What is it about theater and “concept”?
I have spent a good portion of my life in and around the theater, mostly in various backstage capacities. My glory years were spent in lighting, which not only offers you the chance to test the limits of both acrophobia and burn scarification but also lets you see the show itself, albeit from odd angles way up in the rafters. After a while, you sort of expect to see shows that way – I find sitting in the house a bit jarring anymore.
And most times all I notice is the lighting anyway.
So when the girls were off at yet another birthday party sleepover last night and Kim suggested going to see the latest production down at Home Campus, I was of two minds. On the one hand, there is only so much lighting one can look at if one is not actively involved in it, although unlike Niagara Falls and the Gateway Arch it does change, so that’s something. On the other hand, part of my commission as Performing Arts guy on Home Campus is to be the usher of last resort, and since I had managed to botch finding others to do that in the rush of events last week, well, I had to be there anyway. Might as well see the show.
It was the sort of show that probably won an award somewhere.
There were no real “scenes” in the show – just random bits of dialogue from the various characters in different parts of the stage, each one brightly and suddenly lit by a pool of light that just as quickly went black to draw your attention to the next bit of random dialogue. Much of the dialogue was all to do with people coupling and uncoupling in various ways, with Deeply Significant repeated bits of received wisdom, often in the form of urban legends, proper names or declarative cynicism, echoing through like raindrops on a tin roof, and a subplot involving a serial killer that gradually takes over what little plot there is.
I kept waiting for the Sad Clown of Life to make an appearance, but apparently that was only implied.
Now, look. I understand how difficult it is to pull off something like this as an actor – that took a lot for them to make it work. And the lighting was nicely done, although somebody did need to tell the actors to hit their marks a bit more accurately. In the battle between the lighting designer and the director the lighting designer almost always wins, as measured in terms of the ability of the audience to see the actors’ faces, but I can say from experience that it is not a very satisfying victory. So it was a well-done performance in the main. They did a nice job with what they had.
But you know, it was all … so … deep.
The actors didn’t even break character in what passed for the curtain call, which I found off-putting. I’m not clapping for the characters, most of whom were the sorts of people you’d cross the street to avoid. I’m clapping for the actors, who did a nice job of bringing those characters to life and deserve some recognition for it.
Too often theater is taken over by “concept” – the kinds of Big, Meaningful Ideas that actual drama gets subordinated to in order to get a message across, much to the annoyance of the audience, who generally reject such things in my experience, or the Gee Whiz Methods of staging a production that only leave people confused.
Most perpetrators of concept regard this as a failing on the part of the audience. But this is not true. It ignores the central purpose of the theater, which is to tell a story – one that will hold an audience’s attention. If you’re good at it, you can make them think a bit. Or laugh. Or, if you’re really good, both.
It is a cardinal sin in theater to condescend to an audience, but a sin that gets tired with repetition.
And I get to be there again today.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Friday, April 8, 2011
And ... Action!
It was a musical day down at Not Bad President Elementary, and everyone was there.
Really. Everyone. It was as if the entire population of Our Little Town had gathered together in the Multi-Purpose Room, with a row of movie cameras in the back and a row of unnaturally tall people seated up front. There must be some kind of requirement for both of these things.
But it’s nice that these events are well attended.
We were there to see the second grade performance of “Songs of the Jurassic,” a toe-tapping musical about dinosaurs that has had audiences in peanut-butter-scented rooms across the country cheering and clapping. And on top of everything else, Lauran had a speaking part. So of course we were in the front row.
Way off to the side, so we could see past the unnaturally tall people, but still – front row.
The students filed in promptly at 1pm and stood there, scanning the crowd for loved ones and waving frantically when they found them. We all waved back, which kind of defeated the purpose since with everybody on both sides of the stage waving at everyone else on both sides of the stage it was rather difficult to discern who was waving to whom, but it was fun and that’s all that mattered.
Lauren was part of the group that came down off the risers after the second song to stand in front of the microphones. She had one line – a descriptive account of what dinosaurs would and would not eat (the latter category including pizza with anchovies, apparently) – and she did it well. She even ad-libbed a bit at the end, and it sounded right enough that nobody likely noticed that it wasn’t in the script.
It was a short show, as these NBPE shows usually are (the third graders were performing the same show right after) and at the end the parents were invited up to the center of the house to take photos.
You did a great job, Lauren. I’m proud of you.
Really. Everyone. It was as if the entire population of Our Little Town had gathered together in the Multi-Purpose Room, with a row of movie cameras in the back and a row of unnaturally tall people seated up front. There must be some kind of requirement for both of these things.
But it’s nice that these events are well attended.
We were there to see the second grade performance of “Songs of the Jurassic,” a toe-tapping musical about dinosaurs that has had audiences in peanut-butter-scented rooms across the country cheering and clapping. And on top of everything else, Lauran had a speaking part. So of course we were in the front row.
Way off to the side, so we could see past the unnaturally tall people, but still – front row.
The students filed in promptly at 1pm and stood there, scanning the crowd for loved ones and waving frantically when they found them. We all waved back, which kind of defeated the purpose since with everybody on both sides of the stage waving at everyone else on both sides of the stage it was rather difficult to discern who was waving to whom, but it was fun and that’s all that mattered.
Lauren was part of the group that came down off the risers after the second song to stand in front of the microphones. She had one line – a descriptive account of what dinosaurs would and would not eat (the latter category including pizza with anchovies, apparently) – and she did it well. She even ad-libbed a bit at the end, and it sounded right enough that nobody likely noticed that it wasn’t in the script.
It was a short show, as these NBPE shows usually are (the third graders were performing the same show right after) and at the end the parents were invited up to the center of the house to take photos.
You did a great job, Lauren. I’m proud of you.
News and Updates
Just a few short points while I try to deal with life in its usual “drink from the firehose” format:
1. Yesterday was exam day for one of my classes. There is nothing so boring as giving an exam, when you are a teacher. For some reason I always count lefthanders in the class during exams. There were four, in a class of 21.
2. Interesting doings in the election results from the Supreme Court, where the clerk of Wisconsin’s most right-wing county – a women who once worked for Prosser and who was repeatedly admonished for excessive partisanship by her own party – mysteriously “found” 7500 ballots in Prosser’s favor on her own personal computer, one that had no back up and was not linked in any way to the state system for monitoring elections. Seriously? I’m not accusing Teabaggers of voter fraud – I’m sure that everyone who actually went to the polls in that county had the right to do so – but I am questioning the word of this official and I am deeply suspicious of electoral fraud. One corrupt official is a lot more plausible than thousands of illegitimate voters.
3. I haven’t forgotten you, Lucy! I’m working on that list. It’s getting more involved as I go, and events conspire against my time.
4. There is nothing to make you forget the cares of the world for a while quite like a good whiskey and a better book. Thank you to the makers of Drambuie and the author of the Bartimaeus trilogy for making yesterday end on a positive note.
5. Today is a Theater Day! More to follow…
1. Yesterday was exam day for one of my classes. There is nothing so boring as giving an exam, when you are a teacher. For some reason I always count lefthanders in the class during exams. There were four, in a class of 21.
2. Interesting doings in the election results from the Supreme Court, where the clerk of Wisconsin’s most right-wing county – a women who once worked for Prosser and who was repeatedly admonished for excessive partisanship by her own party – mysteriously “found” 7500 ballots in Prosser’s favor on her own personal computer, one that had no back up and was not linked in any way to the state system for monitoring elections. Seriously? I’m not accusing Teabaggers of voter fraud – I’m sure that everyone who actually went to the polls in that county had the right to do so – but I am questioning the word of this official and I am deeply suspicious of electoral fraud. One corrupt official is a lot more plausible than thousands of illegitimate voters.
3. I haven’t forgotten you, Lucy! I’m working on that list. It’s getting more involved as I go, and events conspire against my time.
4. There is nothing to make you forget the cares of the world for a while quite like a good whiskey and a better book. Thank you to the makers of Drambuie and the author of the Bartimaeus trilogy for making yesterday end on a positive note.
5. Today is a Theater Day! More to follow…
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Let the Predictable Begin...
Well that didn’t take long.
We had an election here in Wisconsin the other day. Perhaps you heard.
Ordinarily this would not have been a big deal, as I said last time, as the races were mostly local ones, with only one statewide office on the ballot – a position on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. And since, barring major scandals, incumbent Supreme Court justices never lose re-election bids, and further, since this particular incumbent had beaten his challenger by 30 points in a non-partisan primary in February, this too looked like a forgettable and foregone thing.
Except that Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) and his cronies, minions and lackeys turned it into a referendum on their brazenly unconstitutional and un-American power grab.
And they lost.
Not by much, it must be said. Out of nearly a million and a half votes cast, the final margin of victory for Kloppenberg over the Teabagger candidate, Prosser, was exactly 204 votes. This will likely shift a bit as the totals are certified, but at the moment the victory belongs to those who oppose what Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) is trying to pull.
Teabaggers are already denying that that this is significant by pointing out how close the election was. Like an albino peacock, this rather misses the point.
In seven short weeks they managed to take a guaranteed landslide victory and turn it into a narrow loss, and the lesson they should be taking from this is just how toxic Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) and his policies are for the continued political health of their party. I doubt they will have the vision to see that, however. When dealing with ideological zealots, it is a sucker bet to rely on their ability to perceive reality at all, let alone any reality that conflicts with their deeply-held illusions.
But, as Arlo Guthrie once said, that’s not what I came to tell you about.
There will almost certainly be a recount in this election, no matter what the final results say. Whether Kloppenberg’s lead holds up or whether Prosser squeaks ahead, with a margin that small it would almost be irresponsible not to recount the votes. Mistakes get made. That’s normal. It’s worth taking the time to get it right.
No, that’s not the issue here.
The issue is the vanishingly small interval between the time the polls opened on Tuesday and the time the Teabaggers started complaining about voter fraud.
Because there could not be any possible explanation for their troubles besides fraud, apparently.
Because they just cannot conceive of a world where they are not the representatives of all that is True, Good and Holy, where God and the angels take lessons from them on all things moral.
Because the thought that good people of conscience look with contempt at their efforts to overturn the rule of law, bypass the state constitution and promote an extremist agenda contrary to American history and values just jangles their precious little neurons.
Because they firmly believe that the only people capable of fraud live in liberal districts – and particularly those liberal districts inhabited by brown-skinned people – and we should therefore pay no attention to the closed-door vote counting witnessed only by high-ranking Republican officials that you saw in the heavily Prosser counties.
Because the rest of us should just shut up and obey our masters without complaint and good grief it is so hard to get good help anymore.
Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick, people, they didn’t even wait until after the polls had closed to start throwing that tired old desperation ploy around.
It is a sign of the increasingly paranoid and irrational nature of Teabagger politics that this is the first thing they think of whenever the voters of America dispute their blinkered world view. It is a sign of their unfitness to wield any sort of authority over the free citizens of a republic that they are willing to make such patently false accusations in order to squash dissent and maintain their nakedly cynical hold on raw power.
And it is the normal way they do business.
Nice to have that made so plain.
We had an election here in Wisconsin the other day. Perhaps you heard.
Ordinarily this would not have been a big deal, as I said last time, as the races were mostly local ones, with only one statewide office on the ballot – a position on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. And since, barring major scandals, incumbent Supreme Court justices never lose re-election bids, and further, since this particular incumbent had beaten his challenger by 30 points in a non-partisan primary in February, this too looked like a forgettable and foregone thing.
Except that Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) and his cronies, minions and lackeys turned it into a referendum on their brazenly unconstitutional and un-American power grab.
And they lost.
Not by much, it must be said. Out of nearly a million and a half votes cast, the final margin of victory for Kloppenberg over the Teabagger candidate, Prosser, was exactly 204 votes. This will likely shift a bit as the totals are certified, but at the moment the victory belongs to those who oppose what Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) is trying to pull.
Teabaggers are already denying that that this is significant by pointing out how close the election was. Like an albino peacock, this rather misses the point.
In seven short weeks they managed to take a guaranteed landslide victory and turn it into a narrow loss, and the lesson they should be taking from this is just how toxic Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) and his policies are for the continued political health of their party. I doubt they will have the vision to see that, however. When dealing with ideological zealots, it is a sucker bet to rely on their ability to perceive reality at all, let alone any reality that conflicts with their deeply-held illusions.
But, as Arlo Guthrie once said, that’s not what I came to tell you about.
There will almost certainly be a recount in this election, no matter what the final results say. Whether Kloppenberg’s lead holds up or whether Prosser squeaks ahead, with a margin that small it would almost be irresponsible not to recount the votes. Mistakes get made. That’s normal. It’s worth taking the time to get it right.
No, that’s not the issue here.
The issue is the vanishingly small interval between the time the polls opened on Tuesday and the time the Teabaggers started complaining about voter fraud.
Because there could not be any possible explanation for their troubles besides fraud, apparently.
Because they just cannot conceive of a world where they are not the representatives of all that is True, Good and Holy, where God and the angels take lessons from them on all things moral.
Because the thought that good people of conscience look with contempt at their efforts to overturn the rule of law, bypass the state constitution and promote an extremist agenda contrary to American history and values just jangles their precious little neurons.
Because they firmly believe that the only people capable of fraud live in liberal districts – and particularly those liberal districts inhabited by brown-skinned people – and we should therefore pay no attention to the closed-door vote counting witnessed only by high-ranking Republican officials that you saw in the heavily Prosser counties.
Because the rest of us should just shut up and obey our masters without complaint and good grief it is so hard to get good help anymore.
Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick, people, they didn’t even wait until after the polls had closed to start throwing that tired old desperation ploy around.
It is a sign of the increasingly paranoid and irrational nature of Teabagger politics that this is the first thing they think of whenever the voters of America dispute their blinkered world view. It is a sign of their unfitness to wield any sort of authority over the free citizens of a republic that they are willing to make such patently false accusations in order to squash dissent and maintain their nakedly cynical hold on raw power.
And it is the normal way they do business.
Nice to have that made so plain.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Doing My Bit For a Well-Constructed Republic
I have cast my ballot.
I always cast my ballot. Voting is one of the things that citizens of a well-constructed republic do, at least if they want it to remain a well-constructed republic and not degenerate into the kind of tyranny that so many of the people pulling the strings in this country seem to want it to become. The Constitution starts out, “We the people,” and the Gettysburg Address frames its call in terms of “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” and those are not mere rhetorical flourishes but stringent political demands – government of the people requires said people to get off their collective hind end and vote.
There is a reason why the potential tyrants fear the voters of a well-constructed republic – they’re unpredictable. They can be led like sheep for only so long and then they turn on those in power and vote them out. They have a distinct tendency to gum up the most elegant plans for maintaining illegitimate power that way, at least in the long run.
In the short run? Well, people are people.
You will note carefully, by the way, which end of the American political spectrum is trying to limit the number of voters these days through false claims of “voter fraud” and draconian laws rushed into place in its name, laws which only serve to disenfranchise potential problems to tyranny, and which end of the American political spectrum is trying to prevent this. This is not a coincidence.
For such a dramatic thing, it is surprising how prosaic voting can be in these United States.
And that’s as it should be.
I live about as far from my polling place as I can get and still be in the ward. Like most of the polling places in Our Little Town it’s in an elementary school – a different one than the one the girls attend. Tabitha had play practice after school so I picked up Lauren and took her over with me, because I like to make a point of bringing the girls to vote. Voting is something they should see as normal.
We pulled into the parking lot and walked up to the big old brick building just as the last rush of students there were leaving. The actual polls are in the gym, a well-windowed room on the south side of the school.
You go up to one set of tables on the left of the room and try to figure out which ward you’re in – I can never remember this and have just learned to go to the left-hand table, which usually works – and they look you up and present you with a white piece of paper about two inches square, on which is printed a number. You take it over to a different set of tables in the middle of the room and present the people there with the paper and they hand you a ballot, which in Wisconsin is a piece of cardstock about a foot long and nine inches across.
This you take to one of the blue plastic desks with the spindly legs and the privacy shields set up over by the windows. There is a black marker on each desk, and by each candidate’s name on the ballot is the tail and head of an arrow. To vote you have to use the marker to connect the two halves of the arrow for the candidate of your choice.
No chads. No digital innards to hack. Simplicity itself.
I let Lauren put the ballot into the scanner when I finished. She always enjoys that.
These spring elections are usually quiet affairs – the ballot this time contained a School Board race, a City Council race, a county judge running unopposed, and a State Supreme Court race, and none of these usually spark any interest. I'm usually voter number 23 or some such by the time I get there, halfway through the day.
But say one thing for Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) and his cronies, minions and lackeys, say that they have made people much more interested in protecting the democratic process from threats. I was voter number 166 this time around.
Say also that they have made people more aware of the stakes even in these races – particularly the State Supreme Court race, which pits someone whom the Lead Minion explicitly told a rally would uphold the radical agenda put forth by Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) against someone else whom the same Lead Minion portrayed as an opponent of said agenda.
Well.
Nice to have it put so clearly and openly. “Vote for my sock puppet!” has never really struck me as an appealing campaign slogan for a judge, even in the best of times, and these are not the best of times to begin with.
So I cast my ballot.
What did you do today to further the ends of a well-constructed republic?
I always cast my ballot. Voting is one of the things that citizens of a well-constructed republic do, at least if they want it to remain a well-constructed republic and not degenerate into the kind of tyranny that so many of the people pulling the strings in this country seem to want it to become. The Constitution starts out, “We the people,” and the Gettysburg Address frames its call in terms of “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” and those are not mere rhetorical flourishes but stringent political demands – government of the people requires said people to get off their collective hind end and vote.
There is a reason why the potential tyrants fear the voters of a well-constructed republic – they’re unpredictable. They can be led like sheep for only so long and then they turn on those in power and vote them out. They have a distinct tendency to gum up the most elegant plans for maintaining illegitimate power that way, at least in the long run.
In the short run? Well, people are people.
You will note carefully, by the way, which end of the American political spectrum is trying to limit the number of voters these days through false claims of “voter fraud” and draconian laws rushed into place in its name, laws which only serve to disenfranchise potential problems to tyranny, and which end of the American political spectrum is trying to prevent this. This is not a coincidence.
For such a dramatic thing, it is surprising how prosaic voting can be in these United States.
And that’s as it should be.
I live about as far from my polling place as I can get and still be in the ward. Like most of the polling places in Our Little Town it’s in an elementary school – a different one than the one the girls attend. Tabitha had play practice after school so I picked up Lauren and took her over with me, because I like to make a point of bringing the girls to vote. Voting is something they should see as normal.
We pulled into the parking lot and walked up to the big old brick building just as the last rush of students there were leaving. The actual polls are in the gym, a well-windowed room on the south side of the school.
You go up to one set of tables on the left of the room and try to figure out which ward you’re in – I can never remember this and have just learned to go to the left-hand table, which usually works – and they look you up and present you with a white piece of paper about two inches square, on which is printed a number. You take it over to a different set of tables in the middle of the room and present the people there with the paper and they hand you a ballot, which in Wisconsin is a piece of cardstock about a foot long and nine inches across.
This you take to one of the blue plastic desks with the spindly legs and the privacy shields set up over by the windows. There is a black marker on each desk, and by each candidate’s name on the ballot is the tail and head of an arrow. To vote you have to use the marker to connect the two halves of the arrow for the candidate of your choice.
No chads. No digital innards to hack. Simplicity itself.
I let Lauren put the ballot into the scanner when I finished. She always enjoys that.
These spring elections are usually quiet affairs – the ballot this time contained a School Board race, a City Council race, a county judge running unopposed, and a State Supreme Court race, and none of these usually spark any interest. I'm usually voter number 23 or some such by the time I get there, halfway through the day.
But say one thing for Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) and his cronies, minions and lackeys, say that they have made people much more interested in protecting the democratic process from threats. I was voter number 166 this time around.
Say also that they have made people more aware of the stakes even in these races – particularly the State Supreme Court race, which pits someone whom the Lead Minion explicitly told a rally would uphold the radical agenda put forth by Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) against someone else whom the same Lead Minion portrayed as an opponent of said agenda.
Well.
Nice to have it put so clearly and openly. “Vote for my sock puppet!” has never really struck me as an appealing campaign slogan for a judge, even in the best of times, and these are not the best of times to begin with.
So I cast my ballot.
What did you do today to further the ends of a well-constructed republic?
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The Keys to My Phone
Yesterday I discovered that I had 459 photographs of my keys on my cell phone.
I kid you not. Four hundred. And fifty-nine. One fewer than 460. Roughly three photographs of my keys for every day I have had this phone. They were well-documented keys, is what I’m saying. If my keys had gone missing, I could have supplied an entire dairy’s worth of milk-carton pictures.
And they said technology would never benefit us.
My continuing battles with cell phones have been documented here before. Basically, I am a person who does not find them useful or desirable, and they are sneaky, unreliable, backstabbing little monsters. This combination does not bode well.
But you have to have one of these things in This Modern World, sad to say, otherwise the sky will fall in, the seas will boil away to nothing, the earth will spiral into the sun (or Mars, scientists differ on this) and telecommunications stock prices will decline by as much as an eighth of a point, much to the horrors of industry leaders.
So I got one.
I’ve had it for about six months now, and at 20 cents/minute for every call I make or receive, I’ve spent a little over $32 in that period. I’ve even managed to figure out how to block incoming texts, which neatly removed that problem as well.
But I couldn’t get one without a camera.
Why not? Why is it so hard to get a telephone that doesn’t take pictures? My camera doesn’t make phone calls, after all. My car does not bake cookies. My alarm clock does not take x-rays. My doorbell does not shoot lasers at political campaign workers (although now that I think about it, that might not be such a bad idea). Why is it so hard to find a phone that just is a phone?
The clerk on the other end of that rant the first time I delivered it just sat there quietly until I wound down and then we proceeded as if nothing had happened. I’m sure they’re used to it by now from people like me. There are probably procedures written down in a binder somewhere that deal with it, down to the very last outcry. For all I know they record them and have an internal office pool for the most deranged rants of the week. Perhaps I won a prize for her. You’d think she’d have let me know.
I ended up with the most stripped-down phone they sold. And it does, in fact, make phone calls, usually. But it also has an array of buttons on the exterior that apparently are positioned just so, in exactly the right places for my keys to bump up against them and force it to take their photos.
I must say I have handsome keys. But that is not the point.
Kim eventually figured out how to delete them all in one fell swoop, and now I have plenty of room on the phone for more.
Because you know there will be more.
I kid you not. Four hundred. And fifty-nine. One fewer than 460. Roughly three photographs of my keys for every day I have had this phone. They were well-documented keys, is what I’m saying. If my keys had gone missing, I could have supplied an entire dairy’s worth of milk-carton pictures.
And they said technology would never benefit us.
My continuing battles with cell phones have been documented here before. Basically, I am a person who does not find them useful or desirable, and they are sneaky, unreliable, backstabbing little monsters. This combination does not bode well.
But you have to have one of these things in This Modern World, sad to say, otherwise the sky will fall in, the seas will boil away to nothing, the earth will spiral into the sun (or Mars, scientists differ on this) and telecommunications stock prices will decline by as much as an eighth of a point, much to the horrors of industry leaders.
So I got one.
I’ve had it for about six months now, and at 20 cents/minute for every call I make or receive, I’ve spent a little over $32 in that period. I’ve even managed to figure out how to block incoming texts, which neatly removed that problem as well.
But I couldn’t get one without a camera.
Why not? Why is it so hard to get a telephone that doesn’t take pictures? My camera doesn’t make phone calls, after all. My car does not bake cookies. My alarm clock does not take x-rays. My doorbell does not shoot lasers at political campaign workers (although now that I think about it, that might not be such a bad idea). Why is it so hard to find a phone that just is a phone?
The clerk on the other end of that rant the first time I delivered it just sat there quietly until I wound down and then we proceeded as if nothing had happened. I’m sure they’re used to it by now from people like me. There are probably procedures written down in a binder somewhere that deal with it, down to the very last outcry. For all I know they record them and have an internal office pool for the most deranged rants of the week. Perhaps I won a prize for her. You’d think she’d have let me know.
I ended up with the most stripped-down phone they sold. And it does, in fact, make phone calls, usually. But it also has an array of buttons on the exterior that apparently are positioned just so, in exactly the right places for my keys to bump up against them and force it to take their photos.
I must say I have handsome keys. But that is not the point.
Kim eventually figured out how to delete them all in one fell swoop, and now I have plenty of room on the phone for more.
Because you know there will be more.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Judicial Activism? That's What They DO, Son.
The rule of law seems to be holding up in Wisconsin, at least for the moment. When Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) and his cronies, minions and lackeys again made noises about ignoring a direct court order not to implement their union-busting bill this week after a second loss in court, the judge stepped in a third time to declare that such action was absolutely contrary to law and would result in punishments.
And with the usual squawking about how they would be vindicated in the long run, Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) backed down.
This is entirely appropriate.
Of course he’s going to squawk. Of course he’s going to criticize the judge’s ruling. Of course he’s going to claim that he will win in the end. What else would he do? I would expect no less, and I would do the same if a ruling went against me. So as long as he actually follows the court order, I’ll overlook all the rhetoric as standard operating procedure for anyone on the short end of a judicial decision and be glad that the constitutional crisis has been put off for at least another day.
We have reached the point where having our government follow the law counts as a victory rather than an expectation.
What I find annoying, however, is the bleating coming from the Fitzgerald boys - State House Majority Leader Jeff Fitzgerald and State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, the leaders of the aforementioned cronies, minions and lackeys.
When Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi ruled that the elder Fitzgerald boy’s end run around her first ruling was illegal under Wisconsin law and that the union-busting bill was not in fact law just because he said so, baby brother Jeff accused Judge Sumi of “interjecting herself into the legislative process with no regard to the state constitution.” Big brother Scott, for his part, declared that Sumi’s enforcing the laws of the State of Wisconsin was “judicial activism at its worst.”
Uh, no.
What we have here is a catastrophic failure on the part of the Fitzgerald boys to understand how the American governmental system actually works.
Here is a hint: the mere fact that you are in office does not entitle you to do whatever you want.
There are rules to be followed. Rules that are there to make sure that this republic does not degenerate into a dictatorship. Rules that are not to be flouted save at your cost.
Query: What do right-wingers mean when they yell and scream about “judicial activism”?
Response: They mean that a decision has gone against them.
Query: Why do they not like this?
Response: Because like small children, they are angry about not getting their way.
Query: Why is this not a bad thing?
Response: Because the Founding Fathers set it up that way. Because that’s what American government is supposed to look like. Because that’s how American government is supposed to work. Because the whole point of a republic is to provide checks and balances between the branches of government, so that no branch will be tempted to squash the others and each branch will be held to account in following the rule of law.
Honestly, people, it’s not that hard.
Let’s review.
The judicial branch of a republican form of government has a very specific role. It is a role that was largely created here in the United States, surprisingly enough.
As I said in an earlier post, this country was founded on the ideology of classical republicanism, a theory that argued the need for a properly balanced form of government that would check power and preserve liberty. In England, where as far as the colonies were concerned this idea originated, this was done by mapping the three branches of government onto the three broad divisions of English society. You had the One, the most important guy in the kingdom, who was the Monarchy. That was the king. You had the Few, who were the Aristrocracy – they got the House of Lords. And you got the Many, the rest of us, who were the Democracy and got the House of Commons. A properly balanced republican government would balance the interests and powers of these three sociological groups, and liberty would be preserved against power.
In this setup, judges were considered agents of the One. They were classed under the Monarchy, along with the army, the tax collectors and the sheriffs. Their job was to keep the King’s peace and function as part of the law-enforcement apparatus.
When the United States was founded, classical republicans had something of a dilemma – there was no One in the new republic, nor really was there much of a Few. There was just Many.
So the question arose: what is this new balanced republican government supposed to balance in order to check power and preserve liberty?
And here John Adams stepped in with the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, the oldest written constitution still in effect in the world today and the model for the 1787 Federal Constitution that we live under. Adams argued that instead of balancing sociological groups – One, Few, Many – with their own branches of government, a properly balanced republican government in America would balance the functions of government. Each branch of the government would be separated not by who it represented, since each branch would represent everyone here, but instead by what it did, by function.
Mapping the Executive onto the One, the Monarchy, wasn’t hard. That’s largely what the Monarchy did anyway. Likewise mapping the Legislative onto the Many, the Democracy, wasn’t hard either, for the same reason.
But who were the new Few?
Here John Adams made a very clever move. He took the judges out of the Monarchy category – removed them from the Executive Branch, in the American context – and elevated them to their own branch, the Judiciary.
No longer were they merely law-enforcement tools subservient to the Monarchy, nor would they be subservient to the Executive in the new arrangement. Now they were a fully co-equal branch of a properly balanced republic, charged with protecting liberty and checking power by ensuring that the other branches stayed in their place and did not violate the rule of law.
It took some time for this to be established at the federal level – Marbury v. Madison doesn’t get decided until 1803 and even then the principle of judicial review remained tenuous for a long time after – but that’s how the system works.
That’s how it’s designed to work.
And that’s why all that steaming load of nonsense about “judicial activism at its worst” is just that – nonsense.
Folks, that’s what judges do. That’s what they’re supposed to do. That’s what they are required to do.
And any who refuse to understand that confess a doctrine that is alien to America.
When the legislature runs amok, when it violates the law in its rush to force a bill down the throats of its citizens, when it violates the Constitution through its actions, it is the responsibility of the Judicial Branch of a properly balanced American republican government to step in and rebuke the legislature for its crimes.
You may not like the decisions – certainly there have been a lot of bad decisions in American legal history, and there are specific remedies for that sort of thing. You can appeal. You can pass laws vacating the decision. You can amend the Constitution if mere laws aren’t enough. But you cannot in good conscience argue that the judges are somehow out of line in doing their jobs.
So when you hear someone complaining about “judicial activism,” remember that what you are really hearing is them confessing, “I’m ignorant about how American government actually works and petulant about not getting my way,” and feel free to enlighten them.
Use small words.
And with the usual squawking about how they would be vindicated in the long run, Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) backed down.
This is entirely appropriate.
Of course he’s going to squawk. Of course he’s going to criticize the judge’s ruling. Of course he’s going to claim that he will win in the end. What else would he do? I would expect no less, and I would do the same if a ruling went against me. So as long as he actually follows the court order, I’ll overlook all the rhetoric as standard operating procedure for anyone on the short end of a judicial decision and be glad that the constitutional crisis has been put off for at least another day.
We have reached the point where having our government follow the law counts as a victory rather than an expectation.
What I find annoying, however, is the bleating coming from the Fitzgerald boys - State House Majority Leader Jeff Fitzgerald and State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, the leaders of the aforementioned cronies, minions and lackeys.
When Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi ruled that the elder Fitzgerald boy’s end run around her first ruling was illegal under Wisconsin law and that the union-busting bill was not in fact law just because he said so, baby brother Jeff accused Judge Sumi of “interjecting herself into the legislative process with no regard to the state constitution.” Big brother Scott, for his part, declared that Sumi’s enforcing the laws of the State of Wisconsin was “judicial activism at its worst.”
Uh, no.
What we have here is a catastrophic failure on the part of the Fitzgerald boys to understand how the American governmental system actually works.
Here is a hint: the mere fact that you are in office does not entitle you to do whatever you want.
There are rules to be followed. Rules that are there to make sure that this republic does not degenerate into a dictatorship. Rules that are not to be flouted save at your cost.
Query: What do right-wingers mean when they yell and scream about “judicial activism”?
Response: They mean that a decision has gone against them.
Query: Why do they not like this?
Response: Because like small children, they are angry about not getting their way.
Query: Why is this not a bad thing?
Response: Because the Founding Fathers set it up that way. Because that’s what American government is supposed to look like. Because that’s how American government is supposed to work. Because the whole point of a republic is to provide checks and balances between the branches of government, so that no branch will be tempted to squash the others and each branch will be held to account in following the rule of law.
Honestly, people, it’s not that hard.
Let’s review.
The judicial branch of a republican form of government has a very specific role. It is a role that was largely created here in the United States, surprisingly enough.
As I said in an earlier post, this country was founded on the ideology of classical republicanism, a theory that argued the need for a properly balanced form of government that would check power and preserve liberty. In England, where as far as the colonies were concerned this idea originated, this was done by mapping the three branches of government onto the three broad divisions of English society. You had the One, the most important guy in the kingdom, who was the Monarchy. That was the king. You had the Few, who were the Aristrocracy – they got the House of Lords. And you got the Many, the rest of us, who were the Democracy and got the House of Commons. A properly balanced republican government would balance the interests and powers of these three sociological groups, and liberty would be preserved against power.
In this setup, judges were considered agents of the One. They were classed under the Monarchy, along with the army, the tax collectors and the sheriffs. Their job was to keep the King’s peace and function as part of the law-enforcement apparatus.
When the United States was founded, classical republicans had something of a dilemma – there was no One in the new republic, nor really was there much of a Few. There was just Many.
So the question arose: what is this new balanced republican government supposed to balance in order to check power and preserve liberty?
And here John Adams stepped in with the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, the oldest written constitution still in effect in the world today and the model for the 1787 Federal Constitution that we live under. Adams argued that instead of balancing sociological groups – One, Few, Many – with their own branches of government, a properly balanced republican government in America would balance the functions of government. Each branch of the government would be separated not by who it represented, since each branch would represent everyone here, but instead by what it did, by function.
Mapping the Executive onto the One, the Monarchy, wasn’t hard. That’s largely what the Monarchy did anyway. Likewise mapping the Legislative onto the Many, the Democracy, wasn’t hard either, for the same reason.
But who were the new Few?
Here John Adams made a very clever move. He took the judges out of the Monarchy category – removed them from the Executive Branch, in the American context – and elevated them to their own branch, the Judiciary.
No longer were they merely law-enforcement tools subservient to the Monarchy, nor would they be subservient to the Executive in the new arrangement. Now they were a fully co-equal branch of a properly balanced republic, charged with protecting liberty and checking power by ensuring that the other branches stayed in their place and did not violate the rule of law.
It took some time for this to be established at the federal level – Marbury v. Madison doesn’t get decided until 1803 and even then the principle of judicial review remained tenuous for a long time after – but that’s how the system works.
That’s how it’s designed to work.
And that’s why all that steaming load of nonsense about “judicial activism at its worst” is just that – nonsense.
Folks, that’s what judges do. That’s what they’re supposed to do. That’s what they are required to do.
And any who refuse to understand that confess a doctrine that is alien to America.
When the legislature runs amok, when it violates the law in its rush to force a bill down the throats of its citizens, when it violates the Constitution through its actions, it is the responsibility of the Judicial Branch of a properly balanced American republican government to step in and rebuke the legislature for its crimes.
You may not like the decisions – certainly there have been a lot of bad decisions in American legal history, and there are specific remedies for that sort of thing. You can appeal. You can pass laws vacating the decision. You can amend the Constitution if mere laws aren’t enough. But you cannot in good conscience argue that the judges are somehow out of line in doing their jobs.
So when you hear someone complaining about “judicial activism,” remember that what you are really hearing is them confessing, “I’m ignorant about how American government actually works and petulant about not getting my way,” and feel free to enlighten them.
Use small words.
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