No, we haven't "established" it, we have simply put the question and called for actual argument and evidence for why one view is more likely correct than the other. I think that process has been run into the ground on this particular thread, and readers can judge for themselves what the evidence is and how the arguments hang together.
Nothing strange about that. As a lawyer who handles discrimination cases, this is how I spend most of my working days, figuring out whether "it's not because he's black" is a reasonable response. That takes actual thought and work, gathering and sifting of evidence, and assessing it in the light of what we know about human nature. You can't just make s**t up.
No. My point is that Sullivan was vulnerable in ways the others aren't. There isn't anything meaningful -- outside the usual guff criminal lawyers face -- that anyone inclined to punish the others could do. (The scenario that some random restaurant owner might recognize Baez or Mackey, or Sullivan for that matter, and refuse to serve them is too fanciful to consider and, most importantly, there is no reason to think that Baez or Mackey would face such treatment and Sullivan wouldn't.)
What's "weird" is asserting, on the basis of exactly nothing, that Baez and Mackey are getting away with something that Sullivan isn't because they are not black, rather than that Sullivan is vulnerable in a way the others aren't.
I haven't expressed an opinion about whether any of them ought to be punished, beyond enduring what all criminal defense lawyers endure all the time, and I don't plan to.
The Democratic Party has been the centrist party for a long time. There is no significant left party. I won't argue with anyone's feelings about that, or, for that matter, express my own, but it is the fact.
My father's second wife was Japanese and brought a young son to the marriage. One year, my wife and I were doing Christmas shopping and we were trying to find something for Eddie. We passed a display of plastic giant reptile monsters. One of them was Godzilla. I reached for it, remarking: "Japanese kids love Godzilla." My wife gave me a look, and I grabbed another, less recognizable monster.
When we opened presents, Eddie looked at what we had brought and said: "Oh, boy, just like Godzilla!"
Well, there's an argument for you. Maybe you'll tell us what the sanction is. Criminal defense lawyers constantly face criticism for representing sleazebags, whether they are white, black, Hispanic, or -- especially interesting in this case -- female. No reason to think it isn't happening here. They don't face "market" sanctions for zealously representing sleazebags because their customer base is sleazebags. They don't have to worry about bar association sanctions; quite the opposite, bar associations will defend them for doing their jobs. Their firms won't lose enough talented young lawyers to matter. And they don't, unlike Sullivan, have side-gigs where they have to answer to a constituency that might object to their representing sleazebags.
So basically, nobody is in a position to do anything to Baez and Mackey beyond what countless noisy folk do every day to criminal defense lawyers for defending criminals. Do you think the usual isn't happening to Baez and Mackey? Or that it would be newsworthy if it were? Do you think somebody with some ability to do more than the usual is holding back because they are Hispanic or female rather than black? Do you really think -- and do you have some basis for thinking -- that Sullivan would have skated if he had been white?
The other Weinstein lawyers: Jose Baez -- note that he's Hispanic -- and Pamela Mackey -- note that she's a woman.
My original point, which you keep ducking, is that there isn't any "sanction" available to hit them with. That's the relevant difference between them and Sullivan. Sullivan had a side job from which he could be fired. Baez and Mackey, and Sullivan as well, almost certainly took the usual s**t from people who don't like lawyers defending slimy clients, but only Sullivan had something else on the table. What else could anyone do to Baez and Mackey?
Of course you're allowed to "notice" anything that, for whatever reason, strikes you as worth noticing. And, for whatever reason, you "notice" that he's black. But if you put it out there as some sort of insight, you ought to have some basis -- other than the desire to troll -- for thinking it mattered.
"a single one" of what, or whom? How do I "look up" any or all of the criminal defense lawyers who get criticized for defending criminals, and why would anyone do that? (I know of a few from personal experience, but then so does everyone else.) How would one look up prominent criminal defense lawyers who never even dared to run for public office precisely because they were prominent criminal defense lawyers and, therefore, probably unelectable?
If your question is what have the other Weinstein lawyers, specifically, suffered, well, they can't get fired from jobs they don't have. I doubt that they have suffered anything more than the generic unpleasantness prominent criminal defense lawyers generally face when they represent some high-profile bad guy, like F. Lee Bailey, or Alan Dershowitz, or Roy Black, or Ben Brafman. They aren't complaining, so no reason to research which asshole at what cocktail party told them yet again what they have heard so many times before.
[L1] More than once, I have seen an irate arrestee yell at the cops: "You didn't read me my rights!" Once, I heard the cop answer: "I didn't ask you anything, asshole."
Who would sanction the other lawyers, and for what? They are all private legal practitioners. None of them has any other institutional affiliation that might, even arguably, be compromised by their representing Weinstein. (I knew him in college, and none of what he has been accused of surprises me.) As private practitioners, they are subject to the sanction of private market forces, but criminal defense lawyers rarely suffer in the market for criminal defense services from vigorously defending exactly the sort of folks who would normally seek their services. They probably do suffer some sanction in the court of public opinion. When was the last time a prominent criminal defense lawyer, who represented really bad people and sometimes got them off, got elected to public office? To suggest that race played a part in this is just trolling.
As far as the underlying controversy is concerned, I know no more about it than anyone else, but I suspect that two things are simultaneously true: (1) the Sullivans weren't doing a good job; and (2) this might not have come to light without the Weinstein controversy. Ward Churchill is on line 2.
Very likely. Fagin would then be a loathsome character who merely happened to be a Jew. And if called on it for that fact alone, Dickens's response, that he had no desire to offend Jews and had simply modeled Fagin on real-life models who happened to be Jews, would have been more persuasive.
Indeed, he is, but he is based on Arnold Rothstein, a real, loathsome, but colorful Jew. I wouldn't be surprised if Fitzgerald weren't at least a casual anti-Semite -- that would have been the safe bet regarding any Christian of his generation if you had no other information to go on -- but the loathsome Wolfsheim doesn't tell us much about that.
That's a hard one. There doesn't seem to be anything about Fagin's Jewishness that is relevant either to the plot or to his evil character. In that sense, his being Jewish can be seen as incidental. He had to be something, and there may have been a Jewish real-life model. But if that were all there were to it, like mafiosi being Italian or Irish cops throwing around anti-Italian ethnic slurs, then what you would expect is that references to his Jewishness would either be early straight exposition of a biographical fact, or slurs coming from people who would be expected to talk like that. Instead, where most authors would say "Fagin" when speaking as the narrator, Dickens frequently refers to Fagin as "the Jew" in contexts where his Jewishness isn't relevant. (The novel was published serially, and he did this frequently in the early sections, but stopped in the later installments after a protest that he seems to have taken to heart.)
No. I believe your kid said what you say he said. It doesn't match my experience of past or present 11-year-olds, but both of us are working off small sample sizes.
I read Oliver Twist only recently, though I had seen the musical. I was singing Reviewing the Situation (actually a parody to the tune) in a musical comedy and, knowing that there was a Fagin issue, I asked several Jewish fellow cast members whether my portrayal was Too Jewish (hat tip to Harvey Korman). I was assured it was not, and the song was, if I must say so myself, a hit.
The experience prompted me to read the book. I knew that Dickens knew a great deal about the London underworld, and had heard that there was a well-known Fagin-like criminal who was Jewish.
Obviously, if you write a novel about the Mafia, it will necessarily include a bunch of Italian criminals, and rightly so. That's who's in the Mafia. Irish cops will likely refer to them as "Wops" and "Dagoes," and rightly so. That's what they do. That's just verisimilitude. So I was prepared for Fagin being a Jew, as a simple biographical matter, and for various bad or ignorant folks to employ anti-Semitic language.
What startled me was how unrelated to anything in the story Fagin's Jewishness was -- unlike, say, Merchant of Venice -- and how often he was being called "the Jew" not by anti-Semitic characters, but by Dickens himself, as narrator. Imagine Mario Puzo, as narrator, calling Don Corleone or Michael "the Wop" frequently.
One of these days, maybe we'll find out what these "concerns" are, why you think they are likely to be realized, and what Bad Stuff is going to happen if they are. Then maybe we can talk.
I didn't think that way when I was eleven, and most people I know didn't, either. My limited acquaintance with contemporary eleven-year-olds is consistent with what I remember. The Baby Hitler meme is a conversation starter. I doubt it reflects anything real. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I travel in the wrong circles. I don't think so, but I am willing to be persuaded.
My best jury story. I was picking a jury in the Bronx and was questioning a 30-ish African-American man named Troy Canty. He seemed unobjectionable, but something in the back of my mind was bugging me. So I asked him, "Mr. Canty, I can't shake a nagging feeling that I know you from somewhere or for some reason. Can you think of any reason I might know you?" Turns out he was one of the people Subway Gunman Bernard Goetz shot in the 1980s. Mr. Canty was obviously displeased with the results of his involvement with the court system. Although I still had no particular objection to him being on the jury, both sides agreed that he could go home. The way the case went, I might have been better off keeping him, though my adversary would surely have gotten rid of him.
As someone with 20-400 vision, I have great respect and gratitude for ophthalmologists, but I have trouble grasping the concept of a "hotshot ophthalmologist." I just don't see it.
People join the services for a variety of reasons. Once they're in, being sent into misbegotten clusterf***s is part of the job, and they're professionals. They rarely actually decide to sign up for the purpose of taking part in whatever clusterf**k their superiors send them into. What keeps them moving east when the other side's bullets are heading west has more to do with unit cohesion than any belief in the specific cause.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Wednesday Writs for May 15”
No, we haven't "established" it, we have simply put the question and called for actual argument and evidence for why one view is more likely correct than the other. I think that process has been run into the ground on this particular thread, and readers can judge for themselves what the evidence is and how the arguments hang together.
Nothing strange about that. As a lawyer who handles discrimination cases, this is how I spend most of my working days, figuring out whether "it's not because he's black" is a reasonable response. That takes actual thought and work, gathering and sifting of evidence, and assessing it in the light of what we know about human nature. You can't just make s**t up.
"
No. My point is that Sullivan was vulnerable in ways the others aren't. There isn't anything meaningful -- outside the usual guff criminal lawyers face -- that anyone inclined to punish the others could do. (The scenario that some random restaurant owner might recognize Baez or Mackey, or Sullivan for that matter, and refuse to serve them is too fanciful to consider and, most importantly, there is no reason to think that Baez or Mackey would face such treatment and Sullivan wouldn't.)
What's "weird" is asserting, on the basis of exactly nothing, that Baez and Mackey are getting away with something that Sullivan isn't because they are not black, rather than that Sullivan is vulnerable in a way the others aren't.
I haven't expressed an opinion about whether any of them ought to be punished, beyond enduring what all criminal defense lawyers endure all the time, and I don't plan to.
On “The Big Dog Or The Biggest Choke”
The Democratic Party has been the centrist party for a long time. There is no significant left party. I won't argue with anyone's feelings about that, or, for that matter, express my own, but it is the fact.
On “The King of the Monsters”
My father's second wife was Japanese and brought a young son to the marriage. One year, my wife and I were doing Christmas shopping and we were trying to find something for Eddie. We passed a display of plastic giant reptile monsters. One of them was Godzilla. I reached for it, remarking: "Japanese kids love Godzilla." My wife gave me a look, and I grabbed another, less recognizable monster.
When we opened presents, Eddie looked at what we had brought and said: "Oh, boy, just like Godzilla!"
On “Wednesday Writs for May 15”
I had words after my answer of “dunno”. I’d like to think that those other words were meaty enough to provide stuff to work with.
You might like to think so. I think I'll leave the matter to the readers.
"
There's only so much anyone can do with "dunno," other than suggest that if you really "dunno" there isn't much to say, or much reason to say it.
"
Of *COURSE* there is!
Well, there's an argument for you. Maybe you'll tell us what the sanction is. Criminal defense lawyers constantly face criticism for representing sleazebags, whether they are white, black, Hispanic, or -- especially interesting in this case -- female. No reason to think it isn't happening here. They don't face "market" sanctions for zealously representing sleazebags because their customer base is sleazebags. They don't have to worry about bar association sanctions; quite the opposite, bar associations will defend them for doing their jobs. Their firms won't lose enough talented young lawyers to matter. And they don't, unlike Sullivan, have side-gigs where they have to answer to a constituency that might object to their representing sleazebags.
So basically, nobody is in a position to do anything to Baez and Mackey beyond what countless noisy folk do every day to criminal defense lawyers for defending criminals. Do you think the usual isn't happening to Baez and Mackey? Or that it would be newsworthy if it were? Do you think somebody with some ability to do more than the usual is holding back because they are Hispanic or female rather than black? Do you really think -- and do you have some basis for thinking -- that Sullivan would have skated if he had been white?
"
Criminals are generally stupid.
"
The other Weinstein lawyers: Jose Baez -- note that he's Hispanic -- and Pamela Mackey -- note that she's a woman.
My original point, which you keep ducking, is that there isn't any "sanction" available to hit them with. That's the relevant difference between them and Sullivan. Sullivan had a side job from which he could be fired. Baez and Mackey, and Sullivan as well, almost certainly took the usual s**t from people who don't like lawyers defending slimy clients, but only Sullivan had something else on the table. What else could anyone do to Baez and Mackey?
Of course you're allowed to "notice" anything that, for whatever reason, strikes you as worth noticing. And, for whatever reason, you "notice" that he's black. But if you put it out there as some sort of insight, you ought to have some basis -- other than the desire to troll -- for thinking it mattered.
"
"a single one" of what, or whom? How do I "look up" any or all of the criminal defense lawyers who get criticized for defending criminals, and why would anyone do that? (I know of a few from personal experience, but then so does everyone else.) How would one look up prominent criminal defense lawyers who never even dared to run for public office precisely because they were prominent criminal defense lawyers and, therefore, probably unelectable?
If your question is what have the other Weinstein lawyers, specifically, suffered, well, they can't get fired from jobs they don't have. I doubt that they have suffered anything more than the generic unpleasantness prominent criminal defense lawyers generally face when they represent some high-profile bad guy, like F. Lee Bailey, or Alan Dershowitz, or Roy Black, or Ben Brafman. They aren't complaining, so no reason to research which asshole at what cocktail party told them yet again what they have heard so many times before.
"
[L1] More than once, I have seen an irate arrestee yell at the cops: "You didn't read me my rights!" Once, I heard the cop answer: "I didn't ask you anything, asshole."
"
Who would sanction the other lawyers, and for what? They are all private legal practitioners. None of them has any other institutional affiliation that might, even arguably, be compromised by their representing Weinstein. (I knew him in college, and none of what he has been accused of surprises me.) As private practitioners, they are subject to the sanction of private market forces, but criminal defense lawyers rarely suffer in the market for criminal defense services from vigorously defending exactly the sort of folks who would normally seek their services. They probably do suffer some sanction in the court of public opinion. When was the last time a prominent criminal defense lawyer, who represented really bad people and sometimes got them off, got elected to public office? To suggest that race played a part in this is just trolling.
As far as the underlying controversy is concerned, I know no more about it than anyone else, but I suspect that two things are simultaneously true: (1) the Sullivans weren't doing a good job; and (2) this might not have come to light without the Weinstein controversy. Ward Churchill is on line 2.
On “Fagin, Bigotry, and “Cancel Culture””
Very likely. Fagin would then be a loathsome character who merely happened to be a Jew. And if called on it for that fact alone, Dickens's response, that he had no desire to offend Jews and had simply modeled Fagin on real-life models who happened to be Jews, would have been more persuasive.
"
Indeed, he is, but he is based on Arnold Rothstein, a real, loathsome, but colorful Jew. I wouldn't be surprised if Fitzgerald weren't at least a casual anti-Semite -- that would have been the safe bet regarding any Christian of his generation if you had no other information to go on -- but the loathsome Wolfsheim doesn't tell us much about that.
"
That's a hard one. There doesn't seem to be anything about Fagin's Jewishness that is relevant either to the plot or to his evil character. In that sense, his being Jewish can be seen as incidental. He had to be something, and there may have been a Jewish real-life model. But if that were all there were to it, like mafiosi being Italian or Irish cops throwing around anti-Italian ethnic slurs, then what you would expect is that references to his Jewishness would either be early straight exposition of a biographical fact, or slurs coming from people who would be expected to talk like that. Instead, where most authors would say "Fagin" when speaking as the narrator, Dickens frequently refers to Fagin as "the Jew" in contexts where his Jewishness isn't relevant. (The novel was published serially, and he did this frequently in the early sections, but stopped in the later installments after a protest that he seems to have taken to heart.)
On “Oh, the Humanity”
Well, that certainly clears things up.
"
No. I believe your kid said what you say he said. It doesn't match my experience of past or present 11-year-olds, but both of us are working off small sample sizes.
On “Fagin, Bigotry, and “Cancel Culture””
I read Oliver Twist only recently, though I had seen the musical. I was singing Reviewing the Situation (actually a parody to the tune) in a musical comedy and, knowing that there was a Fagin issue, I asked several Jewish fellow cast members whether my portrayal was Too Jewish (hat tip to Harvey Korman). I was assured it was not, and the song was, if I must say so myself, a hit.
The experience prompted me to read the book. I knew that Dickens knew a great deal about the London underworld, and had heard that there was a well-known Fagin-like criminal who was Jewish.
Obviously, if you write a novel about the Mafia, it will necessarily include a bunch of Italian criminals, and rightly so. That's who's in the Mafia. Irish cops will likely refer to them as "Wops" and "Dagoes," and rightly so. That's what they do. That's just verisimilitude. So I was prepared for Fagin being a Jew, as a simple biographical matter, and for various bad or ignorant folks to employ anti-Semitic language.
What startled me was how unrelated to anything in the story Fagin's Jewishness was -- unlike, say, Merchant of Venice -- and how often he was being called "the Jew" not by anti-Semitic characters, but by Dickens himself, as narrator. Imagine Mario Puzo, as narrator, calling Don Corleone or Michael "the Wop" frequently.
On “Oh, the Humanity”
One of these days, maybe we'll find out what these "concerns" are, why you think they are likely to be realized, and what Bad Stuff is going to happen if they are. Then maybe we can talk.
"
My concern is whether this is actually happening.
"
I didn't think that way when I was eleven, and most people I know didn't, either. My limited acquaintance with contemporary eleven-year-olds is consistent with what I remember. The Baby Hitler meme is a conversation starter. I doubt it reflects anything real. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I travel in the wrong circles. I don't think so, but I am willing to be persuaded.
On “Wednesday Writs for 5/8”
My best jury story. I was picking a jury in the Bronx and was questioning a 30-ish African-American man named Troy Canty. He seemed unobjectionable, but something in the back of my mind was bugging me. So I asked him, "Mr. Canty, I can't shake a nagging feeling that I know you from somewhere or for some reason. Can you think of any reason I might know you?" Turns out he was one of the people Subway Gunman Bernard Goetz shot in the 1980s. Mr. Canty was obviously displeased with the results of his involvement with the court system. Although I still had no particular objection to him being on the jury, both sides agreed that he could go home. The way the case went, I might have been better off keeping him, though my adversary would surely have gotten rid of him.
On “There’s Something About Mary Sue”
That clears it up. Thanks.
"
As someone with 20-400 vision, I have great respect and gratitude for ophthalmologists, but I have trouble grasping the concept of a "hotshot ophthalmologist." I just don't see it.
On “Virtue Signaling the Civil War”
People join the services for a variety of reasons. Once they're in, being sent into misbegotten clusterf***s is part of the job, and they're professionals. They rarely actually decide to sign up for the purpose of taking part in whatever clusterf**k their superiors send them into. What keeps them moving east when the other side's bullets are heading west has more to do with unit cohesion than any belief in the specific cause.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.