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Saturday, May 13, 2023

STRANGE TIMES

I watch MSNBC and CNN more or less obsessively, switching from one to the other to avoid the on-air stars whom I dislike. Now I find that I cannot bring myself to watch CNN because of their obscene "town hall" with Trump.    

From

I see that E. Jean Caroll is considering suing Trump again for defamation.  I suspect her lawyers are well aware of the concept of preclusion. This could be fun to watch.


Several weeks ago I started taking a second medication for my Parkinson's. It has had no positive effect whatsoever but I have been having trouble getting to sleep. This morning I checked online to see what the side effects of the medication are and sure enough one of them is sleeplessness. In the middle of the night I find myself running over Wordle words.  Here is my latest imaginative construction:


"A young girl has a plump little puppy who is missing. She goes off looking for it, worried that it has not had enough to eat, will lose weight. and will get sick and that it will run away again if anyone tries to pick it up. She finds it alive and well at the local animal shelter and sends the following message home to parents: At the pound: hound, round, sound, found bound."



82 comments:

John Rapko said...

The preponderance of plosives in your wordle (what the heck that is) fantasy reminded me a new-to-me plethora of the unvoiced bilabial sort I just heard in the Kim Philby yarn A Spy Among Friends: male urination = 'pointing Percy at the porcelain'.

John Pillette said...

I was reminded of Schopenhauer's proto-wordle, "obit anus, abit onus"

("the old hag is dead, the debt has left")

Schopenhauer (ya gotta love the guy) shoved his too-talky neighbor down the stairs; she sued him; and he had to pay her a monthly stipend for years and years ... Oh, I miss the good old days when people had MANNERS!

Marc Susselman said...

Prof. Wolff,

By holding the town hall, CNN actually did us a favor. To you, and me, and everyone who reads your blog, everything that Trump says is obscene and despicable. But, as Anderson Cooper pointed out in the piece I posted in the prior thread, what we regard as obscene and despicable, everyone in that town hall room found amusing and praise-worthy. How do we deal with this? Who are these people? They are moms and dads; they take their kids to school; take them to soccer; they shop where we shop. Giving Trump that platform did not increase his appeal to that audience. They were already in his corner. As Cooper noted, we cannot ignore this unpleasant and uncomfortable fact, and to condemn CNN for giving Trump a platform, and alerting us of it, is counter-productive – it was a public service. We cannot wish it away. It is not going to go away by refusing to watch CNN. Can we just say that this is an ugly side of America and of Americans that Trump is cultivating, and assume that it does not truly reflect who we are, or who many of us are, and that on Election Day it will all be sorted out, and the good in America will defeat this ugly part of America? That is why I wrote my comment that if Trump gets elected and we descend into fascism, it will be our fault. We had better face up to this reality, if we are going to defeat it. How to defeat it is not an easy question.

This afternoon on Dateline, there was a story about a woman in Washington whose mother was adopted, and did not know who her parents were. The daughter decided to have a DNA test done in order to find out who her grandparents were. The test revealed something surprising – she had a sister in Vietnam. How was this possible? The test did not tell her something about he mother’s relatives. It told her something about her father, Mike, who had served in Vietnam at the age of 18. While there, he had a relationship with a young Vietnamese woman. When his daughter told him that he had another daughter in Vietnam, he was shocked. When he left Vietnam, he was not aware that his Vietnamese love interest was pregnant. What was particularly compelling about the story was that many would assume that he would just go on with his life, and forget what his daughter had learned. He did not. He felt guilty that he had a daughter who had grown up without a father., and who had been bullied in Vietnam because she was an Amerasian, which was a common occurrence after the war. Mike and his American wife traveled to Vietnam to meet his daughter. Her mother had since died. She was married and had a daughter of her own. They wanted to come to America. Mike and his wife took steps to allow them to emigrate to America, and they are now living with them in Washington.

Watching this report, I liked Mike. He was a decent guy, a guy who took responsibility for his actions. I thought he and I could go to a bar and have a drink together, and chew the fact. But then, I also had this uncomfortable thought. Mike is a religious man. He goes to church on a regular basis. I thought, could he possibly be a Trump supporter? If he is, could I even be willing to have a conversation with him? Are there people like Mike who are supporting Trump, and if there are, how do I – how do we – deal with that?

David Zimmerman said...

Re Marc's defence of CNN's decision to provide a platform for a Trump "Town Hall" (AKA Trump rally):

The complaint is not that CNN organized an occasion for Trump to be interviewed, but that they broadcast the interview live with no genuine opportunity for an overmatched interviewer (or anyone else) to fact-check his many lies. The Jonathan Swan interview of Trump is held up by many as the contrasting model of how it should be done:

on tape, with the control that that format affords the producers....

with no audience at all, much less a fawning one, to cheer Trump on and energize him....

conducted by an interviewer who is actually prepared for Trump's lies, with documentary and taped correctives to blatant falsehoods....

with well-focussed questions, not open-ended ones that permit Trump to fillibuster....

with ready follow-up questions, which prevent him from lying and moving on.

THAT sort of interview would be a service, not the spectacle put on by Licht and company.

Marc Susselman said...

David,

I did not watch the town hall, I have only seen excerpts of it. But of what I saw, Licht seemed prepared and did not just ask Trump open-ended questions. She challenged many of his responses. But Trump cannot be controlled. I believe that the town hall served the purpose of showing us what we are up against. He is a much more serious threat to our democracy than people appreciate, and he is not going to be discredited by fact-checking. On the PBS News Hour, they had two veteran journalists who have covered candidates in the past (I don’t remember their names). They agreed that Trump presents a challenge that journalism has never had to deal with before. He gives a lot of people what they want, and give people what they want, and they will come back for more. Is it deplorable that this is what many people apparently want? Yes. The question is how to deal with it in a way that will work. I do not have the answer. Trump is currently leading Biden in several polls.

s. wallerstein said...

The Democrats can't come up with a better candidate than Biden?

How about Michelle Obama? Can't she be drafted?

She's intelligent, charming, charismatic, physically attractive, everything that Biden is not.

Yes, I'm aware that some racists would not vote for her, but she's so fucking charming and charismatic that she could win some visceral Trump voters over.

David Zimmerman said...

To Marc:

Andrew Licht is the newish chief executive of CNN, whose avowed goal is to make the network more friendly to right-wing content. The interviewer was Kaitlan Collins, the 31 year old recent CNN anchor who started out at Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller before moving to CNN... perhaps not the most suitable choice to take on the likes of Donald Trump.

By open-ended questions, which invite rambling dishonest replies, I have in mind examples like: "Why should the American people invite you back into the White House" and "Do you think you owe Mike Pence an apology?" These were just invitations for Trump to go on about how the election was "rigged" (in response to the first) and to go on about how Pence should have refused to certify the electors (in response to the second.

LFC said...

I don't usually read Lawyers Guns & Money (the blog of that name), but I was over there earlier this aft. and there was a post by (I think it was) Paul Campos pointing out that Trump has to be viewed as the culmination of trends in the Repub Party that have been gathering force for some decades -- a view that aaall has expressed here before on a number of occasions.

The first paragraph of Marc's comment at 4:47 p.m. is an ahistorical and rather unilluminating way to think about Trump. D. Zimmerman is right: there are different ways to cover him. CNN should never have given him a live forum in this format. The very two journalists on the NewsHour whom Marc cites -- James Fallows and the other one whose name is escaping me -- made precisely this point.

Simply repeating that Trump is a threat to democracy and that he has a base of loyal support is obvious and not v. helpful. The question is how to deal w it. One answer is: don't give him a live forum in this format.

p.s. didn't watch the town hall, don't have a working TV, haven't watched YouTube clips of it, but from the reporting I gather that it was a complete disaster.

aaall said...

"They were already in his corner. As Cooper noted, we cannot ignore this unpleasant and uncomfortable fact, and to condemn CNN for giving Trump a platform, and alerting us of it, is counter-productive – it was a public service."

Marc, CNN chose the audience and coached them on the ground ruies (e.g. no booing). They picked Republicans and R leaning independents. Recall this Politico piece from 2016: "Donald Trump’s candidacy might not be making America great, CBS Chairman Les Moonves said Monday, but it’s great for his company." We were told long ago that all businessmen were sons of bitches. Joe Kennedy knew what he was talking about.

Having a townhall this early was a ploy for ratings as well as a way to boost Trump. Plutocrats never figure out kleptocrats until it's too late.

Serously, watch a bit of RAW or SmackDown and imagine how it flies with no audience. Kayfabe needs real-time rubes. Trump with a serious interviewer and without his gaggle of true believers would be a pathetic empty suit.

As for the collective guilt; If Trump or his even more fascist mini-me DeSantis win, it will be because time was up, folks were exhausted, a popular vote was a bridge too far, and there was no A/C in 1787. Also, 2000 was a coup; it takes time for the poison to work its way through the system.

s.w., the only way a Black woman becomes president of the United States is through succession which may well happen.

s. wallerstein said...

Trump with a serious interviewer and without his gaggle of true believers would be a pathetic empty suit.

aaall,

Very true. I don't know which U.S. journalist could do the trick, but at least one Chilean journalist, who is actually a lawyer working in journalism, could destroy someone like
Trump in an interview.

Marc Susselman said...

David,

Your assessment of Collins’ performance during the town hall is not shared by everyone, per the following:

“Kaitlan Collins is as tough and knowledgable of an interviewer as they come. She fact-checked Trump throughout the 70-minute town hall. Over and over and over again, she told him that the election was not stolen. That it was not rigged. That there was no evidence for the lies he was disseminating on stage.

“The election was not rigged, Mr. President,” Collins told Trump at one point during the event. ‘You cannot keep saying that all night long.’”

I have no idea whether or not the audience at the town hall was a random selection of Republicans. But it should give us all pause that comments by Trump which we all find to be self-evidently obscene, despicable, scurrilous, etc., etc., were greeted with applause and laughter by this audience. If they are in any way representative of a significant percentage of the American public, even if they are a minority, for whom what we find self-evidently loathsome, they find patriotic and humorous, we have a serious problem. And blaming CNN for revealing is avoiding facing the problem.

David Zimmerman said...

Marc:

You completely miss the point about how NOT to platform Trump.

Collins came equipped with mostly very lame questions for Trump, which amazingly (we are told) were worked out over many weeks by a committee at CNN. (Yeesh....they could not do better than that?)

True, she tried to push back when Trump told his standard lies.... But he steamrolled over her every time, egged on by a selected audience (instructed to cheer but not to boo). She tried to correct him.... he just talked over her.

Moreover, she did not come equipped with "the receipts," as they say these days. For example when he denied that he asked the Georgia Secretary of State to find him extra ballots, she said that there was a tape of the call, but the format did not permit her to play the tape of the call ("I just want to find 11780 votes, which is one more than we need.") And so it went all evening.

Marc, you are attacking a strawman: virtually no one is suggesting that the media do not cover Trump, or that we blind ourselves to the fact that 25% of the American public are rabidTrump supporters and that 60% of Republicans accept "the big lie" that the 2020 election was stolen from him. These facts are evident in polls that are widely published across media sources.

The question is HOW he should be covered: In a way that facilitates his endless lying and does so on legitimate journalistic media platforms or in a way that reveals that he is lying and effectively rebuts every lie.

David Zimmerman said...

An instructive article about what has been going on at CNN recently. The general theme: "follow the money to the right-wing billionaire who now owns CNN":

https://www.rawstory.com/cnn-town-hall-2660168399/?utm_source=123456&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=14354

s. wallerstein said...

David Zimmerman,

I don't follow the U.S. media, but I can't believe that there is no journalist in CNN capable of making Trump look small, weak, old and ridiculously dishonest in an interview,
one who pushes back, points a finger at him and makes him feel like a 7 year old child facing a strict and indignant teacher.

David Zimmerman said...

To SW:

Despite his ill-advised comments on the CNN/Trump fiasco, Anderson Cooper probably could do it; and despite his past association with Fox, Chis Wallace could probably do it. Hell, even Kaitlin Collins could probably do it, with the right focussed and probing questions in hand and some fact-checking materials (tapes of Trump, ready-to-hand documents, etc.).

The format was more the problem than the interviewer.

Howie said...

I would nominate an insult comedian such as Don Rickles or even Rodney Dangerfield to interview Trump. Trump, idiot though he is, uses his mouth as an unconventional weapon. He is domineering and in a way clever. He knows how to get the better of you.
I seriously doubt any conventional journalist could handle Trump, moron though he is.
People today have trouble going off script, on TV news and in life. That's a problem with Trump, moron and idiot though he is

David Zimmerman said...

To Howie:

Jon Stewart, no insult comic, would do a good job interviewing Trump.

s. wallerstein said...

It's a question of finding someone who can make at least some of Trump's fans see that behind all that macho braggadocio, Trump is a very scared and very perturbed 7 year child.

I have no doubt there are journalists who can do that if they take off the gloves and hit below the belt. Nothing wrong with street fighting against a fascist.

LFC said...

The notion that only an insult comic can handle Trump is ridiculous. Any competent journalist, suitably prepared and in a suitable format, could do it.

There is no need at all to show up Trump's inner 7 year old child. Instead you ask "Did you ask the Ga Sec of State to find 11000 plus "missing" votes?" Trump says "no never happened." And then you play the tape of the phone call where he does exactly that. David Zimmerman is right. This is not complicated. The journalist in question doesn't even to be esp smart. Just be well prepared and have the 'receipts'.

Marc Susselman said...

I’m sorry, you guys are missing the point.

Everybody knows that he lies. Even his supporters know that he lies.

THEY DON’T CARE!

Yes, he would lie about asking the Georgia Sec. of State to find extra votes.

THEY DON’T CARE!

This is not a trial, where you can impeach Trump for committing perjury. You are attempting to use standards that do not apply in this context, and which a large segment of our population are not applying. That is the challenge he presents, and nothing you are saying is offering a workable solution.

LFC said...

His diehard supporters are perhaps numerous enough to get him the nomination but not, I think, to win the general election.

If that is correct, then the "solution" is to win the general election against him decisively enough that it is not open to question.

Marc Susselman said...

LFC

What if you are wrong?

David Zimmerman said...

Marc:

You continue to miss the point of the criticism of the CNN debacle. The point of that criticism is that CNN, in offering its own imprimatur to what was essentially a Trump rally, needlessly offered Trump an additional air of legitimacy. A non-right-wing network sponsored Trump's lying rant. That is no way for the non-right-wing media to cover Trump.

Moreover, no one is suggesting that covering Trump in a more responsible way will solve the problem he poses. It will, however, mitigate it at least to the extent that some "independents" will have an opportunity to see how easily his lies can be exposed for what they are... to his face. SW and others are right to suggest that making him look small is one way to combat the poison he injects into the political sphere. Yes, Marc, his hard core supporters do not care that he is a liar and a sexual predator. But there are some people who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, out of distaste for Democrats, who can be jolted by effective exposure of Trump into realizing that they made an error. If that is not true, then America is truly in deeper trouble than we think.

charles Lamana said...

I think Howie is on to something. Trump can insult commentators because he is not playing their game he is just one step, I think, from resorting to blows. Many of his supporters love his vulgar and insane remarks which many can identify with or if not wish they could give those "woke" folks, no wordle here, a piece of their mind. Is part of this phenomenon getting at class antagonism which Trump knows how to take advantage of? Frankly, how can rationality confront irrationality, definitely not by the use of more rationality.

aaall said...

The solution is to never interview him in real time as those only gin up his base
. Trump has a super power that he has chosen to use for evil. Because the United States has a totally stupid way of electing presidents he only needed ~44,000 votes in 2020 to win and he only won by ~80,000 votes in 2016 (thanks Jill!).

Of course the only rope media corporations have are interviews and access.

s. wallerstein said...

This is Trump propaganda which I'm sure most of you have seen.

It promotes him as a supermacho, strong enough to make America great again, unlike the
weakling Biden.

Trump supporters don't care if he lies, if he's a sexual predator, but if someone shows that he is weak, that he is a child, not a super macho, some of them will not vote for him, maybe not for Biden, but they'll stay home and watch porno.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zwy05u6ncg

Marc Susselman said...

David,

Yes, I believe we are in more trouble than you, LFC, s. wallerstein and Howie think.

That was Anderson Cooper's point, and to accuse Cooper of making "ill-advised comments" is burying your heads in the sand. It was also John Capehart's point on the PBS News Hour Friday evening.

Marc Susselman said...

s. wallerstein,

The U.S. is in deep troutble, and That political ad you linked to did not ease my concerns one iota.

Howie said...

Dear LFC

You and I, well you at least, elevate our discourse relative to Trump. He is a made man to his followers and we or someone has to make him look stupid on their level.
To make a convenient and relevant analogy to Hitler. The elite thought Hitler a clown, which he was, but he spoke the minds of the dispossessed as does Trump. He is admirable even charismatic to a certain sort. I know people who admire Trump. This is how they see the world. Rather than feel superior we have to engage him on his own terms.
I think you're tone deaf on Trump and I'm hardly trying to dissuade you. You are blind to the nature of the threat he poses
As Shakespeare said of a character in his play: he physics the populace or public.
Trump has an effect on certain people and you or we need a theory of mind for them- telling them their stupid for admiring such a stupid person which is what MSNBC does, accomplishes nothing and backfires

Howie said...

A good politician from New York City from the seventies (where Trump grew up) could knock him around a bit and draw some blood.
I remember a press conference where Trump just had his way with the press corp; Cooper would do not much better- you need someone street smart and good with language and psychology who could humiliate Trump and make him look foolish which he really is.
This is a blood sport with Trump, we have to draw blood

s. wallerstein said...

Howie,

Yes. Right on!!

s. wallerstein said...

Howie,

How about Jimmy Breslin?

Yes, I know that he's no longer with us, but isn't there someone like that around now?

Marc Susselman said...

Let’s get him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7OsYWLhkk8

anon. said...

Perhaps I’m misreading many of the comments here, but it seems to me the political problem in the US today is being mis-located.

To be sure, Trump can rally a large number of troops (cannon fodder, if you will). And maybe these troops will only rally to him. Therefore, as so many here seem to think, No Trump, No Troops.

But isn’t something a bit different going on? Haven’t the troops just been lurking there waiting for someone they could rally around as they pursue their own political projects? If that’s so, then the departure of Trump from the American political scene might offer a short term solution to today’s political problem. But it wouldn’t eliminate that basic problem.

Perhaps it’s possible to wage a political campaign against Trump that was simultaneously a campaign to deal one way or another with the battalions of discontent. But it seems to me much of today’s politics is narrowly focussed on Trump—as is much of the comment here.

I guess my question is, should the situation be as I have described it, how are those battalions of discontent to be addressed? (Note, I am not claiming that all that discontent is well-founded, though I do happen to think that some—some!—of it is. Neither am I suggesting that Trump be ignored!)

s. wallerstein said...

anon,

It seems to me that there's a patient in the emergency room with a potentially fatal heart attack.

The first priority is to deal with the heart attack.

Later on we'll worry about whether it was a high cholesterol diet, obesity, stress or all of the above which precipitated the heart attack.

aaall said...

anon., the problem is the Republican Party. I see DeSantis has invoked George Soros in his recent endorsement of vigilantism. Just another way of saying "Jew." McCarthy is in thrall to the Christofascist Freedom Caucus.

None of the discontent is well founded. They voted for what they have and now they double down.

Marc Susselman said...

OK, Vitali Klitscko is not an American citizen, so he’s out.

Well, the Republicans chose Herschel Walker, who was not very articulate.

Let’s get Charles Barkley, who’s articulate and not afraid to speak his mind. He’d tower over Trump, and he wouldn’t take crap from Trump.

Would the fact that Barkley was an athlete eliminate him from consideration for those who hate sports?

John Pillette said...

SW, the answer to that question (isn't anyone like that around now?) is "not really". Obvs ... as the kids like to say. Not in politics (not on our side), nor in journalism. Nearly everyone has become (for lack of a better term) "pussified".

Castrati, eunuchs, the dickless, call them what you will ... of course this kind of talk is horribly sexist, which means that the scope of the problem can't even be discussed, but think about it: the last Democratic president to really accomplish things was LBJ. It is inconceivable that the modern Party would ever produce anybody like that, an insensitive, non-ivy-league, crooked, amoral cowboy!

An amoral cowboy who saw politics in concrete, strategic terms ... Biden does try to channel a bit of his inner LBJ every now and then (to his credit), but when he does he promptly gets "called out" for it by our (sensitive, enlightened, correct) guardians of political etiquette. But I don't think that most of the members of the modern Party can even manage the basic skill of counting votes, much less corralling them LBJ-style (as evidenced by the impeachment fiasco).

Journalism has likewise become so delicately gentrified as to be unreadable (and unlistenable). If Jimmy Breslin were to be somehow brought back from the dead and given a column, he'd get cancelled in a New York minute (sorry!). Sy Hersh got shitcanned from The New Yorker by calling bullshit on the Bin Laden assassination, but Hersh-Trump would be worth watching (which is why it would never happen) ... ditto Taibbi-Trump. But this all assumes that a Trump interview could ever be anything but "kayfabe" (i.e., the crudest sort of modern-day folk theatre) ... it's fun to fantasize, but real journalism in that particular context especially is never going to happen.

LFC said...

anon.
I agree w you that some, certainly not all, of the discontent is well founded. The racist, xenophobic aspect is not well founded. The economic aspect is, to some extent.

How to deal w that economic aspect is not an easy question. But the Biden admin is taking some steps. The infrastructure and clean energy bills (both of which have been enacted, the latter called the Inflation Reduction Act) will create quite a few decent paying jobs, many of them, as Biden has been at pains to pt out, not requiring a lot of post-secondary education, if any. Moreover, Biden's natl security adviser Jake Sullivan recently gave a speech (at the Brookings Inst.) signaling that the admin is not enamored of the mode of neoliberal globalization that has dominated the last several decades.

anon. said...

LFC, thanks. Your response to my queries is helpful.

aaall. sorry, but I see your response as part of what I see to be the possibly larger problem, namely, the outright dismissal of about 78000000 of your fellow Americans.

JP By and large, I am again in agreement with you. But is it really a "delicately gentrified" journalism, or is it that journalism has been neutered (to refer back up to your colorful description of politicians)?

John Pillette said...

Ha ha ha, well I don't know if I mixed up my metaphors there, or if it's all kind of the same thing. Truly up-to-date hacks like to show off all the bad history, bad philosophy, and bad social science they learned in grad school, and most of this theorizing does tend to be of the gender-neutral (or even the "abolish gender") variety ... it's all suffocatingly abstract and bull-shitty and as remote from my concerns as it is possible to be.

After reading a lot of this stuff I feel like I ought to send in a bill, like I'm an adjunct lecturer forced to read a bunch of term papers. The NYRB got so bad a few years ago I quit reading it entirely, ditto the Guardian. This stuff is clearly not written for me (a cranky cis-gender dinosaur), but is the left-liberal literary intelligentsia truly disappearing up its own asshole, or does it just seem that way to me because I'm well past my sell-by date?

s. wallerstein said...

John Pillette,

Great minds are not common and they are not always noticed during their life-time: Nietzsche had to pay to print most of his books and they did not sell. During the last few years of his life he got some recognition but nowhere near the recognition he now has.

Were the great minds of the 60's (when I was at college) really so great? Thumb through the back of the old paperbacks where they list all the works available from the same publisher and you'll find few that are worth rereading 60 years later.

Now when one is 17 or 18, one tends to be impressed by anyone who has read all the books one thinks that one ought to read and thus, one idealizes academics or thinkers, who, seen from the perspective of 50 or 60 years were not the great geniuses they were billed to be.

At my age, 77, no one impresses me much and thus, I have the same reaction as you do regarding the NYRB or The Guardian, but if I could volver a los 17 (return to 17, the title of a song by Violeta Parra), I might be as impressed by what they now have to say as I was by the NYRB in the 60's.

aaall said...

Lets see: 78,000,000/320,000,000 = ~25%, seems conservative; I'd put the deplorables at ~30%.

Outsourced to LBJ:

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

Anon, some sheep just stay lost.

BTW JP, in the wake of the Kennedy assassination and the 1964 election LBJ had early New Deal congressional majorities in 1965 - 66 in a still New Deal political dispensation. We are still in the Reagan/Gingrich neoliberal dispensation and the Dems had four seats in the House and a tied Senate so Joe did pretty well with what he had.

Howie said...

Trump is the dominant political figure in our day. His appeal is based on his domineering behavior and his leading his followers in group emotion. This assessment is based on the group psychologist Bion who was a student of Melanie Klein.
He does not win elections by accomplishing anything rather by like a movie giving people powerful feelings. Biden in 2020 challenged Trump by being the work group leader- not sure that will work again. Stymie Trump's group emotion and you stymie Trump- challenge him and he is just another asshole and he loses his appeal, his charisma you might say. The current media environment militates against accurate perceptions of the world, so Trump pretends he is a great leader. But confront him on an emotional level and he is toast

John Rapko said...

What were 'we' (not me, I'm a little too young, but perhaps including s. wallerstein) reading c. 1970? I take it would include at least the following: Paul Goodman, Ivan Illich, Herbert Marcuse, Norman O. Brown, Buckminster Fuller, R. D. Laing, Marshall McLuhan, Carlos Castaneda, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Ken Kesey. An unusually enlightened person might also be reading Philip K. Dick. I can't imagine any circumstances where I'd re-read Laing or Fuller (and I recently tried to re-read Vonnegut, but had to bail), but as a partial mapping of a zeitgeist, it's not shameful.

s. wallerstein said...

Good list. Let's add Jean Paul Sartre and Alan Watts.

I don't think I'd reread any of them.

John Pillette said...

SW, it is difficult to judge as you point out, and for those reasons, but I did run an experiment of sorts with the archives of the NYRB and the LRB and I determined (to my satisfaction anyway) that there has been a definite decline. Gore Vidal, Tariq Ali, Joan Didion, Jenny Diski et al. ... ou sont les nieges d'antan?!?

Surely the wild increase in the cost of living post-1975 has something to do with this. It's at least associated with it in my mind ... when I was 13 I had my life all planned out, I was going to be an East Village beatnik / bohemian. My sister went to Cooper Union, she rented an apartment for $110 a month, and I thought YES, that's the place for me ... 9 years later I was ready to get my beatnik lifestyle on only to find that I could no longer afford the East Village. Now a crappy apartment cost $900!

The East Village got Whole Foods-ified, and I feel like something analogous happened throughout the culture, which seems to me to be ever more dominated by overpriced, pretentious, and unsatisfying goods which are nevertheless oohed and aahed over by the people who buy them ...

At the same time, low culture is getting ever lower. I mean, real, REAL low, surreally low ... who could have envisioned something like "Ultimate Fighting" (what a female friend describes as "men in panties beating the shit out of each other")?

Anonymous said...

Veering off-topic from off-topic comments, but: Along with Paul Goodman’s poem ‘The Lordly Hudson’ the work from the c1970s list that merits at least reading is Tristes Tropiques, a beautifully written, endlessly fascinating book of awe-inspiring intelligence. I’ve been recommending it and giving copies for a decade, and still can’t get anyone to read this very great book. Get the.second translation, which includes chapters on India not included in the first. Also The Savage Mind, recently re-translated as Wild Thought, contains a profoundly interesting and mostly overlooked account of art. End of off-topic.

Anonymous said...

That (and this) ‘Anonymous’ comment is from me John Rapko.

s. wallerstein said...

John Pillette,

We're all more open to developing new tastes when we're young.

I like Joan Didion myself and even reread Play it as it lays a few years ago and found it worthwhile.

However, I first encountered Joan Didion when I was in my 20's and with less formed and rigid tastes than I now have.

I'm a Dylan fan, but if I had been born 20 years earlier, I'd be more likely to be a Frank Sinatra fan, which I'm not.

Besides that, we associate the books we read when we were young and the music we listened to with being young, with being healthier, sexier, with more vital energy, etc. and thus, the whole chain of associations is positive.

So I tend to be skeptical about the "things aren't as they used to be" argument.

My mother was more in that argument than my father and my father aged better, not in physical terms, but in psychic terms.

John Pillette said...

JR, hard to believe that you gotta twist arms w/r/t "Tristes Tropiques", I remember devouring it in one sitting. De gustibus etc., I guess. I can't believe they left Mohenjo-Daro out of the edition I read, I would have completely lost my shit (b/c I can't get enough of that place)!

As far as "La Pensee Sauvage" goes, I think the big problem I have with EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE could be summed up in the phrase "La Pensee Domestique"--everyone and everything seems so completely housebroken nowadays, it's driving me crazy.

Anonymous said...

s.w. does mention his mother. But I think she's the only woman mentioned wrt the 1970 list. Interesting.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, s.w. also mentioned Didion.

John Pillette said...

As it so happens, Catherine Liu (UC Irvine Film Scholar and author of “Virtue Hoarders”) just this morning posted a mild rant about how pervasive “Theory-fication” has led to a stultifying conformity among “the very on-line so-called left”, so nobody need take MY word for it. It’s addressed to “young people” (not old farts like me), but it matches what we’ve been talking about, I think:

“The cool kids of the Left have adopted all sorts of cool positions and insider language that has allowed them to quietly threaten those who won’t go along with the discourse that they are imposing on us all. For the older people like Adolph Reed, Norman Finkelstein and successful celebrities who make a living without the good will of the very on line so called Left, these attempts at bullying are irritating and dispiriting, but not livelihood threatening. For those of you who are young, just coming up in the world, ambitious and angry and smart and politically charged by the failures of the US Left, expressing the slightest doubt about the cool kid positions seems extremely dangerous.”

s. wallerstein said...

As for no women on the list, our rough date was 1970.

Kate Millett published Sexual Politics in 1970 and that was the landmark book in second wave feminism.

So in 1970 second wave feminism was just taking off.

If the question involved what we were reading in 1980 or even 1978, there would be more women writers and thinkers on the list.

We're all products of our time, of our zeitgeist.

Marc Susselman said...

Over the weekend I saw a presentation on NBC’s show, Dateline, about a criminal case in which the Baptist minister was convicted of having murdered his wife in Peoria, Illinois, in 2014. He is serving a life sentence. The show underscored, once more, how the negligence/incompetence of a defense attorney can have disastrous consequences for the client.

Nathan Leuthold and his wife had served as missionaries in Lithuania. They returned to Peoria, Illinois, where they ministered the community’s Baptist church. The community knew them as a devoted husband and wife, with three children. On Valentine’s Day, 2013, Minister Leuthold, after purchasing a bouquet of flowers for his wife, Denise, returned home to find the garage door open, house windows broken, and the front door ajar. He went to a neighbor’s house and called the police, reporting a burglary. When the police arrived, they found Mrs. Leuthold lying just inside the doorway, dead, with a bullet wound to the head. The murder weapon was not found at the scene.

After an investigation, the police charged Mr. Leuthold with murder. The evidence which they maintained proved his guilt was all circumstantial. They concluded he had been having an affair with a Lithuanian transfer student whom he and his wife had sponsored. They both denied having an affair, although there were suggestive emails on their cell phones which they had deleted. There was camera footage of various places Mr. Leuthold’s had visited the day of the murder, which left a 15- minute gap, during which the police and prosecution maintained he had returned home and lay in wait until his wife came back from shopping, and shot her as she entered the house. The wife’s car was found at a nearby park. The police claimed that he had driven her car there, which was near their home, and left in his own vehicle. There had been reports that a strange man had been seen roaming the neighborhood on previous days, wearing a black hoodie. A black hoodie was found in the house, with gun residue on it. The house had been ransacked, but the police claimed that the pattern of the ransacking – kitchen drawers opened, dishes on the floor – did not resemble that of a typical burglary. The circumstantial evidence, taken together, did not, in my opinion rise to the level of proving that Mr. Leuthold had killed his wife beyond a reasonable doubt.

The evidence which convicted him, however, was the wife’s journal which was found in a drawer of their bedroom. The journal contained a single page, in which Mrs. Leuthold expressed her unhappiness in their marriage and accused Mr. Leuthold of being psychologically abusive, as well as her suspicion that he was having an affair with the Lithuanian young woman whom they had sponsored. This journal entry was read to the jury. Watching this, I thought, wait a minute – how could that journal have been admitted as evidence? It was clearly hearsay – an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted – that their marriage was not as idyllic as the public believed. The journal entry was clearly an out-of-court statement made by a deceased wife, who was not present to be cross-examined by the defendant’s attorneys. Didn’t Mr. Leuthold’s attorney object to it being admitted as evidence?

(Continued)

Marc Susselman said...

To find out the answer to this legal riddle, I checked the Illinois appellate decision which affirmed the conviction. As it turned out, Leuthold’s defense attorney had filed a motion to suppress the journal entry, but he argued that it was inadmissible because it violated the spousal communication privilege, which bars using a spouse’s statement about a spouse, without the latter’s permission. However, there is an exception to the spousal privilege – it does not apply if the statement is related to a possible murder. So the motion was denied. The better argument was that the journal entry was inadmissible because it constituted hearsay, and there was not exception. Had the defense attorney made that argument, and it had been rejected, Mr. Leuthold’s conviction would have been reversed, and a new trial would have been ordered, without using the journal. (The trial attorney was not a public defender. He was in private practice and advertised himself as specializing in criminal defense.) On appeal, the appellate attorneys argued that the trial attorney had provided ineffective assistance of counsel, but not on the basis of failing to make the hearsay argument. This argument was also rejected on appeal.

The Illinois appellate court also rejected the argument that admitting the journal as evidence violated Mr. Leuthold’s Sixth Amendment right to confront his accusers. The appellate court rejected this argument as well, ruling that under Supreme Court precedent, the Sixth Amendment only applied to the admission of “testimonial” out-of-court statements, i.e., out-of-court statements made in a testimonial context, as in a police interview, but not to non-testimonial contexts. For example, if Mrs. Leuthold had made statement to the police prior to her being murdered, in which she reported about problems in their marriage, those statements would not have been admissible after she was murdered, because they were “testimonial.” But her personal diary entry was not testimonial, and therefore its admission did not violate her husband’s 6th Amendment right. But the hearsay exclusion is not limited to “testimonial” statements. It applies to all out-of-court statements offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, and therefore would have been excluded as violating the hearsay rule, even though its admission did not violate Mr. Leuthold’s rights under the 6th Amendment.

Am I saying the Mr. Leuthold did not kill his wife? I have no way of knowing. All I am saying is that, without the admission of that inadmissible journal, the prosecution could not have proved his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, Because his attorney failed to make the right argument prior to the trial, he is going to spend the rest of his life in prison, guilty or not.

So, if any readers of this blog are ever charged with a crime, to whatever you can to vet the qualifications of the criminal attorney whom you hire to represent you. Your liberty, or your life, could depend on it.

Marc Susselman said...

Post-script:

Mr. Leuthold did not take the stand to testify in his own defense which, under the 5th Amendment, the jury would have been instructed they could not use against him.

LFC said...

There is a "state of mind" exception to the hearsay bar, and the deceased victim's statement might have come in under that exception. That neither the trial counsel nor the appellate counsel argued it was hearsay suggests that maybe that exception applied. Just a thought. I'm not a criminal lawyer. (But then, based on your description here in previous posts of what your practice was, neither are you.)

LFC said...

P.s. but the trial counsel shd have made the hearsay objection anyway, so as to preserve the issue on appeal.

David Zimmerman said...

To LFC:

Why the gratuitous jab at Marc S.... who is obviously an accomplished lawyer?

David Zimmerman said...

Ah, LFC.... I gather that you are assuming that Marc has never done criminal work.

Marc?

LFC said...

Not a gratuitous jab, a factual (I believe) statement. Maybe Marc has done criminal defense work, in which case I'll retract.

p.s. He claims he doesn't have time to set up his own blog, preferring to make long posts in the comments section here about what he saw on tv. If he's going to do that, then it's fine, imo, for me to comment. I would never claim to be an accomplished lawyer myself, because I'm certainly not, but I did waste three years of my life in law school, I do waste about 200 dollars every year to maintain my (inactive) bar membership (it costs even more if you're "active"), and I did once have some boring work connection w the Fed Rules of Evidence (and even though this is state not federal court he's talking about, the rules of evidence are often similar).

Marc Susselman said...

David,

Thank you. Yes, it was a gratuitous jab, and erroneous to boot. But LFC is fond of such things when it comes to my comments.

LFC,

You are mistaken. The Federal Rules of Evidence are generally applicable to both criminal and civil lawsuits. Moreover, I have practiced criminal law in the past, and am thoroughly acquainted with the Rules of Evidence, and with the hearsay rule and its exceptions in particular. The state of mind exception you are referring to appears in FRE 803(3), and states as an exception the following”

“(3) Then-Existing Mental. Emotional, or Physical Condition. A statement of the declarant’s then-existing state of mind (such as motive, intent, or plan) or emotional, sensory, or physical condition (such as mental feeling, pain, or bodily health), but not including a statement of memory or belief to prove the fact remembered or believed unless it relates to the validity or terms of the declarant’s will.”

Ms. Leuthold’s journal entry, expressing her belief that Mr. Leuthold was having an affair was clearly an expression of her belief, which should have been excluded by the exclusion within the exception.

Then there was the following statement: “I have tried to please you for seventeen years and never succeeded. I’ve never been good enough. Never done enough. I know that you want me dead. I’m not stupid. I suppose it will confirm my worthlessness to you when I write that I am not brave enough to do that job for you.” The jury hearing the assertion, “I know that you want me dead” would have sealed his fate. Yet this, too, was an expression of Ms. Leuthold’s belief, and inadmissible under the state of mind exception. If everyone of us could be convicted of a crime based on what someone stated about us in a journal or random note, without having to testify in court to justify their belief, we would all be in trouble.

Mr. Leuthold is going to spend his life in prison because his attorney did not sufficiently know the rules of evidence and the exceptions to the rule excluding hearsay.

aaall said...

The advantage of doing unarmed daylight burglary is little risk for the likely return, no police follow-up, and likely minimal punishment if caught. Deleted e-mails, dishes on the floor (time is of the essence in a B & E), and GSR on the hoodie - guilty.

All LFC did was anticipate a possible rejoinder, NBD.

LFC said...

I know the Federal Rules of Evidence are generally applicable to civil and criminal cases. My implicit point was rather that there are sometimes considerations peculiar to criminal trials that can influence particular decisions about objections, though in this case it appears he did make a mistake by not objecting.

Question: when the appellate lawyers were arguing ineffective assistance of counsel, why didn't they cite the guy's failure to make the hearsay objection? Are they as stupid as he is?

LFC said...

P.s. there wd appear to be quite a few incompetent lawyers in that jurisdiction. Illinois, the land of Lincoln. Tsk tsk.

Marc Susselman said...

aaall,

Why do you assume the hoodie belonged to Mr. Leuthold, and not a burglar, the person whom neighbors had seen in the neighborhood wearing a hoodie? You have a disturbingly low threshold for proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

One more thing. The prosecution used a jail-house informant who testified the Leuthold had admitted to killing his wife when they were in the same cell? Ministers may be stupid, but that stupid?

LFC,

Correct, they raised multiple other claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. And yes, there are a lot of incompetent attorneys out there. More than incompetent doctors? Perhaps.

aaall said...

"Ministers may be stupid, but that stupid?"

Maybe, like you I actually have no idea but I find it unlikely that a burglar would take off his hoodie and leave it at the scene of the crime. Criminals do make rational calculations. I'm always suspicious of jail house informants but folks under stress do stupid things. I assume that a person who became a missionary might actually believe things and have guilt issues.

I'm not on a jury so I feel free to speculate on the info you supplied instead of using a beyond reasonable doubt standard.

Marc Susselman said...

aaall,

But you did use a legal term - "guilty," and the definition of that legal term is "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."

Marc Susselman said...

Also, aasll, I assume you are aware that police frequently make plea deals with charged felons and deliberately place them in cells with other charged felons, where they will be told a "confession."

Marc Susselman said...

On tonight’s Jeopardy Tournament of Masters – that silly TV show - one of the categories was chess, and I learned two things I did know about the game.

In 1956, a 13-year old Bobby Fisher won has become known as “The Game of the Century,” defeating Grand Master Donald Byrne by sacrificing his Queen.

Artist Marcel Duchamp gave up art in order to become a chess Grand Master.

aaall said...

Marc, that's why I'm always suspicious of JHIs. Anyway, I'm not on a jury so different standard . In the OJ trial, Kato couldn't testify but his actions pretty much convinced me that OJ did it. I did go to the opinion (https://casetext.com/case/people-v-leuthold):

This was recovered from the defendant's hard drive:

"From the laptop drive, Lynn [Detective Lynn testified he was part of the Central Illinois Cyber Crime Working Group] uncovered internet search history. He recovered searches for the following terms:

"Blow to the head," "Hitting someone over the head to knock them out," "How easy is it to electrocute oneself," "How to electrocute," "How to erase everything from iPad," "How to erase everything from iPad II," "How to erase HTC Incredible," "How to hide the sound of a gunshot," "How to make GHB [a date rape drug] without distillation," "How to muffle a gunshot," "How to silence a Glock 40," "How to suppress a Glock 40," "How to suppress the sound of a gunshot," "Lethal Injection," "Murder Insulin," "Nitrogen P3," "Nondiabetic getting insulin shot," "Nondiabetic getting insulin SHO," "Sleep inducing drugs," "Sleep inducing knockout," "Suicide by injecting air," "Suicide insulin," "Suicide methods," "Visine knockout," "What fumes if inhaled can make you pass out," "Where to buy potassium chloride," "Where to buy pure potassium chloride in stores," "Herbal knockout drops," "How to erase HTC Incredible," "How to muffle a gunshot," "Lethal injection," "Nitrogen P3" "Sleep inducing knockout," "Where to buy pure potassium chloride," "How to kill yourself with insulin," "Bathtub electrocution," "Does insulin work for suicide," "How to best shoot yourself," and "How to cause sleep paralysis," and "Short-term furnished apartments, Pensacola, FL."

The black hoodie had defendant's DNA as well as GSR.

Didn't seem to be much of a defense and a two hour jury deliberation. Regardless of the legal hoops, it seems obvious he did it.

Marc Susselman said...

aaall,

I would agree that the circumstantial evidence would support a verdict by a preponderance of the evidence. I just do not believe that without the journal entries, they rise to the level of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The DNA on the hoodie was not an exact match with the defendant’s. It matched his profile, so that he could not be excluded.

I immediately concluded that OJ was guilty because he failed to offer a reward for any information leading to the actual killer, a reward he could have afforded, given his repeated professed love for Nicole Brown. He did not offer the reward, because he already knew who the actual killer was. But this would not have proved his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

aaall said...

What I found interesting was the apparent reaction of Kato to the assault based on my experience with akitas. They are highly protective and I can't see one standing by during a stranger assault.

The search plus the crime plus the DNA was enough for me. Obviously an affair. It seems there is family money so just get a divorce, marry the newer model, and find a new career. What's with all the spa trips anyway? Fundies are weird.

aaall said...

Why we can't have nice things:

https://newrepublic.com/article/172480/barre-seid-leonard-leo-dark-money-king

Marc Susselman said...

I guess we should count ourselves lucky that none of our Supreme Court justices take bribes, like that corrupt judge on the Ukrainian Supreme Court.

Jerry Brown said...

Marc, if someone were to be accused of a crime, what would be a good way to try to figure out which attorney you should try to hire? And how do public defenders generally rate compared to private attorneys? This is just out of curiosity, as I have not been accused of committing a crime. But if I was accused of something, I really have no idea how I would go about rating attorneys.

Sort of related- if you were in some kind of accident that wasn't your fault, would you go with one of the personal injury lawyers that constantly advertise on TV figuring they do that kind of case all the time?

Obviously, I am not an attorney. And very much hope I would not have to hire one for either reason.

LFC said...

Jerry Brown
You didn't ask me, but my sense, fwiw, is that it's hard to generalize about public defenders. Depends on the particular office and jurisdiction. But my impression is that they often have heavy case loads, which wd mean they can't devote as much time to any one case as a private lawyer could. However the federal public defender's office in DC has a v good reputation (a lot of "pedigreed" lawyers have worked there I think, incl at one pt Ketanji Brown Jackson). But they only take certain cases perhaps and only in federal ct.

If you were to need a criminal defense lawyer, you cd do a combination of 1) your own gathering of info - a fair amt shd be freely available online, though the Martindale Hubbell law directory you might well have to track down in a library in hard copy, coupled w 2) asking the local bar assn for advice or referrals.

I'm close to certain I'll never need one, but if I did I'd have people I cd ask for suggestions. Not everyone, of course, is in that position. But the likelihood of any commenter here ever needing one is very slight, I'd guess.

P.s. I don't want to go into any details here, but I actually knew two people who were criminally prosecuted for something in fed ct quite a few yrs ago. Not close friends but I knew them, and I attended one day of the trial. That (being charged and tried) is not something you want to go through. So don't commit a crime that goes beyond something like jaywalking (e.g. no fraud, no embezzlement etc.) and unless you're doing sociological research (and perhaps even if you are) don't hang out in a rough part of town at 3 a.m. on a Sat. night.

Marc Susselman said...

Jerry,

Adding to what LFC wrote above, it is difficult evaluating attorneys, but here are some suggestions. Regarding a criminal case, if one can afford to retain a private attorney, that is preferable to having a public defender assigned to defend you. Many public defenders are well qualified, but they are overworked and underpaid. They generally will not have time to devote to a complicated case, and the government does not sufficiently subsidize their retaining investigators or experts. So, you are better off going with a private criminal attorney. I would ask what their win/loss record was. No attorney will 100% of their cases, but the higher the percentage, the more likely the more qualified the attorney is. What kind of criminal cases do they specialize in – robberies, white collar crime, murder? If the attorney was a former prosecutor, that is a plus. And although many well qualified attorneys did not attend an Ivy League law school, I would prefer an attorney who did, over a less well known law school, especially if I needed an appellate criminal attorney.

Regarding personal injury lawyers, the attorneys that advertise the most are not necessarily the best. They churn their cases. Ask your neighbors if they have hired any attorneys and how satisfied they were. In a recent comment I indicated that I was gong to contact Morgan & Morgan in Texas, the largest personal injury law firm in the country, which advertises a lot, to propose that they sue the manufacturer of the AR-15 which was used in the mall massacre a few weeks ago. I called their office in Houston to ask for the email address of their principal attorney. The receptionist asked if I was calling about a new case, or a case on file. When I said neither, I just want the email address of your principal, he hung up on me. I called several times, and got the same response. I would never recommend the Morgan & Morgan law firm to anyone, not because they were rude to me, but because given that they had not properly trained their receptionist was a sign to me that their attorneys are equally not attentive to detail.

Marc Susselman said...

Post-script:

Regarding personal injury attorneys, I would ask how many of their past cases have they settled, how many have they tried, and of those they tried, how many did they win and and what was the amount of the judgment. A lot of personal injury attorneys prefer to settle their cases because they are not willing to go to the mat and try them. The more cases a personal injury attorney has tried, and won, the better the attorney.

Jerry Brown said...

Thank you LFC and Marc.