No, actually, child sacrifice is violent

The article is on CBS News: "Ancient altar found in Guatemala jungle apparently used for sacrifices, 'especially of children,' archaeologists say."

The article is about the discovery of an altar from the Teotihuacan culture in Tikal National Park in Guatemala, the center of Mayan culture. The Teotihucan culture was centered more to the north, closer to Mexico City, so this discovery proves some sort of "sociopolitical and cultural interaction between the Maya of Tikal and Teotihuacan's elite between 300 and 500 A.D."

According to the linked article, Lorena Paiz, the archaeologist who led the discovery, said that the Teotihuacan altar was believed to have been used for sacrifices, "especially of children." The remains of three children, no more than than four years old, were found on three sides of the altar, according to a quote from Paiz in the article.

Quoting directly, now, from the article:

María Belén Méndez, an archaeologist who was not involved with the project, said the discovery confirms "that there has been an interconnection between both cultures and what their relationships with their gods and celestial bodies was like."

"We see how the issue of sacrifice exists in both cultures. It was a practice; it's not that they were violent, it was their way of connecting with the celestial bodies," she said.

No.

Killing little children is violent. Period. Full stop. People who would countenance the killing of little children are violent. Period. Full stop.

Perhaps Belén Méndez made such a ridiculous statement because she doesn't want people to dismiss either the Mayan or Teotihuacan cultures as uncivilized. The existence of their ruined cities is more than sufficient evidence that these cultures achieved a type of civilization. In addition to building cities, they made advances in astronomy, developed an intricate and accurate calendar, and made discoveries in agriculture, allowing them to feed large populations in a jungle (albeit possibly triggering, at least in the case of the Maya, a climate catastrophe that brought their civilization crashing down).

But if we must acknowledge that these were civilizations, we must also admit that these were violent civilizations. They murdered little children. I cannot fathom why there is a perceived need to sugarcoat this obvious fact.

I suppose this desire to paper-over-the-child-sacrifice business may come from a need to denigrate the Christian, European civilization that ultimately displaced these cultures: At least in academic circles, the Mesoamerican cultures must be considered as at least morally equivalent, if not, indeed, superior to the bad, evil, European colonizers.

Horsefeathers.

The intellectual sophistication and intelligence of some of the indigenous leaders over the barely-literate younger sons of perpetually impoverished Extremaduran noblemen may be conceded without hesitation -- but Christian Eurpoean civilization did not demand child sacrifice. In that sense, clearly, Christian European civilization was superior to the cultures it displaced. At least, it was superior to those cultures which killed little children (even if it was just "their way of connecting with the celestial bodies").

At least our civilization was superior until recently....

No hot takes on Dobbs: Curmudgeon offers opinions that can upset everyone on all sides, at least to some extent

This image, of what looks like a letter to some unnamed editor from a Mr. Robert Veitch of Richfield, has been making the rounds in my social media posts of late:

Here is the text of what appears in the image:

Overturning Roe requires another law be passed that ensures men bear equal responsibility for pregnancies. Call it the "Personal Responsibility Act." Using DNA as a verification, paternity for every embryo should be established and the male responsible obliged by law to support the woman and the child through the child's majority, including medical costs, living costs, education — all the costs a father normally assumes for his child. In addition, the child should have a full share of the father's estate if and when the father dies. If women cannot decide whether or not carry a child, fathers should not be able to decide whether or not to support the woman and the child. It's about time men assumed responsibility for the consequences of their pleasure.

Some of my outraged progressive friends on Facebook are posting this as if it were some thunderbolt from the blue -- take this you nasty Pro-Lifers! As if this were some new, threatening, and hitherto unknown concept.

To which I say... um.

I am not endorsing a specific statutory proposal, not that one has been made, but it seems to me that this letter reflects what IS and what SHOULD ALWAYS HAVE BEEN the correct attitude. Women should always have insisted that any man capable of completing the marital act, inside or outside of wedlock, should bear the consequences, should any result. Duh.

And any male of the species who desires to be called a "man," and not just a sperm resevoir or animated sex toy, should embrace responsibility for one's offspring as eagerly as he embraced said offspring's mother.

Of course, we have paternity laws now, and "men" who evade them, leaving their children to be raised by over-stressed single mothers or, worse, as wards of the state. Such "men" should be shunned and shamed. And society should do all possible to provide for the spurned mother and her child.

But I promised not-hot takes on Dobbs. Here they are:

• Dobbs, the shrill protests notwithstanding, is not judicial legislation. In reversing Roe v. Wade, the Dobbs court undid what amounted to judicial legislation. It returns the matter of whether to allow abortions, or under what circumstances, to the leglislatures of the several states, where the matter should have been, in my opinion, all along. That's such a mild take that, at one time, no less than Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with it.


• Dobbs did not outlaw abortion anywhere. Some states had legislation in place that imposed various restrictions on abortion, up to and including outright abolition, that were 'triggered' or revived by the reversal of Roe. Until recently, Illinois was one such state. But our enlightened, 'progressive' legislature changed the laws a while back, making Illinois one of the most pro-abortion states in the union. And yet, here in Illinois, our political leaders howled in outrage, as if something had actually changed here. Gov. Pritzker issued an immediate call for a special session of our General Assembly in the coming weeks to take "swift action to further enshrine our commitment to reproductive health care rights and protections."
  
  Our legislature will posture and preen about how they support the right of women to make their own health decisions. As long, of course, as women the right health decisions -- as opposed to, say, making a decision not to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Then the State can interfere, and must! Other states, Red States, as they are called, will now have to live with the consequences of the statutory anti-abortion regimes they have created: Promising bounties to snitches and informers who turn in their neighbors who might seek an abortion. Freedom and Justice -- East German style!
  
  For all their supposed ideological differences, all of these performance artists, Left and Right, are united in this: They are all a**holes.


• None of the Supreme Court justices promised not to overturn Roe. Or to support it, for that matter. Sens. Collins and Manchin may say now that they thought they'd received assurances, but it is not so. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC to her friends and foes alike, wants the Trump-era justices 'impeached' for 'lying under oath' about their views on Roe at their confirmation hearings. What crap.
  
  No judge -- at any level -- can ethically say in advance how he or she would rule on a given case. In Illinois, Supreme Court Rule 67A(3)(d)(i) expressly provides that a candidate for judicial office shall not "make statements that commit or appear to commit the candidate with respect to cases, controversies or issues within cases that are likely to come before the court." That's for the man or woman hoping to sit in the basement of the Daley Center hearing speeding cases in Traffic Court. But it applies just as much to those who would sit on the nation's highest court.
  
  Elena Kagan had never been a judge at any level when she was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010. At the time, as I wrote in this post, the red-meat Right was particularly upset about this because they didn't have a body of judical opinions they could use against her. They did have an article she'd written, some years before, "in which she criticized the Supreme Court confirmation process as vacuous, farcical and devoid of substance." I said her confirmation hearing would be no different -- and it wasn't -- and I added, "Grandstanding Senators from both parties will demand that Kagan commit herself on abortion, gay rights, and the proper reach of executive power. Some idiot will undoubtedly ask for her opinion on Obama Care. Were she ever to answer such loaded questions, she would be committed, not confirmed." She didn't answer those questions, of course, and she was confirmed, just as Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett likewise dodged those questions on their way to confirmation.


• Dobbs does not signal an attack on gay marriage or birth control or anything else that the "experts" were claiming five minutes after the opinion was handed down. The majority opinion is 108 pages long; with the three concurring opinions and the dissent, the whole Dobbs opinion is 213 pages long. Yet, all manner of opinions were launched within minutes of the first report that the case had been decided making all sorts of outlandish claims. You may be assured that these claims were based on supposition or political expedience, not on actual analysis of the case.
  
  At several points in the majority opinion, the Court goes out of its way to assure the world that it is not using this case as a 'starting point' for some new judicial offensive in the Culture Wars. In the law we sometimes refer to an argument as suggesting a 'parade of horribles' -- this is bad enough, but this leads naturally to x, y, and z.... This one statement from the majority opinion (slip op. at pp. 71-72) addresses the dissent's charge that Dobbs is just the beginning of such a parade:

Finally, the dissent suggests that our decision calls into question Griswold, Eisenstadt, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Post, at 4–5, 26–27, n. 8. But we have stated unequivocally that “[n]othing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Supra, at 66. We have also explained why that is so: rights regarding contraception and same-sex relationships are inherently different from the right to abortion because the latter (as we have stressed) uniquely involves what Roe and Casey termed “potential life.” Roe, 410 U.S., at 150 (emphasis deleted); Casey, 505 U.S., at 852. Therefore, a right to abortion cannot be justified by a purported analogy to the rights recognized in those other cases or by “appeals to a broader right to autonomy.” Supra, at 32. It is hard to see how we could be clearer. Moreover, even putting aside that these cases are distinguishable, there is a further point that the dissent ignores: Each precedent is subject to its own stare decisis analysis, and the factors that our doctrine instructs us to consider like reliance and workability are different for these cases than for our abortion jurisprudence.

Justice Clarence Thomas, bless his heart, did provide some kindling to stoke the fears of all the "experts" in his separate concurrence. But he joined the majority opinion, which means he subscribes, whether he likes it or not, to the above statement. And the attack in his concurrence is on the legal doctrine of substantive due process, which underpins those other cases, not on the 'rights' to contraception or gay marriage as such. And none of the other justices joined his concurrence. He is on an island on this one and there is no reason to think that any of the Trump-era justices plan to join him there.

• Abortion is a moral issue, not a legal issue. Until and unless there is a national consensus on abortion, there is no law, or set of laws, that will heal the nation's divisions on this contentious issue.
  
  Here is the inescapable truth: Depending on who asks the questions, and how they are asked, a majority of Americans are both pro-life and pro-abortion. Americans are in favor of a right to abortion in at least these four circumstances: (1) in cases of rape, (2) or incest, (3) where medically necessary to save the life of the mother, or (4) when a 'nice' girl gets 'into trouble.'
  
  It's this last category that will get people screaming at one another.
  
  The challenge for those who claim to be pro-life will be to persuade their neighbors that abortion, whether legal or not, is morally wrong. That's going to be a very steep hill to climb.

Hate is not a mental illness? It sure as heck is not a sign of mental health

This poster is popping up all over my Facebook feed the last couple of days. The logo on the poster suggests that it was put out by Mental Health America, an orginazation that is, according to its website, "the nation’s leading community-based nonprofit dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and promoting the overall mental health of all."

And, from what I can see, everyone who has posted it garners lots of "likes" and even "loves." Comments to these posts tend to be of the "Amen" variety.

But I'm really not so sure.

I completely and totally agree that "mental illness" can never be a justification for the murder of innocent grocery shoppers, such as happened in Buffalo this past Saturday. It is certainly not any sort of excuse.

Legally, it may be a defense to the crimes for which the shooter now stands charged. But I have no opinion on the viability of the insanity defense in this case. Anyway, whether or not the Buffalo shooter is legally insane probably just bears on the question of where the shooter spends the rest of his life, whether in a mental institution or a jail.

But hate is not a mental illness? Before last weekend's massacre, the Buffalo shooter apparently posted rambling screeds online, spewing hatred of Blacks, of Jews, of large corporations. Surely irrational hatred of various groups is not normal. Surely we have not yet sunk that low.

And -- even if you are one of those who thinks that those with whom you disagree -- you know, the other half of the country? -- are motivated by irrational, unfounded group hatreds -- even you must admit that most of these -- the vast majority of these -- do not act on their irrational racist beliefs by acquiring semi-automatic weapons and body armor and searching for and shooting up a 'soft target' like a grocery store.

The unreasoning, unyielding hatred of persons for merely being born Black -- or Jewish -- or Taiwanese (the victims in a California church shooting last Sunday) -- is not normal. It's not healthy. It may not itself be a mental illness.

But it sure is a symptom.

In the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, Lt. Cable sings "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught," a song that argues racial and ethnic hatreds are not hard-wired in children, but have to be learned. Someone has to teach a child to hate.

I don't pretend to know where the Buffalo shooter learned to hate as he did. But I can be pretty sure it was not an official part of his school curriculum growing up. I am equally sure that there are dark corners of the Internet, equally accessible to you and me as well as the Buffalo shooter, in which all manner of hatreds can be sampled. But why does it take such deep root, and produce such lethal fruit, in the case of the Buffalo shooter, when so many of us can ignore and dismiss it for the garbage it is?

Hate may not be mental illness, no more than a skin rash is chickenpox. But that rash may suggest the presence of chickenpox, and unreasoning hatreds may likewise suggest the presence of mental illness.

The alternative is too chilling to contemplate.

Ginni Thomas, Anne M. Burke, and Doris Kearns Goodwin

How's that for a clickbait headline? But, Dear Reader, I think I can tie this up.

Let's start with Ginni Thomas, a/k/a as Mrs. Clarence Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and author of some "batshit crazy" text messages sent to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election. Quoting now from Bess Levin's March 25 article for Vanity Fair, "Should Clarence Thomas be impeached over Ginni Thomas's deranged text messages?"

On November 5, for example, before Joe Biden was officially declared the winner, Ginni quoted a right-wing website, writing: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.” On November 10, after news outlets projected the Democratic candidate had the electoral votes, she texted Meadows, of Trump: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!...You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.” Two weeks later, she told Meadows not to “cave to the elites,” and later, “I can’t see Americans swallowing the obvious fraud.” Midway through the month, she urged Meadows to make Sidney Powell—the lawyer who promoted claims like “there is a secret server that all the votes go to where they [are] manipulate[d]”—“the lead and the face” of Trump’s legal team. At one point, Ginni wrote to Meadows: “Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”

The assessment that these texts are "batshit crazy" is also Ms. Levin's. I am entirely certain that there are no crazier texts that Ms. Levin could find because she surely would have quoted them if such were available. On the other hand, I find it hard to imagine that there are any texts not quoted that could provide some context in which these might not appear quite so crazy. Therefore, for the record, I agree that Ms. Levin's assessment is entirely reasonable.

You will not be surprised, perhaps, to learn that Ms. Levin answers the question posed by the headline of her article with an emphatic "yes." The allegedly impeachable offense is participation by Justice Thomas in cases where his wife has staked out a very public position or been even more directly involved -- but this is not as neat and clean a question as some in the media would see it. In a lower court, if there are grounds for Judge Smith to recuse herself, Judge Jones can be called upon to take over. Often Judge Jones is right down the hall.

But justices of our highest courts have generally, and traditionally, taken the position that they are required to decide the cases before them; there is no one that can tap in for a particular case. This does not mean that individual justices haven't recused themselves in some cases. Justice Kagan recused herself from a number of cases that she had handled as U.S. Solicitor General, prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court. Other justices have taken themselves off of cases, too.

But, as George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley points out in two recent articles, "No, Justice Thomas Did Not Commit an Impeachable Offense" (March 27) and "Justice Thomas Faces Calls for Investigation and Sweeping Recusals" (March 28), this has never been required of Supreme Court justices. The Suprme Court has long (long here meaning even before Trump) taken the view that it is not bound by the Code of Judicial Ethics it has imposed on lower courts. (Again, for the record, Professor Turley wishes the Supreme Court would apply the Code of Judicial Ethics to itself.)

And, also for the record, I hate myself for quoting a law professor on anything. In this one instance it seems appropriate.

Though she did not expressly so state, I think Ms. Levin would be inclined to agree with the proposition that Ginni Thomas's expressed opinions and documented behavior so taint Clarence Thomas that anything he says or does is irrevocably suspect. For example, since Ginni Thomas thinks (or at least thought) that the 2020 election was "stolen" from Trump, Clarence Thomas must think so, too. The sins of one spouse renders the other unfit to serve.

What, I wonder, would Ms. Levin make of Anne M. Burke?

Anne M. Burke is the Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. In addition to her distinguished career on the bench, Burke was one of the founders of the Special Olympics. She became Interim Chair of the first National Review Board commissioned by the United States Council of Catholic Bishops to address, and root out, the abuse of minors by Catholic clergy.

On the other hand, she is married to Chicago Ald. Ed Burke. Ed Burke has been under federal indictment since 2019. The indictment has to do with how he allegedly got business for his law firm -- which specialized in seeking reductions of county property taxes -- but, before his indictment, very few people were elected to the bench in Cook County without his approval. The longtime Committeeman of Chicago's 14th Ward, Burke chaired the Cook County Democratic Party's judicial slatemaking committee. Put it this way: Chief Justice Burke would not have been elected without her husband's support.

Was she, too, irrevocably tainted by her husband's alleged criminal misconduct?

Here is one very important distinction: On March 24, the Illinois Supreme Court handed down an opinion in the case of Sigcho-Lopez v. The Illinois State Board of Elections, 2022 IL 127253. In this case a Chicago alderman challenged his predecessor's use of campaign funds to pay legal bills related to the predecessor's federal indictment. (After being cornered by the Feds, the former alderman, then still in office, agreed to wear a wire so that the Feds could go after, inter alia, Ed Burke. If the case against Mr. Burke ever gets to trial, this former alderman's testimony -- and recordings -- will be key evidence for the prosecution.)

And, no surprise here, Ald. Burke is paying at least some of his enormous legal bills from his very substantial campaign funds. Of course they are substantial (were you paying attention?): Ald. Burke had an enormous say in who got to serve on the local bench. Oh, and his City Council Finance committee determined what claims against the City got paid, and for how much. And there was the property tax reduction work he did on the side, too.... I haven't looked lately to be certain, but I'd be willing to bet that there's no longer much of anything coming into his campaign funds these days. But there was so much already there.

In its unanimous opinion, not quite a week ago, the Illinois Supreme Court agreed that the practice of paying a politician's criminal defense fees from that politician's campaign fund is not prohibited by statute.

But... here's the distinction... Chief Justice Burke "took no part" in the decision. And, rather than leave her off on the island by herself, her two colleagues from Cook County likewise did not participate. (That was only possible because the four other justices were in agreement on how to dispose of the case; the Illinois Supreme Court can not decide a case without four votes for or against.)

On the other hand, if Clarence Thomas had recused himself from the text messages ruling would Ms. Levin have been mollified?

Which brings us, at last, to Doris Kearns Goodwin, the eminent historian. I'm just now reading her 2013 book, The Bully Pulpit, which is subtitled "Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism." Kearns presents Edith Carow Roosevelt and Nellie Taft as vital to the careers of their respective husbands. Kearns makes the case that, though their quite different wives provided different things, TR and Taft could not have achieved what they did without their spouses.

In the Bad Old Days, a woman could only succeed in public life indirectly, through her husband. Kearns was more favorably inclined to Mary Todd Lincoln in her book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln than was Lincoln's first biographer (and last law partner) Billy Herndon in his. Herndon didn't like Mary Todd Lincoln one little bit (in fairness, she didn't like him either). But both Kearns and Herndon would agree on this much: Without Mary, Lincoln would probably never have become President.

A woman now can look forward to an independent career, but that same commonality of interests that attracts a man and woman in the first place will often lead to at least some overlap in careers for married couples. Hopefully each would be a positive influence and support for the other -- but when one spouse becomes controversial, or even toxic, must the other be damaged?

The answer should be "no" -- at the very least it certainly should not be automatically crippling to one's career that one's spouse stumbles -- or even is "batshit crazy."

But I also know that this is not how the world works.

My wife teaches in the local Catholic school. Were I to suddenly assert a position at odds with Catholic doctrine, my wife's job might be in jeopardy. Probably would be. Even with an anonymous blog, I was very cautious about criticizing our former pastor (as I did here, here, here, and (later) here). So the problem of one spouse potentially damaging another's career is not theoretical to me. It is very, very real.

I can sympathize with both Justice Thomas and Chief Justice Burke. Both face howling mobs. Very little overlap between their mobs, I should think, but mobs just the same. And I suspect that no member of either mob would be moved by my plea to judge each individual on his or her respective merits, regardless of their spouses' missteps, actual or alleged. But perhaps you, Dear Reader, may be persuaded. One by one, bit by bit, perhaps we can build up a majority on this one small point. Leave it to history -- to Professor Kearns and her successors -- to evaluate how tangled were the strands in these and other cases.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson gets a supreme opportunity

I admit, I have not watched any of the confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

It's not bitterness... I hope... although even I am beginning to suspect that neither this White House (nor any other) is ever going to call me. Why, I no longer even sit by my phone.

No, the real reason I'm not watching is that I am increasingly intolerant of stupid people, the most stupid of which seem to wind up as United States Senators. And I'm not just talking about the Republicans -- who are feigning suspicion -- now -- that Judge Jackson (who they just confirmed to succeed Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit) is a closet Communist, or anarchist, or whatever. I cheerfully include the Democrats, who fawn over Judge Jackson, who strew rose petals in her path, who wish only to touch the hem of her garment and so achieve enlightenment.

Not that the hearings for Amy Coney Barrett or Brett Kavanaugh or Neil Gorsuch were any better. It's just that the Fawners now were the Feigners then and the Feigners now were Fawners. It's all theatrics -- and bad theatrics at that. It's garbage. I am so sorry that Supreme Court nominees are required to endure this nonsense.

Let's get this out of the way immediately:Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is not the single most-qualified person who could have been picked to sit on the Supreme Court. There is no one such person. There are, instead, a great many. She is one of these.

This is a big country. We have a great many lawyers -- roughly 90,000 in my home state of Illinois alone. Surely more than half of these would be in waaaaaaay over their heads if they were nominated to the Supreme Court. But would 10% be out of their depth? Would only 1% of Illinois lawyers be capable of rendering useful service on the United States Supreme Court if given the opportunity? That's still 900 lawyers. And that's just Illinois.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is one of probably thousands of lawyers across this country who would acquit themselves honorably if asked to serve on the Supreme Court. But thousands were not asked. Judge Jackson was. By all credible accounts she is more than qualified. And she is in the right place at the right time. Good for her!

On the other hand... I don't know if you noticed... but Judge Jackson is yet another former Supreme Court clerk (she clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer, whose seat she will soon take on the Court) who is getting a shot at sitting on the nation's highest court and hiring clerks of her own. She is yet another Ivy Leaguer (two degrees from Harvard in her case) who will join a court composed almost exclusively of Ivy Leaguers and former Supreme Court clerks.

Don't believe me? Let's look at the record:

• Chief Justice John Roberts -- Harvard undergrad, Harvard Law School -- clerked for Justice William Rehnquist;
• Justice Clarence Thomas -- Yale Law School -- did not clerk for a Supreme Court justice;
• Justice Stephen Breyer -- Harvard Law School (Oxford undergrad) -- clerked for Justice Arthur Goldberg;
• Justice Samuel Alito -- Yale Law School (Princeton undergrad) -- did not clerk for a Supreme Court justice, though he interviewed with Justice Byron White after clerking for 3rd Circuit Judge Leonard Garth;
• Justice Sonia Sotomayor -- Yale Law School (Princeton undergrad) -- did not clerk for a Supreme Court justice;
• Justice Elena Kagan -- Harvard Law School (where she was later Dean) (undergrad at Princeton and Oxford) -- clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall;
• Justice Neil Gorsuch -- Harvard Law School (undergrad at Columbia, PhD from Oxford) -- clerked for both Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy;
• Justice Brett Kavanaugh -- Yale undergrad, Yale Law School -- clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy;
• Justice Amy Coney Barrett -- Notre Dame Law School (not an Ivy League school, although Domers have a hard time accepting that) -- clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia.

That's diversity?

Only if diversity means Harvard or Yale. Put somebody on from DePaul night school or even any state school and get back to me.

And, speaking of states: With the exception of Justice Kagan, every single current justice of the United States Supreme Court comes to that bench from a Federal Court of Appeals. Judge Jackson fits the pattern. No state high court justice need apply? Holy Cardozo, Batman!

But... it is true that Judge Jackson will bring something to the nation's highest court that her colleagues lack. That they don't have and never will have, namely...



(wait for it)



... actual courtroom experience in a courtroom where she was not presiding.

(You thought I was going for something else, didn't you?)

Actually, Justice Sotomayor did some courtroom work, too.

But most of them... no.

Some of Judge Jackson's new colleagues did brief stints in big firms or in high level government positions and some of them got to argue in court. Justice Kagan was Solicitor General of the United States. Former Supreme Court law clerks are in great demand as counsel in those vanishingly few cases that make it to the docket of the nation's highest court.

But Judge Jackson has faced a jury on a client's behalf. That's a different perspective -- a diverse perspective -- that she can bring to the Supreme Court.

As for the rest of it... well, I'm sure President Biden meant well... but I don't think he did Judge Jackson any favors in publicly announcing that he would limit his search for Justice Breyer's replacement to Black women. Again, Judge Jackson is one of many, many persons (a great many of whom are also Black women) who are well-equipped to serve honorably and usefully on the Supreme Court.

The important thing is that Judge Jackson has been given the opportunity. Not that she cares, but I congratulate her, and wish only the best for her. I hope she will do great things.

All you newspeople get off of my lawn!

I may have found a new avatar.

I'm not actually this bald (yet) and I haven't worn a moustache since law school. And, of course, that long-ago moustache was never as luxuriant as the one on this old codger. Not too surprising, given how young I was then, that my moustache was more of the starving caterpillar variety.

But this fella's all-you-kids-get-off-of-my-lawn bravado rather neatly sums up my attitude toward... toward... toward, well, just about everyone these days, actually.

I am particularly disturbed, these days, with the news.

It's not that the news is bad. News is always bad. Always has been. Crime, poverty, hatred, taxes, war, disease -- and stay tuned for the full 7-day forecast right after these messages for medicines whose side effects sound worse than the diseases they supposedly treat.

What's different about the news these days, I think, is that it's not just always bad, it's always the same bad. Trump, Covid, masks, Trump lawyer, Covid protest, vaccination passports, Trump, Covid, MASKS.... Everything repeats endlessly, but ever more shrilly with each repetition.

I think it's starting to affect our collective mental health. I know it's affecting mine.

And no one makes a mistake any more. No, any little inconsistency between what was said yesterday, or last week, or ten years ago, and just this moment, is seized upon as proof of lying. LIAR!

Sometimes, of course, professional politicians do lie. You know the old joke:

Q. How can you tell if a politician is lying?

A. His lips are moving....

But that's a joke, not a statement of Holy Writ. If it's in their best interests, a politician can be counted on to speak some version of the truth. More or less. Most of 'em, anyway.

Moreover, not every civil servant is a politican. Some are. Especially in the highest places. But most are just pepole who keep their heads down and do their jobs to the best of their understanding and ability.

Most judges aren't politicians either. Even on the U.S. Supreme Court. Whatever the hysterical fund-raising emails say. Despite the braying of 'experts' on cable news. Judges are political animals only because all humans are. It's a fact of our evolution -- our primate heritage. Like saying cattle or bison are herd animals. Or bees and wasps are hive animals. But it's a different brand of politics; judges are by and large not professional politicians.

In many states, including my home state of Illinois, judges are elected. Even these elected judges -- with a few exceptions -- are not professional pols. (Now and again someone will move from the ranks of other elected officials and onto the bench. It's not the most common career trajectory. To the extent that Illinois pols become involved with the courts, it's usually before the bench. In the dock, as they say 'cross the Pond. We had a governor some years back who later went on the federal bench -- and then to federal prison. But that was an unusual case. (Bonus points if you remembered Otto Kerner before I gave you the answer.)

If you stop and think about it -- something I suspect that our media masters really don't like us to do -- there are a lot of men and women who have influence on the health and security of our polity without ever holding real elected office. Thank God!

Sometimes the reason people, even professional politicians, say one thing at one time and then another later on is because they've learned something in between. It happens.

Perhaps not often enough, but still....

All this back and forth about lying, and all these elegant accusations of he's a liar or she's a liar, no matter how passionate, no matter how fraught, is ultimately sterile. Useless. It doesn't fill a single pothole, or pick up anyone's garbage, or repair a single bridge. It doesn't make our streets safer, our schools better, our banks less rapacious.

The genius of America has always in our ability to hunker down and do things. We used to do what worked, regardless of who proposed it, or where the idea came from, leaving it to the academics or the Europeans to figure out labels for it after the fact. Meanwhile, we enjoyed the benefits.

Did we always get it right? Hell, no. We can catalog our national failures some other time. (The fascinating thing about that exercise is that, if it is done honestly and in good faith, anyone can see how far we've come, and how we've improved the human condition, despite our many flaws and failures.)

You will read surveys here or there, or articles, or videos, about how this Scandanavian country is happier than America, or how that other country has reduced wealth inequality. Other countries can boast less street crime. But the poor and persecuted across the world still look at America as a place of refuge and safety.

Why can't we?

I lay some of the blame on our media -- that stokes our fears and divides us into warring camps in the pursuit of bucks and clicks. To them I say, get off of my lawn.

I want to secure the Blessings of Liberty to my Posterity, and this will be impossible if We the People descend further, from our current stalemate, to political violence (the first dangerous rumblings of which have already been seen in our sad country), and ultimately to civil war. Don't tell me it can't happen here. It happened to the Roman Republic. Our Founding Fathers wanted to spare us that fate. They knew Roman history intimately, and debated it, and drew (often conflicting) lessons from it. Our kids don't even study the fall of the Roman Republic in school. But that is a story for another day.

Meanwhile... turn off your TVs (at least as soon as the weather segment is over). Embrace your community, greet your neighbors, and remember, while you may not like everyone the same, we are all in this together and we have an obligation to try and get along.

A downside of 'working from home' that we never thought of

As you can see above, it's snowing in Chicago today. It's worse in the south suburbs and (not surprisingly) in Northwest Indiana (they call it the NWI) but many of the Catholic schools around my home on the northwest side of Chicago are closed today, too. Long Suffering Spouse has the day off (which isn't as good a thing as it might be on another day -- but that is outside the scope of this essay). Middle Son's oldest daughter (Granddaughter No. 5), who attends a nearby parish school, also has the day off.

And therein lies the problem.

Like a great many people since the start of our two-week shutdown to flatten the COVID-19 curve (a shutdown now almost two years old), Middle Son and his wife Magaret, both CPAs, are now working from home. Every time one or both of their employers starts talking about reopening their long-shuttered offices, the public health authorities find that Covid has spun off a new Greek-letter variant and reopening plans are shelved as we brace for a new surge.

We're on omicron now. Will it be over when we get to omega?

Granddaughter No. 5 is a sweet, well-mannered child. She's also four. And for all her sweetness and good manners, she can and will get underfoot while Mommy and Daddy are trying to get their work done.

Unexpected closures, such as we're experiencing today in the Chicago area, put a wrench in child-care arrangements for a great many young parents. If there were a foot of snow on the ground, or more, Middle Son and his wife would be more understanding. But, while it's still snowing, at least off and on, and there may be some lake-effect to deal with later today, there's only about six inches on the ground so far. So they're not happy.

Why? Because they know that there is every expectation -- in this brave new day and age of working from home -- that business can go on as usual no matter how much snow comes down. And why not?

When people had to toil in offices, we'd put on boots and extra layers and slog and stumble our way to the train. If we were among the first to make it in on a crumby day like today, we could imagine ourselves as heroes, the most dedicated of the dedicated, valiant workers in the vineyard. We could put on the coffee and look down our noses at the people straggling in who didn't have such efficient train service or who had to endure travel at glacial speeds on our supposed 'expressways.'

Of course, they thought themselves heroes too, having had the tenacity to traverse what the salt trucks and plows had yet to clear. And, of course, we could all look down on the poor shlubs whose cars would not start or who wound up in a ditch. There was plenty of feel-good-smugness for everyone who made it in -- and if any work did get done on such a day it was more by coincidence or accident. But so what? We had a little triumphal moment.

There's no analogous moment of triumph for the at-home workers, like Middle Son or Margaret, who have only to roll out of bed and come downstairs to their respective "offices." Getting to work would not sap, could not sap, and had better not sap, one's energy quota for the day. Whatever they are expected to do today had better get done, whether the snow stops or piles up to the roof. And they must accomplish their day's work despite the added complication of having to keep Granddaughter No. 5 entertained.

When I was in their shoes, I had the office to slog to and, if the schools were closed, Long Suffering Spouse was home anyway. Even after she began teaching, she would have been home on such a day because she taught (and continues to teach) at the school my children attended.

Working from home has been great for a lot of people, my kids included. But it's been even better for their employers, hasn't it? And that's without even talking about the money the bosses will eventually save on rent as they can contract their offices to fit the new realities.

A day like today shows the unexpected downside of working from home. But that's life: There is always bitter with the sweet.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the 24/7 news cycle

I wanted to boast that I've identified the 'real flaw' or 'real problem' with the 24/7 news cycle. But, when I take a deep breath and think for a moment (a dangerous thing for any wannabe pundit to do, obviously), I remember that there's seldom only one problem with anything, or only one solution to any problem. The world is a more subtle and interesting place than that. When we pundits (real pundits as well as wannabe pundits included) start proclaiming about sole causes or simple solutions we risk sounding like crazy Howard Beale in the eerily (and presumably unintentionally) prophetic movie Network. Although he would have dominated on cable.

The 24/7 news cycle is a fact of life these days, even for those not addicted to cable news. Our local O&O (network owned and operated) and major independent TV stations start news broadcasts at 4:00 a.m. Local news or national info-gossip-tainment (GMA, Today, et al.) is on until at least 10:00 a.m. Some stations take an hour off, but pretty much all of them start a noontime news window from 11:00 to 1:00. Judge Judy or Ellen or Jeopardy have only a small fraction of their former daypart before the news starts up again at 4:00 p.m. and runs, on several stations, to 7:00 p.m. The late news starts as early at 9:00 a.m. on a couple of our local stations.

News programs are so popular with network and station owners because they are so economical. Cheap, really, compared to the cost of a scripted comedy or drama. I mean, on programs like that, you actually have to pay, not just writers and directors, but actors. A popular anchor will be well compensated -- but he or she will always be cheaper than the star of a popular series. And you have the costs of building multiple sets, or renting locations, with a scripted series; you just need one set for the news programs. You can send your news camera crew out to any number of locations for the price of the truck and the camera and the microwave transmitter and sample the seemingly endless parade of grieving mothers, mangled cars and trucks, and the occasional big fire. Fires always provide compelling visuals. Special effects without blowing the budget.

Yes, news is cheap.

Especially as it is done now. Too cheap. Too cheaply done.

So much of what you hear on the news these days is taken, often verbatim, from press releases. There are no questions asked -- just rip and read. Press releases are a great starting point -- don't get me wrong -- and I use them myself in my real-world blogs. But a press release is what the agency, politician, or corporation wants you to know about something. A crime, a scandal, a benefits program, a new product or service. There may be more to the story than that. There probably almost always is.

But reporting takes time and costs money (reporters, field producers, and even interns all have to eat, too, you know). Instead of taking the time to dig into a story proffered by a press release (or find a story that no one is actually pushing) it is far more cost-effective to rip and read and repeat. And, in between, to fill the time, we can speculate (spout balloon juice) about what this means or about what might happen. If we have a pre-conceived narrative -- a point-of-view -- we can 'explain' how everything fits that pat worldview. That can fill a lot of time.

The Chicago Bears just fired their coach and general manager. Lots of people have been scheduled for interviews. Reporters are not invited to sit in for these (obviously). So there's not a lot of news to report there -- listing the names and dates of the interviews won't take more than a couple of minutes -- but there are hours of airtime to fill. So the sports journalists and ex-jocks bloviate ad nauseum about who would be the best fit, or why this OC or that DC would be better than that one.

At least speculation is understandable in that circumstance, perhaps unavoidable. But the news covers everything like sports: All personalities, all speculation, all the time. No one expects the sports reporter to break down game film, or analyze tendencies, much less find a way to explain these intricacies to fans who are mostly interested in the point spread. And, similarly, we don't require the political reporter to read statutes, or bills, and puncture the balloon juice and hypocrisy that is the bread and salt of the political class -- no, we want personalities, and conflicts, and rooting interests. The media thinks that, when it comes to covering the affairs of the nation, or state, or county, or city, we are interested only in who wins and by how much, just as in sports.

And that's how we can all lose.

Masked confusion

In his most recent Sunday strip, Stephan Pastis engaged in sorta-kinda wishful thinking. Yes, Lucy pulled the ball away, as always, but, right now, in the U.S. at least, nobody is seriously saying that the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

New reported infections have reached record levels, hospitalizations are soaring, ICU beds are scarce -- it's gotten very old. It's like Groundhog's Day every day... except the calendar advances and we're all Bill Murray. I remember when we used to chuckle acidly when we asked whether the "two weeks to flatten the curve" were up yet. It may have still been amusing two months in. We're coming up on two years now of these miserable two weeks.

Until recently, anyway, the Curmudgeon family has fared remarkably well during this time. During the initial phase of the lockdown, Long Suffering Spouse (who, as you will recall, is a teacher) learned the intricacies of Google Classroom and a bunch of other related stuff. However, as the Spanish teacher, she was not required to conduct regular classes during the Spring of 2020 (the focus then was on keeping the kids going on math, English, and history). While Long Suffering Spouse did all sorts of school-related work during that time, she did have more time on her hands than she was used to.

Then, one gloomy Saturday in April -- on or about April 4 is my best guess but, of course, all the days were really the same when most everyone took the lockdown seriously -- we saw a story on the news about masks.

I know it must be hard to recollect, now, nearly two years later, but there was a time when the public health authorities were not all persuaded about the utility of masks. In fact, some authorities -- recognized authorities I'm talking here, not YouTube or TikTok crazies -- were concerned that constantly wearing masks might endanger the health of the persons wearing the masks! And, besides, they argued then, there was no certainty that wearing a mask would ward off a COVID-19 infection.

Of course, at that time -- and remember, please, I'm talking about nearly two years ago now -- there was some serious dispute as to whether Covid could be contracted from the air. It turns out -- I remember looking this up, and I had a lot of time, at that time, to look things up -- that medicine generally has (had? by now hopefully had?) a knee-jerk prejudice against believing in airborne viruses. So... droplets? Sure. Contaminated bananas at the grocery? Wipe everything down before putting anything away. It doesn't matter if I don't have all the details right here; I'm confident I have the gist of it.

Health care professionals should wear masks -- that was the original position -- but the rest of us either did not need them or, even if we did, should not wear them because PPP, like toilet paper, was a scarce commodity. It was our patriotic duty not to wear masks. Save them for the doctors and nurses and EMTs!

And that's why, that gloomy April Saturday nearly two years ago, it came as a bit of a surprise when the TV news advised the CDC had decided that mask-wearing might not be such a bad idea for everyone after all. However, since PPP was still scarce as hen's teeth, we the people should go online and find patterns for cloth masks. Thus advised, Long Suffering Spouse immediately got up and got out the sewing machine. And started making masks. Lots of masks. For us. For the kids. For the grandkids.

Her early models had long ties, kind of like the surgical masks on old TV doctor shows. Mask down, I was Ben Casey (I'd leave the bottom string tied up around my neck). Mask up, I was fixin' to rob the 3:10 stage from Dodge City. (Throw down that chest with the railroad payroll money!)

But Long Suffering Spouse soon graduated to models with elastic ear loops. And we ran out of old sheets pretty quick, too. That meant trips -- careful, cautious trips -- to Michael's or JoAnn Fabrics for cloth for masks. In the many, many months since, Long Suffering Spouse has created all sorts of seasonal masks. She needed 'em -- her school was open throughout the 2020-2021 school year and she wore a new mask each day -- and she would fill special orders from the kids and grandkids too (you want unicorns? mermaids? no problem).

I had my one brief shining moment concerning masks during one of these fabric scrounging trips some months back. I saw a bolt of gray fabric with a black and white Dunder Mifflin Paper Company logo. "Grab some of this," I suggested, "the kids will love masks made from this pattern." My wife had no idea what I was talking about -- but she got the fabric and made the masks and the kids did like them. I think one of the kids, or at least an in-law, actually wore The Office mask on a brief trip to his or her actual office. Remember just a couple of months ago... when people were talking about reopening offices?

Anyway, I think it safe enough to say that Long Suffering Spouse has a serious investment in cloth masks. A personal investment.

But the news changed again, just within the past few days. The omicron variant is so contagious that cloth masks alone will no longer suffice. Even if decorated with mermaids, unicorns, or the logo of a fictional paper company. Cloth masks would have to be worn, if at all, with the blue surgical masks. Better yet, according to the latest thinking, we should all start wearing the KN95 masks or their equivalents (the equivalents have similar names but are manufactured in different places) that were in such short supply at the outset of these interminable two weeks.

And then the news advised that all of Chicago's 50 aldermen had been provided with KN95 masks to give away to constituents.

Apparently the supplies of KN95 masks have been replenished. (But... have you noticed? Toilet paper seems to be getting scarce again. On our last two trips to the grocery, before and after Christmas, the shelves that weren't empty in the toilet paper aisle were filled with no-name, off-brand substitutes....)

Anyway, my course was clear. And, if I hadn't figured it out all by myself, Long Suffering Spouse made sure I understood: I was to get myself to the alderman's office posthaste and grab me as many of those masks as I could get. And maybe I could ask, while I was at it, if some of these special masks might be made available to the teachers at my wife's school.

It's good to have a purpose. I've spent most of this global Pandemic as an empty vessel into which stimulus checks might be poured. The checks didn't make up for the costs of groceries I consumed... but it was some contribution anyway.

Anyway, I sent an email to the alderman's office inquiring about the availability of the masks, and while I was at it I asked about masks for the teachers as well. I got a prompt response, too: The alderman had made arrangements to take care of the school.

You could read the email in such a way as to think that maybe I had something to do with that. Long Suffering Spouse thought so, when I forwarded it to her. Her principal may have thought so, too, when Long Suffering Spouse forwarded it to her.

But the truth of the matter is entirely different. The alderman and one of the other teacher's husbands are buddies and the masks came through him.

Ah well.

But I did pick up our household allotment of 10 KN95 masks and Long Suffering Spouse is wearing one of them now. Or maybe one of the ones dropped off at the school. These masks all look alike. No mermaids or unicorns or anything.

I guess we need them. The Covid is all around us. Again. And, unlike past surges, or peaks, the disease has this time hit close to home: Since November, four of my five kids, three of their spouses, and seven of my grandkids have come down with the bug. Only four of my grandkids are old enough to receive vaccinations, but everyone who could has had at least two shots. Most of us (including me) are fully vaxxed and boostered. Thankfully, the virus has made no one in our immediate family seriously ill. My wife attributes this to the vaccinations and the masks. She's probably right. But I don't care as much as I suppose I should: I just want this to be over.

On the anniversary of the Capitol Hill riot

As a pundit-wannabe I know my assigned role: Decry the feckin' idjits who overwhelmed the Capitol a year ago today -- vandals and morons all, and stupid ones at that, since a great many of the arrests that have been made since have come from the authorities simply looking at the narcissistic social media posts the aforesaid feckin' idjits put on line (look at me! I'm Stopping the Steal!).

And I do, whole-heartedly and without reservation, denounce these lunatics.

But---though you might not know it in modern day, divided America---two things can be true at the same time. These were morons (not overexuberant tourists) but they were not insurrectionists.

Some Members of Congress might have been in mortal peril had they not taken shelter or had these these feckin' idjits not (finally) been turned back. But these people could not have taken over the government. That's the goal of an "insurrection." They had no real chance to take over the Capitol Building. Not completely. Not even for an hour. Good Lord, the genius portrayed in the photograph above---I could have looked up his name but it does not deserve to be remembered---couldn't even take over a shirt.

The danger to the Republic came not from these creatures. Rather, it came from those, inside and outside the Trump White House, who urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to fail in his constitutional duty, namely, to certify the election results.

The actual election results. Trump lost. Biden won. Boo hoo. Game over.

Oh, sure, there were irregularities.

There always are. Always.

But when the grown-ups counted up the votes as best they could, though only a few thousand votes in a few key states might have turned the election the other way, the result was clear. And, yet, some of the people in the Capitol on January 6, not the ones waving Confederate battle flags or carrying spears, but actual members of the Congress of the United States, were apparently tempted to tamper with that result.

That was the danger to the Republic. If Pence had done Trump's bidding last year would some of these Senators and Representatives actually gone along? How many would have betrayed their oaths?

Trump was an idiot. And he hasn't gotten any smarter in the past year, either. But I don't want to see him prosecuted for sending the feckin' idjits over to the Capitol to break furniture and/or heads. Because that would only set a dangerous precedent. Study Roman history sometime.

I don't expect it to happen -- sadly -- but I wish the January 6 Committee could rise above partisan politics, abjure the slogans, and simply lay the facts out before the American public. Not about the demented insurance salesmen or real estate brokers or computer analysts or (as in the picture above) kids who escaped their over-indulgent mothers' basements -- prosecute them, sure, for criminal trespass and anything else applicable -- but they presented no real danger to the survival of the Republic.

The real danger lies with politicians who would put party, faction, and personal ambition ahead of the good of the country. Last year it was the Republicans who were obviously dangerous. But there are politicians in both parties who meet this description. I know this has always been so (I'm looking at you, Aaron Burr), but I truly believe the number of these creatures has skyrocketed in recent years. And, next time, there may be no convenient blob of feckin' idjits to divert our attention -- or disrupt the plans of faithless politicians who would undermine our most sacred institutions. We have to call out anyone of any party who would hold an office of trust or honor who does not respect the Constitution or who places him or herself above the good of the country.

But jailing particular politicians will not salve the wound to the body politic. Even if we can legally argue they violated this criminal statute or that one.

Rather, such people must be exposed and shamed. Shamed thoroughly and publicly and completely, so that no one thinks about doing anything like this ever again. Even if the election results go the "wrong" way some other time.

I don't know if many politicians can still experience shame, or whether their partisans understand the concept. If not, we're truly lost, whoever we try to jail.

Very Peri? I dunno... looks kinda purple to me

We are entering the Silly Season now -- or, more properly expressed in 21st Century America, the Even Sillier Than Usual Season. A whole bunch of "end of the year" stuff makes it into the news, mainly because those charged with gathering real news, those few that are left, are busy with Christmas preparations (and/or Winter Solstice or some other Winter Holiday preparations) just like the rest of us.

Thus, for example, in December, various groups announce what the Word of the Year Is -- three I've heard so far are "Vaxxed," "Vaccination," and "Boostered" -- and these announcements are solemnly reported.

Surprised?

Me neither. But it was on the "news." You probably saw or heard it, too.

This morning's revelation is that the Pantone Color Institute has announced its Color of the Year for 2022.

The real story, it seems to me, is how somebody dreamed up a company, and apparently made money in so doing, that makes and sells colors. Apparently by licensing said colors.

But that's not the story being reported today by Time Magazine or CNN. Nope. The story these outlets (and several others besides) are reporting is the creation and selection of the color itself, described on the linked Pantone website as "[e]ncompassing the qualities of the blues, yet at the same time possessing a violet-red undertone, PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri displays a spritely, joyous attitude and dynamic presence that encourages courageous creativity and imaginative expression." The Time Magazine article says Very Peri is "a dynamic periwinkle blue with a vibrant, violet-red undertone designed to evoke the glowing touchscreens of the digital world and the creative possibilities of the future."

Sounds very deep, doesn't it?

Obviously, if Very Peri is in the headlines today, all the serious problems of the world have been resolved, right? COVID-19 is no longer even a nuisance -- Putin has pulled back from Ukraine -- the Palestinians and Israelis have resolved all their differences -- and poverty and hunger have been eliminated from the entire globe. Right?

No?

None of the above?

Well... casting about for a silver lining here... several of my granddaughters say that purple is their favorite color. Perhaps they'll be happy to learn that this shade of purple is the Color of the Year....

Another thing we never imagined we'd have to think about: "Reconnecting" with family after a Pandemic

My friend Steven and I were chatting on the phone the other day. Among other things, we discussed the forthcoming Holidays.

"My sister has decided to pass the baton," Steve told me, talking about who would be hosting his family's Thanksgiving dinner. One of their nieces had elected to step in. She's young, Steve said, but she and her husband have a big enough house for the extended family.

But there was a problem, he said: The niece and her husband are not vaccinated against COVID-19.

A few days ago, Steve said, he mentioned the possible dinner plans to his 30-something son. His son was quiet for some time, evidently weighing his words carefully. "Dad," he said, "I don't know if I can reconnect with persons who are not vaccinated...."

I snorted at that one. Reconnect? I hooted, far more mockingly than I should have.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Like my friend Steven, I am fully vaccinated. Or as fully vaccinated as I can be at this moment: I have not yet had my booster shot, though I will get one as soon as I can. I wear my face mask in public places, not because some idiot politician tells me to, but because, sifting through all the dreck on TV and online, I am persuaded it provides some protection against infection. At worst, it does no harm. In my opinion.

Nevertheless, I firmly believe that, just as blood is thicker than water, blood is absolutely thicker than some stupid virus. You don't jettison a family member because he or she has made what you think is a dumb, or even irresponsible, decision about vaccination.

Look at it this way: Suppose you are vaccinated and your cousin Farquar and his wife Fannie are not. They invite you over for holiday cheer. You have minimized your risk of getting the virus and protected yourself, as much as possible, against dire consequences should you catch the virus anyway. Farquar and Fannie don't care about getting the disease, and while you may potentially transmit it to them (the vaccinated can still spread the disease, apparently) they have assumed the risk of that unlikely outcome.

But what, you ask, about old Aunt Flossie, who lives with Farquar and Fannie, and who likewise has refused to take the shot? Because the consequences of Covid can be so much more severe for those who are older, some may see this as a tougher question.

I don't.

Flossie has made her decision and, if she still has command of her faculties (and especially if she still makes that delicious pumpkin pie), I say the calculus is the same. She has assumed the risk of contracting the disease from you, and you have minimized the risk to her by being vaccinated. Would you feel bad if she succumbed to the Covid a few weeks after your visit? Of course. But you can't know, and would never know, assuming you did not come down with a diagnosed breakthrough infection shortly after the gathering, whether she got it from you or while shopping at the local Wal-Mart. (And you should realize that the odds would favor her getting the bug at Wal-Mart.)

Maybe you think it a tougher choice if you are hosting. Because you are bringing Farquar and Fannie and old Aunt Flossie into your home with all your other, vaccinated relations, some of whom may be young children who can't be vaccinated.

As this is written, the Pfizer shot has been approved for children aged 5-11. Two of my eligible grandchildren have already received their first dose. The other two eligible grandchildren have their first shot scheduled. But that means that I have six grandkids who can't be vaccinated. So, yes, I have thought about this.

Here's the way I figure it: According to all I have read and seen, the very young are the least likely to get the disease or suffer serious consequences if they do. There's a reason why vaccines were prioritized first to the elderly and only now to children. The risk that Flossie, Farquar, and Fannie would pick up some non-Covid bug that the kids acquired in school or daycare seems much greater, to me, anyway, than the risk that the kids might pick up the Covid from Flossie, Farquar, or Fannie. Assuming of course that Flossie, Farquar, and Flossie aren't wheezing and sneezing when they come to your house.

Which brings up another point.

Remember those far-off, carefree days before the Pandemic when the Holidays rolled around and everyone in the house got sick? I do. How many times did we muscle through this -- I'm using the inclusive "we" here, meaning me and you both -- and persuade ourselves that the kids weren't too sick or that we could hold down the aspirin and cough syrup long enough to get through the family gathering?

We were such idiots.

Thanksgiving and Christmas will come next year, too. Probably. Unless the Chinese invade Taiwan and trigger nuclear Armageddon. Or Yellowstone erupts, and wipes out much of America. But the odds are pretty good that the Holidays will return next year, right on schedule.

Therefore, if you are feeling punk, or puny, or whatever euphenism you favor, don't go visit Aunt Flossie or Farquar or Fannie. Cancel the dinner at your home. Reschedule it. There are, as the song says, 12 days of Christmas. No federal laws will be violated if your Christmas feast is not celebrated exactly on the 25th Day of December.

That should always have been the rule. I'd have enjoyed a great many more New Year's Days if it had been.

But, if you're feeling healthy, and they're feeling healthy, see the family over the Holidays. Vaccinated or not. Because, in the long run, family is about the most important thing we have or ever will have in this world.

Just maybe don't talk about politics. Or vaccinations. And, under no circumstances, if you are in the Central or Eastern time zones, do not delay Thanksgiving dinner beyond halftime of the Dallas game.

The contradictions in the recent Facebook meme on public education

This was making the rounds in my Facebook feed the other day. In light of the outcome of the Virginia governor's race this week, it may be particularly important to break the statements in this meme down.

Why tie this to the Virginia race? Well, the one-time governor, and one-time prohibitive favorite to be governor again, Terry McAuliffe, lost the election. It appears that he fared worse in prosperous Northern Virignia suburbs that had gone heavily for Joe Biden just a year ago. And, in particular, this statement, made by Mr. McAuliffe in the course of a campaign debate, has been linked to his downfall: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

On an individual level, this is surely correct: Mrs. Jones, the local chapter president of the Flat-Earth Society, can not demand that her little Johnny and all his classmates be instructed in her own peculiar brand of "science." Also, as the first paragraph of the meme above suggests, Mrs. Smith, who believes in Biblical inerrancy, is free to send her little Susie to a private school which respects that belief; she does not have the right to insist that Susie be instructed in these beliefs in the local public school.

But the second paragraph of the meme is where the problem comes in. It reads (with emphases as in original):

The purpose of a public education in a public school is not to teach kids only what parents want them to be taught. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client of the public school is not the parent, but the entire community, the public[.]

This statement, too, is substantially correct, in my opinion. The purpose of public schools is to produce good, productive, patriotic citizens, the kinds of persons who will hold good jobs in an increasingly complex economy. People who will respect the law and support the Constitution. People who will be kind and generous and sympathetic to the plight of their less-fortunate neighbors. People who will be proud of their communities, local, state, and national, and who will make their communities proud in turn. The types of people you'd like to live next door to, and associate with, and do business with.

At least, that's what any healthy society would want, and demand, from its public schools.

But, again, the above statement is only substantially correct because it fudges on clearly saying what society should demand of its schools, saying only that the purpose of the public schools is to teach students what society needs them to know.

How do we determine what society needs our public school kids to know? We determine it from collective expressions of public policy: State statutes, to start with. The several states have always had principal responsibility for public education in America. And every state has many laws dictating what the public schools must teach. Gym classes, perhaps (so that future grown-up citizens are healthy) or financial literacy classes (so future grown-up citizens understand how to write a check, or the uses, good and bad, of credit cards). Most states have specified required courses that must be taken, and passed, in order to obtain a high school diploma.

And here's where we run into trouble... certainly the person on whose Facebook feed I first saw this would be fundamentally opposed to any law purporting to ban the teaching of "Critical Race Theory" in the public schools. My Facebook friend would feel quite strongly that states should not carve out whole topics or areas of instruction as forbidden. I tend to agree with her. But if the client of the public school is not the parent but the entire community, and the entire community enacts such a law through its elected representatives, isn't that the end of the discussion?

Yes, the parents alone are not the community. But they are a part. The teachers alone are not the community. They are also merely part. Also part of the community is the grumpy old couple with no children who always oppose school bond issues. And the parents who send their kids to private schools. And the seniors worried about what sort of stuff is being taught to their grandkids. We are all a part of the community and we all should have a say in what is taught. And it is not offensive to nature, or good order, or to the Patriot Act for persons who have a particular interest (e.g., parents) to demand to know what goes behind closed school doors.

But all of this controversy, all of this anger, all of this angst can be substantially reduced if only all of us can recall the purpose of public schooling. I've given you my understanding. Let me give it to you again:

The purpose of public schools is to produce good, productive, patriotic citizens, the kinds of persons who will hold good jobs in an increasingly complex economy. People who will respect the law and support the Constitution. People who will be kind and generous and sympathetic to the plight of their less-fortunate neighbors. People who will be proud of their communities, local, state, and national, and who will make their communities proud in turn. The types of people you'd like to live next door to, and associate with, and do business with.

Can we agree on this much? If not, what should be added? What should be taken out?

One thing we should be able to agree on: The public schools should not be used to teach kids to hate America, or each other, or themselves. Our nation is not perfect. No human thing is. We can always learn from our mistakes and grow from them -- if we don't ignore them, that is -- and I firmly belief that we have learned and grown as a society in my lifetime. We can, and must, continue to grow and learn and adapt. But we need to work together.

Who are the Twitterati and why did we cede control of our culture to them?

It must have been so difficult in Ye Olden Days to put a mob together. It happened, of course, from time to time, even before the Internet. No less an authority than Smithsonian Magazine, in a June 2020 article, reports that nearly 2,000 Black Americans were lynched during Reconstruction, perhaps as many as 6,500 from the end of the Civil War until 1950. Murder by mob. Over and over and over again.

A mob is a gathering of people which collectively adopts, by some unspoken means, the IQ of the most ignorant person present.

Which is why Internet mobs are so very dangerous indeed: With old style mobs, whether recruited by newspaper or word of mouth, the individuals comprising the mob had to have at least enough intelligence to work their own doorknobs. Now, with the Internet generally, and Twitter specifically, even that minimal qualification is no longer necessary. So we have mobs that are more ignorant than ever, and they can assemble at the Speed of Light.

And supposedly serious people take these mobs seriously indeed.

Careers are ruined, reputations trashed, lives are forever altered all because largely anonymous people take their umbrage to Twitter.

In a recent post by Ken Levine, "Dave Chappelle and the current state of comedy," Levine laments, "Remember the days when some people thought something was funny while others didn’t and it was just chalked up to differing senses of humor?"

Levine was not defending Dave Chappelle per se. He's not particularly a fan. But, he said, he is glad there is at least one comic out there who is fearless, who is willing to ruffle feathers, who forces people to think. On the other hand, he adds,

I’m personally not a fan of mean-spirited comedy. And if it’s designed to demean anyone, regardless of color, gender, age — then it’s not for me. And it’s not the type of thing I write. But I don’t think there should censorship when it comes to comedy. I don’t think writers or comics should be blasted for things they wrote or said that may not be acceptable now but were when they wrote or said them.

That last sentence should be engraved in stone somewhere. Perhaps atop a pile of rubble left over from the destruction of statues of persons we (as a society) once thought heroic or important for something they had done in their lives, only to be torn down recently by mobs who were outraged by their failure to espouse 21st Century "values" (as they see them) in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, or 19th Centuries. I'm not talking Robert E. Lee here, kids. I'm talking about George Washington. Or Abraham Lincoln.

Anyway, Levine's post cited to a long article on Commentary called "Destroying Comedy," by David Zucker. Zucker was one of the creators of the classic movie Airplane!, one of the many funny movies made a generation ago that could never, ever be made today.

Which was Mr. Zucker's point exactly. Go ahead, read the whole article. I'll wait.

You're back? I thought some of his jokes very funny, others crude and tasteless. Kind of like his movies. The good ones had more hits than misses, the not-so-good ones had more misses than hits. Whatever.

This passage in particular jumped off the screen at me:

[S]ome of the best contemporary comedy minds are abandoning laughter in favor of admittedly brilliant but serious projects such as Joker, directed by Todd Phillips, and Chernobyl, written by Craig Mazin. These men collaborated on two of the Hangover pictures, which struck gold at the box office. Phillips summed up the general plight of the comedy writer when he said, “It’s hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter. You just can’t do it. So, you just go, ‘I’m out.’”

Zucker suggests we use Phillips' estimate of 30 million as the number of the perpetually outraged Twitterati or, as Zucker writes, that portion of the "population is killing joy for everyone." By his reckoning, that comes to about 9% of the population.

Nine percent. Do you realize how vanishingly small 9% is?

Donald Trump -- Donald Trump! -- got 34% of the vote in Ken Levine's California (source: Wikipedia). Trump was buried in a Biden landslide -- in a state where Republicans are an endangered species -- and he still got nearly four times (3.77777 if you're keeping score at home) the estimated percentage of perpetually outraged Twitterati, compared to the rest of the country.

And I think Mr. Phillips may be overly generous in his estimate. An outfit called Statista estimates that there are 73 million Twitter users in the U.S. as of July 2021 (and another 17.55 million in the U.K. -- not all our online outrage is necessarily domestic). An online marketing firm called Oberlo suggests that there were 55 million active daily Twitter users in the U.S. as of Q4 2020.

That makes sense to me: In my own family I am by far the most active Twitter user. I post fairly regularly. But my sons follow the latest local sports news and rumors on the site and seldom, if ever, post. Their usage varies widely, fluctuating with the seasons. None of us, to my knowledge, has ever joined a Twitter mob.

So the percentage of persons regularly active on Twitter should be less than the total number of registered Twitter users. And there are uses for Twitter, believe it or not, besides trying to ruin the lives of persons who inadvertently offend the perpetually outraged. And there are right-wing kooks and crazies on Twitter, too, and these would presumably not be upset at the same things that animate their equally dim brethren on the Left. So the total number of perpetually outraged Twitterati should be some modest percentage of overall active Twitter users -- 30 million may be way high and off the mark.

But whatever. Assume that they are 9% of the country's population. Ninety-one to nine is not just a landslide, it's an avalanche. And while the vanishingly small cadre of perpetually outraged Twitterati may be concentrated in various geographic locations -- perhaps in the most hip, trendy, and tawdry neighborhoods of our largest cities -- they could not carry an election for dogcatcher. Anywhere. Why do we listen to such as these?

Part of the reason, presumably, is because the perpetually outraged make such outlandish statements that media types, the few remaining journalists and all the multiplying cable 'news' outlets, find them irresistible. They bring in eyeballs. Or clicks. And that's how media companies make money in 2021. And, some, surely, are embedded in the media or in academia. But, if you went to college -- heck, if you went to high school -- you know darn good and well that not all teachers are necessarily smart.

And they may "follow" each other. The more followers one has on Twitter, the greater that person's presumed influence. But if all the like-minded (and I am using 'minded' here in the loosest possible sense) perpertually outraged folk follow each other, that has no influence on the 91% at all. And some of them aren't even influential enough to attract followers even within their own tiny-minded clique. Chicago Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) recently apologized online for 'engaging' with a Twitter user who had one more nostril than he had followers.

That's a positively Churchillian put-down.

Let me conclude by going back to the Ken Levine post I mentioned at the outset. A final quote:

The night ALL IN THE FAMILY premiered on CBS, they installed extra phone banks and operators to field the inevitable throng of complaints. They got 12 calls. 12. Now today those 12 could cause such a stink that they might be able to pressure ALL IN THE FAMILY off the air. How horrifying is that?

It doesn't have to be horrifying at all.

In the Pixar movie A Bug's Life, a handful of grasshoppers terrorize an ant colony until one ant, Flick, realizes that, just by sticking together, the ants are far stronger than the grasshoppers no matter how loud the grasshoppers roar or how scary they look. The perpetually outraged Twitterati are the grasshoppers, people. We are the ants. We don't have to live in fear of them.

Now we know which side to take: Balding Billy blasts billionaires' space efforts

Nothing against Balding Billy, really. He and his lovely wife, Bonnie Kate, will be King and Queen of Great Britain some day. Probably. Assuming the monarchy survives his father. Which it most likely will. The monarchy is too important for the British tourism industry.

But that doesn't mean that anyone should take these "Royals" seriously. The Brits like them because they have good manners and dress well and they provide a little lustre to any social occasion that any of them happens to attend. An animatron could probably do those jobs just as well. But the "Royals," being human, and not very bright, are capable of stupendous blunders, and make them from time to time, giving fodder for the tabloids (at least outside of Britain) and plots for new Netflix programs. It all keeps the tourists interested.

Before you accuse me of being unfair, consider the position of the monarch in the British constitutional scheme. The Sovereign can advise, and warn, and has a right to be informed -- and then, when instructed, to sign here and here and read the occasional speech exactly as written. The Brits know better than to actually pay heed to one of these creatures.

So, when Balding Billy says, in a BBC interview, "We need some of the world's greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live," it means absolutely nothing.

Billy may or not be a billionaire in his own right. Yet. He will be eventually, of course. And he will acquire his billions in the oldest of old-fashioned ways: He will inherit it. (The present Queen controls a vast personal fortune in addition to the tourist traps she fronts.) But -- unless I missed it -- he's not advocating hocking the Crown Jewels in hopes of 'repairing' the Earth.

It's all very amusing, really, how the billionaire space entrepreneurs, Musk, and Bezos, and Branson, are portrayed as having the solution to all the world's problems in their wallets, but selfishly choose instead to squander their fortunes on space travel:

But that doesn't mean that it's true. Because it isn't.

We should continue to try and solve our problems here on Earth. Which we'll never do, of course, because we are imperfect beings who will never achieve perfection in this life. But we can keep trying to improve.

At the same time, however, we must also look to the future, to our future, as a species. Our fragile civilization should persist, at least until the next eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano... which probably won't happen this year or next... but might. And all the tax revenue in the world won't help us then. And who knows what other nasty tricks Mother Nature may play on us? Maybe it will be another, deadlier virus. Maybe it will be an asteroid. No... dispersal is a sound strategy for any species; it is a necessary strategy for ours, too.

I'm sure I'd much rather have Balding Billy and Bonnie Kate as neighbors than Musk or Branson or Bezos. Less drama. Polite chit-chat over the back fence. Their kids would play nice with my grandkids. But, obnoxious as they may be, I'd trust Branson and Musk and Bezos with the future over Balding Billy. Any day.