Something silly this way comes.....

If someone isn't being outraged at who is invited to the White House when Pope Francis I is in the building, there is room for outrage about what brings Kim Davis back to court (because that's how the court system works.  We don't get to reduce Kim Davis to a greasy spot because you don't like her actions.)  And there is still no small amount of yammering outrage about Ahmed and the technicolor dream clock which he didn't really make, he just disassembled and put in a pencil box.

The funniest part about this "meme" is that it depends on so many people saying it in order to be true.  Yes, there is a blogpost that purports to examine a photograph, which examination renders visual evidence that only the writer of that post can see, "proving" this radio is actually a Radio Shack product from the 1980's.  The "proof" includes the allegation that there is an "M" on the circuit board (which, again, apparently only the writer of the blog post can see, since no enlarged picture is provided), and that "M" can only mean (wait for it!):  "Micronta," the name under which the clock was marketed.

And, you see, this is all true because the blog post says so.  Again, the "evidence" here is the blog post, not any "high definition" photographs which the post writer says have been reviewed, but which apparently were unavailable for reproduction.  There are fuzzy enlargements of the picture released by the Irving PD which are labeled by someone with parts supposedly from said Micronta clock, but that "evidence," again, is the arrows and the captions and the words of the blog post writer.

Nothing more.

One wonders what Richard Dawkins makes of the Shroud of Turin, which at least looks, even to the uninitiated, like it bears the figure of a man wearing a crown of thorns and wounds consistent with crucifixion.  Yes, I know the Shroud has been proven to be a medieval fake (I'm not much for relics anyway), but you can look at the Shroud and think:  "Hmmm....that looks like a human being."

Or you can look at the photo of the clock in the pencil box and wonder, as I still do:  "Clock?  So, where's the readout?"  And also look at it and say "Looks like some random bits of electronic parts, to me."  Identifying them as coming from a specific digital clock by a specific manufacturer from a specific decade would, one would think, require a bit more, ahem, "personal" inspection of the item.  After all, I'd never pass judgment on the validity of the Shroud of Turin based on a photograph.

And, interestingly, we still can't figure out how the image got on the cloth.  It's not that hard to imagine Ahmed Mohammed assembling components to make a  clock in a pencil box either from instructions on the internet (I've used DIY videos successfully for everything from remodeling a bathroom to roofing a garage to replacing a tail light), or just figuring it out himself.  Both of which are more plausible than assuming he had to have scoured e-bay for a Micronta clock, torn it apart, and scattered the bits into a pencil box, just because he could (or because he knew it would fit into a pencil box).

Unless you're Richard Dawkins and don't want to give the young brown boy any credit at all.

AND ANOTHER THING:  I want to add that many comments about how Ahmed "didn't build that" claim he put the parts in a briefcase.  You know, the thing executives and lawyers carry around, and that every 14 year old has in his room.

It's a pencil case.  It's 8" wide, according to the blogpost Dawkins cited and everyone else is going from.  In the picture it may look like a briefcase only because there isn't much to compare it to, in terms of size (although the AC plug should be a giveaway).  But that's one of the problems with pictures:  what you see ain't necessarily what's there.

(Besides, even in the '80's, digital clocks weren't so big the components would barely fit into a briefcase.  Reason!  Logic!)

WWJD?

At this one he included women and Muslims

So, the "least of these" doesn't include the gai?

Huckabee was upset over Obama inviting transgender activists and the first openly gay Episcopal bishop to the welcoming ceremony for the pope at the White House. The Vatican criticized the invitations and said that photographs of the pope and these individuals might suggest approval of their decisions, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Can't get to the WSJ original, so I have to rely on TPM.  That said, this response could have come from flacks in Rome, not necessarily from His Holiness currently in Cuba.  Either way, it's an interesting response, especially in light of the Pharisees criticizing Jesus for hanging with whores and tax collectors (in 1st century Palestine, basically male whores).

I rather expect Pope Francis to be less upset than the home office or Pastor Huckabee.  And I really think both of them are so far-off base (Vatican and Huckabee, I mean), that they don't really matter.

"You didn't build that!"

This is how absurd the internet can be.

Apparently there's a whole discussion going on out that about how Ahmed Mohammed didn't "invent" a digital clock because all he did was take apart a 30 year old Radio Shack digital clock and reassemble the components in a pencil box.

And since the 14 year old said "invent," he's guilty of heinous crimes including deluding the Irving police into arresting him and the White House into inviting him to come for a visit.

No, seriously.

I'm a bit baffled by the examination of a photograph from which one can make absolute determinations, and I want to ask if they also checked the kerning.  But whatever:  the kid took components and put them together into a clock.  Were the components assembled and he disassembled a 30 year old clock and made it work again?  Or reassemble it in a pencil box?  Do we have any idea where those components came from?  Can "M" only mean "Micronta"?  (is it even reasonable that that is what it means?)

Inquiring minds want to know.  Or, actually, they don't.*  The author of the dissection insists the point is to focus on our reaction to this story, not to the "hoax clock" itself.  So, of course, Richard Dawkins focusses on the hoax.

Given Dawkins' history of disdaining the non-white countries of the world, maybe not such a smart move for him.

I gotta say:  the internet is a really tiring place.  The trolls can have it; they seem to be the only people here anymore.

ADDING:

Not that this whole discussion is really any different from Frank Gaffney's paranoia:

A picture Gaffney tweeted with the quite reasonable question:  "How is a teacher supposed to know?  A Clock or a Bomb Trigger?"  (Maybe the first clue is:  who plugs in a "bomb trigger"?)

Right?


*The point of the "dissection" is supposed to be about our reaction to the device, but the analysis assumes so many facts not in evidence, and so obviously starts with a conclusion it then finds support for, that it's an exercise in futility.  I always assumed Ahmed assembled parts without a blueprint or instructions and figured out how to put a digital clock together from his own knowledge.  If he had the parts, did he know what they were?  How did he know how to assemble them to make them work?  Is it really a Radio Shack item from the '80's?  Did he have it assembled, and took it apart with minimal alteration to put it in a pencil box?

Does it really matter?

Fear of a Brown Planet

I think we're coming closer to an answer to "Why Irving?," and it ain't just because "Texas" or even "Dallas."

"[Irving mayor Beth] Van Duyne’s focus on the city’s growth earned her our recommendation in 2014. But we also urged her to build 'cooperation and unity,'" the editorial read. "She’s failed at that part of the job. An important part of Irving’s population is Muslim, and the city is home to a major mosque."

Now if the majority of those Muslims were Southeast Asian, reflecting the majority of the world's Muslims, would there be the same reaction by the mayor, or the Irving PD?

And really, it ain't limited to Texas. This exchange took place in New Hampshire:

“We have a problem in this country,” a questioner said, “it’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American. We have training camps growing where they want to kill us.”

Trump — who spent much of much of Wednesday night’s debate talking over and interrupting other potential nominees — didn’t even attempt to challenge this interrogator, who did eventually get around to his question: “When can we get rid of them?”

Instead of saying that “they” are American citizens, and as such it would be un-American to “get rid of them,” Trump replied with empty blandishments, saying that “we’re going to be looking at a lot of different things, and a lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.”

As Charlie Pierce likes to say:  "This is your democracy, America.  Cherish it."*

*By the way, are Pakistanis Asian?  Or Middle Eastern?  And are Egyptians African?  Or just Egyptian?  And why aren't Russians Asian?

It is a puzzlement.

Reality. What a concept!

So, Carly Fiorina "won" the debate last night because she had bigger meaty clackers (or clanging brass ones; maybe that's more appropriate) than any other man on stage:

“What I would do, immediately, is begin rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, I would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland, I would conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states. I’d probably send a few thousand more troops into Germany. Vladimir Putin would get the message. By the way, the reason it is so critically important that every one of us know General Suleimani’s name is because Russia is in Syria right now, because the head of the Quds force traveled to Russia and talked Vladimir Putin into aligning themselves with Iran and Syria to prop up Bashar al- Assad.”

All well and good, except:

The Sixth Fleet is already huge, and it's hard to say why adding to its capabilities would intimidate Putin — after all, America has enough nuclear weapons pointed at Russia to level the country thousands of times over. Her proposal for more military exercises in the Baltics seemed odd in light of the fact that President Obama is already conducting military exercises in the Baltics. And the US already has around 40,000 troops stationed in Germany, so it's hard to say what good "a few thousand" more would do. And pushing on a missile defense system in Poland is a very long-term solution to a very current problem. In total, Fiorina's laundry list of proposals sure sounded like a plan, but on inspection, it's hard to see why any of them would convince Putin to change course.

And, as Rand Paul (!) pointed out at the debate, we were talking to the USSR all through the Cold War, and now we can't talk to Putin?  What sense does that make?

And on that Planned Parenthood video she couldn't have possibly seen, she remains unbowed and unrepentant:

"Analysts who have watched all 12 plus hours say the scene you describe - that harrowing scene you described -- actually isn't in those tapes. Did you misspeak?" he asked.

"No, I didn't misspeak, and I don't know who you're speaking about in terms of watching the tapes, but I have seen those images," Fiorina responded. "I don't know whether you've watched the tapes, George. Most people haven't. Certainly none of the Democrats who are still defending Planned Parenthood have watched those tapes."

Stephanopoulos then referenced a report by Vox's Sarah Kliff, who said that she watched all of the videos released and that she did not see the scene Fiorina described.

"Well, you know, there's a lot of commentary about these tapes being doctored. In fact, that's what the mainstream media keeps talking about, is the tapes and their origin," Fiorina replied. "Rest assured I have seen the images that I talked about last night. Rest assured that human lives are being aborted fully formed in order to harvest body parts."

But no, that video simply does not exist.   Which means we should start calling Ms. Fiorina a liar.

Except in American politics, that's more taboo than calling someone a racist.  Or using the "n-word."  My dears, it simply is. not. done!

By the way, Fiorina boldly told a crowd of supporters that she'd earned every wrinkle on her 60 year old face.  I have searched photos like the above in vain for signs of any wrinkles at all.  Is lying just sort of a natural condition for her?

Speaking of justice

I've had my disagreements with Pastor Dan in the past, but fair is fair, and when he's right, he's right.

Still, this was mostly Sanders’ stump speech garnished with a bit of religious rhetoric. That’s his campaign in a nutshell, to be honest. For better or worse, the man is focused on economic inequality like a six-year-old on sugar. (I’d say like a college student on beer, but you know. Liberty University and all that.) If Twitter is any indication, his fans loved the speech, and everybody else just sort of shrugged. No new ground was broken.

Unlike my esteemed RD colleague Sarah Posner, I thought Sanders took most of the usual advice pols get on religion: talk about toning down partisan divides, talk about commonalities, talk about standing in solidarity. Which is fine, I guess, but it didn’t exactly move the conversation on religion and politics forward. Bit of a missed opportunity there.

A bigger miss was that Sanders didn’t really dig into the religious material the way he could have. He quoted only two passages from scripture: Matthew 7:12 (“Do unto others as you would have them do to you”) and Amos 5:24 (“Let justice roll down like waters”), without dwelling on either one. Sanders might have told the story of Hillel teaching the Golden Rule to show how close Jewish and Christian social teachings are, and build a connection with his audience without getting into a mushy faith autobiography. And while the Amos passage was the hinge into Sanders’ discussion of economic injustice, he didn’t bother to explain the concept of justice, or its rich and complex tradition in Jewish scripture.

A keen orator like Pres. Obama would have taken the opportunity to explore the theology being invoked. For all that his faith talk gets dismissed as phony pandering, Obama is conversant enough with Christian thought that he can creatively reinterpret it, as he did at Rev. Pinckney’s funeral in South Carolina. It’s enough—more than enough—to convince his listeners that he gets it, that he understands them and their religious concerns in more than a superficial way.

I haven't paid a lot of attention to Bernie Sanders (neither have I paid a lot of attention to Hillary Clinton). I was ready to be impressed with Sanders going to Liberty U., but Pastor Dan captures the reason why I haven't heard much about it except that he went there.  And it would have been more interesting if Sen. Sanders had tried to delve into scripture for lessons rather than cliches, or had trotted out (as Pastor Dan suggests) what is almost a cliche, a statistic about the number of times "justice" appear in the Holy Bible (simple reference to a concordance would yield the answer).

No, the Senator is not a religious candidate; but he did go to Liberty University, not only a hotbed of rabid conservatism, but a Bible college (in essence).  He could have done a bit more to speak their language, even if he doesn't speak their conclusions.

But mostly I agree with Pastor Dan about the implicit criticism he raises against Sen. Sanders:  the concept of justice, v. the concept of social justice or economic justice or "Black Lives Matter" justice.  That's a very risky abstraction to raise in a political campaign; the ultimate issue of justice, v. some specific and more narrow (and somehow more abstract and obtuse) concept of a type of justice.  But it is no more risky, really, than raising the idea that fundamental to our problems is economic justice.  If we're going to discuss fundamentals in public discourse and public policy, let's get down to the bedrock.  If justice is to roll down like waters, what do we expect that to look like?

It would take a deft hand, and I'm not sure there's a politician who could pull it off (perhaps President Obama, now; since we are not as fixated on his being a potentially angry black man as we were when Jeremiah Wright was the outrage du jour) .  But the discussion of justice itself might start to convince listeners that a politician gets it, that she or he understands the audience and their deep concerns in more than a superficial way.

Of course, then you might upset all the atheists.....

You can't be too careful, or too paranoid

Don't know what it is, so it must be dangerous!

And since I've touched this, I'm not going to let go of it quickly:

At a press conference this morning, Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said charges won't be filed against Ahmed Mohamed, the MacArthur High School freshman arrested Monday after bringing what school officials and police described as a "hoax bomb" on campus.

Boyd said the device -- confiscated by an English teacher despite the teen's insistence that it was a clock -- was "certainly suspicious in nature.

"The student showed the device to a teacher, who was concerned that it was possibly the infrastructure for a bomb," Boyd said.

School officers questioned Ahmed about the device and why he'd brought it to school. Boyd said Ahmed was then handcuffed "for his safety and for the safety of the officers" and taken to a juvenile detention center. He was later released to his parents, Boyd said.

"The follow-up investigation revealed the device apparently was a homemade experiment, and there's no evidence to support the perception he intended to create alarm," Boyd said.

During the news conference, Boyd touted the "outstanding relationship" he's had with the Muslim community in Irving. He said he talked to members of the Muslim community this morning and plans to meet with Ahmed's father later today.

Asked if the teen's religious beliefs factored into his arrest, Boyd said the reaction "would have been the same" under any circumstances.

And if you believe that last statement, I have some coastal land in Louisiana you'll want to buy.  Hurry, 'cause it's going fast!

Then there's the condescending "outstanding relationship" with the community-in-question argument.  I thought I'd quit hearing that when it was applied to blacks in the '70's.  And while the kid was only armed with a clock, he was handcuffed for his safety and the safety of others?

Seriously?

Besides, what made it suspicious?  The fact that no one could tell what it was?  Or that the kids' name was "Ahmed"?  What made it look dangerous had nothing to do with who was showing it to you?

Really?

So about that land in Louisiana.....

ADDING:  the world is shaming Irving and the school.  Whether they notice or not, Ahmed is redeemed.  And I don' t hesitate to say the teachers, the principal, the school district, the Irving police, and the Irving mayor, should be ashamed of themselves.  Not that I'm expecting them to be.....

Ignorance is Strength

"Yup.  That's who I thought it was."

The irony is so sharp and so close to the throat you dare not move for fear of the suicide:

The outlook of mechanically-minded students of color could not have been helped by the fact that yesterday, police in Texas arrested a ninth-grader for making a clock and bringing it to school. The kid had loved robotics club in middle school and was hoping to join something similar in high school, so he brought his creation to show to his engineering teacher. But he had to carry it around for the rest of the day. When it beeped in English class, that teacher confiscated it. Then she called the cops.

On one level, this story fits inside an appalling pattern of police arresting children as young as five for offenses such as throwing paper planes in class, playing tag, and having overdue library fines. But if, on a broader plane, childhood itself is now a walking potential crime, research studies have thoroughly documented the fact that the preschool-to-prison pipeline disproportionately targets children of color.

The story of the clock-making kid gets worse, for his name is not Johnny Smith, but Ahmed Mohamed, and he is Muslim. Authorities at Irving MacArthur High School thought his device was a bomb. The subtext is clear: if the boy is a Muslim, he must be a terrorist.

[The police] were like, ‘So you tried to make a bomb?’”

Ahmed said. “I told them no, I was trying to make a clock.”

 “He said, ‘It looks like a movie bomb to me.’”

Ahmed was led out of school in handcuffs and given a three-day suspension. The Dallas Morning News reports that “police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb — though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it’s a clock.” The police confirm that a clock is what Mohamed claimed to have built, but according to police spokesman James MacLellan, the boy “was unable to give a ‘broader explanation’ as to what it would be used for.”

Uh, egg timer? Metronome? “It’s a clock” is insufficiently clear?

So here's what we have:  ignorant racist police pick on the brown kid because of his name (did they even ask him his religion?  Did they have to?) and it's the brown kid's fault.  By the way, how bad was it?

They led Ahmed into a room where four other police officers waited. He said an officer he’d never seen before leaned back in his chair and remarked: “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.”

As Salon notes, the case of the "bomb" is rather like the case of Dr. Xi, arrested by the Justice Department for selling secrets to the Chinese, because, well, he's Chinese!  Except they had to drop the charges because the only evidence they had was that Dr. Xi, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is Chinese.

The real trouble starts when authorities with ample power to throw you in jail happily flaunt their own ignorance.

And that sentence is when the penny dropped:  how is this any different from the professed atheism of people like Lawrence Krause?  The most fervent of the New Atheists are Islamophobic (a term they disdain, especially when it is linked to racism, because it's not about race because it's never about race).  Yet the idea that a brown kid with a "Middle Eastern" name is likely a terrorist is of a piece with atheist diatribes.  (The further irony is that the majority of the world's Muslims are Asians; yet no one automatically assumes Dr. Xi is a Muslim or, if  so that he's a terrorist.  Wrong "race," donchaknow?  But it's not about race.....)

And it's hard to find a New Atheist who knows anything about Islam or Christianity or religion in general, because they are so proud of their ignorance.

But tell me again what kind of paradise it would be if they were in charge.

Still making monkeys outta....

So I wander over to Religion Dispatches, where I find this:

  WHY SCIENTISTS SHOULD BE AGNOSTIC: 

OR, WHY LAWRENCE KRAUSS IS STILL A WINDBAG

Which was kind of interesting, and led me to this:

NEW ATHEISM PRODUCES ANOTHER CURIOUSLY UNCURIOUS

 SCIENCE V. RELIGION BOOK

Which in turn led me to this review which ends with this sentence:

 Read ''Summer for the Gods'' for that well-told story. For the trial of the century, rent the movie.

And made me consider that law professors don't know that much about history.  And even about the power of powerlessness, about the real value of humility and self-awareness and, while those things don't spring exclusively from religion, they are more emphasized in religion than in atheism, New Atheism, or agnosticism.

It also reminded me that I'm getting really tired of reading the pontifications of people who are proudly ignorant of the subject they denounce, and left wondering what that says about the state of our public discourse and even our national discussion of public policy.  And how what we don't need is an opposing voice shouting down opponents, but an advocate for self-examination.

Yeah, like that'll happen!

Panem et circenses

First, all these new stories about Kim Davis are taking their cues from Ms. Davis and her lawyers:

Kim Davis Says She Won't Authorize Licenses For Gay Couples Issued By Deputies

Spoiler alert:  she doesn't have to:  "The governor, the attorney general and the county attorney have said the licenses are valid. Only Davis and her attorneys claim otherwise."

“Back at square one”: Defiant Kim Davis returned to work Monday and declared that she will continue not to do her job

Basically the same article, without the notation that the licenses are deemed valid by all authorities except Ms. Davis' lawyers, who have lost every legal argument they have advanced.  No surprise, it's Salon; outrage is their marketing strategy.

Kim Davis' Lawyers To File New Lawsuit Against Kentucky Governor

TPM tends to be less lurid, but the comments are full of outrage, which is kinda surprising.  This new lawsuit sounds like something already raised before the federal court (and dismissed out of hand), so the legal team is still batting 1.000 in their attempt to never make a legal argument worth the paper it's printed on.

ThinkProgres is the only headline to get it right: It’s Over: Kim Davis Allows Deputies To Continue Issuing Marriage Licenses.  It is also less sanguine about the validity of the marriage licenses, but that's really a matter for Kentucky lawyers, so let's leave it to them.

What's interesting now is the outrage these headlines produce.  There shouldn't be a controversy here:  Kim Davis is running her mouth, but she's lost every battle she's engaged.  Same-sex couples in Rowan County, Kentucky are getting married with licenses issued by her office.  The plaintiffs got what they asked for.  The Court has her office under review to the point she's knuckled under rather than go back to jail.  Still, commentary runs heavily in favor of putting Ms. Davis back in jail permanently, if not longer, mostly on the grounds that she "deserves" it or needs to "learn a lesson" or just because she is very annoying to some people.  None of these, of course, are grounds for criminal contempt and it is likely, had the judge kept her in jail longer, the 6th Cir. would have ordered her release, giving her lawyers at least one win.

Besides, the ACLU attorneys who brought this suit argued for fines, not jail time.  Apparently they just aren't bloodthirsty enough for the attendees in the internet Coliseum.

It's a bit odd, all this screaming and yelling (virtually) over a woman who has lost every legal argument she's put forward, and has now cratered to the demands of the judge (even as her lawyers vowed defiance last week).  And especially a woman almost no on on the internet knows personally, or is likely to encounter in their daily lives.  She's bitching and moaning about the marriage certificates leaving her office, but she's not stopping them  Her case gives no solace to the handful (literally, you can count them on one hand) of clerks and judges across the country who have vowed to defy Obergefell.  The fact is, what's keeping this story alive (if you can call it that) is the outrage of certain small corners of the internet.  It's as if these petty ideologues were gladiators in some death spectacle, and nothing will do but that their opponents are obliterated from the face of the earth.

Salon, as I say, specializes in this.  In a related article this morning there was this demand:

The most reasonable Christians I know are not the voice of American Christianity. Those who love and promote a more nuanced version of the faith have a duty to get their house in order. Liberal Christians have been either ineffective or unwilling to tame the excesses in their pews.

So we are reasonable, but we aren't silencing the crazy Christians who aren't even in our pews (I've never attended a church that produced a Kim Davis), and somehow because we both call ourselves "Christians" I'm responsible for enforcing the copyright on that term, and denying it to Kim Davis?

Does this make sense to anybody else?

It's the usual internet blather and outrage, but it's beginning to sound like the Coliseum scenes in "Gladiator."  I'm not so sure Donald Trump is the only one appealing to the fears and bruised ideologies of the disaffected white American male.

As Stanley Fish puts it (whose legal analysis of the case frankly leaves a great deal to be desired; it reads like a legal analysis written by an English professor):

Some posters castigate Davis for being self-righteous; but if there were a self-righteousness competition, Davis's critics would win it hands down.

I think that particular disorder is more widespread and less generational than is generally acknowledged; on the intertoobs, at least.

"For self-examination!"

Scout is a "Tenther."

That's the real takeaway from Watchman:  Jean Louise objects to Brown v. Board of Education because she think it runs roughshod over the 10th Amendment.  It makes the novel something of a time capsule, a perfectly preserved relic of a time before Dr. King's letter and his dream transformed us all into thinking justice demanded the elimination of racism in American law.

It's telling that the only voice for the blacks is that of Calpurnia, and all she does is treat Jean Louise like the white woman with white privileges that blind her to her racism, a racism Jean Louise displays by rejecting the sight of Atticus sitting in a White Citizens Council meeting, but also by insisting that blacks should wait for change to come, not go out and meet it and bring it to town with them.

For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

That argument isn't made until years later than the events in Watchman.  It is an argument unimaginable to Scout.  It is, tacitly. the argument of Calpurnia when she spurns Scout.  But even if Calpurnia could put it into words, Scout would not recognize the meaning.

Some things do take time, even if people and events can't wait.

Narratively, this is a weaker novel than Mockinbird.  Lee has a point to make in this first book, and she does it through dialogue.  It reminds me of one of Shaw's wordier plays, more intent on diatribe than on drama.  The middle section of the story, when Jean Louise wrestles with the reality of racism in Maycomb and in her family, is powerful:  it's a gut-punch to Jean Louise and to the reader.  But the resolution comes, not from drama or action, but conversation.  The last portion of the novel is one long justification, first by Atticus' brother (not a figure at all in Mockingbird) and then by Atticus.  It is satisfying neither emotionally, intellectually, nor dramatically, because in the end Scout's racism is justified in the old way:  she's not a racist, she just doesn't want her daughter to marry one.  Calpurnia's change of heart, crucial as it is to the story, is blamed not on Southern racism, but on the NAACP.

The only phrase missing from the book is "outside agitators."

But that's what makes it such an effective time capsule.  It isn't someone of my generation (born at the time Watchman is set) trying to recapture the spirit of a time lived through but not really in; it is a photograph of that period.  It is an attempt by a first novelist to capture the contradictions and what seemed like radical change of the era.  Jean Louise is distanced from her father by time as much as by geography (returning to Maycomb from New York leaves her physically displaced throughout the novel), but her arguments about state's rights and NAACP lawyers "coming down here" were already outdated by the late '60's, when Dr. King's letter (and the efforts of thousands) began to be an influence.  It's a very wrong book, in other words, and a failed piece of drama (show, don't tell, is always the first rule of fiction), but it's a good book with a compelling narrative that the author herself never quite reconciled, at least not in this story; and it points out that we probably read more into Mockingbird than we ought to.

But that should lead us to self-examination, and that is always a better purpose for fiction; even partially failed fiction can be redeemed, if we use it to reconsider ourselves.

Just keeping up

Think Progress has an excellent (finally!) explanation of the legal issues involved in the Kim Davis farce.  Notably, many of the issues her lawyers have tried to litigate before the press were litigated before the judge:

During Davis’ contempt hearing last week, Liberty Counsel Senior Attorney Jonathan Christman told the court, “The governor can change that form, make it a state form with no personal authority, no Kim Davis name on it, available in a Rowan County Clerk’s office, and this case would be over.”

U.S. District Judge David Bunning humored this claim, asking Palmer Vance, an attorney representing Beshear, “Is this something where he can just change the form by executive order?”

“No, Your Honor,” Vance replied, “because the requirements for the composition of marriage licenses is dictated by statute, and the governor cannot change the statute.”

Christman countered with a point that many Davis supporters have made: Beshear did direct Kentucky’s Department for Libraries and Archives to produce a new marriage license form after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling. The change removed gender-specific language so that the form could be used for same-sex couples. Bunning asked the governor’s attorney to respond.

Vance explained, “Judge, the form was changed in response to a final decision of the United States Supreme Court that did change marriage in the sense that same-sex marriage was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and so the form was modified to reflect compliance of the decision of the United States Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court disturbed no other portion of Kentucky’s marriage laws, so the governor does not have the ability to change those himself because they are in the statute.”

But even if the form is changed, Davis is expected to raise an objection:

As Liberty Counsel’s Staver said in his interview with David Brody, “The problem is that the licenses have her name on them and/or they have her official title as the Clerk of the Court of Rowan County, so whether it’s ‘Kim Davis’ or it’s ‘The Clerk of the Court,’ it’s like saying — whether it’s the ‘President of the United States’ or ‘President Obama’ or ‘Governor So-and-so’ or a particular governor’s name, it’s the same person.

“So to issue a license under her name and authority, as Kim Davis as the Clerk of Rowan County, is something that she can’t do, because it authorizes a license for marriage that is contrary to God’s design for marriage as the union of a man and a woman.”

Poppycock, of course, but 'round and round that goes.  The legal battle here is not to free Kim Davis, but to block the implementation of Obergefell.  And what of the authority of the deputy clerks?  Back to the courthouse:

This question similarly came up during the contempt hearing as Bunning was considering requiring the deputies to issue licenses. Can deputies issue valid marriage licenses without Davis’ presence or approval? William Ellis Sharp, an ACLU attorney representing the same-sex couples who filed the complaint against Davis, explained to the court that it made little sense that she could actually prevent deputies from performing their duty.

“We don’t think her authority extends that far,” Sharp explained, “insofar as the office, apart from Kim Davis, exists to perform certain public functions. Kim Davis does not have to personally touch every marriage license. She employs people for the purpose of carrying out the duties of that office. To the extent Kim Davis has an erroneous instruction of her ability to block them from doing that, that, nonetheless, does not mean that they cannot perform those functions.”

Unless, of course, she fires any clerk who crosses here.  And that may well raise a question of Kentucky civil service law.  I rather doubt government employees are employed at the whim of their elected bosses, but I suppose we'll find out, huh?  At a minimum, it'll land Ms. Davis back before the federal judge.

And her counsel have now filed another appeal, claiming lack of jurisdiction for the court to rule in favor of parties not plaintiffs in the suit.  Yeah, their legal case is that ridiculous.

But speaking of legal cases, a bit of perspective.  Brown v. Board was handed down in 1954.  When Harper Lee wrote Go Tell A Watchman, she used that decision as the backdrop for her novel.  The year is unclear, but it is sometime after Brown and before Faubus.  And there's no indication Brown was being implemented in Alabama at the time, certainly not in her fictional Maycomb.  It was 25 years before Brown was fully implemented across the country, and at some point it was rolled back, at least as far as forced busing went.  The impetus of Brown ended with a whimper, and today almost no one notices that the landmark decision everyone praises, is buried beneath our neglect.  Does anyone speak of correcting our schools by making them less racially divided?  Has that solution ever even been broached in all the discussion of New Orleans public schools 10 years after Katrina?  It is, like the Lost Cause, gone with the wind.

Even Loving v. Virginia wasn't the law of the land until 1970, 3 years after it came down from a unanimous court.   And the interesting part is, anti-miscegenation laws were not limited to the south, or to African-Americans:

All but nine of the fifty states outlawed interracial marriage at some time in their history. These laws were not limited to the South—they existed at different historical moments in states ranging from Massachusetts to California, and they variously outlawed marriages between whites and those defined as black, Asian and American Indian. What they had in common was a shared intent in protecting the status of whites and communicating the subordinate position of nonwhite groups.

Loving was ignored in Alabama until 1970, when the Nixon Administration finally got the state to cry "Uncle!" in federal district court.

Yes, it's frustrating for a few people in Rowan County, and I understand there are two other county clerks in Kentucky who are Kim Davis-wannabes, as well as one in Texas.  In the Texas case, however, no same-sex couple has yet stepped forward in that rural county to make the clerk a martyr. Still, given the complete lack of support for their position at the state level (with the exception of Texas, briefly), the country is moving much faster to accept same-sex marriage than ever it moved to accept integrated schools or interracial marriage.

Hmmmmm........

Is it a sin to keep a wound hidden?

For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.
Isaiah 21:6

I'm a little over halfway through Harper Lee's "new" book, and I think I understand what all the fuss was about.

The "fuss", of course, was the fact that Atticus is, in the 1950's, a racist; something he adamantly was not in the 1930's.  This raised great concerns, even as this novel was tacitly denounced as not being the equal of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Well, of course; what could be?  Mockingbird is an evocative, lyrical presentation of a time; Maycomb, Alabama is practically Mayberry, North Carolina.  The novel is rich with characters and evocations, woven together by chronology more than narrative necessity (what does Atticus shooting the dog really have to do with Atticus defending a black man on a false criminal charge?  What does Jem breaking his arm have to do with anything?).  But we don't care about the tissue-paper of the plot, so captivated are we by the narrative woven out of these events related only by their occurring in within the same time frame, one after the other.

That powerful narrative voice, that story-teller's way of focusing on character without losing track of the fact in a story things must happen, is still present in Go Set a Watchman.  If anything, this earlier novel that was set aside for Mockingbird proves the more famous book was no fluke:  Harper Lee is a fine and worthy story teller.   The big difference between the two books, and the reason the second passed from public consciousness so rapidly, so as not to disturb our love of the first, is simple.  Mockingbird showed us racism as a problem of the "other."  It's situated in the townsfolk of Maycomb, in the faceless jury that convicts Tom Robinson, the mob that lynches him, the people who respect Atticus but don't respect the legal process.

In Watchman, it turns out the racists are us.

The shock of this novel is not that Atticus is a racist.  It is that we have been racists all along, and we haven't recognized it, and we don't want to recognize it.  If the narrative structure of Mockingbird is the year Jem broke his arm, Watchman has a narrower ambit:  it's the vacation Jean Louise takes from New York to return to Maycomb. As in Mockingbird, the narrator is in no hurry to get to a point:  this isn't a thriller, or a plot-driven potboiler.  Like a good Southern story or a well-told Southern joke, the set up is worth the ending, the characters as important as the point of the tale.  The conflict in Mockingbird forces Scout to grow up a bit, but come to grips with the world around her that isn't all the simple world of childhood.  It culminates in the assault on Jem and Scout, and the rescue by Boo Radley, but it is, ironically, more "a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel," as the first editor of Watchman reportedly said of that novel.

Watchman is actually more tightly constructed than Mockingbird.  It takes place in a shorter time frame, and it presents Jean Louise, as a young adult, returning to Maycomb and filling in the spaces between visits with people she doesn't really know or have much in common with, with memories from her childhood.  Dill makes and appearance, as does Jem, although in this novel Jem is already dead of a heart attack, a family inheritance from his mother, we learn.  It is these memories in the first half of the book that probably persuaded Lee's editor to encourage her to write a novel set in Jean Louise's childhood; but there's no indication here that this material would evoke the masterpiece that is Mockingbird.  The memories in Watchman are set pieces that describe a more tranquil world, but still one where Scout the tomboy embarrasses Atticus (in ways she never does in Mockingbird) and has trouble accepting that she is female (one of the longest pieces is the 9 months Scout spends convinced she is pregnant because a young boy, in gratitude for helping her with his school work, impulsively kisses her on the lips)..  These anecdotes go to Jean Louise's character, and set us up for the gut punch she experiences when she sees her beloved father at a White Citizen's council meeting in that iconic courtroom, sitting in the balcony as she does in Mockingbird.

It is the famous novel that echoes in this one, not because Lee planned it that way, but because Mockingbird got to us first.  But Mockingbird also did Lee's subject in Watchman an injustice, and that points to an explanation of why the timeline of the latter was abandoned for the earlier time of the former.  The famous trial is mentioned in Watchman, but the outcome is far different.  Atticus takes the case to prevent an injustice, and he does.  He wins the case, rather than loses it.  The loss in Mockingbird is more realistic to the setting and dramatically necessary, as it confirms for us that Atticus is a good man surrounded by the darkness of racism; and he's an even better man because he fights against the evil, even as he hasn't the strength or power to defeat it.  When the blacks stand in honor of Atticus walking from the courtroom, we all stand with them:  he never had a chance, but he fought the good fight anyway.

There is no similar tale in Watchman, but when Jean Louise sees Atticus in that courtroom among all the other racists, it turns her world upside down and inside out, and the worst part is she has no one to talk to.  Everyone in Maycomb agrees with Atticus, and those who don't, such as Calpurnia, see Jean Louise no longer as Scout, but as a white woman.  She is isolated on all sides, but not a victim of racism so much as a beneficiary of it, and that is a sin that is very hard to wash out, indeed.  Of whom do you ask forgiveness, and who can grant it to you?  That's the message of Watchman:  not that the racist is the other, the faceless mob, the implacable jury; not that we, too, can be Atticus.  No, the message is that we are Atticus:  we want to protect the status quo from "outsiders," Or we are Jean Louise, beneficiaries of a privilege we took for granted, but one that now, we have to pay for.

It's worth emphasizing that the setting of Watchman is not America under Martin Luther King.  It isn't King in the Birmingham Jail, or LBJ pushing the Civil Rights Act through, or the march on Washington or Bloody Selma or Mississippi Burning.  It's not even yet Orville Faubus standing in the schoolroom door.  All that's really happened in Maycomb is Brown v. Board of Education, an opinion whose implementation would still be resisted by school districts ("why don't they just resign?") as late as the 1980's.  Whenever people are frustrated that Obergefell isn't fully implemented in every county clerk's office in all 50 states by now, I think about that.  Little more than the threat to separate but equal schools has, in Jean Louise's world, spurred whites to form committees in opposition, and blacks to recognize they deserve a better place in America, fairer treatment from their government.  The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, are absolutely unimaginable.  It's not even clear Brown has been implemented in Alabama; just the idea of it is enough to force everyone to stand on the issue.

In Watchman Atticus does take on the defense of another black man accused of manslaughter; but he doesn't do it for the purpose of racial justice.  He does it to keep the NAACP from sending in lawyers, "outsiders," to "disrupt" Maycomb.  We realize, with Jean Louise, that the call of racism is not coming from outside; it's coming from inside the house.

That was a volatile message in 1950's America.  Oddly, it seems to still be that today.  The plot of this novel pivots on that revelation; on the radical change coming to the South, on the fact that Jean Louise literally can't go home again because home isn't home, the people she loved, from Atticus to Calpurnia, are no longer the figures of her childhood (and not just because she is no longer a child).  It is actually a more powerful statement on racism in America than Mockingbird was.  And I hope that isn't the reason, or even just the result that, this novel fades into the shadow of its famous predecessor.  This novel solidifies the talent of Harper Lee as an American novelist; and it makes us face, as adults like Jean Louise, what Wendell Berry labeled our "hidden wound" as Americans.

It is a much more honest examination of racism and race relations in America than Mockingbird; and it deserves to be honored for that.

Go the f**k to sleep

I know I'm supposed to be upset by this ("Lawyers vow Kim Davis will violate court order").

I'm too busy laughing.

All the plaintiffs in the suit who wanted marriage licenses have them.  Hetero couples in Rowan County can now get marriage licenses.  Nothing Kim Davis or her lawyers did bore any fruit.  The ACLU, who represented the plaintiffs, is satisfied.  The deputy clerks are under court order and observation and must report in every two weeks, or face criminal contempt themselves (i.e., jail time).  Kim Davis may try to block the issuance of any more licenses, but she'll just go back to jail, and licenses will continue to issue.  Pretty soon even the people of Rowan County will grow tired of this dog-and-pony show.

She failed, she lost, she was rebuked, she left no mark on the system, she created no legal precedent, she solidified the holding in Obergefell and limited the holding in Hobby Lobby (which is the legal precedent she is relying on for all her statements about her "sincere religious beliefs").  The opposition to her position won everything except her extermination and removal from the face of the earth, or from public office in Rowan County.

And since the former is just childshly insane, and the latter was never really an option, why aren't we dancing in the streets?  Better yet, why don't we just turn out the lights and close the door on our way out.

This party is over.*

In the adult world, this is what "winning" feels like.  It's nothing like the movies or TeeVee, and there are people on the intertoobs still outraged that the judge "caved."

Leave them to their ignorance.  There's no hope for them anyway.  Adults move on.

*And if this doesn't make you laugh, what will?

Cruz did not appear at the press conference with Huckabee, Staver and Davis. But it wasn't for his lack of trying. The New York Times reported that when Cruz "exited the jail a throng of journalists beckoned him toward their microphones, but an aide to Mr. Huckabee blocked the path of Mr. Cruz, who appeared incredulous."

BTW, Cruz is polling 4% in Iowa, 5% in New Hampshire; Huckabee is 3% and 4%.  Anybody really think there's a "Kim Davis bounce"?

Sic Transit Gloria

Alright, let's bring this sordid tale to an end:

The federal judge who threw a renegade Kentucky clerk in jail for contempt of court last week ordered her release on Tuesday.

Criminal contempt, it turns out, is not for the satisfaction of the howler monkeys on the intertoobs.  Now that her office is complying with the court's order, Davis no longer needs to be in jail.  Besides, the plaintiff's have won; they all got their marriage licenses.  And the clerks have to file reports with the court every two weeks, certifying they are still in compliance with the court's order.

So Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee get to appear at the courthouse and....what?  Cheer the fact "the gaiz" won?  Take credit for Ms. Davis being released?  Proclaim her martyrdom of one week in jail a victory for right-thinking Christians everywhere?

She lost.  She lost completely and absolutely.  If the clerks defy the court's order, they, too, could wind up in jail (why do you think the judge called them to the courthouse?  It was to put the fear of the law into 'em.).  Ms. Davis may make some more noise, but all the air has gone out of that balloon.  That party's over:  no martyrdom for you!

Or soup.  No soup, either.  And no, that doesn't make the judge a Nazi.  But Ms. Davis' 15 minutes are now up.*

Who wants a donut?

*This doesn't mean she won't try to cling to the wreckage.  But I don't think somebody understands how jails work.  Quelle surprise.   And she was to have been visited by Cruz and Huckabee; somehow I don't think the timing of this order is coincidental.

Heh.

Soundbites

One more reason Kim Davis is not going to be a martyr:  she's lost FoxNews.

And one more reason we should revive the study of Classics (if J.K. Rowling wasn't proof enough):  so we stop reinventing the wheel (people with excessive overconfidence tend to succeed?  The Greeks taught us that 2500 years ago.  Yes, they may also fail spectacularly, but success and failure are inextricably linked.).

To complete the triad, we recall that politics is the means by which people resolve their difference within an institution, be that government or church.  And we learn, once again, that yes, the Roman Catholic Church also embodies politics.  What's interesting is how much the discussion within the Vatican on what is "true Church teaching" resembles discussions in America on what is "true Constitutional interpretation," complete with appeals to the "Founding Fathers" (who were no more of one mind than we are today) and the certainty that there is only one Church teaching for any given subject (or at least of the "important" ones, whatever they are).

"But Sordello and my Sordello?"

Practicing law like a 3 year old with a loaded gun

Mmmmmmm...fresher* donuts!

NTodd beat me to it, but there's still some choice stuff here:

Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who's refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, on Monday asked the Kentucky governor to immediately free her from jail, according to court documents obtained by CNN.

"We would like them to release her from jail and provide reasonable, sensible accommodation so she can do her job," one of her lawyers, Horatio Mihet, said in a statement. "That would be taking her name off of marriage licenses in Rowan County and allowing her deputies to issue the licenses."

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear's office said Monday he won't respond, noting that the conflict was a "matter between her and the courts."

At this point Kim Davis would be better off pro se (representing herself).  These guys are morons.  Worse than that, they are a positive danger to their client.  What, they might have a legal argument?  First, I would remind the Court that these are the legal geniuses that said the clerk has to sign marriage licenses or they are void.  Not, however, according to the Rowan County Attorney. (Or according to the license itself; see comments below.)

So now we have this "legal opinion:"

One of Davis's lawyers, Mat Staver, founder and chariman of Liberty Counsel, said Beshear could issue an executive order to solve the problem.

It's my understanding that the duties of the County Clerk, an elected office, are set by statutes, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say:  No, the governor of Kentucky can't do that.  But apparently that's what her lawyers have been telling her, because her husband last Friday spilled the beans:

Staver said Davis has no plans to resign and would remain in jail until a compromise is reached. He said his client would be willing to issue licenses if her name and title were not on them.

Davis' husband, Joe, told reporters Friday that his wife was willing to stay in jail until that proposed compromise happened.

"As long as it takes," Joe Davis said. "Hopefully (Kentucky Gov. Steve) Beshear will haave the guts to do his job."

I'd been wondering what Gov. Beshear had to do with this; now I think I know.

Which brings me back to my original aassessment of the plight of Kim Davis.  I've wanted to be somewhat gracious to her lawyers and think they were either making a legal argument in good faith, or just, as a retired judge once put it, "preaching it round and square."  But I've decided they are venal idiots committing malpractice as publicly as I've ever seen it done.  Mat Staver is a man in a round room trying to find the corner to sit in.  Problem is, he's got his client with him.

*WEEKEND UPDATE:  And it turns out it's worse than I thought.  Davis' lawyers didn't make any appeal to Bashear; they've filed an appeal with the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals asking the Court to issue an emergency injunction against Bashear's statement to all Kentucky County Clerks that they comply with the Obergefell decision.  So now it's the governor's fault that Kim Davis is in jail!

I can think of a fairly large number of objections to this pleading, but the main one is:  this is the argument they tried once before, and it was already rejected.  What they want is some reason for Kim Davis not to have to comply with Obergefell.  What they have, is the same argument over and over.  Time to change the record, fellas.

So, three things: Kim Davis isn't getting rich off of this anytime soon (the story is turning into her pathetic legal case, not her heroic martyrdom); her lawyers are committing malpractice in a way I truly never thought I'd see; and the federal courts are going to lost patience with them any day now.

I've seen pro se defendants with more legal sense than this team of lawyers has.

Time to follow the money

Rowan County Senior High School Band.  I dunno; I just like high school bands.

This has now turned into farce:

With Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis in jail on civil contempt charges for defying a judge's order to resume issuing licenses, deputy clerk Brian Mason ended the office's two-month license ban by politely serving Yates and Smith on Friday, even congratulating them and shaking their hands afterward.

Hours later, however, attorneys for Davis said the marriage licenses issued by her office Friday were void because only Davis has the authority to authorize a marriage license and she refuses to do so.

"They are not being issued under the authority of the Rowan County clerk's office. They are not worth the paper that they are written on," said attorney Mat Staver after meeting with Davis in the Carter County jail in Grayson.

Rowan County Attorney Cecil Watkins has previously dismissed that argument, saying deputy clerks can issue valid marriage licenses without the approval of their boss.

Marriage equality protesters shouted "Love won!" outside the Rowan County courthouse as Yates and Smith emerged. Across the sidewalk, a crowd of people who support Kim Davis stood mutely, save for one man screaming quotes from the Bible about Sodom and Gomorrah.

Do they think they're scaring people with that line?  Do they plan to sue them for living in sin?  Do they imagine this is really a 40's madcap comedy (marriage and bigamy are surprisingly common topics in '40's comedies.  Somebody oughta do a study....)?

These are the legal geniuses who lost their case from the trial court to the Supreme Court, and now they threaten not only to appeal the contempt charge (good luck with that, fellas!), but want to put the fear of their God into people coming to Rowan County to get marriage licenses, not all of whom have to be gay (since Davis, for some reason, was refusing to issue any licenses, under the mistaken impression it would protect her from a charge of discrimination.*).  And now they think nobody involved in this case, including the federal judge, knows the law of Kentucky except them?

Really, this is just ridiculous now.  I'm honestly wondering if the voters of Rowan County want to pay a clerk a salary to sit in jail.  That may be the real reason she refuses to quit her job.  Wonder if it will become the reason she gets removed from her job?

*Neither federal law nor Kentucky law recognizes homosexuality as a protected class for civil rights purposes, so you can discriminate against homosexuals in Kentucky with abandon.  What you can't do is ignore a court order.

The Wit and Wisdom of a former Cowboys Quarterback

It's worth noting Kim Davis seldom said much in her defense; mostly she hid in her office, away from cameras and reporters and people demanding marriage licenses (which she refused to issue on some confused notion that not issuing any at all was a "Get Out of Jail Free" card because she was not discriminating against gays, which is not illegal in Kentucky).

And now her husband is speaking for her:

Joe Davis said that he plans to travel to confront Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D), who has refused to call a special legislative session to address marriage licenses for gay couples, according to The Courier-Journal.

"You ain't no governor because you have no backbone," he said of Beshear.

He has also criticized U.S. District Judge David Bunning, who ordered Kim Davis to jail on Thursday.

"Bunning cannot bully me, my wife or my son," Joe Davis said on Friday, according to Louisville television station WDRB. "I taught my son how to stand up for what's right and what he believes in at any cost. Bunning doesn't know how to pick on somebody that can handle him. The only thing he
knows how to do is to pick up on the weak people."

On Thursday, after his wife was sent to jail, Davis told a New York Times reporter, "Tell Judge Bunning ... he’s a butt."

This is what's going to launch a thousand internet funding efforts and land Kim Davis a job as a commentator on Fox News?

Besides, marriage licenses are already flowing from the Rowan County clerks' office; so why, again, do we care that Kim Davis won't let herself out of jail?  And her husband's comments are a sharp contrast to the actions of Ms. Davis herself:

Davis stood and thanked Bunning after he ordered her to jail, pausing briefly to search the crowded courtroom for familiar faces before she was led away.

Turn out the lights, the party's over.....

Nope.

I've seen this argument already in comments at Salon:  that Kim Davis gets rich and famous now because she's a "martyr" in jail for her "sincerely held religious beliefs."

I respectfully dissent.

First, Kim Davis is not Sarah Palin, which is to simply say, she doesn't look anything like Tina Fey.  Sorry, but being attractive matters, especially for instant celebrity.  She resembles the mother (I know she has a name, but I never watched the show) of Honey Boo Boo, a show people watched because it was a train wreck and the characters on there were so bizarre as to be almost interesting.

Nobody's watching Honey Boo Boo anymore; that ship has sailed.

Nor is she eloquent.  The report from the courtroom today had her answering briefly the questions put to her, until she spoke about her religious beliefs.  She speaks from the heart about her religious beliefs, but she sounds like people I grew up with, people as nondescript and otherwise uninteresting as Kim Davis.  Nothing against Ms. Davis personally, and I won't join in comments on her appearance or her marital history; but she's not a charismatic person who's going to excite interest for very long.  She's ordinary; she's not electrifying.  She's a symbol, which is how she's being treated by her lawyers.  But she's not an interesting person with something to say.

She's a woman who suddenly found herself on the world stage, and she seems to still be blinking in the klieg lights.  Now she's going away for what could be as long as three years.  Courts don't generally imprison people for contempt for years on end, but that's the outside number on this issue, as she doesn't come up for re-election until 2018.  I don't know the law in Kentucky, but it may be the office can't issue marriage licenses without the signature of the elected clerk, and unless there's some provision to declare her unable to complete her duties, there's nothing to keep her from blocking the issuance of marriage licenses in Rowan County until 2018.*

There are no cameras in jail, and no microphones.  More to the point, Ms. Davis hasn't sought out the cameras and microphones.  Reports are that recently she's been hiding in her office, coming out briefly to address crowds of people, and then retreating behind closed doors again.  She isn't seeking the spotlight now, and she won't command it from a jail cell.

Her lawyers and "supporters" may try to make a martyr of her, but I think they'll find they have no raw material to work with.  She isn't a particularly sympathetic character (my sympathies are with her because she reminds me of people I've known all my life.  I have no sympathy for her stubbornness that put her in jail, and I think she expected things to go differently when she started this.), and she won't become more so when she's once again locked away from public view, a public view she's never really tried to exploit.

Other people can only exploit someone for their own publicity for so long, and then they have to move on.  Ms. Davis' 15 minutes are down to about their last five.**

*There is undoubtedly some provision in KY Law that will eventually replace Ms. Davis and get the work of the county flowing again.  Or it may be pressure simply builds on her to resign because the entire county can't come to a halt while she serves her martyrdom in jail.

**The problem with commenting on a "breaking" story is that you never have all the information at one time.  Now it seems the deputy clerks, save Davis' son, have promised to issue marriage licenses, so the work of the county clerk's office will go on without Ms. Davis.  She won't be released from jail immediately, but I also wonder if the Judge will soon release her with instructions that if she blocks the issuance of licenses again, she's back in jail instanter.

Of course, if she's not in jail for long, and if the licenses flow, then whither her martyrdom?  Or even if she is there for long, it will be only her stubbornness that keeps her there.  She won't stop the marriages from happening.

Watch the doughnut, not the hole

Mark Joseph Stern makes an excellent point:

Now the Liberty Counsel has filed an angry, rambling application to the Supreme Court that is little more than an anti-Obergefell rant dressed up as a legal document. The fact that Davis’ lawyers couldn’t tone down the animus for long enough to pen the application is distressing but not surprising. More and more, it’s beginning to look like the Liberty Counsel is taking Davis for a ride, using her doomed case to promote itself and its extremist principles. Davis has certainly humiliated and degraded the gay couples whom she turned away. But I wonder if, on some level, she isn’t a victim, too.

To fully understand his point, you should know Ms. Davis' lawyers have actively advised her to defy the court's orders.  That is what we lawyers call "unethical," a word that means you probably shouldn't be practicing law and, at a minimum, should have your license to practice in federal court revoked.*

No one wants to think of Kim Davis as a victim.  She has humiliated individuals; her personal life has been splashed across the internet; her husband has responded belligerently to death threats (no surprise, actually; I'd do the same for my wife, except I'd have to buy the gun first.).  She hasn't done much to deserve our sympathy.  And, you will say, she's walking into this with her eyes open:

“I owe my life to Jesus Christ who loves me and gave His life for me. Following the death of my godly mother-in-law over four years ago, I went to church to fulfill her dying wish. There I heard a message of grace and forgiveness and surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. I am not perfect. No one is. But I am forgiven and I love my Lord and must be obedient to Him and to the Word of God. I never imagined a day like this would come, where I would be asked to violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage. To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience. It is not a light issue for me. It is a heaven or hell decision.”

She may be sincere in her belief, but she's being taken for a ride by her lawyers.  I could see that, and all I know of this case is from news reports.  I haven't read any of the pleadings, but just what gets reported made it clear to me the lawyers in this case were political, not legal.  They shouldn't be allowed into a court of law; and now it appears they are actively putting their client at risk.  It is perfectly clear they have never pursued this case for their client's interests, but only for their own.

She'll be the one paying the fines and going to jail (if it comes to that).  Sure, maybe they can crowd source the fines (for a while); but nobody can go to jail for Ms. Davis.

This does not make her innocent; but she is being misled, and abused.  Our internet ire should land on her lawyers, more so than it does on her.  She will eventually fade from our attention.

The all but anonymous lawyers will move on to their next victim.

*not the same as losing your license to practice law.  Federal courts require application and licensure before you can appear before them, a "license" the Federal court can revoke.  They don't like people playing games in their system, and they don't have to put up with it.  Lawyers can lose their ability to go to federal court, but can still practice in states where they are admitted to the state bar.  If that doesn't happen to these lawyers, it still should.  Their actions are indefensible.

Does anybody really know what time it is?

Does anybody know what Rand Paul is talking about?

"I think one way to get around the whole idea of what the Supreme Court is forcing on the states is for states just to get out of the business of giving out licenses," Paul said. "Alabama has already voted to do this, they’re just no longer going to give out licenses. And anybody can make a contract. And then if you want a marriage contract you go to a church. And so I’ve often said we could have gotten around all of this also in the sense that I do believe everybody has a right to a contract."

First, best I can tell, Alabama is still issuing marriage licenses (can't be married without one!).  Second:  marriage has always been a contract under civil law.  Marriage licenses just allow  the ordering of that contract, the registration of it, and prevention of bigamy.  It also allows the state to determine paternity, and assign responsibility for children of the marriage, as well as ownership of property from the marriage.  Which is why Alabama Probate Clerks issue marriage licenses; marriage often ends up involving probate.

So if states "get out of the business of issuing marriage licenses," what happens to all that property and family law?  Not to mention health laws and tax laws?

Is this guy really that big a moron?

Unphilosophical Investigations

I've never gotten around to reading Philosophical Investigations (I prefer the more fragmentary works, lectures notes, etc., published posthumously), but this quote is marvelous, if only because I love coffee and I like Wittgenstein:

“Describe the aroma of coffee—why can't it be done? Do we lack the words? and for what are words lacking?—But how do we get the idea that such a description must after all be possible? Have you ever felt the lack of such a description? Have you tried to describe the aroma and not succeeded?” Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.

The Slate article is good, too, although I could do without the back-handed slap at "bloviating deconstructionists."  Then again, analytical philosophers are engaged in a constant feud with Continental philosophers; although I've always thought of Wittgenstein bridging that gap somewhat (which is yet another way of reading him, and yet another controversy about how he should be understood.  Oh, read the article, you'll see what I mean.)

I'm always asking my students to describe a flavor, and then asking them why they can't.  It has something to do with composition and rhetoric, of that I'm sure.....

Blessed are....

My take on this is not that of Charlie Pierce.  To the secular world, this announcement by Pope Francis can seem patronizing and paternalistic, and even the demand for contrition can seem too much.

But this applies only to Catholics, not to all women in the world.  If you want the official blessing of your church, this is what you do.  And it doesn't seem like much to me, considering we are all called, if we are Christians, to be contrite and to humble ourselves before God.

I'm a little perplexed when people think the Pope should not be Catholic, but rather should agree with them and then, if possible, be Catholic; and if not, just don't be Catholic.  It kind of ignores the reason he's the Pope in the first place.

I also think this is a great deal more movement on abortion than I ever would have expected.  Then again, having known women who were getting abortions, I understand this as I think Francis does:  as a pastoral care issue.

The Pope is determined to restore some of the pastoral office to the Holy See.  He can't be the Pastor-in-Chief to the Roman Catholic world, but he is, I think, going in the right direction.  People who seek the blessing of their church in reconciliation need to come with contrite hearts (otherwise what's the point of the blessing?  What good does it do you?).  But they also need to know their church will accept them, that the blessing and the reconciliation is available.

Seems to me that's the heart of the gospel message.