Lawyers! Here's how to represent Donald Trump in twelve easy steps!
1. Sign the new client. Envision a cabinet appointment or a District Court Judge's bench. Feel very happy in your new elite status of Republican-ness.
2. Lose the respect of a high percentage of your peers and colleagues. Irritate a certain number of your clients who either dislike Trump intensely or who want matters resolved quietly -- some enough so that they will fire you and hire a different firm.
3. Be told unbelievable but initially unfalsifiable things by your client. Review a legal theory on memo from some as-yet-unknown-to-you Trump supporter with J.D. issued by Al's School of Law and Bowling Lanes for whom the client vouches enthusiastically. Repeat those things in already-pending court proceedings.
4. Learn those things the client told you weren't true. Seek clarification from your client. Learn that they not only weren't true, but the client is exactly as culpable of the problem as Twitter said he was.
5. Disclose the conflict of interest to your new client, ask for a meeting to prepare a new and different strategy to address the problem. Endure blistering anger and rage on phone with client.
6. Raise ethical issue with the ethics committee.
7. Get stiffed on your bill.
8. Raise payment issue with the management committee.
9. Get fired.
10. Put malpractice insurance carrier on notice of potential claim. Retain personal ethics counsel for anticipated bar complaint by now-former-client.
11. Get served with subpoena. Invoke privilege to resist subpoena. Fail because of the crime fraud exception.
12. Remove admissions certificate from wall of office, bring close to face. Kiss your license to practice law goodbye.
Well, we certainly aren't going to compare and contrast "FLSA exempt" work ethics from "FLSA non-exempt" work ethics. But exemption is the meaningful divide in the working world, at least from my perspective. Even if it makes for awkward jargon.
Tough stuff to write about, Em; I appreciate your taking the time to write it down and share it with us.
Life is so often about taking some bitter with the sweet. I think your resentment that this didn't happen years ago for your sake, for your family's sake, is entirely natural and right and inspires empathy. Look at what turns out to be possible! So it must have been possible years ago too, and the past could have been so much better than it was.
Maybe it really was possible back then, maybe it wasn't, and there's no knowing or telling now. But damn it, it's what should have happened.
Do you know if the sitting in the cafe is actually Adriano Celetano? Looks like him. Very cool if it is. I'll be sticking with the original Prisencolinensinainciusol on my cocktail party songlist, because the bass drum whips.
The dancing in the modern remix video is quite good. More athletic and ballet inspired, but not as cool as, that thing Celetano (e Amici) did with the hips and shoulders in the original.
And in a lot of ways depicts technology that's still very far in our (potential) future, if it is possible at all.
In my mind, when I see either Blade Runner movie, I add a hundred years to the stated date -- it feels easier to accept the climate change, cultural change, and technology as being from 2119 rather than "about thirty years in the future" or worse yet "four years ago."
Oh, my. Teixeira advocates nuance. That's never going to fly.
FTR, I think that the issue is won when a drag performer like Ms. DuBalle is accepted as someone doing something that there's room for in society. The challenge is whether a drag queen is inherently an "adult cabaret performance."
As for the pearl-clutching "Won't someone think of the CHILDREN!!??" part of the law, "I perform one way for a late-night show, and differently for an all-ages brunch, and encourage the other performers to follow suit," is more than enough comeback to that. After all, if she remains fully clothed in her costume and doesn't make jokes racier than PG-13 level, who's to say that's an "adult" performance?
Memphis drag queen Bella DuBalle vows to fight Tennessee's new law https://www.npr.org/2023/03/16/1163815547/tennessee-drag-law-queen-bella-duballe
TFA mentions that this performer is also an ordained minister. It occurs to me that if she called her performances part of her "ministry" and claimed immunity from prosecution under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, that might make a few heads explode. And demonstrate the ridiculousness of both a too-expansive reading of the RFRA and the selectively-censorious nature of the anti-drag show laws.
It's a little bittersweet despite months and months of shenanigans for a Green Bay fan like me to see Aaron Rodgers take a metric shit ton of ayahuasca and go into a four-day darkness retreat so as to commune with the universe, only to have the universe open up to Rodgers and tell him "Go to the New York Jets":
Rodgers has not officially committed to New York. But he has given them a to-do list, per ESPN's Dianna Russini. He wants them to sign receivers Odell Beckham Jr., Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb and tight end Marcedes Lewis. That's a massive ask.
Rodgers will want the Jets to pick up his contract which would mean a $31M salary cap hit for the next year, along with Beckham, Lazard, Cobb, Lewis, and a pony. The Jets have already signed Lazard, although WR is not really the Jets' weakness so far as I can tell and it looks to me like NYJ overpaid him at $44M (although yes, he is quite good).
But the real thing to note here is cultural. Green Bay has had essentially only two quarterbacks for the past thirty years. No other NFL team has anything that looks remotely like that; the closest thing to it was Brady with the Patriots (2001-2019). You'd think that there would have been more wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in Packerland, but so far I can't see evidence of a whole lot of that -- I think a lot of fans are like me, and have been basically done with Rodgers and his antics for a while now.
So unlike the last hall-of-fame QB to go from Green Bay to the Jets, which was an angst-filled experience, it seems to be basicall, "Good luck in New York, A-a-ron. Im'a ordering my JL10 jersey."
I guess the question is whether the use of internet-based marketing techniques has made things better or worse.
Apparently pickle jars are a significant enough factor in selling pickles that it's worth it to sink this sort of research effort into studying it, and like Dark Matter points out above, there are new ways of doing it that don't involve the kinds of ruses that the OP describes. That won't have changed. But now, the researcher can sponsor click-through ads and ask these questions in different ways (among other techniques).
Is it better now? It's probably more accurate. And less intrusive and deceptive than what the OP describes. So I'm tentatively saying "yes, it's better now."
Other countries that used to exist within the present-day boundaries of the United States of America are still extant, but have relinquished or lost their empires: the United Kingdom of Great Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, Russia, and the Netherlands.
But the failed attempts at nations are more interesting than the colonial powers ultimately withdrawing.
Get back to writing, far more important things going on in the world.
No sir, I dissent. Nothing is more important. We are a community, and you are a prominent member of it. Yes, we will write. Yes, we will discourse. But no, we'll not put you far from our minds. You've given much to this community, and the least we can do to pay you back is put you in our thoughts and wishes and intentions, and for those who pray, our prayers.
You fight this thing with both hands and every weapon available. We've got your back, Andrew.
Might we say "violence and vandalism"? Vandalism is most certainly not good, but not as bad as violence. Am I somehow excusing vandalism (intentionally damaging property) to say it's bad but not as bad as violence (intentionally damaging a human being)?
Or do we need to come up with a complex nomenclature that distinguishes between a) some hippie kid spray-painting "Live Love Loot" on an unpopular business' front window, b) an actual anarchist throwing actual explosives into the ground floor of an (unpopulated at that point in time) courthouse, c) an adrenaline-hyped cop whacking a profanity-yelling but otherwise unaggressive hippie into unconsciousness with a nightstick, and d) a Black Bloc jagoff shooting an illegal Mexican firework into a battalion of SWAT officers mustering into formation?
Do we need distinct words for all of these actions, and the infinitely-varied gradations of moral condemnation assigned to each of them?
Personally, I have had zero time for Tucker Carlson for a long, long time, and have never had any time for McCarthy, whom the OP correctly describes as a "weasel."
I suppose that for a lot of folks in the conservative movement right now, Carlson may well personify a kind of reckoning with honor and honesty, with ideals and ideology, with justice and justifications. I'm just trying to tell you that the moral plasticity, dismissal of intelligence and education, and raw grasping cupidity has always been on full display.
In mitigation, I can certainly understand how it's harder to see that sort of thing coming from people who say things that affirm your priors rather than challenge them.
I've begun hosting a potluck and board game night every second Saturday. RSVP'd this time around is Our Tod and his charming, clever bride. I have a board came called Mysterium still in its shrink-wrap, another RSVP'd guest is bringing Sagrada, and a third non-RSVP is bringing Viticulture. There is a kegful of homebrew, five cases of wine, and a lovely cocktail from some south-of-Seattle distillers. Then Sunday night I catch the redeye back east to spend a week with my Boomers. Ought to be a pretty full time.
When ‘Cocoon’ reached theaters on June 21, 1985, Wilford Brimley was 18,530 days old (50 years, 9 months and 6 days). I'm older than that right now. (And so was Brimley's character in the movie, but we needn't let that ruin the joke.)
I'm not sure I like this rebuttal, TBQH. That "only" a few blocks were the scene of violence and destruction raises a murky question about how much of a city has to be subject to that sort of thing before it's accurate to say "the city burned."
Did Los Angeles "burn" in 1992? Its death and property damage rates were about the same as Kenosha's, if you math out comparing what happened in a city of 3.5 million to what happened in a city of 100,000.*
One thing that's different is in Kenosha, 100% of the deaths were at the hands of a single vigilante. It's hard to say how many of the 63 deaths in 1992 Los Angeles were at the hands of "rioters," noting lack of agreement upon that term as settled, versus vigilantes and/or police, although the number for all three categories was surely greater than zero.
So if we go by this index, there's never been a riot anywhere ever. That can't be correct.
* Los Angeles 1992 aftermath of Rodney King verdict: City was about 3.5 million population. Had about 3 million buildings. 63 deaths. About 3,800 buildings damaged or destroyed. Compare to Kenosha 2020 protests aftermath of police shooting of Jacob Blake -- about 100,000 population in the city. I cannot determine total number of buildings before the violence, but if proportionate to L.A., it would be about 86,000, which seems right given stats that did find, of ~42,000 housing units total in the city; I find reports of 140 buildings damaged or destroyed and 2 deaths, both at the hands of a single vigilante. Math the math yourself from there and it's hard to escape the conclusion that Kenosha's violence in 2020 was proportionate to L.A.'s violence in 1992.
On “Bad News for Trump But No Arrest (Yet)”
Lawyers! Here's how to represent Donald Trump in twelve easy steps!
1. Sign the new client. Envision a cabinet appointment or a District Court Judge's bench. Feel very happy in your new elite status of Republican-ness.
2. Lose the respect of a high percentage of your peers and colleagues. Irritate a certain number of your clients who either dislike Trump intensely or who want matters resolved quietly -- some enough so that they will fire you and hire a different firm.
3. Be told unbelievable but initially unfalsifiable things by your client. Review a legal theory on memo from some as-yet-unknown-to-you Trump supporter with J.D. issued by Al's School of Law and Bowling Lanes for whom the client vouches enthusiastically. Repeat those things in already-pending court proceedings.
4. Learn those things the client told you weren't true. Seek clarification from your client. Learn that they not only weren't true, but the client is exactly as culpable of the problem as Twitter said he was.
5. Disclose the conflict of interest to your new client, ask for a meeting to prepare a new and different strategy to address the problem. Endure blistering anger and rage on phone with client.
6. Raise ethical issue with the ethics committee.
7. Get stiffed on your bill.
8. Raise payment issue with the management committee.
9. Get fired.
10. Put malpractice insurance carrier on notice of potential claim. Retain personal ethics counsel for anticipated bar complaint by now-former-client.
11. Get served with subpoena. Invoke privilege to resist subpoena. Fail because of the crime fraud exception.
12. Remove admissions certificate from wall of office, bring close to face. Kiss your license to practice law goodbye.
On ““Working-Class Wannabes” and the Language of Sports”
Well, we certainly aren't going to compare and contrast "FLSA exempt" work ethics from "FLSA non-exempt" work ethics. But exemption is the meaningful divide in the working world, at least from my perspective. Even if it makes for awkward jargon.
On “My Dad Quit Drinking, So I Find Reasons to Complain About It”
Tough stuff to write about, Em; I appreciate your taking the time to write it down and share it with us.
Life is so often about taking some bitter with the sweet. I think your resentment that this didn't happen years ago for your sake, for your family's sake, is entirely natural and right and inspires empathy. Look at what turns out to be possible! So it must have been possible years ago too, and the past could have been so much better than it was.
Maybe it really was possible back then, maybe it wasn't, and there's no knowing or telling now. But damn it, it's what should have happened.
On “Video (4m): How English Sounds to Non-Speakers”
Do you know if the sitting in the cafe is actually Adriano Celetano? Looks like him. Very cool if it is. I'll be sticking with the original Prisencolinensinainciusol on my cocktail party songlist, because the bass drum whips.
The dancing in the modern remix video is quite good. More athletic and ballet inspired, but not as cool as, that thing Celetano (e Amici) did with the hips and shoulders in the original.
On “Video Throughput: Science Fiction From Fritz Lang to the Daniels”
And in a lot of ways depicts technology that's still very far in our (potential) future, if it is possible at all.
In my mind, when I see either Blade Runner movie, I add a hundred years to the stated date -- it feels easier to accept the climate change, cultural change, and technology as being from 2119 rather than "about thirty years in the future" or worse yet "four years ago."
On “Parenthood Control, As In Self Control, Dystopian And Otherwise”
I suppose we might tut-tut that art produces more intense emotions than reports of the news, but is that really surprising?
On “Gavin Newsom’s Absurd War on Walgreen’s For Following The law”
Yes. Ron DeSantis.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 3/13/2023”
Oh, my. Teixeira advocates nuance. That's never going to fly.
FTR, I think that the issue is won when a drag performer like Ms. DuBalle is accepted as someone doing something that there's room for in society. The challenge is whether a drag queen is inherently an "adult cabaret performance."
As for the pearl-clutching "Won't someone think of the CHILDREN!!??" part of the law, "I perform one way for a late-night show, and differently for an all-ages brunch, and encourage the other performers to follow suit," is more than enough comeback to that. After all, if she remains fully clothed in her costume and doesn't make jokes racier than PG-13 level, who's to say that's an "adult" performance?
That's where a potential victory lies.
"
Memphis drag queen Bella DuBalle vows to fight Tennessee's new law https://www.npr.org/2023/03/16/1163815547/tennessee-drag-law-queen-bella-duballe
TFA mentions that this performer is also an ordained minister. It occurs to me that if she called her performances part of her "ministry" and claimed immunity from prosecution under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, that might make a few heads explode. And demonstrate the ridiculousness of both a too-expansive reading of the RFRA and the selectively-censorious nature of the anti-drag show laws.
On “Video (16m): Countries That Used To Exist in US”
Are there any others I forgot?
On “The Haller Pizza”
Absolutely concur on anchovies with their salty, oily, rich goodness. Nothing on Earth takes garlic better than anchovies.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 3/13/2023”
My, my, my, how tedious.
"
It's a little bittersweet despite months and months of shenanigans for a Green Bay fan like me to see Aaron Rodgers take a metric shit ton of ayahuasca and go into a four-day darkness retreat so as to commune with the universe, only to have the universe open up to Rodgers and tell him "Go to the New York Jets":
Rodgers will want the Jets to pick up his contract which would mean a $31M salary cap hit for the next year, along with Beckham, Lazard, Cobb, Lewis, and a pony. The Jets have already signed Lazard, although WR is not really the Jets' weakness so far as I can tell and it looks to me like NYJ overpaid him at $44M (although yes, he is quite good).
But the real thing to note here is cultural. Green Bay has had essentially only two quarterbacks for the past thirty years. No other NFL team has anything that looks remotely like that; the closest thing to it was Brady with the Patriots (2001-2019). You'd think that there would have been more wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in Packerland, but so far I can't see evidence of a whole lot of that -- I think a lot of fans are like me, and have been basically done with Rodgers and his antics for a while now.
So unlike the last hall-of-fame QB to go from Green Bay to the Jets, which was an angst-filled experience, it seems to be basicall, "Good luck in New York, A-a-ron. Im'a ordering my JL10 jersey."
On “The TV Pilot Hoax of 1997”
I guess the question is whether the use of internet-based marketing techniques has made things better or worse.
Apparently pickle jars are a significant enough factor in selling pickles that it's worth it to sink this sort of research effort into studying it, and like Dark Matter points out above, there are new ways of doing it that don't involve the kinds of ruses that the OP describes. That won't have changed. But now, the researcher can sponsor click-through ads and ask these questions in different ways (among other techniques).
Is it better now? It's probably more accurate. And less intrusive and deceptive than what the OP describes. So I'm tentatively saying "yes, it's better now."
On “Video (16m): Countries That Used To Exist in US”
Other countries that used to exist within the present-day boundaries of the United States of America are still extant, but have relinquished or lost their empires: the United Kingdom of Great Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, Russia, and the Netherlands.
But the failed attempts at nations are more interesting than the colonial powers ultimately withdrawing.
On “That Old Gut Feeling, The Kind That Has To Be Surgically Removed”
No sir, I dissent. Nothing is more important. We are a community, and you are a prominent member of it. Yes, we will write. Yes, we will discourse. But no, we'll not put you far from our minds. You've given much to this community, and the least we can do to pay you back is put you in our thoughts and wishes and intentions, and for those who pray, our prayers.
You fight this thing with both hands and every weapon available. We've got your back, Andrew.
On “A Tale of Two Riots”
Might we say "violence and vandalism"? Vandalism is most certainly not good, but not as bad as violence. Am I somehow excusing vandalism (intentionally damaging property) to say it's bad but not as bad as violence (intentionally damaging a human being)?
Or do we need to come up with a complex nomenclature that distinguishes between a) some hippie kid spray-painting "Live Love Loot" on an unpopular business' front window, b) an actual anarchist throwing actual explosives into the ground floor of an (unpopulated at that point in time) courthouse, c) an adrenaline-hyped cop whacking a profanity-yelling but otherwise unaggressive hippie into unconsciousness with a nightstick, and d) a Black Bloc jagoff shooting an illegal Mexican firework into a battalion of SWAT officers mustering into formation?
Do we need distinct words for all of these actions, and the infinitely-varied gradations of moral condemnation assigned to each of them?
On “Tucker Carlson Doesn’t Respect His Audience”
Personally, I have had zero time for Tucker Carlson for a long, long time, and have never had any time for McCarthy, whom the OP correctly describes as a "weasel."
I suppose that for a lot of folks in the conservative movement right now, Carlson may well personify a kind of reckoning with honor and honesty, with ideals and ideology, with justice and justifications. I'm just trying to tell you that the moral plasticity, dismissal of intelligence and education, and raw grasping cupidity has always been on full display.
In mitigation, I can certainly understand how it's harder to see that sort of thing coming from people who say things that affirm your priors rather than challenge them.
"
"I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to learn there is gambling going on in this establishment!"
"
I think that's exactly right. It's about the best I think I can realistically hope for with my own Boomers.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Pasketti”
I've begun hosting a potluck and board game night every second Saturday. RSVP'd this time around is Our Tod and his charming, clever bride. I have a board came called Mysterium still in its shrink-wrap, another RSVP'd guest is bringing Sagrada, and a third non-RSVP is bringing Viticulture. There is a kegful of homebrew, five cases of wine, and a lovely cocktail from some south-of-Seattle distillers. Then Sunday night I catch the redeye back east to spend a week with my Boomers. Ought to be a pretty full time.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 3/6/2023”
I can kick that can... forty-nine weeks down the road!
On “VIDEO (22m): Did People Used To Look Older?”
Right back atcha, sir!
"
Also a lot fewer people smoke these days.
When ‘Cocoon’ reached theaters on June 21, 1985, Wilford Brimley was 18,530 days old (50 years, 9 months and 6 days). I'm older than that right now. (And so was Brimley's character in the movie, but we needn't let that ruin the joke.)
On “A Tale of Two Riots”
I'm not sure I like this rebuttal, TBQH. That "only" a few blocks were the scene of violence and destruction raises a murky question about how much of a city has to be subject to that sort of thing before it's accurate to say "the city burned."
Did Los Angeles "burn" in 1992? Its death and property damage rates were about the same as Kenosha's, if you math out comparing what happened in a city of 3.5 million to what happened in a city of 100,000.*
One thing that's different is in Kenosha, 100% of the deaths were at the hands of a single vigilante. It's hard to say how many of the 63 deaths in 1992 Los Angeles were at the hands of "rioters," noting lack of agreement upon that term as settled, versus vigilantes and/or police, although the number for all three categories was surely greater than zero.
So if we go by this index, there's never been a riot anywhere ever. That can't be correct.
* Los Angeles 1992 aftermath of Rodney King verdict: City was about 3.5 million population. Had about 3 million buildings. 63 deaths. About 3,800 buildings damaged or destroyed. Compare to Kenosha 2020 protests aftermath of police shooting of Jacob Blake -- about 100,000 population in the city. I cannot determine total number of buildings before the violence, but if proportionate to L.A., it would be about 86,000, which seems right given stats that did find, of ~42,000 housing units total in the city; I find reports of 140 buildings damaged or destroyed and 2 deaths, both at the hands of a single vigilante. Math the math yourself from there and it's hard to escape the conclusion that Kenosha's violence in 2020 was proportionate to L.A.'s violence in 1992.