Open thread 5/10/21

The New Neo Posted on by

I had almost forgotten this one, but once Brenda started to sing I remembered most of the words – in particular that great line, “Come in daughter, that’s enough for tonight.” When I looked up the lyrics to the song, though, it’s rendered as, “Come here, darlin’, that’s enough for tonight.” That makes less sense, and that’s not what I heard in 1960 and it’s not what I hear now.

And why does everyone in the audience seem to be chewing gum? Was the whole audience given free gum as some kind of promotional gimmick, or did everyone chew gum constantly anyway back in 1960?

And although I’ve never thought of this as a telephone song, whoever designed the backdrops for the show seemed to think it was. I also perceive her as lip-syncing. That was very common back then for technical reasons, but there’s no question Brenda Lee could have knocked it out of the park singing live:

Lee was one of the biggest singers of the 60s in terms of charting hits, surpassed in that decade only by Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Ray Charles. She had been singing professionally since childhood (she’s only about 15 here) and supporting her impoverished family, much like the Bee Gees. Also, like the Bee Gees, when she was a child her family was so poor that she had to share a bed with two of her siblings.

For Mother’s Day: my mother, the essayist

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the tasks that fell to me since my mother’s death years ago was to go through her papers and photos.

Some “getting rid of” candidates were obvious. Medical records, of which my mother kept very many. Not needed any more, now that she was gone. Ditto her lists of things to do, address and appointment books, and random jottings.

But the rest! A few letters from me in high school and college. Greeting cards. At least a hundred letters from my father when they were dating in the late 30s when he was traveling constantly while working for the government as a lawyer. Those tend to take the form of descriptions of cities and small towns visited, but here and there are some more personal nuggets. A scrapbook of clippings about her activities in the community. A similar one made by her mother my grandmother, and one compiled by her grandfather my great-grandfather. That last one contains his wedding invitation, circa 1883.

Yearbooks. As an only child of an only child, my mother also inherited all the family photos going back to Civil War times and earlier. Some are of people I knew but many lovely ones are of the total strangers who must be my ancestors, and whose identities are lost.

Sorting them out has been time-consuming, and the task is still incomplete many years later. But I try, especially with those things that seem of special interest.

For me that includes my mother’s writing – because she was a writer too, an essayist whose work was often published in local newspapers and who’d written poetry as a precocious child and young woman. I had seen many of her poems and essays before, but some were new to me.

Here’s an essay of my mother’s that I found and read for the first time about a year after her death. I thought it might be fun to publish it on the blog; I don’t think that would have bothered her in the least. It appears to be something she wrote at the age of 80 (during the 1990s) for a writing workshop in response to an exercise staged by the teacher. It’s written in longhand, with various cross-outs, but I’m impressed with how few corrections she had to make in the flow of her thoughts, and how graceful her expression was under the circumstances.

And she seemed to like the dash, too—just like me.

It appears that the teacher had played music for the class, lit some candles, and given the students a sheet of guidelines (these were not saved; I have a hunch my mother didn’t think too much of them), telling the students to write for a few minutes. Here’s what my mother produced:

80 years of living has immunized me somewhat to candles, music, and yes, even meditation—so I looked with a somewhat jaundiced eye at first on Guidelines—and what strikes me at once is the word “Proprioceptive”—what does it mean and where does it come from?

Isn’t that awful—but I do like words and I keep wondering about that one—

The music is delightful and I wonder what is making me put words on a yellow legal pad anyway—and why am I resistant—

Probably because I tend to have used humor as a shield all my life—it helped me overlook hurts, and raise children without going crazy, and a laugh has been like medicine—the best for me.

As an only child I looked for friends—-and it helped me acquire them and saw us through good days and bad.

My husband liked a “light view”—but now it is more difficult because people are different—more violent, angry, and sad. I cling to humor—if and when possible—and its not always possible anymore to find it.

Why am I writing about fun and laughter when I could pick anything? Perhaps it keeps me sane when the alleged golden years have crept up and facing the inevitable is too much. Like Scarlett O’Hara—if it’s unpleasant “I’ll think about that tomorrow”—

Writing fiction is almost impossible for me because “truth is stranger than.” Coincidence, friendships, travels, the endless variety in people who cross your life are enough—there is little laughter these days and I plan to hold onto just as much as possible.

Now I have made a neat ending but the time is not up and the music and candles are still with me—and with them go gratitude for good luck and good health and the ability to cope with what comes—so far so good.

My mother and I were temperamentally very different, although we both liked humor. One of the things we shared was writing, and perhaps that’s why her essays mean a lot to me. I was especially struck in this one by her saying she couldn’t write fiction. I’ve written quite a few short stories, but they’re not my natural genre and I gave up writing fiction about fifteen years ago and it’s been essays ever since.

Some of my earliest writing memories involve my mother helping me write. She was a fabulous typist (she could even use carbons, and boy was she fast on a manual!) and a good editor. When we were young, my brother and I would leave our essays for her to read and correct for grammar errors, and she knew what she was doing.

My mother was also an excellent natural untrained dancer. But even though my mother couldn’t really sing, when I saw Bebe Daniels in the movie “42nd Street” on TV as a child, I was transfixed because the actress reminded me so very much of my mother. Here’s Bebe:

bebeDaniels

And here’s my mother, at the time of her graduation from college:

JGraduation

I thought everyone had an editor for a mother. I thought everyone had a mother who could write. Turns out they don’t.

More from Sebastian Haffner on the Nazi transition

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s another excerpt (you can find an earlier one here) from Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler, his 1930s description of what it was like to watch the Nazi takeover of Germany:

Many journals and newspapers disappeared from the kiosks – but what happened to those that continued to circulate was much more disturbing. You could not quite recognize them anymore…Old-established broadsheets such as the Berliner Tageblatt or the Vossische Zeitung changed into Nazi organs from one day to the next. In their customary, measured, educated style they said exactly the same things that were spewed out by the Angriff or the Volkischer Beobachter, newspapers that had always supported the Nazis. Later, one became accustomed to this and picked up occasional hints by reading between the lines…

To some extent, the editorial staff had been replaced but frequently this straightforward explanation was not accurate. For instance, there was an intellectual journal called Die Tat (Action), whose content lived up to its name. In the final years before 1933 it had been widely read. It was edited by a group of intelligent, radical young people. With a certain elegance they indulged in the long historical view of the changing times. It was, of course, far too distinguished, cultured, and profound to support any particular political party – least of all the Nazis…[After the Nazis came to power everyone on staff but the editor] remained in post, but as a matter of course became Nazis without the least detriment to their elegant style and historical perspective – they had always been Nazis, naturally; indeed, better, more genuinely and more profoundly so than the Nazis themselves. It was wonderful to behold: the paper had the same typography, the same name – but without batting an eyelid it had become a thoroughgoing, smart Nazi organ. Was it a sudden conversion or just cynicism? Or had [the editors and writers] always been Nazis at heart? Probably they did not know themselves.

As with so many of Haffner’s descriptions of that time, this resonates. The details are different, of course, but the sense of relatively sudden and extreme change for the worse remains, as well as the phenomenon of shifting sands and editorial – as well as political – hypocrisy. This hypocrisy has occurred on both left and right, and I’m not just saying this in the name of some sort of vague even-handedness. I see it more on the left, among what used to be liberals or even some self-styled moderates, who have voted unhesitatingly with the most radical elements of their party. But I see it on the right in those such as George Will who for decades called themselves conservative – in fact, champions of conservatism – who took up with the left without seeming to miss a single beat because they were offended by the style of Donald Trump.

In 1930s Germany, at least we can say that the threats against people in that country by the Nazis were more severe than what we see today in this country. But the specter of Twitter mob cancellation or job loss seems to be powerful enough to effect change, as well as abject groveling. Then again, it’s getting worse, because dawn raids and prosecution (a la Rudy Giuliani) or investigation of witnesses who would dare to speak on the side of an unpopular defendant (a la Dr. Fowler, the Chauvin expert witness who is now being investigated by the state of Maryland) have a certain chilling effect.

It’s been sobering, to say the least, to learn how few people are actually dedicated to things they used to claim allegiance to such a freedom of speech, freedom of religion, or liberty in general. The response to COVID has brought that out as well. The number of supposedly moderate Democrats who watch Biden speak and read about his policies and say something like, “Finally the country is in good hands and I can relax!” is astonishing.

Back in 1941, journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote a provocative piece in Harper’s entitled, “Who Will Go Nazi?” It bears reading today, and when doing so one isn’t limited to speculating on who would follow along if Nazis took power. The larger question is: who will go tyrannical? The answer now, as then, is: a surprising number. We see today that some will do it for protection, some will do it for advancement, some will do it to virtue-signal, some will do it out of ignorance, and some will do it for revenge, or for fun, or for spite, or just to be trendy.

The economy surprises the “experts” – again

The New Neo Posted on by

It happens nearly every time, almost like Lucy and Charlie Brown and the football. Why are they called “experts”? Well, they’re expert at predicting what the left wishes will happen, and then they’re expert at being perpetually astonished at what actually does happen:

The April jobs report showed the U.S. added only 266,000 jobs during the month and the unemployment ticked up to 6.1%.

Economists are usually off the mark, but holy cow. They predicted 978,000 job growth and unemployment of 5.8%. I have never seen such a huge difference between prediction and numbers.

Miserable considering the U.S. started to see some growth at the end of former President Donald Trump’s term.

And the NY Times, for example, headlines an article about the report this way: “The Jobs Report: The Boom That Wasn’t/April’s anemic job creation was so out of line with what other indicators have suggested that it will take some time to unravel the mystery.”

Such a mystery! Such a puzzlement! Not only are people demoralized and worn out, not only are many people in blue cities frightened that the police won’t be allowed to protect them against, rioters and looters, but many people are still being paid to not work.

Facts may be stubborn things, but they can still be denied if the will to do so is strong:

How many people are paying attention? That’s a question I find myself asking a lot these days.

The show trial against Chauvin and the other officers marches on, this time at the federal level

The New Neo Posted on by

Today’s announcement:

A federal grand jury in Minnesota has voted to indict the four former Minneapolis police officers involved in the May 25, 2020, arrest of George Floyd, according to indictments unsealed Friday.

The three-count indictment names Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao. Specifically, Chauvin, Thao and Kueng are charged with violating Floyd’s right to be free from unreasonable seizure and excessive force. All four officers are charged for their failure to provide Floyd with medical care. Chauvin was also charged in a second indictment, stemming from the arrest and neck restraint of a 14-year-old boy in 2017.

The fact that EMTs had been called and were on their way doesn’t seem to matter. The fact that one of the officers, Lane, had suggested early on and then again that Floyd be rolled on his side and that Chauvin overruled him – doesn’t seem to matter. Does anyone else remember this?:

Lane, 37, had only been on the force for four days when he helped to restrain Floyd, according to his lawyer.

“My client is holding his legs, Mr. Floyd is saying he can’t breathe and my client says to the 20-year veteran Chauvin should we roll him over,” Gray said.

“Lane asked, should we roll him on his side and officer Chauvin said no,” Gray said. “Now, we’ve got a 20-year officer here and a four-day officer in my client.”

“Then later, my client again says, do you want to roll him on his side? This is right before the ambulance comes and again he’s not rolled on his side.”

Gray said that Lane “did not want to see the man die” and started to perform CPR on Floyd.

“My client is holding his feet. When the ambulance comes, my client goes in the ambulance. Four days on the force … and starts his own CPR, pushing down on his chest, which he did for a lengthy period of time, until they got the machine on,” according to Gray.

Chauvin, the 20-year veteran, overruled Lane. But Lane is charged, just like the rest of them. And all also face state charges as well. Speaking of which…

In the Rodney King incident and trial of 1991, which also featured inflammatory video evidence (although King was not killed, only injured), you may or may not recall the legal niceties. I’ll summarize them by saying that four police officers were charged by the state, three acquitted, and one received no decision on a single charge because of a split jury. The results was terrible riots in Los Angeles:

The rioting lasted six days and killed 63 people, with 2,383 more injured; it ended only after the California Army National Guard, the Army, and the Marine Corps provided reinforcements to re-establish control.

Note the force with which the riots were met, quite different from today’s reaction.

After that came the federal charges, because of the failure to find the men guilty. It’s worth looking at that trial in more detail. As you read this, please compare and contrast with today [my emphasis]:

After the acquittals and the riots, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) sought indictments of the police officers for violations of King’s civil rights…[T]he grand jury returned indictments against the three officers for “willfully and intentionally using unreasonable force” and against Sergeant Koon for “willfully permitting and failing to take action to stop the unlawful assault” on King…

…The jury found Officer Laurence Powell and Sergeant Stacey Koon guilty, and they were subsequently sentenced to 30 months in prison. Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno were acquitted of all charges.

During the three-hour sentencing hearing, US District Judge John G. Davies accepted much of the defense version of the beating. He strongly criticized King, whom he said provoked the officers’ initial actions. Davies said that only the final six or so baton blows by Powell were unlawful. The first 55 seconds of the videotaped portion of the incident, during which the vast majority of the blows were delivered, was within the law because the officers were attempting to subdue a suspect who was resisting efforts to take him into custody.

Davies found that King’s provocative behavior began with his “remarkable consumption of alcoholic beverage” and continued through a high-speed chase, refusal to submit to police orders and an aggressive charge toward Powell. Davies…concluded that Officer Powell never intentionally struck King in the head, and “Powell’s baton blow that broke King’s leg was not illegal because King was still resisting and rolling around on the ground, and breaking bones in resistant suspects is permissible under police policy.”

Mitigation cited by the judge in determining the length of the prison sentence included the suffering the officers had undergone because of the extensive publicity their case had received, high legal bills that were still unpaid, the impending loss of their careers as police officers, their higher risks of abuse while in prison, and their undergoing two trials. The judge acknowledged that the two trials did not legally constitute double jeopardy, but raised “the specter of unfairness”.

These mitigations were critical to the validity of the sentences imposed because federal sentencing guidelines called for much longer prison terms in the range of 70 to 87 months. The low sentences were controversial and were appealed by the prosecution. In a 1994 ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected all the grounds cited by Judge Davies and extended the terms. The defense appealed the case to the US Supreme Court. Both Koon and Powell were released from prison while they appealed to the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, having served their original 30-month sentences with time off for good behavior. On June 14, 1996, the high court partially reversed the lower court in a ruling, unanimous in its most important aspects, which gave a strong endorsement to judicial discretion, even under sentencing guidelines intended to produce uniformity.

There’s a lot there to mull over, as well as tremendous differences between then and now. I strongly suspect that, had the King incident taken place today, the riots would have occurred even before the initial trial, and that the men would have been found guilty in that trial. They would have been sentenced to the harshest possible sentence, and then they would have been tried by the feds as well.

The present situation is an obvious show trial, and it seems that very few people care, because Chauvin is a seemingly dislikeable person. The other accused officers have not had that much personal exposure compared to Chauvin, and it remains to be seen whether they will ever have a higher profile in the public’s minds or whether the taint of Chauvin will wholly become their taint. How many people care about them or their fate? I certainly do, and anyone who cares about justice should care about each individual and each case, but I believe that’s very rare in this day and age.

As Scott Johnson of Powerline writes:

I wonder if such a case has ever been brought when the perpetrators have already been convicted or have yet to be tried in pending state criminal proceedings. I may be missing something, but I am unaware of relevant precedent. Absent relevant precedent or further explanation, I can only comment that I find this aspect of the case performative and abusive.

That is my thought as well.

As with the King case, the court can say that the two trials do not legally constitute double jeopardy. The difference, of course, is – as Scott Johnson says – that Chauvin was convicted by the state in his first trial, and the others have yet to be tried but certainly have not been acquitted and the plan is for the state of Minnesota to try them. The unusual nature of this particular double prosecution may also not be double jeopardy in the technical sense – at least, that will be the prosecution’s argument – because the exact charges are different although they arise from the same set of acts. I submit that they not only raise “the specter of unfairness” but constitute actual unfairness, especially considering the highly serious nature of the crimes of which Chauvin has already been convicted. And I wonder whether an argument can be made that these federal charges, coming at this time – prior to sentencing on the state charges – have the goal of affecting the Minnesota sentencing in the first trial and making it even more harsh.

The state of justice in the US today is sickening. The DOJ is quite the Orwellian designation at this point.

[NOTE: I have already discussed that charge against Chauvin in the case of the 14-year-old.]

Sowell: on universities and race

The New Neo Posted on by

This video is a compilation from a bunch of interviews with Sowell over a period of many many years. One of the most interesting things about watching it is how consistent Sowell’s message has been on the subject of colleges, “diversity” programs of affirmative action, and teaching minority students that they are victims of systemic racism:

Telephone songs

The New Neo Posted on by

I hear that telephones are growing obsolete, at least in terms of using them for actual conversations. They’re really just voicemail services and computers, especially for people under the age of 50.

But the telephone used to be a big theme in popular music – and in life.

This one fairly sizzled:

This next song is one of my absolute favorite telephone songs. Scratch that – it’s actually my favorite:

From my youth:

This next one I never liked. Not my cup of tea. But it was big at the time, and it’s certainly about telephones. I have to say, though, that I did do my share of waiting anxiously by the phone for a boyfriend to call. This song was only possible before the advent of caller ID, because it relies on the singer not knowing who’s calling when the phone rings until she picks it up. Anticipation; it’s keeping me waiting:

And then there were the days of exchanges like “Beechwood”:

In 1978 we had this:

There are plenty more.

Caitlyn Jenner’s California campaign

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s that Caitlyn Jenner ad, in case you missed it:

There was a big discussion in this thread yesterday about Jenner’s candidacy. Here’s one of the many things I wrote in the comments:

That’s a brilliant ad. Of course, brilliant ads don’t necessarily win elections when the deck is stacked against you. But it really resonates. I’m not even talking about politics. In the last 50 years I’ve probably gone to California at least 100 times and maybe more. Lots of relatives and friends there and I lived there for a year as well. Each of my visits may have averaged a month ( usually summers and then over the holidays plus some of January). So you might say I’ve spent many many years there. I first went in 1960 but my regular visits started in 1970. So I remember it when it really was The Golden State, a wonderful place. And I’ve watched it change year by year.

I wonder how many people remember. After all, most voters are not my age.

I have a deep connection to California and have viewed its decline up close and personal. I can imagine that a lot of people who live there, and even some who vote for Democrats, are dismayed at what has happened to the state. Nevertheless, I don’t think Jenner has a chance of winning, nor does any Republican.

In the comments yesterday there was also a discussion about trans people in general and their mental stability. This was part of my answer to that:

Some trans people are very unstable. Some are somewhat unstable. Some are fine – I even know some personally who are fine and very stable and trustworthy. I wouldn’t generalize about one person by the category of people that person belongs to.

I’ll leave that to those who are into identity politics.

The first celebrity who ran for office that I can remember was Ronald Reagan, and he became the governor of California as his first general political office (he’d been president of the Screen Actors Guild prior to that). I’m not saying that Jenner is the least bit like Reagan except for being a celebrity rather than a politician, but since Reagan there have been a number of other celebrity governors, including Jesse Ventura of Minnesota (Reform Party) and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California (nominally GOP). Neither of the latter two covered themselves with glory.

On the Democrat side, we have Senator Al Franken, who left ignominiously after a mild infraction that was seized on at the height of MeToo (remember MeToo? Seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?). If you’re interested, you can see a list of actors and actresses who went into politics, most of them at a low level but some (George Murphy, Sonny Bono, Helen Gahagan Douglas) who rose higher. A lot of them are in California, which is no surprise.

It’s also not unusual for sports figures to go into politics. The one that came to mind for me was Bill Bradley, but there are plenty of others.

And then of course there’s Donald Trump, who was a highly successful reality TV star among many many other things at which he was successful in his life prior to becoming president.

Jenner has been both a reality TV personality and a huge sports figure, but in recent years has gained fame as a trans person. That last fact is somewhat unique, as far as I can tell, in the annals of American politics so far.