Alito, FDR, and Me.

Alito will probably be confirmed. Supreme Court appointees may be the most lasting legacy a President can leave, although they aren't always what the nominating President might hope for. Rehnquist, for instance, influenced this country's direction for 30 years. Presidents at best get 8. Bush has managed one knock-out so far: Roberts as Chief Justice. Roberts could very well serve for 30+ years. Many Presidents have understood the power of the Supreme Court: FDR tried to pack the Court to ensure his New Deal legislation would be ruled constitutional (he was certainly inventive: the plan was to expand the Court from nine to potentially 13 members). That plan didn't work, but FDR eventually managed 8 court appointments due to death or retirement.

Again, proving that some legacies are best left unclaimed, it was FDR's reconstituted Court that ruled FDR's Executive Order 9066, calling for the internment of Japanese-Americans, constitutional.

Now we have Alito, the man who belonged to the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a group established in 1972 to fight against Princeton's then-recent policy of admitting women and minorities (when anyone talks about these eastern "liberal" schools, one might want to dig deeper and ask why it is that so many of them held retrograde admissions and social policies for so long). Not only did Alito belong to this conservative group, but also he listed it as a feature on his job application in 1985 for the Reagan administration.

1985, people.

As The Nation points out, in 1983 the organization's organ Prospect had published an article lamenting the inroads women and minorities had made:

"People nowadays just don't seem to know their place," fretted a 1983 Prospect essay titled "In Defense of Elitism." "Everywhere one turns blacks and hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they're black and hispanic, the physically handicapped are trying to gain equal representation in professional sports, and homosexuals are demanding that government vouchsafe them the right to bear children."

Wow. And Alito is listing this organization as a feather in his CAP, so to speak?

Alito of course claims he had no idea. Really, he is "shocked, shocked" that this conservative organization would be misogynist, racist, and homophobic. Let's take his word on that and then ask what sort of judgement a man must have to list something on his resume about which he knows absolutely nothing.

Certainly, these are dark days, but I step back and allow myself at least a small amount of faith in a progress narrative: conservatives have always lost in the end. It may take fifty years, it may take 100 years, but in the end the conservative bloc -- that group that defends upperclass white heterosexual male privilege -- loses (and by the way, underneath those signifiers lurks the end aim of conservatism: service to Capital).

Build me a path from cradle to grave...

So right now my wife and daughter are en route to California. My son and I will be joining them on Friday. As adults we may be used to the jumble of our lives, being able to take trains, planes, or automobiles from this city to the next for a week, then back again, settling in for a day or two then hitting the road again. For children it's a difficult time. Young children like routine. They like to see the same things day after day. Stability in all things is beneficial to them: caregiver, mealtime, bedtime, home.

The strain of the past month and a half showed on my son's face this morning. As he ate breakfast he edged closer to me, until he was resting under my arm. He told me he missed Mommy. She'd been gone for about one hour. Since Thanksgiving, he's been in California and Pennsylvania as much as he's been in the District. It's hard to get back into a rhythm when you can't get settled.

But children are resilient. In the face of all this disruption, my son has begun to read. He started the week before winter break and has steadily recognized more words as the days have progressed. It would be nice if the only challenges children faced were the kind my son is facing: a temporary disruption due to family illness. So many children are left behind before they even get started: lack of access to schools and healthcare, lack of plain safe environments, the permanent disruption of living on the economic margins of society (whether in this country or another).

Last night we watched the PBS show Frontline: Country Boys. Set in eastern Kentucky, the filmmaker followed two boys for 3 years, from the age of 15 to 18. The challenges these two boys have faced far outweigh any obstacles I ever had to overcome in my life. They sometimes make the same dumb decisions that most teenagers make, but without the social safety net that many middle and upper class kids have to catch them; they also make the same incisive comments that many teenagers make, showing at times a deep understanding of their situations. This side of America rarely gets an airing: 90210, The OC, Laguna Beach, Saved by the Bell, etc. do not come near the lives that these boys live.

The series continues tonight and tomorrow night on PBS.

Total Flow

I decided long ago that I hated news trucks. I think it really came to a head during the huge non-event that was the Starr investigation/Lewinsky-Clinton impeachment fiasco. The news trucks sat down on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Judiciary Square area for months, their telescoping antennae looming ridiculously out of glorified panel vans, apparently waiting for something like a fire to break out in the hearing room.

This pattern is on endless repeat, from the Waco/Branch Davidian standoff to the Cindy Sherman vigil outside the idiot king's "ranch." This morning I saw it in action at George Washington University Hospital, where the vans were circled like vultures around the last known whereabouts of Dick Cheney.

It has been said that Dick Cheney's heart problems actually demonstrate that he does indeed have a heart. For my part, I believe it a clever ruse to treat a nonexistent organ.

The trucks are apparently waiting for news of Cheney's death. Each "reporter" down there would love to be the first on air, a background shot of GWU hospital framing their prepped face and hair, intoning solemnly, firmly, but slightly breathlessly that "Vice President Richard Cheney has suffered heart failure." Seriously, anything must be better to them than sitting around for a few hours to find out that after a checkup, the doctors sent the VP home. My friends, that doesn't move you from beat reporter for local TV to beat reporter for network news. Next week these jokers could be covering dog walkers in Glover Park.

But these omnipresent news trucks have the effect of reducing even the most mundane to a spectacle. What in fact is the use of having wall to wall news vans sitting outside a courthouse for months on end to cover of all things court proceedings? You measure this stuff with a sundial, not a stopwatch. There are actually two reasons for going to the expense of dedicating a van and its crew to something as fast-paced as a glacier, and these reasons are inter-related:

1. Background shots of the location make it more "real."
2. The news must be seen as an event unfolding quickly, almost too quickly, to be captured: blink and you'll miss it. The news as spectacle.

I think I've written before that there aren't 24 hours worth of news in a day. Given that fact, news channels find themselves filling the time not with broader coverage or even with more in-depth coverage, but with well-paid opinion jockeys endlessly arguing over the same 30 second clip of a press conference, a clip that itself will be played on endless loop throughout the day.

One might think that 24 hours of coverage of some event (Katrina, Clinton impeachment, etc.) might lend itself to in-depth reporting, but actually quite the opposite occurs. The facts -- the event -- as Nietzsche says of the French Revolution becomes lost under its interpretations. We are left instead with an interminable ideological war of attrition, of which the relatively recently cancelled "Crossfire" is only the most visible example. As Jon Stewart correctly surmised (here I extrapolate freely from Stewart's rightly famous attack on the show), no one actually learns anything watching these "news" programs -- these shows aren't about informing the public but rather about performance. They are tightly scripted acts in which each participant knows his or her (well, mainly his) role.

It's a ceaseless play of so-called "issues" of the day, which are really nothing more than the latest distraction from our lives: the runaway bride, Laci Peterson, Brad and Angelina, Merry Christmas v. Happy Holidays...Even the "serious" news can't be covered seriously and in fact is conveyed with the same even tones as the news above: Bush's spying, Cheney's heart ailments, Jack Abramoff's purchasing of Congress. More time on the airwaves will be spent with right-wing zealots espousing the themes of "everyone's corrupt" and "the Democrats are making this a political issue" than will be spent investigating and exposing the Representatives and Senators that Mr. Abramoff bought.

And so it goes.

Taking extra work to the office.

These last two days have been unofficial "take your daughter to work days" and it's been interesting trying to navigate my various duties with a 9 month old child. On most days, I don't really have an excuse for not doing anything. Luckily, she provides a great excuse for not getting anything done.

Yesterday I brought a bunch of her toys and a big blanket for her to sit on. She wasn't very happy. Today I brought the same things, but supplemented with an empty cookie tin in the office. She loves it. That and small plastic cups.

Still, it's almost a guarantee that among all of the "she's so cute" comments, you will get at least one jokester who makes a remark about "[insert occupation] getting younger all the time." Sometimes they're funny and sometimes they're worn out. We recycle humor all the time, from poop jokes to secret tapings. It's all in the twist.

Note for the future: staplers are not good toys. Neither are staple removers. Also, turn off paper shredder.

ad infinitum

If I never see another ad featuring some extra from Deliverance "singing" along to an unrecognizable ringtone version of the Dukes of Hazzard theme song, I will be a happy man.

The Tao of Football

I'm exhausted from watching the Orange Bowl. By the end of the game, I was shaking and my shoulders were tensed enough to curl me over. PSU football is about the only game that gets me in this twist. Of course, if they'd run away with it as it looked like they'd do early on, I would have been fine. It's just that nail-biting, expletive-inducing, shiver-generating close game that causes my body so much stress damage. Note to self: reread Tao te Ching.

FSU played very well -- they were clearly more focused and intense. After the first quarter, Penn State's offense played pretty much like they were afraid of mistakes, rather than making plays.

I am not sure how well Bowden and Paterno actually know one another. Maybe very well. Who knows. I do know this: Paterno and Bowden do not share the same values, at least not deeply. Maybe they're both politically reactionary -- although the Paterno Professor at Penn State is Michael Berube, hardly a conservative, and Paterno has given greatly to the library system (even having a wing named after him). FSU consistently hits late, hits out of bounds, and in general takes cheap shots. That's in addition to the trash-talking poor sportsmanship on the field. When an attitude is systemic, look to the leadership: such behavior is either taught or condoned.

It is best to do your work and then withdraw, or so says Lao Tzu.

A few loose ends from last year...

I won't bore everyone with details of my New Year's Eve celebration (seriously: it's boring), but I will say that this year it included watching Elvis Costello on Austin City Limits. I don't know. After three and a half days of MLA saturation, I was exhausted. The MLA always reminds me that I actually like academia. I like the idea that you can research discursive strategies of Victorian dress styles mentioned in the Brontes and at least three other people will sit in a room to listen to your analysis.

Academia has the problems that plague the rest of the world population: a fair number of pompous assholes, careerist opportunists, impotent handwringing, and incompetent individuals. However, it also has committed individuals and brilliant analysts and provides hope that one day I too can be paid to read books and talk about them (and not in some glib way like a talk show host - who is generally paid to read a staffer's gloss of the book and pretend he/she has read it).

Speaking of books, the final day of the MLA was a frenzied search for bargain books, as publishers strove to unload all their floor samples so they wouldn't have to box them up and take them home with them. I found out that the hotel charged $90 for a hotel staffer to move a box of books from the exhibit hall to the shipping area. What a racket. I'm willing to bet the hotel staffer got to see about $2.00 of that charge. I was holding out for Grove to drop their prices to $2 bucks a book, but they stood firm at $3, so I only bought one: two novels in one binding by Robbe-Grillet. I did manage to snap up two texts from the Continuum series "Live Theory" for $5 bucks each.

For the first time at the MLA I saw the "Ayn Rand Institute" hawking their cult leader's relatively sparse output: The Fountainhead, Anthem, Atlas Shrugged. The new editions have beautiful, simple covers. However, that doesn't change the fact that inside those new covers the text remains pure shit. In a deliciously ironic moment, it appeared to me on Friday that the Randians were giving away (yes! for FREE as in "Free Lunch") stacks of the books. Even more delicious was that no one was taking them ("no one" meaning that huge stacks remained at the end). I suppose next year I'll see the Scientologists there hawking Dianetics.

Next year the MLA is in Philly. With any luck (OK, if you have to go to Philly already you're out of luck), I'll be there "on the market" as they say.