Author Archives: Tom Crippen

A Question I Could Not Have Answered

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Hilzoy is back, this time quoting Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine:


 Later the same day, Powell came back to [Cabell Chinnis Jr., his law clerk] and asked, “Why don’t homosexuals have sex with women?” “Justice Powell,” he replied, “a gay man cannot have an erection to perform intercourse with a woman.” The conversation was especially bizarre not just because of its explicit nature but because Chinnis himself was gay (as were several of Powell’s previous law clerks.)”

Powell didn’t know that Chinnis was gay, or the previous law clerks, or anyone else he had ever met. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a homosexual,” he told Chinnis. This was in 1986, when Powell and the rest of the Supreme Court were deciding whether Georgia could keep gays from getting it on in the usual ways. As it happens, Powell and four other justices decided, sure, Georgia could do that. Hilzoy figures Powell might have decided differently if gay existence weren’t such a big blank spot to him.  No word on Justice Byron “Whizzer” White, who also ruled with the majority and had got his start with that swinging Kennedy crowd, the fellows who were in the know about everything.
Powell, I expect, was highly intelligent, and he had certainly been out and about in the world, a president of the ABA, a lawyer with big clients. But the question he asked Chinnis is one I cannot imagine answering. That the answer appears to have satisfied him (we’re not told that he said, “Okay, but why can’t they get an erection?”)  suggests that Powell wasn’t at sqaure one, he was at square zero. He was at the level of (made-up quotes) “What, they don’t like the feel? They want to stay close to their college buddies?” “Well no, sir, they can’t get an erection with women.” “Oh.“
When I was a kid, we thought of the pre-1960s crowd as being prehistoric, before the dawn of modern consciousness, trapped in the era when nobody knew anything about sex, race, or whatever else had bubbled up during the great upheaval.  Then a few more years passed, various references in old books and movies forced their way into my awareness, and I realized that the old-timers, when young, had been on to more than I thought. Now I’m reminded that being on to more than I thought has its limits. The past, like the poet said, is a fucked-up place. I guess the present, as a past in the making, is too. 

Do young people like Star Trek?

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My tv viewing and other anecdotal evidence led me to think that Star Wars was the favored brand for Gen X onward. After all, the last Trek tv show was kind of a fizzle, the last Trek movie wouldn’t even put the Enterprise in its poster. But yesterday I heard a boy and girl, both about 20, discussing the new Trek movie, and today I’ve seen a few posts about it popping up on blogs by people a lot younger than I am.

I suppose young people could prefer Star Wars but still take an interest in Star Trek. Anything is possible.
UPDATE:  Looks like the new one’s getting good reviews. Yeah, Trek!
UPDATE 2:  Ward Sutton has watched a lot of Star Trek.
UPDATE 3:  Obama wants to see the movie. ( I hope Politico misquotes his reference to “lithium crystals.”) Nimoy talks about Obama and other topics.
UPDATE 4:  I just took a look and confirmed it: the new movie’s name is simply Star Trek, as if it were named after the franchise. That seems kind of postmodern to me.

Religion

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The liberal blogger Hilzoy has a good line:


I would think that people of faith, in particular, should be wary of politicians holding ceremonial observances of National Prayer Day. For one thing, one’s communications with God are intensely personal. If you think of God as a person, and not as a political weapon, the idea of having a ceremony of this kind would be like observing National Have A Serious Talk With Your Spouse Day by having such a talk in front of TV cameras.


Well … yeah. You wouldn’t even have to think of God as a person, just as a force, the Prime Mover, whatever. You would just have to be thinking about God, not how you could PR the masses into having the right attitude toward God.

As a nonbeliever (I settled the question here), I’m always surprised by how easily God slips from the minds of people who say they believe in Him/Her/It. If I believed in Him/Her/It, I’d believe 24-7. He/She/It would be a really big deal to me.

Good thing I don’t, because who needs the hassle. But to say you believe in God, and then to figure that praying ought naturally to be a photo op, or that you’ll follow this injunction of your faith but not another … it sure looks lame from the outside.

UPDATE:  A commenter at the site where Hilzoy posted (it’s the Washington Monthly, no permalink that I can find; the commenter is named Racer X) says the following:

Obama may just be trying to do what Jesus supposedly told us to do; pray in private and avoid the ceremonial prayers of the Pharisees. The bible is extremely clear on the directive, and yet the churches always have violated it. 


Okay, but is it ceremonial if everyone is just praying at the same time? And is it in public if they’re at their place of worship and not somewhere in front of nonbelievers? And where did Jesus say whatever Racer X claims he said?

But I’d like to believe Racer X is correct. To me the most interesting thing about religion is the way people can think they believe in it while choosing which bits to ignore.

UPDATE 2:  From comments, the Jesus quote and Bible cite. Thanks, Naomi.

Matthew 6:5-6:

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”


Wow, that seems pretty open and shut. So for 2,000 years, or close, Christians have been gathering together to do what Jesus expressly told them not to do. That’s bizarre. There’s got to be an explanation here. UPDATE 3:  Or I would think there had to be an explanation if I hadn’t just said in comments that the “whole thing is weird and inexplicable.”

Oh, These Times

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This is funny:


Already, as a NOM commercial on the Prejean incident was released, a story about her implants was leaked. And, of course, that was only the beginning of the character assassination to come. 


The quote is from a column by Seth Leibsohn and Kathryn Lopez at National Review (via Sullivan, as usual). NOM is the National Organization for Marriage, which doesn’t want gays getting married. Carrie is Carrie Prejean, a girl who is Miss California (and looks like you’d expect Miss California to look). She told an Internet gossip site that she’s against gay marriage. 

The implants … well, apparently she had implants, and nobody needs an explanation as to where. Not even the people at National Review, who spend the rest of their column wading into all the terrible sexual things young people get up to nowadays. I guess this is what strikes me as the funny part. But Leibsohn and Lopez could argue back, if they felt like it, that their point was proved by this little aside. Everyday culture is now so sexualized that “implants” is a standard, commonplace term that everyone recognizes without explanation.

To take on some of the points actually made in the column:

  • Leibsohn and Lopez seem to deplore every decision Ms. Prejean has ever made except her decision to be against gays getting married. If she’s so bad at making decisions, are they happy having her agree with them?
  • L&L acknowledge that Ms. Prejean signed a release saying she had never posed for seminude photos, even though, well, she had indeed posed for such photos. L&L act as if this provided “some of the most radical opponents of her position on gay marriage” (interesting construction) with an easy pretext to play the hypocrisy card. But I think we can all agree that people should not lie in signed statements. Our legal system certainly thinks so.
  • L&L act as if everyone who’s in favor of gay marriage somehow got together to do down Ms. Prejean: “note what the movement of tolerance does when you simply exercise your rights to free speech, taking a position they disagree with. They go personal. They go for the jugular.” But we’re talking about leaked information. By definition, very few people have access to such information. A handful of people decided to reveal Ms. Prejean’s secrets; I bet they didn’t like what she had to say about gay marriage, but a movement they ain’t.
  • Finally, there’s a reason people like that phrase about “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The reason is sentences such as the following:  “One report last year found that one in four teens has a sexually transmitted disease.” Oh yeah, what report and using what methods? Maybe the American Institute for Keep It in Your Pants held a nationwide contest and church members wrote their best guesses on boxtops. L&L don’t tell us.

Credit where it’s due, L&L are right in saying that Bristol Palin should not be doing publicity work for teen abstinence, especially since 1) she has a child to raise, 2) she still has to get thru high school, and 3) she apparently doesn’t believe in teen abstinence. Her decision to go before the cameras really is absurd. Who could have influenced her? Who around her has shown a persistent combination of reckless judgment and love for publicity? Oh yeah, her fucking mother. Which goes to show two things: parents don’t always know best, and Kathryn Lopez is very bad at picking worthy candidates for high national office. Good thing she knows so much about how teens ought to behave. 

UPDATE:  I forgot, L&L end their column with a plea for “decency.” Yeah, well, torture.

UPDATE 2:  The gossip site TMZ says Ms. Prejean’s parents got divorced and accused each other of gay shit. A reason for Ms. Prejean’s beliefs on gay marriage? Possibly. An occasion for one of the more amusing sentences ever allegedly found in court papers? Oh yes, very much so. Here is the sentence: “The mother also alleges the father told the girls their stepfather was gay, that all men with mustaches are gay.” Tom Selleck assures me that’s just what is called a rule of thumb. 

Marvel at a Publishers Weekly Hand-me-down

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PW keeps sending me e-mails with small news stories in them. Here’s the latest, a lead story about how Marvel is doing. The byline is Jim Milliot:

Marvel Entertainment had an overall strong first quarter, although results in its publishing segment fell in the period ended March 31. Revenue in the segment declined 2.6%, to $25.8 million, which the company attributed to lower advertising revenue that was only partially offset by modest improvement in the mass market channel and higher prices. Operating income declined 29% due to lower ad sales and $1 million in investment in its digital media operations. Marvel said it expects publishing sales to improve in the second half of 2009, and is still targeting operating margins in the publishing group of between 31% and 35%; margin in the first quarter was 27%. 

For the entire company, Marvel enjoyed gains in licensing and production segments with the production unit benefitting from video versions of Iron Man and Incredible Hulk. Over the weekend, X-Men Origins: Wolverine generated worldwide box office receipts of $158 million; those results will fall in the second quarter and the company raised the low end of its guidance for 2009. 
Not bad, Wolverine! Here’s the BoxOfficeMojo link for the film. Apparently the movie did about as much in a weekend as Watchmen did in 50 days.
… Fuck it, this is stupid. I should be doing something, and instead I’m sitting around pretending this is work.

What does “emo” mean?

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I gather it was some kind of music that people find drippy, and that by extension it’s been applied to sensitive young men. Is that the case? Apparently people consider the term  a sure put-away insult. From a thread on Sandman at TCJ’s message board, JL Roberson calls Gaiman’s Sandman “Emorpheus” and adds, “sorry, but it’s true, and Dave Sim’s parody of him sums up all that you need to know about him.” As I recall, the Sim parody character was named Swoon and wouldn’t have been much good at football.