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.
The "needless war" theory, prominently associated with Avery Craven, a genuinely excellent historian, had one big problem. I think it was Craven himself who said that "any sane policy" on the part of the North would have avoided war. But many serious efforts to prevent war failed, and nobody seemed able to describe a "sane policy" that would have worked. As Lincoln put it at Cooper Union, "What will satisfy the South?"
This is exactly right. And until very recently, the South had won the historical battle, both in popular culture -- two of the greatest movies ever made were Birth of a Nation, in which the hero is the KKK, and Gone With the Wind--and, until the late 1950's, the academy. It took quite a while for the latter victory to consolidate itself, because even though high-level scholarship was changing, the results didn't filter down to K-12 education for a long time. I was taught classic Lost Cause history in central New York in the 1960's and 1970's.
Rodney King might ask why we can't all get along, but considering who beat up whom, it's clear enough where the initiative has to come from.
OW6: I used to think that we'd get a Value-Added Tax once Democrats understood that it was a money machine and Republicans understood that it was regressive. Instead, it seems that we won't get it because Democrats understand that it's regressive and Republicans understand that it's a money machine.
The Boy Scouts didn't teach CPR in my day, but the rest was standard stuff.
I've had many clients accused of things they didn't do. Adopting the Mike Pence policy wouldn't have helped any of them. For a lot of them, hiring a videographer to follow them around all day, which would have been even sillier than wearing a football helmet, wouldn't have helped either.
While it would be foolish to underestimate the Democrats' ability to f**k things up, I keep mulling over a couple of questions:
1. What state is Trump likely to take that he didn't in 2016?
2. What constituency that Trump didn't do well with in 2016 is likely to show increased support for him in 2020?
3. Is there a reservoir of Trump-leaning voters that didn't turn out for him in 2016 and will be motivated to come out in 2020, or did Trump get essentially all of his supporters?
4. Will voters of color turn out better than they did in 2016?
I think the answers are: None, none, no, yes. Unless the Democrats f**k up, which they well might.
It's not "Chris," Dave. Otherwise I agree entirely. As an aside, lawyer tricks work only when the witness is being evasive or tricky, or otherwise trying to pull something. It's like the old saying: "You can't cheat an honest man." A bit of an overstatement, but there's a lot to it.
What makes you think I was not a Boy Scout other than whatever cultural stereotype you may assign to me? In fact I was, for several years. I enjoyed it immensely, wasn't sexually abused, and live by the motto "Be Prepared" to this day. But I prepare for things based on an assessment of actual risks. Seat belts and football helmets. I know that requires judgment and judgment is a hard, adult skill, but I learned a lot about it in the Boy Scouts.
He was never a social liberal, just an opportunistic libertine. At best, he didn't give a shit what other people did unless there was something in it for him. When he was a real estate developer/TV celebrity, there was nothing in it for him. As a politician, there is.
I wouldn't argue with that number -- though I'm not sure we need to quantify the difference between what justifies buckling up your seat belt and what justifies walking around town constantly wearing a football helmet. What really matters is situational judgment. How likely, given the people you work with, your own behavior, your spouse's trust in you, and other largely local factors, are you to become the target of a believable false accusation? Are you a movie producer? Then maybe someone should be in the room when you talk with starlets about casting. Are you a CPA working on a big company's taxes late into the night in early April with an attractive assistant of whatever sex you're into? Probably not, but that will depend on other local factors. Seat belts and football helmets. With the added complications that sometimes your precautions can hurt someone else. Good judgment can't be reduced to a formula. But it has to be based on more than "it has happened somewhere and could happen to me."
The “accidentally fired” thing isn’t real, which doesn’t mean it will never happen, to someone, somewhere. Everything happens. But we cannot worry about everything, nor scrutinize every possible public policy to that degree. Applied consistently, this would lead to no laws, no regulations, no policies, nothing but the war of all against all.
So why are some people worried about it? I mean, these are smart, “data driven” types. They know this isn’t an actual problem.
I've wondered about this myself, and my attempts to tease it out sometimes raise hackles.
I've driven over a half-million miles over the last 40-plus years and literally never been in a situation where it would have made a damned bit of difference whether I was wearing a seatbelt or not. But situations where it would be useful are far from uncommon, and strapping in is no big deal, so a risk-averse person is fully justified in buckling up and nobody thinks he or she is weird or misguided.
I've wandered the streets of cities perpetually under construction or renovation for decades. People sometimes die after being hit in the head by falling tools or masonry. Not often. Still, it happens somewhere, because something always happens somewhere. But if I wear a football helmet every time I go outside, people will think I'm nuts, and rightly so. Saying I'm risk-averse and it sometimes happens wouldn't wash as an explanation. Still, I'm not doing anyone else any harm, so who cares?
I've worked many late nights when on trial with attractive female co-counsel and no one else in the office. Some woman somewhere has falsely accused a man of sexual misconduct. If, for that reason, I refuse to work with my co-counsel without witnesses present, am I simply risk-averse, or a paranoid asshole, or Mike Pence? And unlike my silly football helmet, which is a harmless eccentricity, this behavior hurts my clients and damages my co-counsel's career prospects. But don't dare call anyone on it, or ask for an explanation of why this is a reasonable response to the risk.
This happens all the time when I examine witnesses. They think I am aiming for X, they vigorously deny it, and, in the process, give me Y, which is what I was after all the time.
The last thing I thought was that there was anything nefarious going on, yet both you and Maribou jumped on the assumption that that was where I was going. To be clear and explicit, I did not and do not think there is anything nefarious behind your self-described precautions. What I thought was that there was nothing behind them. And that, it seems, is the case.
Your witness.
Every accusation is a confession? What he isn't telling us might be something about the possibly toxic culture of his employer, an actual experience, either his own or a co-worker''s, with a false accusation, or some other tangible fact that might explain what seems otherwise seems like an extremely exaggerated fear.
Nothing cheap about any of that.
Most of the rest of us don't feel the need -- and more to the point, don't have the need -- to do anything like this. There must be something you're not telling us.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
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.
"
You make my point. There was no deal to be had. Unless you regard surrender as a deal.
"
The "needless war" theory, prominently associated with Avery Craven, a genuinely excellent historian, had one big problem. I think it was Craven himself who said that "any sane policy" on the part of the North would have avoided war. But many serious efforts to prevent war failed, and nobody seemed able to describe a "sane policy" that would have worked. As Lincoln put it at Cooper Union, "What will satisfy the South?"
"
This is exactly right. And until very recently, the South had won the historical battle, both in popular culture -- two of the greatest movies ever made were Birth of a Nation, in which the hero is the KKK, and Gone With the Wind--and, until the late 1950's, the academy. It took quite a while for the latter victory to consolidate itself, because even though high-level scholarship was changing, the results didn't filter down to K-12 education for a long time. I was taught classic Lost Cause history in central New York in the 1960's and 1970's.
Rodney King might ask why we can't all get along, but considering who beat up whom, it's clear enough where the initiative has to come from.
On “Ordinary World”
OW6: I used to think that we'd get a Value-Added Tax once Democrats understood that it was a money machine and Republicans understood that it was regressive. Instead, it seems that we won't get it because Democrats understand that it's regressive and Republicans understand that it's a money machine.
On “A Polish Joke”
The Boy Scouts didn't teach CPR in my day, but the rest was standard stuff.
I've had many clients accused of things they didn't do. Adopting the Mike Pence policy wouldn't have helped any of them. For a lot of them, hiring a videographer to follow them around all day, which would have been even sillier than wearing a football helmet, wouldn't have helped either.
On “The Trouble With Incumbency”
While it would be foolish to underestimate the Democrats' ability to f**k things up, I keep mulling over a couple of questions:
1. What state is Trump likely to take that he didn't in 2016?
2. What constituency that Trump didn't do well with in 2016 is likely to show increased support for him in 2020?
3. Is there a reservoir of Trump-leaning voters that didn't turn out for him in 2016 and will be motivated to come out in 2020, or did Trump get essentially all of his supporters?
4. Will voters of color turn out better than they did in 2016?
I think the answers are: None, none, no, yes. Unless the Democrats f**k up, which they well might.
On “A Polish Joke”
It's not "Chris," Dave. Otherwise I agree entirely. As an aside, lawyer tricks work only when the witness is being evasive or tricky, or otherwise trying to pull something. It's like the old saying: "You can't cheat an honest man." A bit of an overstatement, but there's a lot to it.
"
What makes you think I was not a Boy Scout other than whatever cultural stereotype you may assign to me? In fact I was, for several years. I enjoyed it immensely, wasn't sexually abused, and live by the motto "Be Prepared" to this day. But I prepare for things based on an assessment of actual risks. Seat belts and football helmets. I know that requires judgment and judgment is a hard, adult skill, but I learned a lot about it in the Boy Scouts.
On “Two Cheers for William Weld”
He was never a social liberal, just an opportunistic libertine. At best, he didn't give a shit what other people did unless there was something in it for him. When he was a real estate developer/TV celebrity, there was nothing in it for him. As a politician, there is.
On “A Polish Joke”
I wouldn't argue with that number -- though I'm not sure we need to quantify the difference between what justifies buckling up your seat belt and what justifies walking around town constantly wearing a football helmet. What really matters is situational judgment. How likely, given the people you work with, your own behavior, your spouse's trust in you, and other largely local factors, are you to become the target of a believable false accusation? Are you a movie producer? Then maybe someone should be in the room when you talk with starlets about casting. Are you a CPA working on a big company's taxes late into the night in early April with an attractive assistant of whatever sex you're into? Probably not, but that will depend on other local factors. Seat belts and football helmets. With the added complications that sometimes your precautions can hurt someone else. Good judgment can't be reduced to a formula. But it has to be based on more than "it has happened somewhere and could happen to me."
"
The “accidentally fired” thing isn’t real, which doesn’t mean it will never happen, to someone, somewhere. Everything happens. But we cannot worry about everything, nor scrutinize every possible public policy to that degree. Applied consistently, this would lead to no laws, no regulations, no policies, nothing but the war of all against all.
So why are some people worried about it? I mean, these are smart, “data driven” types. They know this isn’t an actual problem.
I've wondered about this myself, and my attempts to tease it out sometimes raise hackles.
I've driven over a half-million miles over the last 40-plus years and literally never been in a situation where it would have made a damned bit of difference whether I was wearing a seatbelt or not. But situations where it would be useful are far from uncommon, and strapping in is no big deal, so a risk-averse person is fully justified in buckling up and nobody thinks he or she is weird or misguided.
I've wandered the streets of cities perpetually under construction or renovation for decades. People sometimes die after being hit in the head by falling tools or masonry. Not often. Still, it happens somewhere, because something always happens somewhere. But if I wear a football helmet every time I go outside, people will think I'm nuts, and rightly so. Saying I'm risk-averse and it sometimes happens wouldn't wash as an explanation. Still, I'm not doing anyone else any harm, so who cares?
I've worked many late nights when on trial with attractive female co-counsel and no one else in the office. Some woman somewhere has falsely accused a man of sexual misconduct. If, for that reason, I refuse to work with my co-counsel without witnesses present, am I simply risk-averse, or a paranoid asshole, or Mike Pence? And unlike my silly football helmet, which is a harmless eccentricity, this behavior hurts my clients and damages my co-counsel's career prospects. But don't dare call anyone on it, or ask for an explanation of why this is a reasonable response to the risk.
"
If I were transparent about what I was after, I wouldn't get it.
"
This happens all the time when I examine witnesses. They think I am aiming for X, they vigorously deny it, and, in the process, give me Y, which is what I was after all the time.
The last thing I thought was that there was anything nefarious going on, yet both you and Maribou jumped on the assumption that that was where I was going. To be clear and explicit, I did not and do not think there is anything nefarious behind your self-described precautions. What I thought was that there was nothing behind them. And that, it seems, is the case.
Your witness.
"
Every accusation is a confession? What he isn't telling us might be something about the possibly toxic culture of his employer, an actual experience, either his own or a co-worker''s, with a false accusation, or some other tangible fact that might explain what seems otherwise seems like an extremely exaggerated fear.
Nothing cheap about any of that.
co-worker's, with a false accusation
"
Most of the rest of us don't feel the need -- and more to the point, don't have the need -- to do anything like this. There must be something you're not telling us.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.