Doug Jones: members of Congress and “representation”

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “expat” writes:

I hope the Reps learn to use the Jones victory to break the stranglehold of the Clinton/Pelosi/Schumer gang on Dems in other areas. Strange started this by reminding Alabama voters that Jones has to represent them. In WV, Manchin is also not in lockstep with the party elite. Keep up the pressure by evaluating all representatives on how well they are really representing their voters.

Interesting thought. I’ve read comments and articles on other blogs that evince the hope that Jones will be more moderate than the vast majority of Democrats in the Senate and will vote with the Republicans sometimes. The reasoning behind this thought is that Alabama is a conservative state, Jones presented himself during the election as being more a moderate sort of Democrat, and if he wants to have a chance at re-election he needs to represent what Alabamans want and not just vote in lockstep with the other Democrats.

Well, that would be nice, and it’s certainly possible, but I would be very surprised indeed if it were to actually happen. What expat refers to as the Clinton/Pelosi/Schumer gang’s stranglehold on Dems is very firm and I don’t see Jones as especially likely to buck it. I don’t know exactly when the Democrats became such strict party-liners, but it certainly was firmly entrenched during Pelosi and Reid’s tenures (Pelosi became Minority Leader in 2003 and Speaker in 2007; Reid was either Minority or Majority Whip or Leader during just about the entire 21st Century until his recent retirement).

The Democratic Party used to have more diversity of opinion, more moderates who sometimes voted with Republicans. That’s been eroding, and I think the ostracism of Joe Lieberman, which occurred between 2006 and 2008 and contrasted with his nomination for VP in 2000, was a turning point. The Party made it clear there was no room for him, and he obliged by leaving it in many (not all) ways.

Republicans, on the other hand, do not have the same “discipline” and have not just some members with different views but whole wings with different views. Those who bemoan the GOP’s inability to enforce similar discipline to the Democrats ignore the very real differences in the philosophical makeup and balance within each party.

But what of Jones? When he enters the Senate he will be Alabama’s representative, but he will caucus with the Democrats and be subject to whatever pressures are placed on him. My guess is that he will vote straight Democratic when it matters, but might be allowed to stray outside the party line just for show when his vote doesn’t matter. After all, we have a representative government, not a democracy, and once he’s in office the only check on him is the threat of expulsion from the Senate (which does not happen because of the way a member votes) or the desire to please constituents so that he can be re-elected.

Jones has been an attorney his entire life until now, so he has no record as a representative in a legislature, not even at the state level. During the campaign he presented himself as a moderate who would “reach across the aisle”:

Former Alabama Democratic Party chair Giles Perkins described Jones as “a moderate, middle-of-the-road guy.” Describing his own views, Jones said that “If you look at the positions I’ve got on health care, if you look at the positions I [have] got on jobs, you should look at the support I have from the business community; I think I’m pretty mainstream.” Jones’ campaign has emphasized “kitchen table” issues such as healthcare and the economy. He has called for bipartisan solutions to those issues, and pledged to “find common ground” between both sides of the aisle.

Jones’ Wiki entry then goes on to list his actual positions on actual issues that might come up for a vote. On reading them, I conclude that he will almost always vote with the other Democrats because he is with them on almost all issues, no matter how he chose to describe himself during the election in order to appeal to Alabama voters. He’ll due to be in office until 2020, and since he’s not a career politician I don’t see him as necessarily even wanting to be re-elected after that year. He can easily just go back to lawyering if he’s annoyed the people of Alabama by blocking much of what they support during his Senate tenure.

One of the only more moderate stances I see Jones as having is that he favors reducing corporate taxes—although, tellingly, he doesn’t support the GOP tax bill. He also supports more defense spending if it benefits Alabama (“particularly in the areas around NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal”).

Hey, who knows, maybe Jones really will reach across that aisle and support “bipartisan solutions.” I see no real indication of it, however, and I think that in recent years that’s the way it goes for almost every Democrat who’s managed to take office in a more conservative state. The Republicans who are elected in more liberal states—such as, for example, Susan Collins—have a tendency to be far more responsive to their constituents’ more liberal positions. and far more bipartisan, than their Democratic counterparts in conservative states, even if conservatives hate someone like Collins for it.

Strzok/Page and the myth of objectivity

The New Neo Posted on by

From what I’ve seen of the coverage of the Strzok/Page texts, the whole story is already being successfully minimized. The reaction of everyone but some of those on the right appears to be “So what? There’s no proof they did anything.”

But the bias these two demonstrated was extreme and ran a profound risk of being prejudicial. Since they—especially Strzok, from what we know so far—worked on investigating the very people they had such a strong aversion to (Trump) and such a strong approval for (Clinton), how could we ever assume that what they did—that is, the decisions they made in their official capacities—were caused by an objective appraisal of the evidence before them rather than their pre-existing prejudices? I don’t think that’s possible to prove or disprove, in part because we actually don’t know (and may never know) what decisions they were responsible for, and in part because it is very difficult to tell whether a person is capable of being objective or not when there are strong pre-existing opinions. One thing we do know is that opinions like that are difficult to overcome and create a strong presumption of prejudice that could easily affect decisions.

It takes a lot of effort and skill and self-awareness to be objective, because we all have opinions. But the line on lawyers (and on reporters, for that matter) is that they are cool professionals who can put those pre-conceptions and expectations and judgments aside and look at a situation fairly.

I titled this with the phrase “myth of objectivity,” but it’s not really a myth—not totally, anyway. It’s a goal, and I believe some people can achieve it. But I also believe that’s very rare, and it takes some struggle and a great deal of integrity and devotion to the idea that objectivity is of overwhelming importance. It also takes extreme self-examination, because people tend to be unaware of how much their expectations are affecting what they see and the judgments they make.

How can an extremely partisan person be objective? Does it ever happen? And how often does it happen? Is there anyone in public life (or government, or the DOJ) who’s only mildly partisan, or who if extremely partisan is capable of objectivity?

Can people with the degree of partisanship that the Strzok and Page texts reveal ever be objective? Haven’t they passed a point of obvious no-return that invalidates their participation in any investigation of those about whom they’re so very partisan? I certainly believe so.

And at what point does that happen? And how can we ever know? Who makes that judgment? After all, it’s not like they were writing anti-Trump jibes publicly on Twitter, for all the world to see.

Instead we find hidden partisanship, secret hatred, and an intent to save the republic though their jobs. And how would that have been accomplished (Page alludes to a possible “path” by which they can prevent Trump’s election, but it’s rejected as too risky and so we never learn what it might have been)? And how can you prove that something of the sort either happened or didn’t happen? Are the texts enough evidence, or did they communicate it in other ways?

And how many others are there with roles in the investigations who were and who are every bit as partisan as Strzok and Page? The federal government agencies are loaded with them, and the entire legal profession leans very heavily towards the same partisanship (liberal and/or leftist).

Lawyers are generally expected to be able to put aside their own opinions to work fully on behalf of their clients, whoever those clients might be. So lawyers like to think they can be objective and fair no matter what. If they can’t be objective they’re not supposed to take the case.

Andrew McCarthy—whose analyses I usually agree with—takes an interesting position on the Strzok/Page texts:

But I believe that McCarthy has let his status as a lawyer, and his feeling of identification with other lawyers, lead him astray on this. In other words, he is defensive because he has made enormous efforts to be objective, and it is something he believes all lawyers should do and are capable of doing. He says he speaks crudely (and I’m sure in an opinionated way) about politics in private, and the idea is that he is objective when acting in his official capacity as a lawyer.

But I very much doubt he’s ever been tasked with evaluating a politician with so much at stake (the presidency, in this case) and making a decision on whether that person has committed a crime, when he has such strong negative feelings about the election and has concluded that the person is a danger to the country. I can’t imagine that such a situation wouldn’t require recusal from the case. It would take superhuman strength to maintain objectivity in the face of that sort of prejudice, to the point where the person him/herself cannot be the judge either of the politician or of his/her own capacity to be fair.

And there is no parallel to Trump’s tweets—Trump is a politician, not a lawyer tasked with the job of investigating a politician. Trump is expected to be highly partisan, as are all politicians.

California: the homeless poor and the temporarily homeless rich

The New Neo Posted on by

Ironic:

The blaze that swept through the hills of Bel-Air last week, destroying six homes and damaging a dozen others, was sparked by a cooking fire at a homeless encampment in a nearby ravine, Los Angeles officials said Tuesday.

The encampment was nestled in a canyon several hundred feet from Sepulveda Boulevard and the 405 Freeway, hidden from passing cars. For several years, it had been home to an unknown number of people, officials said.

That’s an area I know very very well. I used to pass that way on my journey to my ballet classes years ago.

Investigators said the fire had not been set deliberately and they have not found any of the people who lived there. The camp ”” one of scores of makeshift communities that have grown along freeways, rivers and open space across Los Angeles ”” was largely destroyed in the fire, leaving authorities with little evidence…

Nickie Miner, vice president of the Bel Air-Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council, said residents had long worried about the fire hazard from hillside homeless encampments, but “all the agencies’ hands seemed to be tied.”

“We knew it was only going to be a matter of time before something horrible happened,” Miner said.

Miner said she was skeptical of the proposed campaign to educate homeless people about fire risks. Los Angeles needs a massive regulatory overhaul like the one that followed the 1961 Bel-Air fire, she said, which should include eliminating hillside encampments.

The article goes on to say that the homeless population in the area has been growing. I’m not the least bit surprised, because rents have been growing as well, and the weather in southern California means that tent living is highly possible (compared to an area such as New England, for example). Although Los Angeles is a huge city, it’s mostly suburban and a great many of those suburban areas are surrounded by empty stretches of canyon and hillside, good for hiding such tent dwellings and highly subject to fire because of dry brush.

The homeless problem is a big one, and growing. It’s not even just a question of building affordable housing, although I assume that would be of some help. But a certain proportion (I’ve read differing estimates) of the homeless are mentally ill and/or addicts and/or alcoholics, and resist efforts to treat them or move them into housing, temporary or otherwise.

Alabama special election: Look for the silver lining…

The New Neo Posted on by

…in the Moore loss, and there are several possibilities:

(1) On this blog I have defended Moore from the sexual allegations because of a principle I hold to—and apply to members of both parties—which is that unsubstantiated allegations are always to be taken with a grain of salt. But Moore himself was someone I have considered to be one of the weakest candidate ever to have run for the Senate, and as soon as he was nominated I felt (and/or feared) that that seat was potentially at risk even before a single sexual allegation against Moore had surfaced. Moore is a loose cannon with a strong propensity for saying outrageous and difficult-to-defend things (while completely lacking in Trump’s smarts and cunning). If elected, he would have been continually offending nearly everyone in sight. Therefore the GOP would have been constantly needing to defend him, and constantly being put in the position of standing by their man when their man was very problematic indeed. In other words, Moore was the perfect person for the Democrats to have in the Senate to kick around. Now they’ve lost that golden opportunity. And since even the solid-red GOP voters of Alabama have rejected him, it will be hard for the Democrats to call them amoral (immoral?) troglodytes any more.

(2) Many people are saying that now Democrats will find women with sexual allegations against every single GOP candidate and trot them out with perfect timing, prior to elections. I have little doubt that this is true (and it was already being done to a certain extent, i.e. Herman Cain and Trump). The Democrats’ “sacrifice” of Franken and Conyers was part of the preparation for doing just that, after years of cozying up to alleged or in some cases proven sexual predators such as Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Jerry Studds. However, it occurs to me that—just as with the Salem with trials—this pattern may not be able to go on forever before a significant number of voters start to think it’s excessive and begin to get suspicious. So there might be a backlash. I don’t know if that will happen, but I think the Democrats could overplay their hand on this one. Flushed with the triumph of the victory over Moore in Alabama, they would do well to remember that Moore was probably one of the very weakest and most vulnerable to such an approach, considering that he apparently did date teenagers when he was in his thirties. Moore may have been guilty of coming on sexually to a 14-year old and/or sexually assaulting a 16-year-old (and we still have no idea whether he is innocent or guilty of either charge), but we do know that he’s either guilty of those charges or he was perfectly positioned to be the target of false charges. To much of the electorate, both things (guilty, or “credibly” guilty) are nearly the same thing with the same effect. But fortunately, not everyone in the GOP is vulnerable to the degree Moore was.

(3) I’m not so sure that the loss of one vote in the Senate means so very much right now, although the conventional wisdom is that it does and I tend to agree. But the GOP in the Senate was going to have to unite more if they wanted to get much legislation passed, whether they had that seat or not. A loss of a vote is important, but the need for unity doesn’t change.

(4) I wish GOP voters would be smarter about who they choose in primaries to be their candidates. It’s not enough that a candidate be a rebel against the GOPe, or markedly conservative. He (or she) has to have some sort of more universal appeal and come across as worthy of national office.

(5) Steve Bannon’s stock has fallen. And maybe, just maybe, he’s learned something, although I wouldn’t bet on it.

The Strzok/Page texts make it clear that these two people were fully capable of an objective assessment of all things Trump and Clinton

The New Neo Posted on by

Not. Not. NOT.

I’m not sure what I expected—I expected something pretty bad, because otherwise the two would not have been removed, and it would not have been kept so hush-hush.

But it’s still quite something to read what Strzok and Page were brazenly texting each other while at their respective jobs, without any sense that their texts would ever be read. And this guy is a counter-intelligence officer? I have to say that if I ever was going to write messages so incriminating, I’d make sure they were in a medium that could never, never ever, be seen by anyone else. Maybe I’d send them by carrier pigeon, and then I’d flush the papers down the toilet.

A sampler:

On Aug. 6, Page texted Strzok a New York Times article about Muslim lawyer Khzir Khan, who became embroiled in a war of words with Trump after Khan spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

“Jesus. You should read this. And Trump should go f himself,” Page wrote in a message attached to the article.

“God that’s a great article,” Strzok answered. “Thanks for sharing. And F TRUMP.”

I always say F*** whoever it is I’m being objective and fair about. Don’t you?

More:

And then we have this announcement:

The co-founder of Trump dossier firm Fusion GPS confirmed in court filings on Tuesday that he met last year with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and hired Ohr’s wife to help with the opposition research firm’s investigation of Donald Trump.

Glenn Simpson said in a declaration filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. that he met “at [Ohr’s] request” weeks after the presidential election. Simpson stated that Ohr, who recently held the position of deputy assistant attorney general, sought the meeting “to discuss our findings regarding Russia and the election.”…

In addition to his meeting with Simpson, Bruce Ohr also met last year with dossier author Christopher Steele. Fox News reported last week that Ohr’s meetings with Steele occurred before the election.

Ohr still works at the Justice Department, but he was stripped of one of his positions last Wednesday after Fox News inquired about his meetings with Simpson and Steele. He remains as director of Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.

Nellie Ohr’s work for Fusion GPS ”” which Simpson referred to as “confidential” ”” was revealed Monday night. Fox News reported that she worked for the oppo firm during the presidential campaign. It was unclear until Simpson’s disclosure whether she worked directly on Trump-related matters.

Will anything actually come of these revelations? Nothing came of the exposure of the politicization and weaponizing of the IRS, did it?

Hate to be cynical, but I’m feeling that way at the moment. I think a lot of people are getting away, if not with murder in the literal sense, then with using the mechanism of government to conspiratorially subvert the republic. And funny thing, they seem to think they are being noble in protecting us from Donald Trump, whom they see as the real tyrant.

Open thread for results of Alabama special election

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m reading that Moore is toast, and then that maybe he’s not. I haven’t a clue which it is.

I do know that the minute I heard Moore had won the GOP primary in Alabama I felt a sinking feeling, because he was a problematic candidate even before the sexual allegations came out.

We’ll…….see. I have no idea what will happen. It all has to do with the different areas of Alabama that are reporting, so although Moore is ahead at the moment the idea is that he’s not ahead by as much as he might need to be at this point to win once results from the more heavily Democratic areas come in.

UPDATE 10:30: Just about all the networks are calling it for Jones.

If that holds up (and I assume it will), then a combination of Moore’s inherent weakness as a candidate and recent allegations of sexual abuse caused a red state to turn blue—at least, for now. This seat will be in Democratic hands until 2020, and the GOP majority in the Senate was already very small. This makes it razor thin.

UPDATE 12:30 AM: And for now, Trump takes the high road. He never was a Moore enthusiast, to be sure:

Moore: the plan seems to be…

The New Neo Posted on by

…to kick Moore out of the Senate if he manages to win.

That’s why Franken was sacrificed—a fake “sacrifice” for the party since the Democratic governor of Minnesota will be appointing a Democrat in his place.

It will be very interesting if they try to kick out an elected senator who was elected when the people already knew of his alleged wrongdoing, and there is no trial pending and certainly no conviction of any level of crime. I believe that if this happens, then all people (especially men) in public life will become fair game for accusations, and that the process will definitely include some false accusations orchestrated for political and/or other reasons. It’s already that way, of course, but it will become more extreme.

At the time of the witch trials, Increase Mather said that it was better that ten witches go free than that one innocent man be condemned. Flip that around and you have today’s climate. The problem is that sexual abuse does exist, and some people are guilty of it, but with the he-said/she-said nature of the accusations it is fiendishly (I use the word purposely) difficult to tell truth from fiction.

Trump’s cunning

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed the word “cunning” in the headline of a piece by Spengler entitled “Trump’s Courage and Cunning Confound His Opponents.”

He goes on to say:

I can think of no politician with his combination of courage and cunning since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to whom I compared the then president-elect in a December 2016 essay for Standpoint.

Well, I haven’t yet read that essay for Standpoint. And I don’t see an FDR figure in Trump. But I do think he has courage, and I especially think that “cunning” is a good—if ambiguous—word for a quality in Trump I’ve tried to describe before.

This past Saturday, for example, I wrote:

I’ve never been keen on these “the president is an idiot!!” stories, even when I was a Democrat and they were about Republican presidents or candidates whom I disliked. Reagan seemed smart enough to me, rather than an “amiable dunce,” although I never voted for him. So did Bush in 2000 (didn’t vote for him then; voted for him in 2004)…

Trump is more unusual, to say the least. But I’ve never seen any indication he isn’t plenty smart, although not in a conventional “academic” way””at least, he certainly doesn’t express himself that way. Whether his popular touch is an affectation or the way he just is (I think more the latter than the former), it’s worked awfully well for him so far.

When I look up the word “cunning” I get a variety of definitions, some of them indicating a positive quality and some indicating a mostly negative one, so “cunning” is a great word for Trump-haters and Trump-likers and Trump-in-betweeners. Here is a typical one of the more pejorative sort:

skill employed in a shrewd or sly manner, as in deceiving; craftiness; guile

And here’s one of the more complimentary ones:

1 : very good or very clever at using special knowledge or skills or at getting something done
2 : showing keen understanding

Trump’s cunning also shows in his almost uncanny ability to get his opponents to trip over their own feet, particularly the MSM.

I think it’s pretty clear…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that no one has a clue who will win the Alabama special election tomorrow. Polls have become rather useless, and in this case they’re contradictory anyway.

By the way, do you recall why Alabama has to choose a new senator? Because Jeff Sessions became Trump’s AG. A lot of people on the right have been very displeased with Sessions’ performance in that capacity, and if Moore ends up losing tomorrow my guess is that we’ll hear a lot more criticism of Sessions.

[ADDENDUM: More—much more—here.]

I used a used toothpick

The New Neo Posted on by

I was recently in New York and went to an upscale grocery store of the kind that has lots of samples of food in little displays, with containers of toothpicks nearby for the customer to use to spear the delicacies.

Olives, pickled vegetables, crackers, and infinitesimal cubes of cheese that are so tiny it takes some skill to hook one. But I was determined. I took a toothpick from a plastic container, stabbed a cheese tidbit or two, ate them (they were pretty good, and I was hungry), and then looked for a place to throw out the used toothpick.

It was only then that I noticed a second plastic container just like the first one, only the toothpicks in the second were placed in a slightly more orderly and less haphazard fashion than in the first. Oh-oh! I had apparently taken a toothpick from the “used” bin (nearly indistinguishable from the “unused” bin), and re-used it.

Can I sue?

The killing of Daniel Shaver

The New Neo Posted on by

The killing of Daniel Shaver by a police officer didn’t get much national coverage when it first happened two years ago in Arizona, or even during the trial of the officer. But post-trial, a video of the killing has been released, and it is so shocking that now the case has become national news.

At Red State, Patterico has come up with a theory that defends the police officer, but I don’t think it’s an especially convincing one. I have not watched the video because I have a tremendous reluctance to watch videos of any human being being killed. But I’ve read many descriptions, and it’s evident that the heart of the problem was the incredibly contradictory and nearly crazy instructions given to Shaver (who was drunk at the time), instructions that literally could not be followed:

Brailsford was called to a hotel in Mesa back in January of 2016 on reports that someone had been pointing a rifle out of a window. Daniel Shaver, very drunk at the time, had apparently been messing around with a few pellet guns that he used in his pest control job. Exceedingly stupid behavior on his part, but not deserving of the death penalty. Still, Brailsford and the other responding officers could not have known that they were pellet guns, so it’s understandable that they were on edge.

But this is where it gets not-so-understandable. Shaver emerges stumbling out of his hotel room. He’s told to get on the ground, and he immediately complies. Shaver attempts to follow every instruction shouted at him, but he has difficulty because the instructions make no sense. Here’s a verbatim transcript of everything Brailsford told Shaver to do, as he pointed his rifle at him and threatened repeatedly to kill him: “lie on the ground,” “put both hands on top of your head and interlace your fingers,” “take your feet and cross your left foot over your right foot,” “keep your feet crossed,” “put both hands flat in front of you” (while they’re on his head and interlaced?), “push yourself to a kneeling position” (have you ever tried to push yourself up while your arms are extended all the way in front of you?), “put both hands in the air,” “crawl towards me” (with his hands in the air?), “stop,” “crawl,” “keep your legs crossed” (while crawling?), “put your hands in the air,” “keep your legs crossed,” “crawl” (so he’s supposed to crawl again with his hands in the air and his legs crossed). In the midst of this flurry of hysterical, arbitrary commands, as Brailsford continually reminds Shaver that he’ll die if he “makes a mistake,” Shaver cries and begs for his life.

Then comes the fatal moment. As Shaver crawls, awkwardly and wobbly, trying to keep up with this deadly game of Simon Says, his pants begin to fall down. He reaches to pull them up and Brailsford immediately sprays him with bullets. Shaver followed his ridiculous instructions for five minutes and still wound up dead.

Of course, Brailsford’s defense was that Shavers [sic] reached for his waistband. Fine. But what was he worried about? That Shaver would pull a rifle from his basketball shorts? And even if he did have a gun, how was he going to pull it out and get off a shot from the crawling position?

However, the person giving those crazy impossible-to-follow orders was not the guy who killed Shaver. The guy talking was Sgt. Charles Langley, who retired from the police department a few months after the shooting. Both Langley (the officer talking) and Brailsford, the officer shooting, say they feared Shaver was reaching for a gun, but the shooter Brailsford hadn’t issued the ridiculous orders. I believe that it was actually Langley who caused Shaver’s death, but what could he be charged with, since he didn’t do the shooting? Negligent speech? I don’t think there is any crime that meets that description; he wasn’t yelling “fire” in a theater, he was just messing up the instructions to the suspect.

The whole situation is absolutely terrible. And it seems quite clear that Shaver was actually trying to obey the officer’s orders rather than defying him in any way.

One of the reasons we didn’t hear much about this case is that the video was suppressed by the court till after the trial was over, and it’s the video that is so very distressing. It’s also likely that if Shaver had been black the furor wouldn’t have waited for the video release; this could have been an even bigger story than Brown, since Shaver is clearly trying to comply and never attacked any officer.

Had Shaver been black and with the same set of facts, the shooting officer’s actions would have been ascribed to anti-black bigotry. But just because a person is black it does not mean that every error of judgment on the part of an officer, including a fatal error of judgment, is due to bigotry. Everyone in this story was white, as far as I know, and Shaver still ended up dead.

What was that name again? (Garrison Keillor, unperson)

The New Neo Posted on by

[UPDATE 6:30 PM: It’s come to my attention that MPR may have done this because, when it severed its relationship with Keillor and his companies, it may have lost at least some of its rights to post the material from his shows at its website. See this. Of course, one of the reasons they may have severed the relationship in the first place is that they were eager to divest themselves of all connection with him. It’s not clear what the legal situation actually is in regard to the archives; the message was that MPR does not fully own the rights.]

One of the most fascinating portions of Orwell’s brilliant Nineteen Eighty-Four is Newspeak, an invented language that he presents in his dystopic book as the language of Ingsoc (English Socialism). I read that book when I was about twelve years old and it scared the proverbial crap out of me, but I sure remember a lot about it.

Like the term “unperson”:

An unperson is someone who has been “vaporized”””not only killed by the state, but erased from existence. Such a person would be written out of existing books, photographs and articles so that no trace of their existence could be found in the historical record. The idea is that such a person would, according to the principles of doublethink, be forgotten completely (for it would be impossible to provide evidence of their existence), even by close friends and family.

Mentioning an unperson’s name, or even speaking of their past existence, is itself thoughtcrime; the concept that the person may have existed at one time and has disappeared cannot be expressed in Newspeak.

That’s pretty extreme. But it’s based on the sort of thing that actually happened in the USSR.

And now (except for the actual killing part), it’s apparently happening to Prarie Home Companion’s Garrison Keillor.

Whether you previously liked Keillor or not, let me just say that, although I’ve never been a Keillor fan (I just don’t get “bachelor farmer” humor, for example), and although I disagree with what I know of his politics, what has happened to his oeuvre is really chilling and also sad:

Keillor and his entire body of work from “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Writer’s Almanac” have been effectively erased from the archives of MPR, along with the work of all the other storytellers, singers, poets and production staff who made the shows successful.

..[But] Spacey’s movies still remain available, as are those that Harvey Weinstein produced. If Hollywood were to follow MPR’s Memory Hole model, we would also lose “The Usual Suspects,” “American Beauty,” and “L.A. Confidential.” We would lose “The English Patient,” “Shakespeare in Love” and “Pulp Fiction,” and hundreds of other movies and television shows.

We don’t really want that to happen. The internet is already fragile, brimming with rotten links and ephemeral websites. And when news organizations are bought out or go bankrupt, as was the case most recently with The Gothamist, the work of reporters disappears, a loss to a community’s understanding of its past…

As consumers of news, entertainment and art, we should be able to choose what we want to watch. If you’re uncomfortable with the work of sleazy movie stars, celebrities and producers, then you can ignore them. That shouldn’t be MPR’s call.

Ah, but the erasure of history is a thing now, don’t you know? Remember the tearing down of the monuments?

Sometimes I think people have gone mad in their race to show who’s the most righteous of all in pursuing and destroying the witches of our age.

[NOTE: By the way, although MPR has never said what the charges were except that they involved “sexual misconduct,” which covers a multitude of sins, we do have Keillor’s description. If the following is actually the gist of Keillor’s alleged offense (and we have no way to know if it is or isn’t; there certainly might be lot more, but the silence from MPR is odd), the punishment seems way out of line:

“I put my hand on a woman’s bare back,” he told Minneapolis’ Star-Tribune, “I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called”¦

Keillor adds:

If I had a dollar for every woman who asked to take a selfie with me and who slipped an arm around me and let it drift down below the beltline, I’d have at least a hundred dollars. So this is poetic irony of a high order.

So, is he alleging that women are regularly feeling him up in the genitalia while taking selfies? A hundred women? Garrison Keillor? Forgive me if I find this a trifle difficult to believe.]

[ADDENDUM: In the comments, it’s been pointed out to me that maybe Keillor is saying the 100 women groped him in the butt rather than the genitals. On reflection, I think that may be it. I’m not in the habit of feeling men up when I’m not already in a very intimate relationship with them, so I may not be up on my technique. When I read the word “around” I took it literally, as in “all the way around.” But I see that that’s not a reading justified by the text, as they say.

So if it’s the butt, I still wonder about 100 woman. But maybe.]