MP tried to intervene with the Israeli government on behalf of sick Palestinian children? She faced a torrent of antisemitic abuse, that's what. Shocking story, but it's the wages of anti-normalization.

I thought this was a really thoughtful discussion between Ken White and Elie Mystal on whether things like the North Carolina gun store billboard targeting "the squad" should be protected as free speech (both -- accurately -- observe at the outset that it is protected; the discussion is about whether that doctrine is correct).

The "Word Crimes" special issue of Israel Studies continues to generate controversy: the editors of the journal issued an apology acknowledging that "the special issue and our decision-making process regarding the publication were flawed", but also defending themselves against some of the more histrionic critiques. The editors of the special issue in turn replied to the journal editor's apology, as well as addressing the wider controversy, here.

In California, locally-assessed fees sometimes make new housing construction cost-prohibitive. Locally-assessed fees are assessed, however, because Prop. 13 took a chainsaw to localities ability to raise revenue via property taxes, and so they have to get creative if they're to bring money in.

RIP Toni Morrison.

Islamophobe Walks Out of Anti-Omar Protest Because Muslim Speaker Joined Protesters

The opening to this story, about a protest against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) organized by the newly-formed Minnesota Jewish Coalition, is absolutely wild:

An estimated 100 people showed up Thursday afternoon for a Minnesota Jewish Coalition-organized rally on the steps of the State Capitol in St. Paul, but a vocal few were very disappointed with the direction the event took.

Marni Hockenberg, a Republican activist who live-streamed to her Facebook account that she was outraged that Somali activist Omar Jamal was one of the speakers of the event, “Stand Against Ilhan Omar’s Antisemitic Ideas & Support For BDS!”

“What the hell are they having a Somali speaker for?” Hockenberg said on her Facebook video posted to her account under the pseudonym Marnie Mockenberg. “This is wrong. I knew there was something wrong with this rally. I’m out of here.”

Again, just so we're clear: the Somali speaker (Omar Jamal, Director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center) was part of the protest against Omar's' "Antisemitic Ideas & Support for BDS". Hockenberg is so intolerant of Muslims she can't even tolerate them agreeing with her on other Muslims. That's the friction point in the anti-Omar movement these days, apparently.

Anyway. Now that this rally is concluded, I'm sure the MJC will be organizing a similar rally targeting Rep. Tom Emmer and then another aimed at a Rep. Jim Hagedorn.

Any day now. Any day.

On the California Ethnic Studies Controversy

Soon, if you haven't already, you will likely hear of controversies relating to the draft model ethnic curriculum guidelines recently promulgated by the California Department of Education. The LA Times recently editorialized against them as a jargon-laden PC smorgasbord, and much of the Jewish community has also rallied against the curriculum's almost complete exclusion and erasure of Jews, Jewishness, and antisemitism (alongside its promotion of BDS). The California Legislative Jewish Caucus released a letter expressing its deep concerns with the curriculum, including the somewhat explosive allegation that the omission of Jews was not a mere oversight but rather was "intentional" on the part of the curriculum drafters and reflective of their particular "political bias".

There's also a related movement by the California Middle Eastern Jewish community, led by JIMENA, that is protesting against the specific omission of Middle Eastern/Mizrahi Jews from the "Arab American Studies" curriculum (see their "call to action").

The public comment period remains open; I actually submitted comments several days ago. Mine focused on the Mizrahi Jewish issue; while I was in conversation with JIMENA on this question, my comments were my own and submitted in my personal capacity.

Anyway. In an undoubtedly futile effort to contextualize this controversy, which I am sure will soon explode into the press as "the Jews vs. Ethnic Studies!", I offer the following quick thoughts:

• None of the major interventions I've seen from the Jewish community have opposed the Ethnic Studies mandate passed by the California legislature. This is not a case of Jews opposing Ethnic Studies; "the Jews vs. Ethnic Studies" frame, tempting as it is, is incorrect. 
• If anything, this is a case of Jews seeking inclusion within Ethnic Studies. Their objection is rather that the draft curriculum erases Jews from the Ethnic Studies pantheon -- an erasure that, if the CLJC letter is correct, was not an oversight but rather malicious in character. 
• The most unifying "ask" by the Jewish intervenors has been to ensure that antisemitism and Jewish ethnic identity gets its fair share of attention within the Ethnic Studies curriculum, whether it is in a model course of its own or at the very least due attention in the draft "survey" course.
• That this is a call for inclusion, not exclusion, is even more important to stress in the Mizrahi Jewish case. Jews from places like Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt have every right to be included in an "Arab American Studies" curriculum; that curriculum is as much theirs as it is anyone else's. The assumption that their objections come "from the outside" is a form of antisemitic otherization, nothing more.
• In the wake of the debate over H. Res. 246, I have a sneaking suspicion that we're going to see some quick pivots from "if government is allowed to express its negative opinion of BDS in a non-binding resolution, free speech in America is dead!" to "if government doesn't explicitly endorse BDS in its K-12 model curriculum, free speech in America is dead!" Maybe I'm too cynical. But we'll see.

If you want to offer your own comments, you can download the form here. I suggest reading JIMENA's call to action for some suggested do/don'ts so you can understand what the community does and does not want from its allies on this issue (DO: "Be respectful – no bashing Ethnic Studies"; "Share how the Model Curriculum personally impacts you as a student, parent, educator, or concerned Jewish resident of California." DON'T: "Attack the State of California or the Board of Education for passing legislation requiring the State to implement Ethnic Studies Curriculum"; "Attack state officials or communities referenced in the curriculum – such as Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims.").

Institutional Jewish Responses To GOP Anti-Semitism: A Minnesota Play

Allow me to present to you a one act play on how the institutional Jewish community responds to antisemitic discourse emanating from the mainstream Republican party. The players are:

• Rep. Tom Emmer, Minnesota Republican and Chair of the NRCC.
• Steve Hunegs, Executive Director of the JCRC for Minnesota and the Dakotas.
• NRCC Spokesperson

Ready?

Emmer: "Republican donors! Here is the trio of evil Jewish communist billionaires who BOUGHT control of Congress!"

Hunegs: "Hey, Tom, that rhetoric has some incendiary antisemitic connotations. Maybe don't use it?"

NRCC spokesperson: "LOL, get bent."

Hunegs: "Yes sir. And let me just reiterate that Tom Emmer is a true friend of the Jewish people."

And scene.

Ideally, this little play might get placed in conversation with the current box office smash "Everything Ilhan Omar Says is Sharia -- A Ninety-Six Part Epic". Yet, despite the fact that Emmer's dalliances in this sort of antisemitism are actually a bit of a trend when it comes to Minnesota Republicans (paging Jim Hagedorn!), I somehow doubt that will be so.

Preparing the Meat Roundup

I'm going on the law school job market this fall. That process began this week, when I sent in my application to the "Faculty Recruitment Conference" in Washington, DC, charmingly nicknamed the "meat market". But possibly inappropriate name aside, it actually is a relatively humane way of organizing academic hiring: all the law schools come to DC for their first round interviews, which take place over one weekend at a single hotel. Makes for a rather frenetic weekend, but the centralized process does cut down on applicant labor time.

* * *

And then there were none: the last African-American GOP Representative in the House, Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, will not run for re-election in 2020. Hurd barely squeaked by Gina Ortiz Jones in 2018; Jones had already jumped into the race for 2020.

LibDem wave! LibDems picked up a parliamentary seat in the Wales constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire. The seat had been held by the Tories, and their defeat cuts Boris Johnson's parliamentary majority (which already depends on the support of a third party) to a single vote.

The Poway synagogue shooter was inspired by the Christchurch mosque shooter. That's because extreme-right Islamophobia feeds into extreme-right antisemitism, and vice versa.

Despite the efforts by some on the right that reflexively label the entire "squad" as antisemitic, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez actually hasn't said all that much on Israel or Jews. A recent interview changed that -- and revealed that her positions are for the most part wholly harmonious with those of liberal Jews across the country (absent, perhaps, her fondness for IfNotNow). "The same way that me criticizing Trump doesn’t make me anti-American, criticizing the occupation doesn’t make you anti-Israel, frankly. It doesn’t mean you are against the existence of a nation." Well spoken.

Long-time Baltimore-area Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) -- in the news after Trump attacked him by declaring all of Baltimore a place "no human" would want to live -- has long quietly promoted an exchange program bringing young Black Americans to Israel. JTA interviewed several of the trip's alumni -- they offer a great endorsement of what seems to be a wonderful program.

NPR interviews Wanda Sykes. Who knew she used to work at the NSA?

What's the Insurgent Democratic Map to 270?

Periodically, I hear calls from the leftier edge of the Democratic Party that basically say that in the 2020 presidential election Democrats shouldn't try to pander to working class whites or "swing-y" affluent suburbs. Their path to victory is instead goosing turn out by their base -- urban progressives and people of color. Stop trying to win Ohio, and instead pick up Georgia.

Now, I'm decisively of the view that the strategy Democrats should adopt in the 2020 election is the one that wins them the presidency. That doesn't mean I'm adverse to this strategy, I just want to hear how it's supposed to work in practice. What route do these advocates had in mind to get Democrats to 270?

Let's stipulate that Democrats will keep all of Clinton's wins next time around. That's 232 electoral votes, so they need to gain another 38. Here is my list of all the states that I can imagine as even plausibly competitive:

Arizona - 11 EVs
Florida - 29 EVs
Georgia - 16 EVs
Indiana - 11 EVs
Iowa - 6 EVs
Maine (2nd District) - 1 EV
Michigan - 16 EVs
Nebraska (2nd District) - 1 EV
North Carolina - 15 EVs
Ohio - 18 EVs
Pennsylvania - 20 EVs
Texas - 38 EVs
Wisconsin - 11 EVs

The most traditional Democratic path to 270 is the "blue wall" that failed the last time around: Michigan (16), Pennsylvania (20), and Wisconsin (11). These all have the reputation of being kind of rust beltish, working class old-guard union states, and so presumably going after that trifecta is the strategy that's being criticized. And I think the critics have a point: you need all three to get to 38, and I'm on the record as being very bearish on Democrats' chances of taking Wisconsin back. So even if Democrats take Michigan and Pennsylvania, they need another three votes from somewhere.

So the question is -- is the strategy "Michigan + Pennsylvania + [somewhere else]" -- if so, what somewhere else? I can see either North Carolina or Arizona as the next most viable targets, but while neither is traditionally liberal turf, both are very different in terms of how Democrats might appeal.

Or is it a more radical departure? The "new southern" strategy, gets Democrats there via Florida + either North Carolina or Georgia. But I'm bearish on Florida too, and Georgia I think is still a pipe dream (let's remember that Stacey Abrams lost, and even if you think the reason she lost was because Kemp stole it, why would Kemp be less able to effectuate a theft now that he's in the governor's mansion?). Texas would win it for Democrats in one fell swoop, but I hardly want to put all my eggs in that basket.

But anyway, I'm digressing. If you're a proponent of the more "insurgent-style" Democratic brand of politics, what states do you think are the prime targets to flip in 2020? Even if you think you can put a huge amount of red turf into play, what, in your mind, are the juiciest targets? Is it still the "traditional" purple states like Wisconsin? Or is it a new path?

Ubaidullah Abdulrashid Radiowala: Another One We Betrayed

This case brings back some bad memories. A rickshaw driver in his native India, Ubaidullah Abdulrashid Radiowala came to the United States on a visitor's visa in 1998. He stayed, as he was fleeing an Indian mobster whom he had informed on to the police.

In his time in the U.S., he built his own successful business and served as sole provider for his wife and four children (two whom immigrated to the US with him and are under DACA protection, two of whom were born in America). Three of his children are now in college, the fourth in high school. His earnings account for the entirety of his household's expenses -- food, tuition, rent, everything.

Radiowala was arrested in 2017 on a traffic stop, and was ordered deported. Although there was some evidence that the mobster he had informed on might try to hurt him in India, it was too late for Radiowala to request asylum. And while the U.S. has the power to cancel removal for persons in his position, the IJ concluded that removing Radiowala would not cause "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to his spouse, parent, or child, who is a United States citizen" (in this case, his two U.S. citizen children). Although his children would no doubt suffer, the IJ and Board of Immigration Appeals decided that their suffering was not exceptional compared to any other family with a parent or spouse facing removal.

The Third Circuit affirmed. And the reason this case brings back some bad memories isn't because I think the decision was wrong. It's because it was probably right. The bad memories I have stem from the near-impossible standard of review that we were faced with when overseeing the immigration docket. The needless cruelty and trifling pettiness of the immigration system was entirely out of our hands to check. It didn't matter. Where it might matter was in the chambers of immigration judges -- who were wildly overworked and may or may not care -- and, of course, in the initial decision of immigration officials to make commonsense decisions about which cases to prioritize and which to let slide. But by the time the case gets up to the appellate court level, the immigrant is pretty well doomed -- no matter how cruel or manifestly unjust their case is.

So let's be clear: deporting Ubaidullah Abdulrashid Radiowala is needlessly cruel and manifestly unjust. There's no point to it other than the cruelty. He had been living in the United States for almost twenty years. He had raised a family here. He had sent his kids to college. He had built a successful business. He hadn't hurt anybody. He came to immigration authority's attention based on a traffic stop. A traffic stop!

But of course, today the cruelty is the point.

Radiowala has already been deported back to India. I hope he's safe. And I hope his family is getting by. But goodness, what a terrible thing we've done. What a terrible, terrible betrayal of the American ethos this is.

Some Libertarians Are REAL Easy to "Coerce"

John Ziegler is a "conservative/libertarian" columnist who has views on race and how our current surge in racism came to be. Specifically, he thinks that "The left forced non urban/liberal whites (even those who were not overtly racist) to start thinking tribally."

Wow, forced, you say? That's strong language, and some people reasonably wanted to some clarification as to what "forcing" Ziegler had in mind. It must have been pretty intense, to force good White people (even the not overtly racist ones!) into "tribal" thinking.

Or, well, it could be this:

As an example, probably the moment when they started having to push “one for English” when calling customer service.

— John Ziegler (@Zigmanfreud) July 23, 2019

Okay then. I guess I just have a different view on what counts as "force". But then, I'm not a libertarian, with their deep respect for human agency and liberty, nor a conservative, with their strong commitment to personal responsibility.

H/T: Hilzoy, who also spotted the "one for English" example (this post emerged because I had to dig that one out myself -- I couldn't believe it just from reading it).

Mark Sanford's Proposed Primary Challenge Against Trump

Mark Sanford has had an interesting career.

The former Governor of South Carolina penned a beautiful editorial about what it meant for Barack Obama to compete in his state's primary in 2008. Of course, his tenure as Governor is most renowned when he went missing -- "hiking the Appalachian Trail", his staff claimed -- in order to visit a mistress in Buenos Aires.

An improbable comeback saw him elected to the House, only to lose a primary challenge from far-right Republican Katie Arrington, who in turn improbably lost the general election in a deep red seat to Democrat Joe Cunningham.

And now Sanford is mulling challenging Donald Trump in the Republican primary.

What's interesting is that while Sanford is at least decently positioned to tackle Trump on his racism and bigotry (Sanford was one of the more vocal Republicans calling him out on that while in Congress), that doesn't sound like it will be the focus of his proposed primary:

But notably, Sanford, who has been a vocal critic of Trump in the past, isn’t here to reclaim morality, or stand against Trump’s racist rhetoric. Trump’s racism is all distraction, Sanford says, from what he sees as the true problem facing America: bloated Social Security and Medicare programs raising the national debt.

“It’s this sort of nuclear swirl with Trump in the center of it in Republican circles, and in the process, we’re not talking about issues like the debt and the deficit that I think really are going to impact people’s lives in profound ways,” he said. “I would rather you get a little more excited about debt, deficit, and government spending than the tone I hear in your voice. I want passion. I want passion on this subject.”

Now, to be sure -- a GOP primary against Trump for his racism would be doomed to fail for the simple reason that Trump's racism is overwhelmingly popular among Republicans. But at least it'd provide a stark moral narrative. A campaign centered around the scintillating subject of the national debt is both doomed to fail and pointless.

Is Hockey the Hardest Sport To Announce?

One thing I've often suspected, but have no way of verifying, is that ice hockey is the hardest sport to announce (that is, do play-by-play) on television. It's fast, chaotic, and the players are swathed in padding that makes them all look identical. Sometimes watching a hockey game I'm blown away at the ability of the announcers to even keep up with the action, much less give informative commentary.

Am I right? On the one hand, I have absolutely no experience broadcasting anything and thus all of my opinions are ignorant. On the other hand, this is the internet -- so why should lack of experience and utter ignorance stop me?

So, with all that in mind, I've created a four-part rubric to gauge announcing difficulty (each element on a five point scale).

1) Chaos: How fast does the action happen? How ordered or disordered is it? Sports which are highly position-oriented might be fast-paced but you pretty much know where everyone is going to be (i.e., the quarterback will, for the most part, always be doing quarterback-y things). Other sports are more free-for-all.

2) Density: How many "announceable actions per minute" are there? Some sports are densely-packed with "things" that need to be announced (i.e., each time there's a pass, you pretty much need to say who the pass was to and from). Others are more leisurely.

3) Spread: How many different things are happening at the same time? In a boxing match, you can pretty much concentrate on what's going on in one spot -- where the boxers are fighting (note how there might be very dense action in a boxing match that's not at all spread out). In a football game, different announceable things may be happening all across the field simultaneously.

4) Opaqueness: How much of what's going on is pretty much intuitive to anyone with a basic understanding of the game, and how much needs explanation? Are there deep rule interpretations that need to be explained on the fly, or is everything pretty much as it appears on face?

I'm not including in my metric difficulties associated with making the sport interesting. Perhaps it's really hard to craft a gripping narrative about golf, but if that was part of the criteria then the most boring sport would be the hardest. I also assume that the announcer has a solid grasp of the sport he or she is broadcasting, and an audience which has basic familiarity with the rules of the game.

Okay -- without further delay:

Hockey
The reason I think hockey is the most difficult is because the game moves so damn fast. Players are constantly passing and checking and shooting and crashing into each other. And while hockey has positions, outside the goalie any player can pretty much be anywhere at any time. To be able to pick up (underneath layers of padding) that it was Jon Smith who leveled that check in the corner in the approximately .5 seconds you have to react before having to announce who retrieved the loose puck and centered it.... is a task that seems positively titanic.

Chaos: 5, Density: 5, Spread: 3.5, Opaqueness: 2.5. Total: 16

Football
The rules in football are often pretty hard to follow (what makes "holding" different from anything else the defense does?). It's a relatively spread out game, and as the play develops there's a lot to call, but soon the action pretty much converges and it gets a lot simpler. Plus you get lots of long breaks between plays.

Chaos: 2.5, Density: 2.5, Spread: 4, Opaqueness, 3. Total: 12

Soccer
From an announcing standpoint, it's like slower hockey. Plenty of passing and movement, but not done with the rapidity of a hockey game (and you can see everyone's faces, which helps). Hard to truly appraise penalties when everyone is flopping all the time.

Chaos: 2.5, Density: 2.5, Spread: 3.5, Opaqueness: 2.5. Total: 11

Basketball
Very similar to soccer. It's a little faster, but also a bit more compact (the larger field size in soccer means you have to keep an eye on more things).

Chaos: 2.5, Density: 3, Spread: 3, Opaqueness: 2. Total: 10.5

Boxing
One thing to focus on, but that thing can get hectic in a hurry. Boxing also seems to have more than its share of bizarre moments, though for the most part it's pretty intuitive that the person getting beaten up is losing.

Chaos: 2, Density: 3, Spread: 1, Opaqueness: 2. Total: 8

Gymnastics and Figure Skating
I think these have the exact same issues for an announcer. They're pretty slow, you've got time to breathe between announceable actions, but the major problem is that outside blatantly obvious falls and flops no lay person can tell what's intentional and what's a mistake. A figure skating announcer could tell me literally anything about the average routine -- from "it's the most dazzling performance the Olympics has seen in decades" to "most middle schoolers could handle this" -- and I'd believe them.

Chaos: 1, Density: 1.5, Spread: 1, Opaqueness: 4.5. Total: 8

Tennis
Another relatively straight-forward sport, albeit one that moves pretty fast.

Chaos: 2, Density: 2, Spread: 1, Opaqueness: 1.5. Total: 6.5

Baseball
Slow-paced, rigidly position-oriented -- people are always pretty much where you expect them to be -- and only occasional need to pay attention to more than one thing at a time (tagging up runners, stolen bases). Baseball also has a couple truly weird rules that come up more than you'd think (infield fly rule, balks).

Chaos: 1, Density: 1, Spread: 1.5, Opaqueness: 1.5. Total: 5

Golf
One thing happens: a player hits a shot. You talk about it as it soars through the air, until it lands. If it's closer to the hole, that's usually good. Further, bad. Some very obvious traps are also bad. Repeat.

Chaos: 1, Density: 1, Spread: 1, Opaqueness: 1. Total: 4

Not rated: Rugby, Lacrosse. These are two sports that in particular I can imagine being quite difficult to announce, but I don't know enough about them to say for sure.

I Want To Like Soccer

I want to like soccer.

Like most of my generation, I played soccer as a kid (for far longer than Little League or any other sport). I like its international character, especially how even relatively obscure teams always seem to have a few players from some random nation halfway across the world. I like how every country has approximately twenty six leagues, and I like the promotion/relegation system where entire teams can move to more or less prestigious leagues based on their performance. Wikipedia tells me there is a Bethesda Athletic FC that plays in some fifth-level league in Wales, and I'd love a jersey from them (for those of you who don't know, I grew up in Bethesda -- Maryland, not Wales).

But my goodness is the sport boring to watch.

I don't know how people do it. Occasionally, I can get into a match when there's some serious big-game atmosphere. And I appreciate the World Cup as another opportunity to apply my Olympics-rooting-rules (in essence: always root for formerly colonized nations to crush their erstwhile colonial overlords). When Team USA performs well, or there's some other good narrative (I'm a sucker for underdog tales) I can enjoy the story.

Yet by and large, it's just not that interesting a sport to watch. Nothing happens -- nothing even really threatens to happen -- for 95% of the time. The most common "action" is players faking injuries. Fans are so starved for action that they roar in anticipation if the ball even arcs towards the net.

As a spectator sport, I just don't get it.

The Rules of Racial Standing Hit Ayanna Pressley

In the wake of the latest Trump racism scandal, which targeted Rep. Ayanna Pressley alongside Reps. Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, and Tlaib, one particularly depressing thing to witness is the simple rote reflexive declaration that they're antisemitic, anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, and therefore have it coming.

To be clear: None of the women deserve to be targeted by racist vitriol. That remains true even granted insensitive things some of these women have said (though even the worst offender -- Rep. Omar with her "hypnotize" quote -- still hasn't done anything approaching singling out prominent women of color and saying they should remove themselves from America). You'd think that go without saying, though it apparently needs to be said and said again to all but four members of the GOP caucus. I suppose also if it went "without saying", we wouldn't have a racist President saying them.

Yet there also must be made mention of the particular way this discourse is playing out with respect to Rep. Pressley. Pressley has no history of antisemitism, or anti-Israel advocacy, or anything else. Yet in fulminations about the evils of the "squad", and newly-elected progressive women of color, she's treated as an equally valid target of indiscriminate fulminations about left-wing antisemitism.

This is nothing new for Pressley. But, confronted with the evidence that Pressley has never said, done, or implied anything that gives rise to any inference of antisemitic animus whatsoever, those spitting fire at her seem unbowed. They argue that the fact that Pressley is so proximate to Omar, Tlaib, and Ocasio-Cortez means it is incumbent on her to condemn them -- and if she doesn't, she must be endorsing them (it has to be said here that the evidence of antisemitism from AOC is also needle-thin -- from what I can see, it primarily hinges on (a) calling Israel's response to the Gaza protests a "massacre" and (b) a phone call to Jeremy Corbyn).

That argument -- that if Pressley is not vocally denouncing alleged antisemitism by other Congresswomen, she must be endorsing the sentiments -- reminded me of one of Derrick Bell's famous "Rules of Racial Standing", which he published in his 1992 book Faces at the Bottom of the Well. The fourth rule ran as follows:

When a black person or group makes a statement or takes an action that the white community or vocal components thereof deem "outrageous," the latter will actively recruit blacks willing to refute the statement or condemn the action. Blacks who respond to this call for condemnation will receive superstanding status. Those blacks who refuse to be recruited will be interpreted as endorsing the statements and action and may suffer political consequences (118).

I referenced this dynamic a bit in this post, but the point is the manner in which Pressley is being treated -- guilty-until-proven-innocent, on the hook to constantly condemn (to our satisfaction) this or that "outrageous" thing said by her fellow congresswomen, despite no evidence that she shares any such problematic views -- is nothing new. It is a phenomenon of long standing, and it is noticed.

And let's be clear: this is how Pressley is being treated. She's young(-ish), Black, progressive, and so therefore just defaulted to be a threat. The absence of evidence doesn't deter this assessment in the slightest -- it just causes a slight fallback: now if she isn't spending her days railing against AOC, that counts as evidence of endorsement.

Of course, noticing it does little good. Again, it's not like this phenomenon has gone unremarked upon; it's constantly remarked upon and yet repeats itself over and over again. And so Bell's fifth Rule of Racial Standing tells us that while understanding the rules can give one prophetic power of how racism will operate, "[t]he price of this knowledge is the frustration that follows recognition that no amount of public prophecy, no matter its accuracy, can either repeal the Rules of Racial Standing or prevent their operation" (125).