You know you've gone too far when you write a law and even Posner trashes it.
I wouldn't go so far as to call him an honest conservative--far too much very destructive bullshit over the course of his very influential career. I'd put it down more to the fact that he really enjoys treating other people like idiots, and lately there have been an awful lot of opportunities to treat conservative legal positions as idiotic.
Kinda sorta? I'm not going to endorse every decision he's made as principled, and the principles he has have some massive problems, but an intelligent, principled decision that isn't partisan in a Republican direction isn't surprising from Posner at all.
Posner has said a lot of nutso stuff over the years, but he's a lot more troll or imp than hack.
I know a lawyer who is an irreverent wise-ass, but on the topic of arguing before Posner, he's totally serious: great judge: fair, and very smart.
Let's not go overboard in our actual assessments of the man. His academic work as a champion of law and economics was extremely problematic, and his work as a practicing judge tends to suffer from a continuing assumption that he's sufficiently smarter than everyone else (including Congress, the Supreme Court, agencies, district courts, and the parties in front of him) that he doesn't need to listen to what they say.
That said, if he would like respected center-left commentators to praise him for intellectual independence, integrity, and principled disagreement with judicial movement conservatism, I think it's a fair deal for this and the same-sex marriage thing. He's probably old enough that he has to be thinking about what his obituaries will say, after all.
On preview, mostly pwned by 2 and 3, but I think I've added some cynicism.
I'd put it down more to the fact that he really enjoys treating other people like idiots, and lately there have been an awful lot of opportunities to treat conservative legal positions as idiotic.
Whereas Antonin Scalia's ONLY goal is to write opinions that treat people like idiots. And yet his notion of what is idiotic is a bit different because he gets his news from talk radio and Fox News.
At this stage of his career, Posner isn't a conservative. Arguably, he never was. His first interest was "law and economics," which made him seem radically right (not conservative) early on, but in the past decade his economics cases seem leftish. He loves consumer class actions, which the conservative judges hate because they cost big businesses money and make a few Democratic-leaning lawyers rich (like me!). He was always libertarian/lefty on social issues like abortion.
Mostly honest, sure.
Thoroughly pwned. Also pwned on what Posner's real interest lately seems to be, which is his own reputation, especially in the next generation of law school professors and such. He wrote an entire book on the judicial reputation of Justice Cardozo once. Judges tend to have better reputations is include short, quotable aphorisms in their opinions, and take expansive views of individual rights.
Justice Kennedy also seems heavily motivated by reputation among law scholars (which, like Posner, he was once), which seems to explain his position on same sex marriage and gay rights generally. By contrast, Scalia seems to be motivated to become thoroughly hated by the professors.
on the topic of arguing before Posner, he's totally serious: great judge: fair, and very smart.
I have not argued before Posner myself,* but I've been in the room when it happened, and have heard any number of recordings and stories, and this strikes me as kind of nuts. He's got a reputation (well-earned from what I can tell) as pretty much the most obnoxious federal judge out there in terms of letting his contempt fly, and while he is very smart in his weird way, he thinks he's many orders of magnitude smarter than everyone else, which of course is totally counterproductive to having an honest argument. If that was reflected only at oral argument I'd say no big deal, oral argument is almost always entirely irrelevant and (on contentious, ideological issues) rarely honest, but it comes across in his opinions and "scholarship" too.
But 3 & 7 are right, Posner is and always has been an ideologue, not much of a partisan.
*I have been in a seminar room with him, where I will admit he was really not especially an asshole; maybe it was just my imagination/prejudice but I felt like I could see him straining to keep it in.
7 is correct. If he is honest, he is no longer conservative. QED.
I worked in the Law School library before going to law school myself. Both Posner and Scalia were professors then, so I've had some personal contact with them. Scalia very much more affable.
I know Posner's books more than his opinions, of which I've read many but not systematically. Both the literature one and the sex one were interesting, and demonstrated how many of his views are completely compatible with the intellectual class he was born into and has lived among all his life. There's a story that may be apocryphal that he resented giving up his electric train to the Rosenberg children. It certainly illustrates 1) the nature of his background and 2) is cantankerous relation to it.
he resented giving up his electric train to the Rosenberg children
"They'll just sit on it!"
I have heard similar things to 9 about his demeanor at argument, but never seen it personally. I have briefed cases before him and did not come away with a great impression. But we didn't win, so discount that for sour grapes.
The lawyer I mentioned is basically a professional asshole, so maybe that's why he liked Posner so much.
a professional asshole
I'm more of a hobbyist asshole, but mostly because I'm too lazy to get properly credentialed.
9 -- I think of D. Ginsburg as the King of (Well Informed) Snark, but I've never stood in front of Posner. He gave a guest lecture in my property class when I was a 1L, and we had a brief exchange in which I was clearly right and he was clearly wrong.
That said, it's a fine thing to have him directing it at the current Know Nothings.
17 sure isn't the (obvious) joke I was expecting in response to 16.
Are there other non-SCOTUS judges right now famous for their writing and opinions, other than him and Jed Rakoff?
21: Alex Kozinski, who is probably the only non-SC judge I could name for reasons other than being bandied about as a potential Supreme Court pick.
21: Depends what you mean by famous. Among the people who are into this sort of thing, Kosinsky (right) and Reinhardt (left) on the Ninth Circuit, Easterbrook on the Seventh. San Francisco District Court Judge Judge Vaughn Walker (recently retired), who wrote the first California same sex marriage opinion. All but Reinhardt were nominated by Reagan, who had some law professor advisors looking for young right wing scholarly types to promote (Scalia was in that group).
21: Sutton, perhaps, depending on how much you stretch "famous." He was the Republican judge on the Sixth Circuit who wrote the opinion upholding Obamacare's insurance mandate--and who is expected to be the deciding vote on the gay-marriage case heard there a while ago.
I mean, I think Alex Kozinski is supposed to be very smart (if schmibertarian), but basically the way I as a layman hear about these people is if they work a bunch of three-dollar-word insults and dad jokes into their opinions, so it's really orthogonal to any sort of judicial merit.
Selya likes to think of himself as being famous for his writing, which is unfortunate for everyone involved.
19: There's a certain, I dunno, whinyness to Posner's tone that puts him a notch above Ginsburg for me. But of course there's no shortage of contemptuous assholes on the courts of appeals. (True IME of a particularly high percentage of Reagan appointees, probably for reasons related to 23.last.)
Oh, I've also heard of Janice Rodgers Brown for reasons of evil, and Frank Easterbrook for reasons of evil and secondary, Gregg's-brother evil.
Reinhardt's opinions in the gay marriages case were pretty good.
I've read some Brown opinions where it looked like she was auditioning for a promotion in the coming Palin administration. Sentelle has a kind of fame, I think you'd have to say, although maybe not as a writer. Kavanaugh writes like he hopes to be famous; I expect to see his name a lot when/if we get a Republican president before he ages out.
Our local senior district judge Molloy is very well known regionally for his opinions on environmental issues. The rednecks think he's some kind of green wizard, but actually he's just a real stickler.
I'm curious to hear people's opinions of Frank Easterbrook. Is he really evil?
Margaret Marshall (ret.) is famous in Massachusetts, and presumably a little famous in some other circles! Never a federal judge, though.
I feel like Kozinski's stock has fallen considerably. I used to hear his name regularly but rarely do now. Maybe this is because the seated president is unlikely to tap him for the bench. If that's correct, once President Ryan (or Romney!) is inaugurated, we can expect to hear a lot about the insouciance and genius of Kozinski again, in which case I should probably look into relocating to Mali. (One really does have to write "war-torn Mali," doesn't one?)
Bybee is famous for some writing he did before becoming a judge.
Is he really evil?
Did he strangle Gregg in the crib? Well then.
(That was Katherine bait, for those of you too busy to check in to standpipe's.)
31 -- He's 64, and too old for that kind of talk now.
You are ever the optimist, Charley.
What sensible Republican president would do anything other than nominate a shiny, 41-year-old appeals court judge, preferably a Federalist Society-approved Cuban-American? Nominating a person in his or her mid-60s is what you do when you are outfoxed and a stupe, which is why I fully expect the awesome Diane Wood to be Obama's nominee if there's an opening under a Republican Senate.
29: Good lord yes. All the vices of Posner and few of the virtues. Although I will say I appreciate his efforts to get lawyers to use better typography in briefs.
If Kozinski's stock has fallen it's because, as Carp says, he's aged out of relevance in terms of possible SCt appointment (which was never a real likelihood, honestly, but the Federalist fanboys could dream). Also maybe the porn-hosting thing really made him just look like a clown?
Here in MA, we have been told our driver's licenses (which don't meet "Real ID" requirements) are no longer acceptable as ID for getting into various federal buildings, and will within a few years (2017?) not be acceptable for getting on airplanes. This is all by federal law. (MA is now scrambling to change its driver's licenses to qualify, but it will "take time.")
So, are Posner and his co-dissenters wrong? I notice their statements about "not required" are fairly qualified, and most of the things on the list do seem to require a photo ID in many cases, at least in my experience.
Any experts on this available down in the mineshaft?
In anecdotal support of the position that Posner is an ass and a troll (and also as evidence that Martha Nussbaum doesn't receive enough contempt): A friend was out to dinner with a small group that included both Posner and Nussbaum. When the topic of affirmative action at law schools came up Posner began insisting on the genetic intellectual inferiority of African-Americans, and Africans generally. I'm assured that the following exchange occurred verbatim:
Posner: "There are a billion of them. What have they ever contributed to world civilization?"
Nussbaum: "But what about jazz? And modern dance?"
So, are Posner and his co-dissenters wrong?
No. What you do or do not need to get onto an airplane is a red herring. Getting onto an airplane is not a constitutionally-protected right. And even if it were, that wouldn't mean you could automatically impose the same burdens on voting as you could on getting on a plane.
What you do or do not need to get onto an airplane is a red herring.
A herring and a boarding pass.
Could I get a definition of "dad joke"? I'm assuming some sort of dumb joke smugly told, but I really have no idea. This is the second time today I've seen the phrase.
PS - Is there a difference between dad jeans and mom jeans other than the identity of the wearer? And am I correct that it basically refers to jeans in every cut that existed before Jordache?
I think a dad joke isn't smugly told, but it is a bad joke.
39- Since you don't actually need any ID to get on a plane, just an extra 30-60 minutes to deal with the hassle, I'd say that this is bullshit.
That is, "dad joke" isn't abusive the way "dad rock" is.
So Shearer was really Posner? I guess all that Westchester stuff was just a smokescreen.
40: I'm surprised Posner would be so blunt, but yes, he famously took a very principled stand in support of the whole Bell Curve thing (while sort of distancing himself from the race part of it, as if it was just a side issue and "rhetorical mistake" on the part of Murray and whatshisname).
So what's the distinction between "dad" and "bad" wrt "joke"?
And is "dad rock" just "rock in the style of rock music common between 1955 and 1991"? Is there some crucial element of browness, or is it just generational posturing?
As a dad, I feel it's critical to understand precisely the ways in which my children will be othering me.
51.last: This is literally unknowable. Any attempts to know only increase the painful dadliness. Don't be "cool dad."
Dad jokes are funny jokes that go under-appreciated by one's offspring.
So what's the distinction between "dad" and "bad" wrt "joke"?
It's hard to say. Generally people who habitually tell "bad jokes" are dads, so it looks like a case of backformation via folk etymology.
It's a bad joke or pun of the sort that you would find in a book of jokes targeted at 8-year-olds, as told by an adult: http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/759/356/3b3.jpg
I think of it as a joke that the teller thinks is funny, but knows the audience will not think is funny, but tells it anyway (because they're kids, and who cares what they think). I do this all the time.
Don't be "cool dad."
Well I've never been cool anything else, so that should be simple enough.
55 makes me think that the origins are actually simple: when kids are ~8, their dads tell jokes that the kids find mostly funny. By the time the kids are 10-11, they've grown in sophistication (kind of), and their dads are telling the same jokes. By teenagerhood, they're excruciating.
56 might be the best explanation yet.
Now the jeans and the rock.
Dad jokes are jokes dad is comfortable telling in front of kids, So they have no hints of sex, drugs, ethnicity, or curse words, and therefore aren't funny to anyone over about 8 (including the dads themselves).
"Although I will say I appreciate his efforts to get lawyers to use better typography in briefs."
Completely agree! Although that style guide is hilariously lengthy and in general over the top. I do get a bit if a kick out of watching colleagues become visibly uncomfortable when forced to operate outside of Times New Roman.
Anyone tempted to get all warm and fuzzy re Posner should pop the phrase "Posner rape license" into the nearest search engine. Having personally heard him expound on the topic in a small, majority female, law school setting I find the anecdote re him and Nussbaum thoroughly believable. He strikes me as someone nearly completely at the mercy of the basest human desires, his intellect exclusively subservient. Lust for power, contempt for all fellow human beings, overwhelming desire to have his ubermenschenness recognized by all.
Hmmm LB would you mind removing my pseud from 60? Ir just delete altogether, thanks.
I'm going to tell the joke in 55 to my 8 year old. He will think its hilarious.
And yet, its my sense of humor that will be maligned for telling it.
Lust for power, contempt for all fellow human beings, overwhelming desire to have his ubermenschenness recognized by all.
[Sidles, shifty-eyed, toward the door.]
"There are a billion of them. What have they ever contributed to world civilization?"
This is so close to other Maroon Saul Bellow's "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus" that I'm simultaneously more suspicious and more credulous of its truth.
Or ogged or heebie or neb! Would be grateful if one of you would get rid of 60.2, or alternatively anonymize it and delete 61 and this, thanks.
65:
I thought of that, too. And while both came to be associated with the place, and held faculty appointments, neither was educated there. So I'd asterisk their Maroonedness.
What? No, a dad joke is one intended to make the kids groan, like pretending to misplace the baby or making terrible puns.
68: Sure, I can help you with your math homework. Oh, I see why you're having trouble. Pi r squared? No no no. Pies are round. Cornbread are squared.
like pretending to misplace the baby
The reason its not funny is the lack of commitment to the joke. You aren't going to get a good laugh if you only pretend to misplace the baby. But if you are willing to go all in, it will be so memorable that people will be bringing it up for years afterward.
Because they'll have saved the milk cartons.
So I'd asterisk their Maroonedness.
No point in baiting Halford now, idp.
60.2 is a particularly disgusting example of where a "principled" adherence to the pseudo-insights of L&E will get you. A weaker intellect might step back and think something has gone seriously wrong if this is where your reasoning leads you, but Posner is no weak intellect.
Incidentally all the top google hits for that phrase now are very recent right-wing attacks by people who always have objected to this kind of moral monstrosity found it a useful cudgel with which to beat on Posner's gay marriage opinion last month.
Well, 71 is only funny when the baby eventually gets found. But usually they do!
65: I have always wondered how he would have responded if someone countered with "Who is the Tolstoy of the Jews?"
A) "Uh... Kafka."
B) "There are lots of them."
C) "Well, thank you for asking, let me hand out my full ranking here..."
D) "Me, bitch."
E) [fistfight]
But I didn't read the whole piece, and maybe he addresses the spiraling stupidity of it all there.
I am sad that there was a felt need to have 60 redacted.
I suppose Proust is the most obvious answer, actually, but is it not still terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly stupid? There, I'll stop now.
The now nearly canonical answer, as I understand it, is "Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus," which is clever, but a feint. 77, however, is great.
Now why did my remarks, off the cuff obviously and pedantic certainly, throw so many people into fits of righteousness and ecstasies of rage? France gave us one Proust and only one. There is no Bulgarian Proust. Have I offended the Bulgarians too? We, for that matter, have no Proust either: should the White House issue a fatwa and set a price on my head for blaspheming against American high culture?
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/23/specials/bellow-papuans.html
Well, 71 is only funny when the baby eventually gets found.
No, it's only funny if the baby is found alive. It has to still be alive.
Well, 71 is only funny when the baby eventually gets found.
No, it's only funny if the baby is found alive. It has to still be alive.
Re dad jokes, Mrs. K-sky's online dating profile mentioned that she was a sustainability consultant. My subject line read "It could LEED to something." A bit obscure for a classic dad joke, but in every other respect an advertisement of reproductive fitness.
I don't get what the big deal with Proust is. Is it worth reading the Wikipedia plot summaries of his books?
I don't know about the Russian Mandela, but Jonas Savimbi is the Angolan Thomas Jefferson.
I don't think Lenin works. All that bloodshed, you know.
It could LEED to something.
I'm dumping you right now.
It worked, dude, I spawned.
A friend suggested something about "semi-permeable surfaces" but I waited on that one.
Proust is a big deal because of the payoff in the last volume, in which he finally finds the baby.
I have it on good authority from Fox News that Mandela was, in fact, a Russian Communist.
Baby kidneys are sooooo tender, but it takes far too many of them to make a proper meal.
A friend suggested something about "semi-permeable surfaces" but I waited on that one.
"I care about my personal appearance, but I don't go so far as to xeriscape."
Oh, wow. I hadn't seen 60.2. Yeah, principled really doesn't mean admirable, unless you know what the principles are.
That rape license bit is unreal.
Lots of good Dad jokes in the twitter thread when Mallory Ortberg asked "what's the most dad thing your dad has ever done?"
https://twitter.com/mallelis/status/519971435054239745
I think Mandela was a Xhosa, not a Zulu. Perhaps Lenin was the Shaka of Russia. I think we'd better retool the analogy ban.
100: It's a good prompt, but I see a bunch of sad responses. ("Left me and mom in the middle of the night without a trace.")
The ecstasies of grievance in stuff like comment 80 make me want to crawl down a hole in the ground. But it's funny that I had pretty much assumed that a jeremiad of the same scale and temperature had given rise to the original quote. I'm glad he read a Zulu novel after all, though I usually have to skip this sort of thing:
immediately after the telephone interview I remembered that there was a Zulu novel after all: "Chaka" by Thomas Mofolo, published in the early 30's. In my Herskovits days, I had read it in translation. It was a profoundly, unbearably tragic book about a tribal Achilles who had with his own hands cut down thousands of people, including his own pregnant wife.
Plot summary might not help with Proust. He wrote one long, meditative novel in seven parts, and it's among the very last things anyone should read out of a sense of duty.* I don't think references to anything but the cookie-that-makes-you-remember come up often. War and Peace is actually a lot of fun, though.
* it's my favorite novel; I hate "favorites" but made an exception for it
The section of Proust known as Swann in Love is a pretty easy read. I actually thought someone had published the section as a separate short book, but apparently I hallucinated this.
104: Naw, the Moncrief translation came out in 7 paperback volumes at one point. I still have a couple somewhere.
Proust is worth reading just for the gorgeous extended metaphors. It's like eleventy billion pages of violating the analogy ban.
Not just Moncrieff! All of à la recherche in one volume soul be one honkin' volume! Originally and subsequently published as separately bound volumes.
would be, although Marcel - one soulful dude.
I just learned that it isn't called "Remembrance of Things Past" anymore. I'll never remember what they call it now.
107:Pretty certain I read it first time in one honkin' Random House Modern Library volume. Small freakin print too.
(Just spent an hour on the "transposition of the sexes" theory, and its refutation (Sedgwick...but). Freaking complicated, and freakin weird. Elizabeth Ladenson, "Proust's Lesbianism", google books.)
I'll never remember what they call it now.
"À la recherche du temps perdu".
Ahh, it was two volumes, found a picture.
I don't know if it was Enright (the translation I read) or Moncrieff (whose translation Enright revised), but Christ, what a vocabulary. I've never read anything that had me reaching for the dictionary so constantly.
If I recall correctly Darconville's Cat is another good one for that.
The alternate translation hilariously (well, to me at least) makes it sound like the guy misplaced time and spends 7 volumes looking about for it, whilst getting distracted.
It is such a ridiculously nice May or maybe early June evening out right now. Whoever spread all the dead leaves around to try to convince us it's fall is pulling one hell of a prank.
We are going to a show tonight, so apparently it is not only spring, it is spring 2007.
Proust's father Adrien developed the idea of the cordon sanitaire, something relevant to today's news.
I bet I went to some pretty good concerts in Spring 2007.
77. Late to the party but surely Solzhenitsyn.
I wouldn't mind giving spring 2007 a do-over.
114: The very mention of which makes my day.
La Vita Nuova for our fallen age. And I mean it.
|| Portland meetup! 7:30ish tonight, Lucky Labrador, SE 9th and Hawthorne. Smearcase, Emerson, me. You? Maybe! |>
Am embarking on The Court Jester, despite Danny Kaye. How much am I going to regret this? Lansbury is a powerful draw, but still.
Lansbury is a powerful draw, but still.
That's not a sentence I thought I'd see.
What are they feeding this child on?
Danny Kaye is really unbearable in that movie.
These costumes cane from kmart. Not even target.
Great location shots of the southern/central California coast circa 1954.
I'd rather drink from the flagon with the dragon than ever watch The Court Jester.
Yowza - La Lansbury delivers. A veritable maserati amongst the chevys.
Kaye has the virtue of consistency, he's always unbearable. Alas.
Not as bad as Tony Curtis in that out of control Viking flick.
There is far too little lansbury in it.
122: nah. Some local bands. Headliners had the sweetest minimoog I've ever seen, though.
The directions said to take medication with food. I choose candy corn.
No one's going to buy that as an excuse for why you don't have any candy for the trick-or-treaters, Moby.
La Lansbury delivers. A veritable maserati amongst the chevys.
That tangentially makes me think that you might appreciate this 2008 Grace Jones performance that I linked to recently. She's pretty fabulous at 60, and the music has also aged well. The reggae influence makes it sound less specifically like 80s revival, but it still has a pleasant nostalgia to it.
(The Youtube sidebar reminds me that she performed at the Diamond Jubilee concert in 2012, and was impressive, but I think the linked video is slier.)
That video is a convincing argument for the practicality of the sequined bowler.
Oh good, I thought you would appreciate it.
(The sequined bowler is great, but obviously requires that you be standing under a spot light. Only the star gets to wear one.)
Tonight - Smoke Signals.
Conclusion - with the vast resources of the mid-20th c studio system at their disposal I am confident Indians could make as spectacularly crappy a movie as Court Jester. But as things are, we'll have to make do with thus gem.
À la Recherche de Pain Perdu.
